Jobs of tomorrow will require post-secondary education

ABSENT MINDS: Richard Brooks, executive director of the Governor’s Workforce Board, said lessening the “brain drain” is one of his primary goals. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT
ABSENT MINDS: Richard Brooks, executive director of the Governor’s Workforce Board, said lessening the “brain drain” is one of his primary goals. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT

As executive director of the Governor’s Workforce Board, Richard Brooks coordinates state and federally funded programs for workforce development. Since 2005, the board has invested more than $56 million to aid the state’s employment, education and economic development. The board’s most pressing task is to help train thousands of out-of-work Rhode Islanders in desperate need of jobs. But Brooks says the board is also focused on the future and closing the skills gap that could keep local firms from growing at the pace they’d like.

PBN: What is the role of the workforce board?
BROOKS: It’s a 17-member board made up of people who represent labor, community organizations, businesses and government. They make policies and provide funding to help Rhode Islanders obtain the skills they need to do the jobs employers need. … We have a very comprehensive, five-year strategic plan that our board prepared. Recently they took the plan and identified short-term, priority objectives to guide our work over the next year.

PBN: How is that accomplished?
BROOKS: We recently formed an employment committee that is looking at employers and what they need. We work closely with employer organizations, the chambers of commerce and the state Economic Development Corp., just to name a few. We also have industry partners, seven major sectors of the business community: hospitality; health care; marine trades; construction; defense; information technology and bioscience.

PBN: How do industry partners assist the workforce board?
BROOKS: They are the links to the employers and the trade associations in their field of expertise. They provide labor-market information and identify the skills gaps, the mismatch between the time an employer has a job they want to fill versus the skills applicants bring to the table. That information is shared with the K-12 system, to the community colleges and to [universities]. They also help with career pathways, where people will be able to understand how to prepare for a particular job, how to get the credentials or certificate they need, the training and the course skills.

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PBN: Your seven sectors don’t include general labor?
BROOKS: I do not want to understate the fact that there are still good manufacturing jobs in Rhode Island. That should not be overlooked.
There’s no question that the bulk of the jobs that are expected to be created over the next 10 years will require some post-secondary education. The challenge for Rhode Island is that the individuals entering our workforce have less education, less English proficiency and less experience than those leaving the workforce. It’s also a challenge for employers that are looking to fill their vacancies and remain competitive.

PBN: What are your biggest challenges?
BROOKS: We have tens of thousands of Rhode Islanders that need jobs now. At the same time, we have skills gaps that require longer-term training and education, so we need to do two things at once. We need to be preparing people to get in the workforce, get their foot in the door, and we’re doing that with a couple of short-term initiatives. They are intended to jump-start hiring for those out of work and provide incentives for companies to hire them.
The second thing is to keep people employed here. One of our new initiatives is designed to stop the “brain drain” of college graduates that have the skills employers need, but in some cases are moving out of state to work. We will be reaching out to information technology and bioscience students graduating in May and trying to enlist them in subsidized fellowships over the summer.

PBN: What are some of the other programs?
BROOKS: We recently announced short-term training and hiring incentives for an electronic health-records training pre-employment program, a hospitality training program, the fellowships I just mentioned and post-employment information technology and bioscience training for Rhode Islanders that were previously unemployed. Helping with these programs are several of the industry partnerships I described earlier; the Rhode Island Hospitality Education Foundation, Stepping Up and the Tech Collective. The four programs should help about 50 to 60 Rhode Islanders.

PBN: How does the training process work?
BROOKS: Much of the funding goes directly to the employers but some covers the training and education of individuals entering the workforce. They may have been unemployed, on welfare or laid-off, or they might have difficulty with the language.

PBN: How is the money distributed?
BROOKS: When it goes to the employer for an existing employee it’s a matching fund, meaning they must contribute the same amount. Sometimes that training is done in-house and sometimes it is done by a professional trainer. For the individual we would be working with a range of education providers.

PBN: How’s the participation?
BROOKS: People are highly motivated to get the skills and credentials that they need to get a job that will enable them to support themselves and their families.
Our work is very difficult in an interesting economic climate, yet we are confident that with the input and active participation of employers, in partnership with the education-training system, we really do have the ability to train workers for the jobs that exist today as well as in the future. •

INTERVIEW
Richard L. “Rick” Brooks
POSITION: Executive director, Governor’s Workforce Board
BACKGROUND: Before being named executive director of the Governor’s Workforce Board, Brooks worked for 13 years as the executive director of United Nurses and Allied Professionals, a regional health care union. Before that, Brooks served for seven years as associate director of the Institute for Labor Studies and Research, where he was responsible for worker-education programs. He is a co-founder of Stepping Up, a statewide health care career pathways program.
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s degree in labor studies, Empire State College, SUNY, 1978; master’s degree in labor relations, University of Rhode Island, 1994
FIRST JOB: Newspaper carrier
RESIDENCE: Warwick
AGE: 58

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