Adaptability of the US Engineering and Technical Workforce Proceedings of a Workshop (2018) / Chapter Skim
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6 Training and Organizational Change
6 Training and Organizational Change
Pages 45-54
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From page 45... ...
• ompanies are less likely to pay for their employees to develop C adaptability skills such as communication, program solving, and critical thinking than they are to pay for more narrowly focused skills, such as coding. Community colleges need to help change that dynamic.
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From page 46... ...
To provide its employees with a recognizable career path while also building a flexible workforce, the company developed what it calls an hourly career framework, which includes a skills and flexibility program called the work elements program. Rolled out among welders and then extended to all 14 functional career paths in the company, the program is based on paying workers for developing skills and flexibility.
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"That's how we guide our people to naturally go where the work is going to be." CREATING A HOMEGROWN WORKFORCE Felsomat USA, which builds machine tools, robots, and other automation equipment for the Big Three auto companies, employs a vast array of people but was having a hard time keeping talented workers. Hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs in manufacturing are going unfilled, said Blake Consdorf, the company's chief executive officer and president, "and it's only going to get worse with the retiring baby boomers.
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Educational institutions and parents devote some attention to career awareness and preparation in the United States but not to the same extent as in other countries. Again using Germany as an example, Partridge said that 12-year-olds there are expected to arrange their own one-week internships, after which they "get some very reliable feedback about what their strengths are, and what their weaknesses are, which makes them better prepared when they're making career decisions." An NVCC labor market research group has been analyzing skill deficits identified by employers: communication was number 1, problem solving/critical thinking number 2, and relationship management number 3.
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is a partnership of higher education institutions adapting their undergraduate engineering programs by working to increase students' curiosity about the future and develop their interest in economic and societal value, said Douglas Melton, program director at the Kern Family Foundation. KEEN's 31 partner institutions represent about 58,000 undergraduate engineering students and about 3,500 engineering faculty members -- about 10 percent of all undergraduate engineering students and faculty members in the country.
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The result, he predicted, will be a new normal for engineering programs. EVALUATING AN ADAPTABILITY PROGRAM Carra Sims, senior behavioral and social scientist with the RAND Corporation, elaborated on RAND's evaluation of the US Army Asymmetric Warfare Adaptive Leader Program (AWALP)
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• Companies and educational institutions must keep the com munication lines open about existing and anticipated company needs, especially in nontechnical skills. • Community colleges can create excitement through competi tion, challenges, and partnerships.
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DISCUSSION In closing this session, the presenters addressed a question posed by the moderator about what they saw as the most important steps to advance training and organizational change. (Additional steps, suggested by the workshop moderators and attendees, are presented in chapter 8.)
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"Of course, we're in business to make money, don't get me wrong," he said, but the culture of the company enabled it to take a chance that the program would pay off. Consdorf agreed that costs were associated with the program at the community college, though they were soft costs rather than the costs of providing hardware.
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From page 54... ...
For that reason, the United States should do a better job with the "stackability" of degrees and certificates, he said, so that students can continue their education. That is the case in Germany, where someone who goes down a vocational route can later change to a university route.
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