Community Workforce Development: A System of ON-RAMPS & OFF-RAMPS

Communities must develop a “system” that supports its citizens along the entire workforce continuum.?Workforce development is not something that happens at any one stage of development.?In my opinion, workforce development is a system of “ON RAMPS and OFF RAMPS” that each individual navigates throughout their lifecycle.?

Let's talk about youth involvement in the labor market throughout the workforce continuum, starting with childhood employment. Childhood employment refers to the participation in work related activities at a family and neighborhood level.?Parents modeling work for their children to mimic and master.?For example; the local little league baseball field needs cleaned up before the season starts.?The park director invites volunteers to help complete the work.?Parents need to take these opportunities to bring their children to a community space to participate in labor intensive work (shoveling, raking, repairing, and painting).?The risk to a child whose work is being supervise by a parent is minimal.?The reward is immeasurable.?

Parents have the opportunity to demonstrate the behaviors they want to see in their children.?Children have the opportunity to develop new skills, work in cooperation with others, share in the experience of professional accomplishment, and take pride in a job well done.?This experience is an example of your child’s first “ON RAMP” to workforce participation.?Other examples of initial “ON RAMP” work opportunities include raking leaves, washing cars, feeding/walking pets, making lunch, babysitting, taking out the trash, flipping loads of laundry, stacking wood, making beds, vacuuming,?watering or weeding gardens.?

If parents don’t invite children to participate in these work activities, they are missing the earliest opportunity to introduce them to the larger world of work.?It’s important that parents assign this level of work to children and hold them accountable to the completion of these tasks.?If parents start to relax on their expectations, children will take the opportunity and the cue from you that it’s ok to shirk your duties and take the easy way out.?

Think about ON RAMPS as opportunities to gain access to work.?The more access we have the more familiar we become with examples of work, and we expand our occupational awareness and vocabulary.?If parents have the most influence on our career awareness, then wouldn’t we serve our children best by introducing them to occupations in addition to our own??A child’s occupational knowledge is informed by the “jobs” they see in their family, at school, and in their everyday lives.?To be more specific, an elementary aged child may only associate teachers, nurses, police officers, firemen, doctors, and veterinarians as future career options.?

But, what if parents were more intentional about exposing their children to other occupations??For example, you might see trains, airplanes, garbage trucks, combines, barges, cranes, and busses while driving in the community.?Parents should take the time to talk to their children about those occupations and the education/training pathways to those jobs.?They can use O’Net (Department of Labor, Occupational Network Website) https://www.onetonline.org/ to get more information about training, salary, and future job outlook.?

Parents can also explore a child’s curiosity about these occupations by reading books, watching videos, or taking field trips to businesses that represent these occupations.?For example; the John Deere Pavilion in Moline, Illinois is a family friendly, and free destination that allows children and adults the opportunity to explore John Deere Equipment hands on.?This experience represents an ON RAMP, in introduction to occupations in the agriculture and construction industries, but not exclusively.?Children who experience this facility may also walk away with a passion for teaching, or building, collecting, design, marketing, growing, or machine maintenance.?

?Adults assume that children will only appreciate the most obvious elements of a field trip and the most obvious career connections will be top of mine.?In actuality, children will observe the elements of an environment that capture their curiosity for color, lighting, shape, design, material, movement, and more.?Personally, I toured a local metal manufacturing plant with my high school aged son recently.?You would think the obvious take away would have been the production of metal, the assembly work, the machine operating jobs, or the engineering occupations.?In fact, it was the visual display at the start of the tour that caught his interest the most.?He is a kid that loves to play Army and watch movies and read books with military themes.?He heard the tour guide point out that metal produced at their plant in another state, was responsible for the production of munitions for the military.?From that moment on, his attention was fixed on figuring out the relationship between this plant and a career building military machines and equipment.?This was as significant observation as a parent.?

The end of the field trip doesn’t have to end the experience.?Parents can continue the journey on this ON RAMP by introducing children to additional resources and activities that reinforce their child’s interests from the field trip.?Parents will start to observe their child’s natural inclinations toward real world of work capabilities for building, creating, writing, calculating, caregiving, technology, teaching, learning, sorting, exploring, and sharing.?As children demonstrate a curiosity for one or more aspects of the field trip experience, that is a clue to parents to identify other resources and experiences that enhance their child’s curiosity.?The act of observing your child’s behaviors in an interactive experience will give you clues to how they interpret and respond to their environments.?Observable behaviors and intellectual curiosity are a roadmaps for navigating the ON RAMPS and OFF RAMPS of a child’s career pathway.?

In my experience, the next step was to enroll my son into a career and technical education course in high school that focused on manufacturing.?This was another key ON RAMP to my child’s future occupational identity.?This class opened his eyes to new technologies and engineering concepts.?We purchased a 3D printer to fan the flame of curiosity.?Ironically, we witnessed his childhood talents for drawing and design emerge.?He became more interested in modeling, design, color, and materials.?This change in curiosity represented an OFF RAMP on his builder pathway and an ON RAMP into design.?

Here are some local programs in our community that offer ON RAMPS ?to career exploration:

·??????Federal Title 1 WIOA Programs

·??????AmeriCorps

·??????YouthBuild

·??????Conservation Corps

·??????iJAG

·??????AVID

·??????Goodwill

·??????Concurrent Enrollment and Guided Pathway Programs

·??????Work-Based Learning Opportunities

·??????Youth Apprenticeship Opportunities

·??????Skilled Trade Apprenticeship Programs

I caution parents against labeling or profiling the interests of their children in a single industry or occupational type.?The true process of career discovery should be protected from pigeon holing or stereotyping.?Just because a student is good at math, doesn’t mean they should automatically be an engineer; why couldn’t they be a salesman, an electrician, or the dean of a community college??It’s too easy to fall back into the trap of labeling the most familiar occupation and associating it with traditional education.?We need to expand our curiosities and trust that our intuition already knows what we want to become (Steve Jobs).?

?A critical element of self-discovery is testing your abilities and aptitudes.?I stand by the statement that says, “You can’t be anything you want to be.”?I know it sounds harsh, but if we all had the same abilities and aptitudes, we would diminish our individuality and experience limited occupational diversity.?

I once read a book by the Gallup organization that described the Acorn Principle.?Simply put, people pursue careers that society determines are “good jobs.”?Essentially a child will choose to be an acorn because society tells us an acorn becomes a giant oak tree, the biggest and most beautiful tree in the world.?Think of the oak tree as synonymous with being a doctor, lawyer, nurse or engineer.?Many parents push their children toward becoming something that is completely misaligned with their natural talents and aptitudes because “we” perceive these occupations to be the best.?

But, have we ever thought that maybe a child has a completely different mental, physical, and intellectual make up that aligns more closely with a palm tree??What’s wrong with discovering the unique talents and aptitudes of your “little coconut” and feed and fertilize the unique element of a coconut so that is has the best chance of growing into the biggest, strongest, and most highly producing palm tree???We need to stop pursuing occupations based solely on potential income and start paying attention to the unique brilliance in each child and encourage them to pursue career pathways that align the characteristics that represent their best selves.

This level of self-discovery takes us to another ON RAMP in our own career exploration, the part-time job.?The very nature of the part-time job and the predictable rate of turnover in these positions is what uniquely contributes to valuable skill development and self-discovery.?

Children and teens need to test their own aptitudes and abilities to discover their own competency (the ability to do something successfully or efficiently).?Aptitude describes an individual’s natural ability or inclination toward learning and understanding particular subjects.?Ability obviously describes and individual’s level of talent, skill, or proficiency for a completing tasks.?Teens need to develop their technical skills to identify what they are naturally talented at doing, all the while developing the necessary soft-skills that employers are looking for (communication, team work, decision making, and critical thinking).?

Technical skills are more recognizable as workforce readiness skills.?We recognize these skills as entry level job skills like customer service, counting money, mowing grass, construction labor, waiting tables, cleaning floors, lifeguarding, serving food, caring for children/elderly, bagging groceries, running a cash register, detailing cars, and changing tires.?These are examples of entry level jobs that are appropriate for teenagers to perform.?We need to encourage teens to get a job where they are in the service of others, so that they appreciate the key elements of business.

Typically, the initial motivator for getting your first, part-time job is to start earning your own money.?Teens respond positively to this new level of mastery and independence.?They perform work to their employer’s expectation and they are compensated for that work.?

Through trial and error they start to discover skills that align with their talents and interests and they discover skills that are misaligned to their talents in interests.?Both experiences are equally valuable.?Good experiences positively reinforce our preferences for certain work.?Negative experiences inform us of our dislike for other roles.?This process of discovery is critical to improving a child’s awareness of the alignment between their interests, aptitudes, and abilities.?

When a child becomes aware that all three components are positive, they experience person/environment fit, the congruence between personality, interest, and aptitude.?Recognizing the feeling of fit between an individual and their work environment is a critically important component of future decision making as they mature and grow.?Without the ability to test their fit in multiple work environments, a teen will have less confidence in choosing education and training pathways or career pathways that align with their personalities, interests, and aptitudes.?Part-time jobs are a critical element of career exploration and a series of ON RAMPS and OFF RAMPS during their teenage years.

It’s important to point out that while teenagers are working through this process of career exploration, employers are becoming increasingly interested in navigating them towards careers in their industry and organizations.?Teens and parents are working through the challenges of school, extracurricular activities, and socio economic challenges that face families in local communities.?It’s unrealistic to think that students spend much of their personal time thinking about careers.?In many cases, families are facing challenges with food insufficiency, financial concerns, health, safety, and personal challenges.?On the other hand, employers are thinking about developing a talent pipeline into their businesses and how they can attract young adults into working for their companies.?Clearly, there is a major difference in priorities between employers and the prospective (teen) workforce.?

In order to bridge those interests, businesses, students, families, and schools need to work collaboratively to provide ON RAMPS for all students, from every societal demographic, to participate in.?We have to embrace an attitude of universal access and inclusion in the modern workforce.?All citizens should have access to the same education, training, and workforce opportunities.?All citizens should be invited to participate in ON RAMP experiences that guide youth toward training and career opportunities.?Communities need to recognize opportunity gaps in our communities and work toward solutions that expose youth and young adults to information, work-based learning opportunities, field trips, career fairs, jobs, and mentors.?

One method of improving equitable access to ON RAMPS is to guarantee all high school students have the opportunity to participate in at least one, work-based learning experience as recommended in their district’s student career development plan.?A work-based learning experience is the opportunity for students and professionals to interact through a classroom presentation, job shadow, worksite tour, internship or other activity like job fairs or project based learning.?

The Iowa Intermediary Network is a program funded by the Iowa Department of Education https://www.iowain.org/ . It is a network of workforce development coordinators who partner with schools and businesses to facilitate work-based learning experiences for students.?This is an opportunity for teens to have a meaningful, hands-on experience that affirms their ideas about college and career or redirects their thinking about college and career options.?Again, both are valuable outcomes of a career exploration activity like work-based learning, but without the opportunity, the learning can’t happen.?This is a free resource for students and one that can be formally coordinated by a member of the Iowa Intermediary Network or one that can be informally coordinated by a parent, teacher, or caregiver.?What parents don’t realize is that they should be proactive in advocating for their son or daughter to participate in a job shadow or work-site tour.?This is a highly impactful ON RAMP experience and one that all teens should participate in before graduating high school.

Inevitably, teens will change their minds about their choice in college major and/or career pathways.?This behavior should be accepted as a normal aspect of development and appreciated as an opportunity for businesses, schools, and communities to creatively design additional ON RAMPS back into workforce activity.?Just because one door closes, doesn’t mean another door doesn’t open.?As teens OFF RAMP after a part-time job, work-based learning experience, change education and training programs there should be other opportunities in place to ON RAMP them back into participation in the competitive labor market.? It's up to local communities to design the map and outline the resources for navigating these periods of transition.

The word transition should be appreciated in the realm of the career continuum. Change, evolution, divergence, adaptation are all positive terms that describe a career. We need to appreciate the workplace skills of someone changing careers or OF RAMPING, and the value of their transferrable skills to their next employer.

Transferrable skills are the behavioral based and technical based skills that we have been developing since childhood.?Transferrable skills can be described as workplace skills and behaviors that add value to any occupation or industry.?For example, communication skills, sales skills, persuasion, creativity, leadership, measurement, analytics, and accounting are all transferrable skills that have value in many different types of occupations.?

Unfortunately, people fall into the pattern of labeling themselves by their job titles. Job titles give us a sense of identity but it also limits our value and contribution to a future employer. We too often define our value by our occupational role, and we forget about how our skills could be incorporated into different roles, in different industries. For example, wouldn’t the leadership skills of a retail manager in a hardware store have value to a manufacturing company??If technical skills can be taught, then wouldn’t a retail manager, with her leadership, decision making, time management, and communication skills add value to the front-line leadership team of a manufacturing company??

I caution everyone from labeling your child, teen, or other adult jobseeker.?The competitive labor market will determine your eligibility for a job. You should focus on ways to demonstrate the value of the transferrable skills you can offer the new position as a primary interview strategy.?If you want to see proof of the value of transferrable skills, search for a job skill or behavioral skill on a job search website like www.indeed.com .?In contrast to popular belief, you do not have to search for jobs using a job title.?Instead, search keywords that describe your transferrable skills; the skills you use to be successful.?For example, search the work “training” or “researching.”?You will find an entire list of job postings that you never would have seen before by searching a job title only.?Indeed.com searches keywords in the entire job description.?If you search keywords that describe your best skills, assets, and behaviors, you expand your search results and potential job opportunities.

It’s tough enough being a parent and providing for your child’s basic needs, but it’s not enough.?We have to help provide for the education and occupational future of our children as well.?Our economy is evolving at a rapid pace.?Jobs that existed 20 years ago are going to be eliminate or changed at the very least.?Our workforce will not look the same, but the encouraging news is that jobs will exist for our children in strong numbers.?

These jobs will not be the highly repetitive jobs of years past, they will be jobs that incorporate automated equipment, computer technology, data driven decision making, and complex communication and decision making.?Our workforce is going to ask more of each citizen in the labor pool.?As parents, as teachers and leaders we need to be more intentional about bringing an entire generation into a highly technical and information driven workforce.?We need to embed workforce concepts into our curriculum at school.?We need to make it a priority for all students to interact with our business community through a series of work-based learning activities.?We need to open our doors to youth employment, internship, and apprenticeship.?We need to be curios about that which is unfamiliar and ask questions that will advance the professional and technical capacity of our local labor pool.?If we want to elevate the standard of work and family in our community we need reframe our purpose as people and professionals.?As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, children need to feel a sense of accomplishment and purpose and that comes from a healthy and real relationship with work.

Think about the “ON RAMPS” and “OFF RAMPS” of your child’s life.?The road through life is never a dead end and from time to time we are going to take a wrong turn, but there is always a road sign or a guide along the way who can help us stay on track!?Let’s prioritize work.?Let’s set a higher standard for workforce participation.?Let’s create a system of ON RAMPS and OFF RAMPS for every child in the Quad Cities and watch our community grow.?

Author: Chris Caves