Forbes

‘A Healthcare Company Finds The Right Medicine’ – Forbes, Online

By Nicholas Wyman.

Rhode Island-based CVS Health (CVSH) is a major U.S. employer, with nearly 300,000 people on its payroll. It is also the first American employer to have initiated a registered apprenticeship program for pharmacy technicians. Since 2005 over 8,000 individuals have signed on to that earn-while-you-learn program, making CVSH one of the most experienced U.S. sponsors of a non-traditional occupation apprenticeship. It has also launched apprenticeships for aspiring retail store managers, logistics supervisors and prescription benefits manager pharmacy technicians.

The company’s beginning apprentices, according to David Casey, vice president, workforce strategies and chief diversity officer, CVS Health, come from a diverse swath of the population: recent high school grads, youngsters who haven’t found a way into the workforce, middle aged people seeking a career change and military veterans.

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CVS Health has doubled down on its initial commitment in November 2017 when it announced its intention to hire 5,000 new apprentices by 2022, and to expand its programs from 11 states to 18. That expansion coincides with the U.S. Department of Labor’s call to vastly increase the number of apprenticeships across industries. A growing number of companies in manufacturing, hospitality, telecommunications, IT, energy, transportation and other industries are answering the call–skilling up a new generation of employees who will help to narrow a national “skills gap” that currently stands at six million unfilled positions—the highest on record.

What’s good for the nation is, in this case, also good for participating companies. The measurable financial benefits to CVS Health, for example, have been very positive. “Apprentice training brings our people up to full productivity more quickly,” according to Casey. Perhaps the greatest beneficiaries of programs like CVSH’s are the apprentices themselves. Each receives mentor-guided entry into the workforce, and earns a wage as he or she learns a skill that companies clearly value. When their term of training ends, there is no job-hunting. They already have a job! Nationally, more than 90% of apprentices who complete their programs stay with their employers. Many go on to additional post-secondary education, and most employers provide tuition assistance if the course of study is aligned with their business needs.

Facts And Figures

Ninety-eight percent of CVS Health registered apprentices are trained to become licensed and certified pharmacy technicians. The typical training period is one year.
On average, CVS pharmacy stores employ five or six pharmacy technicians.
In retail settings, pharmacy technicians must demonstrate strong consumer service skills, keep track of inventory, and achieve 100% accuracy in filling and recording prescriptions.
Some 400,000 pharmacy technicians are currently working in the United States.
Jobs for pharmacy technicians through 2024 will increase “faster than average.”

Like other sponsors, CVS Health has discovered that attracting qualified candidates isn’t easy. “Apprenticeships in this country,” says Casey, “have a branding problem,” and lack of awareness is part of it. Few American households have any experience with apprenticeships. Others only associate apprentice work with the building trades, and with electricians, plumbers and carpenters—not with white-collar vocations such as health care, banking, information technology, and management. The list of apprenticeships registered with the U.S. Department of Labor is broad, covering over 1,000 careers! Nor will many parents or high school counselors recommend an apprenticeship as a pathway to a working career. To them, a college education is the only reliable path to a good paying job and a secure future. In an era of high college dropout rates (roughly 50%) and crushing student debt, that sort of thinking is dangerously out of date. Yet, it dominates the advice given to young Americans today.

CVS Health has risen to the “branding problem” through pre-apprenticeships that it instituted in collaboration with state and local governments, public workforce agencies, community colleges, youth-focused nonprofits, and faith-based organizations. Those partners, about 1200 nationwide, connect the company with promising recruits and often assess applicants’ reading, math, and computer know-how to assure that they have the skills needed to succeed. The pre-apprenticeship program builds on those capabilities and helps participants to develop the soft skills that work in a consumer retail workplace requires: good communications, the ability to work with others, timeliness and a strong work ethic.

CVS Health has used pre-apprenticeship since the program’s inception in 2005 as one of the ways to recruit diverse talent into the apprenticeship program. Incorporating pre-apprenticeship:

Assists in keeping a full diverse talent pipeline
Improves outcomes: pre-apprentice graduates becomeproductive employees more quickly (50% more quickly by one estimate) than employees recruited by traditional methods
Helps the company meet its goal of hiring more people from communities served by its over 9,800 stores and 1,100 walk-in health clinics

Like leading firms in other industries, CVS Health has learned that it must take ownership of its unique training needs. “We can’t expect our school systems to equip people with the workplace habits and unique skills we require,” says Casey. Nor can it passively put out the “Help Wanted” sign and expect people with all the right stuff to appear on its doorstep. CVS Health’s commitment to doubling its apprentice ranks by 2022 is a clear signal that the healthcare giant has a human resource strategy for the future and that it’s on the right course.

Leave a comment or join the conversation with me on Twitter. My Book, Job U How To Find Wealth and Success By Developing the Skills Companies Actually Need can be found here

‘Fear Not The Job-Stealing Robots’- Forbes, Online

| June 13, 2018 | by Nicholas Wyman , Contributor |

Let’s face it. You’re probably like most people. You’ve heard about workplace automation probably taking your job. But it won’t happen to you or maybe anyone you know, right? Much hot

air is spent on the topic of workplace automation and its consequences for workers. Opinions are divided. Some people forecast we’ll take automation in our stride, as we have in the past. That displaced workers will be absorbed into new and emerging industries. Others foretell a gloomier future.

Optimists

The pro-automation bloc often point to American agriculture as an example. In the early 1900s, mechanization made U.S. farmers so productive that millions of rural dwellers moved off to cities, where labor was needed by a fast-growing industrial economy. In turn, as factories became more automated, millions of workers were laid off but found work in the emerging service economy. Machine-driven industrialization created wealth.

Over the past centuries, automation has improved conditions for most people. Today we enjoy abundant and less expensive food from fewer farmers, more cars, and refrigerators from highly efficient factories. We’ve also got a service economy that caters to almost every human want, from pet grooming to periodontal care. We have all of this, and nearly full employment to boot! Today’s wave of rapid automation may continue in the same way.

Pessimists

Those on the anti-automation bloc, however, point to a “jobless future.” They say the highly educated and tech-savvy will do exceptionally well, while robots and software will take over the work of the rest of us. An early 2018 report by Bain and Company’s Macro Trends Group estimates 20% to 25% of current jobs may be eliminated by the end of the 2020s, with middle- to low-income workers being the hardest hit. Income inequality under this scenario will worsen as more and more of today’s middle-class workers slide to the bottom.

Don’t Discount The Power Of Human Creativity

Indeed, they are two very different scenarios. Where do I stand? Put me with the pro-automation bloc any day. It recognizes the transformative power of human creativity in business, science and other walks of life.

Yes, automation will eliminate millions of today’s jobs, but what about the others? Many roles we can’t even imagine today. And innovation will create most of them.

Look At Apple, Amazon, FedEx, UPS

Life is full of surprises. Who in the late 1970s would have guessed that a handful of techno geeks in Cupertino, California would create the world’s most powerful brand and a robust job-producing engine? Today, Apple employs 124,000 people and has committed to hiring another 20,000 within five years. When its 9,000 U.S. suppliers and partners are added to the mix, Apple accounts for 2 million jobs.

Amazon is another example. Starting in 1993 with a small office and warehouse crew, founder Jeff Bezos now employs 566,000 people. The company’s second headquarters is on the drawing boards and expects to hire another 50,000 with an average salary of $100,000. And in support of Amazon and other online retailers, delivery companies such as FedEx and UPS are currently writing paychecks for almost one million people!

Growing Industries – Like Solar

Among industries, solar energy was barely a blip on the charts 15 years ago. It now accounts for 260,000 U.S. positions, mostly hands-on installation jobs, and that number is growing fast. One of every of 50 new jobs in the U.S. today is in the solar industry.

The job-creating potential of these and hundreds of other enterprises was not anticipated in the 1970s and 1980s when industrial robots first appeared in significant numbers. And other job-creating companies will undoubtedly emerge in the years ahead if the U.S. and its peer economies maintain their current dynamism.

Being Proactive

Sure, there will be growing pains, but when aren’t there? Employers, governments and individuals can take steps to ease transitions and leverage the advantages of automation to benefit workers and their communities.

Innovative, proactive programs are already putting people into rewarding, good-paying jobs. The programs focus on skilling and reskilling workers with apprenticeships, and key to them are partnerships between community colleges and local industry. The result? We’re successfully closing a gap for once-despairing employers who’ve been crying out for skilled candidates.

Automation will pave the way for more people to gain real satisfaction from their work. It’s about giving their human potential a platform to flourish. In so doing, we’re genuinely changing the world in astounding ways with robots and automation by our side.

Caption – Main Image: A humanoid robot stands on display during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Feb. 2018. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg.

View this and other articles on Forbes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholaswyman/2018/06/13/fear-not-the-job-stealing-robots/#6b88ad8e5f5a

‘Sampling The World Of Work In A Four-Hour Adventure’ – Forbes, Editors Pick

By Nicholas Wyman Forbes Contributor.

There was a time when kids had ample opportunities to experience the adult world of work. Farm family children pitched in whenever needed: they built fences, learned how to tend animals and fix broken tractors, and dozens of other handy skills. City kids worked part-time in hardware stores, grocery stores, or restaurants run by their parents or relatives. Or they passed wrenches and parts to dads and uncles as they repaired the family car under a shade tree. High school “shop” classes gave everyone a chance to try their hands at electrical work, wood crafting, plumbing, machining, cooking, auto repair and more. Those experiences opened their eyes to a range of future possibilities. Read the full article on Forbes Here

KidZania London pit lane experience where children have the opportunity to learn by doing. – Supplied: KidZania

‘Hiring Is On The Rise, But Are College Grads Prepared For The World Of Work?’ – Forbes, Online

By Nicholas Wyman, Forbes

McGraw-Hill Education’s (MHE) survey on readying college graduates for the workforce is hot off the press. With the school year just around the corner, a new crop of graduates gearing up for their job search after summer break and a robust economy, this survey is timely. In fact, for the class of 2018, 44% of employers will increase hiring of new college graduates.

Essential career readiness skills are not what you think.

MHE reports that only four in 10 college students feel very or extremely prepared for their future careers. Even though this figure is better this year than last, it is still low.

Whereby over half of college graduates surveyed believed they were well prepared for the workplace in “essential career readiness skills” like professionalism and work ethic (77%), critical thinking and problem solving (63%), and oral and written communication (61%), employers’ perception of career readiness was lower, namely (43%) for professionalism, (56%) for critical thinking and (42%) for communication. That’s divided thinking. Technical skills don’t seem to be a big issue for either students or employers. Interpersonal skills are. Only in teamwork and collaboration did college grads (73%) and employers (77%) see eye-to-eye.

Student throwing graduation hats in the air — It’s time for the newly minted crop of graduates to gear up for their job search after summer break. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

It is important to note, says Susan Gouijnstook, VP of Learning Solutions Strategy at McGraw-Hill, that a gender disparity around confidence in workplace skills showed up again this year in McGraw-Hill’s Future Workforce Survey. In fact, 50% of men compared to 36% of women feel like they are “career ready.”

Where does the ball drop in providing college grads (and all young adults for that matter) with essential career readiness skills?

Whether it’s early college high schools, community colleges, apprenticeship programs, or four-year colleges everybody is stepping up to the plate. All are embarking on endeavors to facilitate the pathway from school to work. MHE’s findings have important implications across the board for America’s nascent workforce.

Assessing problem-solving abilities replaces standardized testing.

And four-year colleges are gearing up to provide their graduates with career-ready skills. MHE, explained Ms. Gouijnstook, is using survey results to inform product development and help college instructors zero in on essential career readiness skills – to “unlock the potential of each learner” – by leveraging learning science to create tools that support application of learning and authentic assessments. If you don’t know the term, authentic assessment, it’s one you should become familiar with. “Through our products, we seek to help students improve critical thinking skills, learn to communicate more effectively and perform real-world tasks through meaningful application of fundamental knowledge,” said Ms. Gouijnstook. The classroom becomes a laboratory for applied knowledge. MHE is a significant player in bringing these kinds of skills to schools and making students work ready.

Practice makes perfect.

Finally, in addressing MHE’s findings on college grad’s confidence levels, Nick Corcodilos (CEO, Ask The Headhunter) observes, “By being exposed to the workplace early, whether by internship, apprenticeship, volunteer opportunities or authentic assessment, young adults develop a clear sense of expectations and increased confidence. Experience speaks volumes.” Along these lines, just over half of all students surveyed by MHE believed professional experience and internships would better prepare them for the workforce. Adding fuel to this fire, in the MHE survey, nontraditional students (those who did not enter college within a year of high school) were more likely to feel prepared for the workforce than traditional students, 49% to 34%. A pretty big difference.

By Nicholas Wyman, Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholaswyman/2018/08/03/hiring-is-on-the-rise-but-are-college-grads-prepared-for-the-world-of-work/#735ecb0e4e7e

‘Why 5 Million Apprenticeships Will Make America Great Again’ – Forbes, Online

by Nicholas Wyman.

The White House roundtable last week has shone a spotlight on the countries job, skills and training needs for the 21st century workplace. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel and leading American and German industrial CEOs seated at the Cabinet table, President Donald Trump praised Germany’s long-term approach in using on apprenticeships programs to develop its workforce’ skills, declaring “The German apprenticeship model is one of the proven programs to developing a highly skilled workforce. Germany has been amazing at this.”

The U.S., he stated, must embrace innovation in technical and vocational education and explore effective non-college approaches, like apprenticeships to prepare people for the trade, manufacturing and other well-paying careers of the future.

And its easy to understand why: Germany, despite having the highest wage costs in the world, has a significantly lower unemployment (4.2%) and youth unemployment (6.5%) rate than the U.S. (4.9% and 9.9%) or any other comparable country. It also has a an export economy focused high-value manufacturing: last last year Germany lodged a record trade current account deficit of U.S. $297 billion – nearly 8.5% of GDP – and runs strong budget surpluses.

As these enviable economic outcomes are substantively underpinned by Germany’s commitment to wide and varied apprenticeship training pathways, it was no surprise to hear CEO after CEO outline how their firm’s approaches to expanding vocational pathways and call for the expansion of apprenticeship programs in the U.S.

Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, even encouraged the president to “take a moonshot goal to create five million apprenticeships in the next five years.”

The president’s response “let’s do that, let’s go for that five million” was mightily encouraging to apprenticeship advocates across the nation.

Image: In Germany, vocational training is ingrained in the education culture. Apprentices learn the basics of precision filing at the Siemens training center, Berlin. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

A target of five million apprenticeships, may seem a significant stretch as the U.S. currently has just on 500,000 active apprentice positions, however, a unified approach to expanding this mode of training would not also generate improved economic and employment conditions for our citizens, but also put a big dent into several related social and budgetary problems, for example:

• Closing the “skills gap” that is acting as a handbrake on business investment in capacity expansion in the U.S. A shortage of skilled job candidates regularly tops of list of CEO complaints.

• High youth joblessness and underemployment. Millions are unemployed or stuck in low-wage, temporary jobs, with little hope of moving up. Apprenticeships will help people avoid a range of poverty and welfare traps.

• Stagnant wages. Wages stagnate when productivity fails to grow. Apprenticeships turn out workers trained to the cutting edge of industry, to ensure maximum productivity. (Most newly minted apprentices pull down starting pay from $45,000 to $60,000, out-earning the majority of their bachelor degree peers).

Yet despite knowledge of the benefits and superior outcomes generated by German and other European vocational training systems, only a small percentage of U.S. high school graduates enter apprenticeships, compared to their counterparts in some high-income EU countries.

Why is that? Blame could be reasonably apportioned onto many heads: high schools that have eliminated vocation education; some counselors and parents who think that the only pathway to a successful and rewarding career runs through a four-year college degree; and a job snobbery, where many in society look down their nose at careers that involve making or fixing things. On the front line, its more a chicken-egg problem. There are far too few apprenticeship offers from companies for many schools and counselors to pay much attention.

The unacknowledged reality is that too many young Americans are being pushed towards college will not graduate. According to the Department of Labor, 69.2% of the three million 2015 high school graduates subsequently enrolled in colleges or universities.

Yet the six year graduation rate is only six in 10. So, what becomes of those 40% who will drop out? Chances are they will be saddled with student debt, no qualification, an incomplete skill set and will have lost some formative years of training. As this is the scenario facing roughly 850,000 young Americans each year, we need to do better.

So, in the wake of the big White House skills roundtable, what can business leaders and the Trump administration do to rapidly scale up apprenticeships? Here are three easy to achieve suggestions:

1. Redirect tax dollars from ineffective government job-training programs and weak academic programs to incentives that encourage private companies to offer more apprenticeships.

2. Establish a major marketing effort to promote apprenticeships and to make apprenticeships more straightforward to create.

3. Insist that major contractors on federally funded infrastructure projects incorporate apprentices in their work crews.

Encouragingly, there are many great and inspiring examples of apprenticeship programs (and apprentices!) which gives me hope that we can close our skills gaps.

To deliver on his promises to create 25 million new jobs in ten years, recreate industrial America and bring back U.S. manufacturing, it is clear the president should grasp Marc Benioff’s “moonshoot” suggestion, set an ambitious target of five million apprentices in five years.

The result be would be a significant down payment on the president’s 25 million jobs target, the expansion of the most cost-effective skills training model across America and as well as positively impacting the lives of potential millions of people along the way.

That’s the thing about shooting for the moon – even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars!

Link:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholaswyman/2017/03/21/why-5-million-apprenticeships-will-make-america-great-again/#6a8223c22fce

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