Lexington’s new workforce development manager is going to work for the city’s jobless as well as its business community. Elodie Dickinson said her new job, a new government position, will be to help local employers that want to hire the best workers or to “up-skill” current employees to meet their changing needs.
“If you’re someone who wants a certain job and you’re not having luck and don’t know where to go for training, there is now a workforce development person with the city who provides assistance and resources and places where they can go for help,” said Dickinson, who began her new duties in late October.
“Elodie’s job is to match the job training [the community] provides to employer needs,” said Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, who added that growing the local economy could be accomplished by “ensuring we have a trained workforce that attracts employers who offer good jobs – the kinds of jobs our citizens want and need.”
The aim isn’t for minimum-wage, low-skill jobs but for well-paying jobs that require a certain amount of specialized education or training that can be obtained locally through the right sources.
Dickinson, who reports to chief economic development officer Kevin Atkins, comes to her new role from Goodwill Industries, where she was regional manager of program services. Aside from its chain of retail stores, Goodwill provides services to people with disabilities who seek employment and also to those facing barriers to employment such as lacking transportation, a GED or English skills.
“The mayor and other administrators have heard a lot of talk from employers about their workforce needs,” said Dickinson. “They explained about what kind of a workforce they needed and how they could get it.”
That is why Dickinson’s position was created. Her appointment was seen as closing a gap in city services that occurred in 2007 with the closing of the Mayor’s Training Center.
Dickinson said that local employers rely, in part, on Fayette County Public Schools, Bluegrass Area Development District and schools such as Bluegrass Community and Technical College to provide technical training or soft skills to potential employees. BCTC is very active in this arena and is one of the largest workforce developers in Central Kentucky. In 2015, it worked with 235 local businesses and trained 1,200 of their employees. Companies seeking training for their employees may range from giant manufacturers such as Toyota and Square D to companies in the banking and health-care industries to the public sector, like city government, where workers may need to update professional certifications.
Dickinson said BCTC is one of the largest workforce providers in the Lexington metro area with three campuses in Lexington and others in Danville, Winchester and Lawrenceburg, plus an advanced manufacturing training center in Georgetown.
A wide-ranging job preparation program at BCTC is called Workforce Solutions. An employer may send its employees to a class that already exists or the college will customize a class to teach the exact skills a company needs its workers to master.
“It can be anything from learning soft skills, such as how to do a performance appraisal as a supervisor to how to perform welding,” said Mark Manuel, vice president of advancement at BCTC. “We do a little of everything. We try to train the new workforce for Kentucky but also keep our current workforce competitive globally.”
Manuel said he’s heard local employers ask for more qualified employees, but there aren’t enough trained job candidates to satisfy them.
“We just don’t have enough people coming through the pipeline at the moment. That’s an economic development issue. If our current businesses can’t grow, that hurts the community overall. It affects the quality of life for the whole region.”
Manuel said the region’s economy is on the rise and relatively strong compared to the years of the Great Recession when companies were hesitant to hire and grow and to borrow money to invest in new resources. “Now we’re growing, but our workforce isn’t growing with us.”
Another challenge facing Dickinson and Manuel is specific census tracks within Lexington having lower employment rates than other parts of the city. The main reasons are inferior education levels plus various socioeconomic issues. Getting these citizens up to speed would create a new pool of potential employees for local industries.
“How do we help them skill-up? That’s my job — to zero in on the city’s training needs,” she said.
Manuel agreed: “We can’t leave anyone behind. We need everybody to be part of the economy and be trained and working.”