Tag: recruitment

A Guide to Building a Motivated Workforce

by dream2career, posted in HR Professionals, Marketing Professionals, Workforce Development

In today’s competitive job market, businesses are constantly searching for ways to attract, retain, and inspire top talent. One powerful strategy that often goes overlooked is the integration of education into the workplace. By investing in the professional development of your employees, you can create a more engaged, motivated, and productive workforce.

Build a Talent Pipeline Through Education

  • Leverage local workforce groups: Share job openings and communicate with local businesses from all industries. Setup talent pipelines that help employees get the training and experience to onramp with your organization now and in the future.
  • Partner with local schools and universities: Collaborate with learning providers to develop internship and apprenticeship programs that offer students with real-world experience.
  • Offer employee referral bonuses: Incentivize existing employees who refer qualified candidates from their personal networks.
  • Create a strong company brand: Highlight your company’s commitment to education and professional development in your recruitment and public relations materials.

Foster a Learning Community in the Workplace

  • Provide ongoing training and development opportunities: Offer a variety of learning options, including workshops, conferences, and online courses.
  • Encourage peer-to-peer learning: Create opportunities for employees to share knowledge and skills with one another.
  • Recognize and reward employee achievements: Celebrate milestones and accomplishments to boost morale and motivation.
  • Foster a culture of continuous improvement: Encourage employees to seek feedback and strive for excellence. Use gamification and team building along with a rewards system.

Reimagine Talent 

  • Embrace lifelong learning: Promote a growth-minded workforce culture where employees are rewarded for seeking opportunities to expand their knowledge and skills. Support interdisciplinary education.
  • Use history as your guide:Look into your industry’s history to find out what worked before technology. Sometimes the old ways are best and they could inspire new innovations.
  • Support employee career aspirations: Help employees identify their career goals and develop a plan to achieve them. Whenever possible, filter workers in instead of filtering out.
  • Use data and intuition: Track key metrics to assess program effectiveness, but also use intuition. Test new approaches on a small scale and learn from those experiences.

By prioritizing education, you can create a workplace where employees feel valued, empowered, and motivated to succeed. This, in turn, will lead to a more engaged, productive, and innovative workforce that can help your business thrive in the years to come. If you’d like to learn more about how to use education as a strategic advantage, Book a Meeting with Dream2Career and let us help you reimagine your talent pipeline so the system works for everyone. 

Earn-Learn Programs: Minimizing the Skills Gap

by Edu-Advisor, posted in HR Professionals, Workforce Development

In my 20+ years of experience working with workforce development and education, I’ve seen the use of work-learn solutions as the most effective model in reducing the skills gap. The outcomes far exceed the investment for the company, the mentee, the mentor, and the community.

Businesses and educators often look for someone to blame for the skills gap. Each entity wants to blame the other group instead of working together to solve the issue. Our philosophy at Dream2Career has always been don’t blame, collaborate! When business and education work together, like with internships or apprenticeships, both sides experience significant benefits.

When businesses spend a small amount of time and resources developing learn-earn programs, they get customized training that fits their specific needs it boosts company morale and increases employee retention.  When seasoned workers have the opportunity to teach another person about their job, they experience a greater sense of responsibility and importance to the company. This sense of achievement also helps to reduce stress and creates a sense of belonging.  The apprenticeship model has a net positive effect on the company culture and ultimately the bottom line.

Students also gain from the work-learn model because it so neatly helps students match the classroom lessons to related concepts they learned “on-the-job”. Now that math problem has context, which increases comprehension and interest in math. It also helps give student a sense of hope about their future and lets them discover a pathway forward.

I like to describe our current workforce system by giving students the opportunity to understand their personality using HIF Logic and then matching who they are to the work-learn onramp experiences that inspire and delight so they can see a future that is bright. It makes so much more sense to give students access to career pathways that match their interests and their aspirational goals so they can succeed in learning and in life. Workforce-related learning give students the opportunity to see the outcome and how they fit into the structure. By creating this work-learn connection, students have the opportunity to find a successful and rewarding career that they love.

If you would like to discuss internships, apprenticeships, or other educational reimbursement solutions that inspire and delight, contact Dream2Career.

About the Author:

Kathleen Houlihan, CEO of Dream2Career, is on a mission to help students and displaced workers find onramps to their dream careers. Kathy taught full-time at the university level for over 6 years and continues to teach as an adjunct while consulting for businesses and educational providers. She serves on several workforce development groups including the T3 Innovation Network and Midwest Credential Transparency Alliance and has a Ph.D. in Organizational Management, an MBA, and B.A. in Psychology.

SME Weighs In: Students Need Industry Specific Career Advice

by Edu-Advisor, posted in Businesses Work-Learn Insights, Naturalists, Specialists, Work-Learn Solutions for Businesses

I recently had a conversation with Troy Johnson, a leading voice in the trades industry, about how we might help students learn about high demand and emerging career opportunities that match career aspirations.

Read his brilliant insights:

I think [finding a way to help students find and prepare for careers] would create a much happier workforce as well. Technical education has become “the consolation prize” – to use Mike Rowe’s phrase – for students who can’t get into a four-year liberal arts college. It’s a shame because, as I think you will agree, not every high school senior should go to a traditional four-year college. There are multiple options for them now. Even the young people who finish a four-year liberal art bachelor’s degree accumulate six figures of debt. It’s really no wonder that they are so discontented as a group. And there seems to be no one advocating for reductions or limits on tuitions anywhere. The price of tuition has gone up faster than energy costs, food costs, and even healthcare, yet the emphasis is always on financing the tuition, not looking at ways to make these educational institutions more cost-efficient.

I’d really like to see a renaissance in career guidance and counseling that emphasizes more in-depth matching between students’ abilities AND interests against the real works needs of companies in the U.S. It is such an important point in these young peoples’ lives, they deserve more thoughtful advice and exposure to more potential career trajectories. With a smaller population of young people, I really think there could be a business concept that serves companies looking for bright high schoolers that they will hire for demonstrated work ethic and train them in-house for whatever job level skills the companies need filled.

Like I said, “America doesn’t have the skill problem, it has a recruiting problem.” Maybe what we need is something similar to the NFL draft where companies compete for students with strong skills right out of high school…It’s something to think about.

Some states are finding creative ways to create stature for positions in the trades. Dream2Career uses the term “specialists” to describe these positions because these individuals are the true problem solvers needed in our society. Join the conversation. What are your thoughts about how we might help students succeed?

Need Workers? Submit a Talent Request

by Edu-Advisor, posted in Businesses Work-Learn Insights

Wouldn’t it be great if you could order workforce talent just like you order a new piece of equipment? You enter the technological specks: It needs to be 5G ready, it needs to work with Microsoft Office, and it needs to integrate with all current platforms. Then in a few days, weeks, or months, your product arrives ready for installation into your production schedule.

Now, you can submit a talent request in exactly the same way. All you need to do is complete a Talent Request at https://Dream2Career.org and we will start training individuals to meet your needs. In a few days, weeks, or months; depending on the complexity of your request, we will have your newly trained individuals ready for on-boarding. We will be working with our training partners to ensure that you can hire individuals who fit your exact specifications.

Don’t worry… We always work first with the student in mind. We are creating on-ramps for all industries for students to explore. Using Dream2Career‘s new D2C Directory students and job-seekers have easy access to organized and validated work-learn information from which to learn about and choose careers. The best part for the student is they will see career pathways before they waste their time and money on the wrong training programs. They will also be happier employees when they can easily find career opportunities that matches their interests and aspirations.

The best part for you, as the employer, is that you will have easy access to individuals who exactly match your hiring criteria-because you submitted the request. Retention rates will soar, saving you time and money. We are embarking on this brand new talent strategy, one that truly looks at the process through a completely different lens, but we are certain that in the end, your workforce environment will improve significantly.

You’ve already done all of the work, we just need to move your information from your website and other resources into the Talent Request form so that students can have access to industry information and your recommendations or specks so they know how to “build themselves”. The form is simple there are only a few boxes to click and you can share links to your current career resources. You know.. those great pages you developed that no one ever visits. Working with D2C, you will immediately see increased traffic to those pages. Remember this is a resource for entry-level talent what you say to them is completely up to you. Join us and let’s create the workforce pipeline you’ve always wanted. When you get your wish we will also be helping students succeed and communities flourish.

February 2019 republished from LinkedIn Dr. Kathleen Houlihan’s post