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State Chamber CEO: Educators Must Adapt to Meet Industry Needs

3 min read

Manufacturers everywhere are having a hard time finding qualified workers, and in Arkansas, that means the state is falling short of its full potential for economic growth, Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Randy Zook said Wednesday.

He spoke about “Addressing the Workforce Challenge in Manufacturing,” among other topics, at the two-day Rockwell Automation on the Move event at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. The event allowed participants to experience new manufacturing products and services through technical sessions and hands-on labs. Rockwell Automation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a provider of industrial automation and information products.

“It’s gotten to the point where businesses are not just scared, they’re not just challenged, they’re constrained by the lack of available talent, the lack of people willing, able and available to do the work in the right places at the right time,” Zook said.

The issue is not unique to Arkansas. 

“Everybody has the same problem … The question is what the heck are we going to do about it,” he said.

Zook said there are about 6.7 million manufacturing jobs available across the country and, to help companies fill them, educators must focus on three things: relevancy, delivering at scale and speed of delivery.

Zook said the problem is that education is controlled by academics, not job creators who know what skills employers need. Their classrooms shouldn’t use a 20-year-old curriculum and it should offer current, not 20- to 30-year-old equipment, for students to learn on, he said.

He said industry needs more than two or three good technicians a year and they need workers fast, even though schools want to keep tuition-paying students for longer.

Zook made his point with anecdotes about companies he didn’t name.

He said a sawmill in south Arkansas is trying to employ 130 but have only hired 112. The sawmill screened 1,000 applicants, but many were eliminated because they couldn’t pass a drug test, or they didn’t have work history, or they couldn’t read at a ninth grade level.

Zook said an Arkansas poultry processing plant is trying to hire 1,500 people but is stuck at about 1,200 employees.

Mary Burgoon, business development manager for Rockwell’s Academy of Advanced Engineering, said Rockwell is working to alleviate the skills gap. 

The academy is a join effort between Rockwell and ManpowerGroup of Milwaukee. ManpowerGroup recruits, screens and accesses talent for the academy. It offers 12 weeks of training for veterans from all military branches who have technical backgrounds. Upon graduation, those who go through the academy are certified as control technicians, she said.

This is the first full year of the program, and 30 veterans were chosen for each class from about 700 applicants. The academy will train nearly 100 veterans this year, hopes to train 200 next year and is planning to reach 1,000 graduates per year within three to five years, according to Burgoon.

The students are paid a small stipend during the training, and Rockwell Automation covers everything, including meals and a place for them to live.

Burgoon said the academy came about after Rockwell Automation spoke to its largest customers about what skills and capabilities they needed in workers. So Rockwell Automation provides the academy’s curriculum, based on feedback gathered from the manufacturers that are its customers. In addition, Rockwell Automation faces, on a daily basis, the same workforce shortage their customers struggle with, Burgoon said.

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