Integrating education into other aspects of life is the key to a stable knowledge base and a progressing workforce, said Robert Knight, managing director of the National Arbor Workforce Institute in Washington D.C.
Knight, who served for 22 years as president of the National Association of Workforce Boards and served on the United States Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Training, was in Gainesville Monday, Sept. 29 to speak at the FloridaWorks board of directors meeting at Santa Fe College.
Knight said the most critical workforce issue facing our country today is “the huge number of people who don’t have even the basic math, reading and computer skills to benefit from post-high school training.”
“If two-thirds or more jobs require this training, it increases competition for a qualified pool of applicants, which raises wages . . . in the end it hinders economic growth,” Knight explained.
Knight said the key to improving any workforce is for employers to “buy into the value of education.”
“Over the next several years, we will have to figure out how to make work places learning places,” Knight said.
This kind of progress starts within a community, and the Gainesville area is making strides toward lifelong learning.
FloridaWorks, the regional workforce board for Alachua and Bradford counties, and Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce partner, provides numerous services for continued training and education. These include programs that train employees before a new business or location opens; as well as training for individuals already employed to keep companies and workers competitive.
FloridaWorks offers other employer resources that reduce a company’s human resources costs, such as career fairs and targeted hiring events that help businesses recruit and hire employees.
Through these programs, and others, FloridaWorks and the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce are committed to community improvement.
To find out more about these services, click here or call Joe Johnson at 352.334.7105 x 311.
The FloridaWorks Newsletter is published via e-mail every Monday by board staff. Issues from the current and previous months are available for download here. Older issues are also available via e-mail upon request. If you have a relevant piece of workforce news that you would like to share with the community, please contact us.