- 22 Jun 2018
- Managing the Future of Work
Ep 6: From hot dogs to helicopters, the Golden Triangle’s workforce transformation
Joe Fuller: The Golden Triangle region of Eastern Mississippi is proving an old adage: Be careful what you ask for. For decades, the area lost jobs in sectors like furniture manufacturing and food processing. But now it’s enjoying a revival in advanced manufacturing. Global companies like Airbus Industries and leading truck manufacturer PACCAR have invested in the region. Macaulay Whitaker is the chief operating officer of the area’s economic development agency, GTR Link.
Macauley Whitaker: We’ve made the transition. We’ve made the jump. We’ve gone from hot dogs to helicopters, so to speak.
Fuller: Now the Golden Triangle must tackle a new issue: how to create and maintain a workforce with the skills to support employers that rely on state-of-the-art advanced manufacturing technology.
Whitaker: In order to do these things, we have to connect our employers to our educators.
Fuller: Whitaker says one of the region’s secret weapons that has helped draw $6 billion of investment and create more than 6,000 jobs is the area’s community college. It’s working with businesses to provide workers with the skills that employers require. Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast. I’m Harvard Business School professor and visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Joe Fuller. I’m pleased to be joined by GTR Link’s Macaulay Whitaker to tell us about helping people go from making toys to the next generation of diesel engine. Welcome, Macaulay.
Whitaker: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Fuller: Macauley, you’ve said that in attracting new business, you want to experience “uncomfortable growth.” What is that? Why not just settle for comfortable growth?
Whitaker: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head there, Joe. "Why not just settle" is not something that’s in our vocabulary. “Uncomfortable growth” is something that I’ve said before in referring to reaching just beyond what you think you might could possibly do in a community, and it’s within that space that the most productive initiatives are grown. And whether that be through the development of infrastructure for your community, the development of marketable product, in our case particularly, it’s looking at our pipeline of skilled workers. And uncomfortable growth, really, is another way of saying that invention comes burned out of necessity. We have to grow, and thus we may be uncomfortable and we get very creative in solving problems in that space.
Fuller: Well, The Golden Triangle has enjoyed consistent success over the last decade in landing major plants with requirements for workers with advanced manufacturing skills. When did it become apparent that keeping that workforce flowing to those employers was going to be a challenge?
Whitaker: We are acutely aware that we don’t have enough of a lot of things when you’re looking at attracting these major, either manufacturing or other types, of employers. So, short answer for a very, very long time far before I ever became part of The Golden Triangle team. However, in recent years, in the past, let’s say five or six, it’s something that, at our local level, we want to make sure that we’ve made the transition, we’ve made the jump, we’ve gone from hot dogs to helicopters, so to speak. However, there is always a next generation of skills and that is evolving within our current employers right now. Their technology is changing, and it changes faster now than it ever has before. And so we are very, very hyper-focused on not just supplying a pipeline of workers, but the type of worker we are supplying and making sure that we’re meeting the individual needs of each one of our employers.
Fuller: Macauley, business leaders, policy makers, economic development professionals are concerned about [the] skills-gap pretty much nationwide. How have you gone about filling that in order to not only meet the current needs, but as you said, get people ready for the requirements of tomorrow?
Whitaker: One of the things that we are acutely aware of in economic development is that the speed of business is what it is, we’re familiar with that, speed of light. It’s a speed as fast as you want to make money. And then the speed of education is completely opposite. It is not slow, but it is just methodical, and it has a schedule, and it runs in a different way. Something for later study, why in the world are those two things so completely different? But connecting them is where your workforce pipeline meets. Connecting business with education is where we run into, "How do we negotiate and get these two systems functioning together in an efficient manner so that we’re producing a product, and that product is skilled workers?" Some of the things that we are looking at is as simple as providing certifications in high schools for students that are looking to pursue careers in manufacturing. And that’s at all levels: whether they’re looking to enter the workforce right after high school, or they’re looking to go all the way through secondary education and pursue a four-year engineering degree. We’re looking at designing academies. And some places in Mississippi and across the nation have already done this, and are quite successful, in that students complete a good bit of their career in technology training while still in high school, showing up the amount of time they have to spend in an educational setting once they graduate. In order to do these things, we have to connect our employers to our educators, and that is one of the greatest hurdles. But it’s also something that we’ve been very successful with in terms of workforce training in our area. The Center for Manufacturing and Technology Excellence at East Mississippi Community College crosses those barriers like no other community college we’ve ever seen.
Fuller: Macauley, you’ve worked hard in The Golden Triangle to bring middle-skills good-paying jobs to the region. Those require academic backgrounds and skills that are not all that common in your population. How have you tried to respond to that, and how does that image affect employers’ views of The Golden Triangle?
Whitaker: We are looking in our community to attack pipeline development and workforce training at all levels of, what I call, the educational mobility. Getting to students while they’re in high school, junior high, and beyond is pretty easy, they’re a captive audience. The more difficult challenge comes in at your immobile population, and that’s something we’re very familiar with in The Golden Triangle. And that some of our communities, the average family salary in Clay County, for instance, is just over $30,000, think it might be $34,000. That’s a two-person family salary. So when you’re bringing in jobs that average above that, you’re doing two things: One, you’re raising the average wage of your community, and that is what we aggressively pursue all the time. If a company does not pay at or more than the average wage, then we do not recruit them, because that’s not how we’re going to raise our community out of that low income poverty rate. But what we are also looking at is that those people are immobile. Those people are reachable in some ways through technology, which has been great for a lot of outreach, but in some ways they’re not. Grassroots methods of workforce recruitment have taken place and this is one area where EMCC is particularly skilled in that they do things as simple as going to church services and handing out fliers, setting up an individual at a government assistance office so that people can be reached and understand that there is life beyond your check. Again, going after that student population and communicating to them that there is far more beyond the cycle in which you are born and that there are opportunities here. And there is vastly more money, plainly speaking, in a lifetime of work than there is in lifetime of assistance.
Fuller: One of the things that is most impressive about the development of The Golden Triangle is how all the different resources, educational, financial, regulatory are aligned around achieving success. Talk a little bit more about your relationship specifically with Eastern Mississippi Community College. That it is integral, not merely to educating young people, but also the ongoing training of workers.
Whitaker: East Mississippi Community College, that is where the Workforce Training Services Department is located. We, economic developers, could not do our jobs without workforce training services. This is where our industries receive the products that we have promised them in moving to this community. If you plant your plant here, we will supply them, and this is the place that’s going to generate this training for you. They go so far as to design this training with you, and the more specific and skilled your workforce development training center is, the better off you will be in the long run. It’s something that, in our current climate, one cannot ignore or get by with, "We’ll try to do this." You’ve got to have a proven record of supplying good workforce product to accommodate in order for them to make money, essentially, to be successful in their region. It is a close relationship. It is a strategically maintained relationship. And if you’re not making efforts to work with these people on a daily basis, then you’re not going to have an economy that will flourish.
Fuller: A lot of jurisdictions are experimenting with so-called "Dual-Enrollment Programs," where high school students are studying on college campuses. You have one called the "Early College High School Program." Could you tell us a little bit about how that works?
Whitaker: What the Early College High School is, is taking a giant step forward, in that a group of students are currently enrolled in a high school program that is located on East Mississippi Community College’s campus in The Golden Triangle. And what they have the opportunity to do is to pursue an Associate’s degree while they’re completing their high school diploma. So, in the four years they spend from 9th to 12th grade, they take courses within the community college. They finish a lot of their high school prerequisites in 9th and 10th grade, and then they go on to, sort of, their declared major. One of the great benefits of our community college and many others like it, specifically those who do workforce training, their greatest concern is not the business of education in a sense that enrollment is king, production is king. The quality of individuals that our community college is producing throughout all disciplines is what is most concern, and that allows us to pursue like goals in economic development.
Fuller: You’ve done a lot of innovative things in the Golden Triangle and one is called “The Communiversity.” Can you first just tell our listeners what that is?
Whitaker: Sure. The Communiversity was first an idea born in 2014. We needed to take care of our workforce, but also have something, a place, or a thing, that inspired people to a lifetime of work. It needed to be awe-inspiring. It needed to be something that [when] we brought prospective companies in, that it would wow them. You don’t expect this in the middle of Mississippi. It’s a $42, $44 million training facility. It is EMCC’s new Center for Manufacturing and Technology Excellence. It is their building. They will operate workforce training there, but in addition to that, we now have a tangible representation of how all the pieces come together to supply a qualified workforce. It addresses a variety of educational levels, so that when a second grader tour comes in, we’re able to address them exactly how they need to be addressed. We’re shopping virtual and augmented reality for that center, so that while a fourth grader can’t enter the steel mill, perhaps they can, through those types of technology, reach out and touch a roll of steel, understand what the melting pot looks like, and understand what high tech work there is out there for them to pursue right here in their backyard.
Fuller: Mississippi State [University] is also an integral part of what’s going on in the Golden Triangle. Talk a little bit about their role.
Whitaker: We don’t necessarily look to Mississippi State to train the mass amounts of our workforce, but they do play an extremely vital role in training the engineers and the business components of the workforce that are still essential. The College of Engineering there is something that we take great pride in and we also are starting to work with them a bit more to make sure that they’re connected to our current employers. We talk about NSPARC, which is the National Strategic Planning Analysis and Research Center. We are starting to track our workforce in a way that says, "Hi prospective company. Here are 100 people that do the thing that you’re looking for. And in addition to proving to you that we have these people here, we can also contact them. We can text them, we can email them." We can say, "Hey. There’s a company who is coming here and they have these jobs and they match your qualifications.” I think that is going to be really impactful in the way that we communicate with potential employers specifically.
Fuller: One gets a sense that a lot of economic development activity, that once the deal is done, once the ground is broken, you move onto the next thing. Can you talk a little bit about this whole concept of “after care” with employers, especially as it relates to skills and employability?
Whitaker: Absolutely. First, a lot of economic developers will tell you the chase is a heck of a lot more fun. It is fun. We are in a competitive environment. For those of us that flourish in that environment, we really like it. We like to chase that new company because when you do get that win, there is no greater feeling knowing what you’ve done for your community. However, that’s not the most important job that we have. Our most important job is to take care of the people who are currently employing that population, changing the lives of the individuals that work there. And that’s far more important than any potential spot we can every recruit. We’re always working to provide more value to our existing employers. We call it ’after care,’ unofficially, but I need them to know that they have my cell number and they can call me anytime, with any problem, whether I can solve it or not. Often, it’s not me that’s doing or coming up with a resolution as much as it is connecting them to resources that we have and finding solutions for their problems. We want to make sure, number one, that we’re having those conversations with them, but number two, that we’re actually providing services to them because if we’re just talking about it, eventually they’ll quit talking.
Fuller: Macauley, some of the technologies you’re deploying really almost allow real time engagement with prospective workers. How do you stay in touch with them? How do you allow them to access the data available and see the opportunities that might be open to them?
Whitaker: In terms of deploying technology as a way to communicate directly with our workforce, a product that the National Strategic Planning Analysis and Research Center, that they have, it’s called “Mississippi Works,” [which] is essentially a portal that an individual can fill out a profile and allows us to one, communicate directly with that employer or potential employee, but two, also allows us to track what they’ve experienced, the education they’ve gathered, and then where they’re headed, even so far as to say that individuals that have this type of training will make this much money one year out of high school, two years out of high school, or five years out of community college. Things like that which all factor into the marketing that we’re doing at the high school level. All of these things that we can show them to say, "Hey. If you invest in this much, give me this much time, I will give you this kind of life." On the flip side of that, there’s an entirely different category of eligible workers or unemployed individuals who are not mobile, and that means literally don’t have vehicles or perhaps access to transportation. It can mean that they don’t have smartphones or Internet access at their homes. There’s a different demographic of individuals that we’ve got to reach in an entirely different way. We’re having to look at pursuing our workforce and marketing to them in very different ways and the hardest part is certainly not the technology. The hardest part is those immobile parts of society where we are having to do a lot of grassroots movements. This is one of the things… The State of Mississippi has recently moved our Workforce Investment Network Job Centers, or WIN Job Centers, inside the community colleges. An impactful change, and they’ve strategically placed that office where you go pick up your unemployment in the very back of the facility. You have to walk past all these classrooms and all these opportunities to go pick up your unemployment, to file for unemployment. They’re exposing you to that environment over and over and over again. The little changes like that, which is just picking up an office and moving it somewhere else with a couple of staffers has really been successful and we’re looking at making that even a bigger program. Mississippi has a rapid response program where individuals get laid off, they’re immediately connected with the community college, and there are dollars there to provide training for them should they want to switch disciplines or get different training so that they can get back to work as quickly as possible.
Fuller: Your region suffers from a pattern of inter-generational dependency and poverty. What are you doing to break that and what tools can you share with our listeners about how they can think about trying to interdict what’s really been an intractable cycle in so many places?
Whitaker: We’re looking at ways to really market to students, and this is where our high school student population comes into play. Getting children, as young as at the elementary age, aware of one, what work is, that work is not bad, and that work provides you a different type of life. When you are a multi-generational individual whose family has been largely supported by assistance, it can be very difficult for them to receive support. We like to think everybody wants better for the next generation, but that’s not always the case because maybe they just don’t know any better. So, getting students exposed to exciting opportunities that are easily accessed within their communities is something that we’re very much looking at developing. Inspiring students to understand that with very little effort from them that it’s pretty easy for you to enroll in this career pathway while you’re in high school. And you can participate in this, let’s call it, automotive academy. And then once you finish that academy there’s a direct pipeline for you to keep going to the community college if you would like to pursue that. If you want to get out and work, go for it. The company you work for may very well pay for you to keep going back to school. Using recent graduates as marketing examples is probably ... It seems simple but it’s one of the best things that we’ve done. When we do take high schoolers on industry tours we request that they bring in new employees and they bring in young employees. Someone that very well may have graduated from that high school while that student was still on campus. And they explain to them, "Okay, here’s where I heard about this because Miss Rolitan at Westlands High School told me about this program and took me on a tour and I saw it and I thought, ‘Man, that’s cool. I can do that.’ And then I enrolled in this program. And I didn’t have to pay for it because I got this scholarship and after that program I got this certification and then I applied for a job here and this is how I got to this place. And you can too."
Fuller: Macauley, you said earlier that business moves at a very rapid speed. Speed in pursuit of profit. What do you anticipate you’re going to have to do in coming years to keep up?
Whitaker: I would hope in coming years career and technical training, but more so the entire system, is able to flex and to strategically allow their students to pursue all kinds of stuff while they’re locked into this K-12 model. We’ve got a paradigm shift that’s got to occur in our country. And it’s going to center around the concept that two year degrees weren’t good enough at some point or that you were going to end up somewhere if you couldn’t pursue four year traditional college education. And I get that I’m talking to Harvard folks saying "Hey, I’m probably not going to encourage anybody to come to Harvard." Because it’s not the gap that we have. It’s not our greatest need right now and in terms of our national educational perspective everybody needs to put what they need in front of what they want. Wants versus needs is a big deal and our country doesn’t need a whole lot more four-year [degrees], what we need is a whole lot more middle-skill jobs. And so, if we don’t figure that out ... And I do think it will naturally just sort of evolve that way because four year individuals who have those degrees won’t be able to get jobs. So, it’s going to require all of us to kind of practice what we preach and communicate the success stories and the wonderful opportunities that are out there and that will, sort of, build a stronger economy through the elevation of our available workforce.
Fuller: Well, Macauley Whitaker, COO of GTR Link, we’re delighted that we were able to get you to come to Harvard, even temporarily. And thank you so much for joining us.
Whitaker: Thank you. It’s been wonderful.
Fuller: I’m Joe Fuller of the Harvard Business School. For more information on the Golden Triangle’s impressive turnaround, we invite you to listen to last week’s interview with GTR Link’s CEO, Joe Max Higgins. This is the Managing the Future of Work podcast. Thank you for listening.