Virginia’s workforce boards offer help for job-seekers and employers | Local Business News

Every Monday, when Gov. Glenn Youngkin sits down with his Cabinet to chew over issues that cut across each one’s responsibilities, one item is always on the agenda: workforce development.

“It stretches across every area,” and will be central focus of his requests to the General Assembly when it convenes in January, Youngkin told a group of business and civic leaders in Newport News last month.

He told them was working on a plan to bring together the many agencies with their several hundred programs aimed at make sure Virginians have the skills they need for work and that companies can find workers with the knowledge and skills they need.

It’s the same approach he pushed for the new Partnership for Petersburg community development push, bringing together government, schools, businesses and non-profits to focus on new ways to work together to boost local economies.

One early example, he said, is Virginia Beach-based DroneUp’s partnership with Richard Bland College to launch a drone operators training center and a new credential that should help students in their job searches. 

Restructuring Virginia’s workforce development efforts is a big task because of the stark differences in Virginia’s regional job markets.

Building skills and listening to business needs is a lot different in Southwest Virginia, with a labor force participation rate of just 45%, than it does in the high-tech corridors of Northern Virginia or the shipyard-driven economy of the Peninsula, where Newport News Shipbuilding is in an intensive push to hire 5,000 people this year and 21,000 over the next five years.

The shipyard needs scores of welders, electricians, pipefitters and even more highly specialized workers to work in areas from nondestructive testing to computer-assisted drafting to choreographing the movement of tens of thousands of parts, subassemblies and equipment over the many years it takes to build an aircraft carrier or submarine.

Virginia’s workforce development boards play a major role in a multi-pronged effort – one that sees shipbuilder-volunteers tutoring in middle schools and bringing a message there about interesting and well-paid futures in the year, as well as an innovative fast-track training program for people who may never have considered work in the skilled trades.

In and around Richmond, the Capital Region Workforce Partnership has assisted 13,000 people seeking work and directly assisted 275 employers with their hiring, said Brian K. Davis, executive director.

And, as Rachel Patton, director of business services at the Southwest Virginia Workforce Development Board, said the work doesn’t stop when someone is hired.

She helps businesses figure out ways to hang on to employees, and how to help them help employees develop new skills and advance to more demanding – and higher-paying – jobs.

At the Capital Region partnership, a similar push over the past year included including 19 firms that received funding to train current workers in new skills, Davis said.

Another 16 employers hired 50 employees through incumbent worker training funds to reskill current workers and 16 employers who brought on 50 employees under on-the-job training contracts, a record for the Capital Region.

The Capital Region partnership and the SW group are part of a statewide network of 14 regional workforce development boards.

They aim to be business-led and to focus on the particular needs of businesses in their communities.

Funding comes from the US Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, but communities also kick in – in Southwest Virginia, a $1.5 million grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission helped launch its unique R.O.P.E.S. — Recovery Opportunities and Pathways to Employment Success – program for people recovering from addiction.

“People talk about addiction, being on the ropes and bouncing off the ropes, so the name seemed to fit,” said Tiffanie Goff, director of programming at the Southwest Virginia board.

The program melds counseling for job-seekers with education for employers, anchored in the notion that one important path to recovery is finding a regular daily routine – knowing where you need to be and when in order to do what – which is exactly what a job entails, she said.

With employers, conversations focus on what they can do to help a new worker fit into what’s often a new way of living, for instance by talking about recognizing triggers that can spark a relapse and thinking about how to keep these out of a work place.

A grant from the Knoxville, Tennessee-based Thompson Charitable Foundation funds a monthly stipend to cover living expenses for coal miners who lost their jobs so they can enroll in training programs for a new line of work.

“They’ll work two, three part-time jobs just to keep food on the table; this means they can drop one or two so they can go to school,” said Aleta Spicer, the board’s executive director.

Across the state, boards work closely with the Virginia Employment Commission, the Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services, adult education programs, local Departments of Social Services and community colleges.

They can help with looking for jobs, preparing resumes, workshops on what to do in a job interview and learning basic computer skills. They can steer people to apprenticeship programs as well as the internships for real on-the-job training and experience.

There are funds to help job seekers afford training programs, as well as for those who need help simply getting to a job because transportation options are limited – a challenges many job seekers face, whether in far southwest Virginia or the Eastern Shore – or even cities like Richmond and Petersburg.

There’s financial help, too, for job-seekers who need child care, or suitable clothing, or tools for the job.

The Bay Consortium Workforce Development Board will host a series of job fairs across its sprawling region, which includes 15 rural counties on the western and Eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay as well as Fredericksburg, said Jackie Davis, executive director.

In July, the first phase of its “Career Adventure Program” for young adults include week of classes focused on skills for Information Technology job – everything from assembly equipment to programing to the cutting edge areas of non-fungible tokens and cyber security, said executive director Jackie Davis.

The board aims to be a one-stop shop for people seeking work and at its three centers makes available tools for the search, including computers with Internet access, facsimile and copying services, video conferencing for job interviews and even job applications from local businesses.

The Hampton Roads Workforce Council is using a $1 million grant for its HR Strong pilot program to training 200 members of the metro area’s “ALICE”, for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, and low-income populations in the skilled trades — a push that led to an $11 million Good Jobs Challenge grant to expand this effort.

Helping the “ALICE” population has been a particular focus of the Virginia Peninsula’s Community Foundation and Chamber of Commerce; while Hampton Roads’ large numbers of military personnel led the council to open Veterans Employment Centers in Norfolk and Newport News. Those saw 2,167 visits over the past year, as veterans, service members preparing to leave the military and spouses connected with school and training opportunities, help with their job searches and other support.

A “Let’s Go to Work” campaign launched in March aims to encourage people to rejoin the work forece, highlight jobs in particularly stressed sections, including hotels, information technology, construction, manufacturing and ship repair, while its NextGen program focus on preparing young people, aged 14 to 24 for the labor market, with financial literacy education, job preparation, and career exploration. Its Campus757 is a one stop shop to connect employers with young professionals.

Its six main Virginia Career Works center had more than 10,000 visits over the past year, as residents used its services to develop resumes, look for jobs, find training opportunities and get career counseling. Some 586 people enrolled in training and 286 got jobs earning an average wage of $21.97 per hour.

“We don’t have a lot of people here,” said Spicer, in Southwest Virginia said. “We can’t afford to let any job go unfilled.”