Chamber Kicks Workforce Development Strategy Into Overdrive
It is a topic of conversation across the country but in Huntsville, workforce development is the greatest challenge city leaders face. Following the recent release of new 2020 census numbers now showing Huntsville as the largest city in Alabama, the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce has kicked their strategic plan for economic development and workforce development into hyperdrive.
Lyndsay Ferguson, vice president of Workforce for the Chamber discussed steps they are taking to continue building on the success their plan had leading up to the new census data, in hopes of outpacing estimates decided in early 2020 by a 2019 Deloitte Labor Study and the arrival of COVID-19.
“As Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle often says, ‘We don’t want to just be big, we want to be the best’, and to do that, we have to tackle this challenge collectively and effectively,” said Ferguson. “To do that, we are looking at where are we going, and what are we doing when it comes to executing the Workforce Strategic Plan to better understand and assess the current workforce landscape and needs.”
She said that consists of sitting down with people in our community and discussing what is going on, not just the anecdote, but real discussions and conversations with people about their many efforts that make up the workforce ecosystem in Huntsville and the shared 16-county North Alabama region.
“Some of this work falls under the work of the Chamber Foundation, but ultimately it requires looking at our key priorities as an organization and as a community,” Ferguson said. “The 2019 study remains relevant because it was one of the most comprehensive and thorough studies ever done because of the number of companies regionally that participated in it.
“There were key findings in that study that are still relevant to tackling the workforce challenge. Even though it was taken in a pre-COVID world, some things have come into play that were not on the radar then, and other things are more important now than they were then because of the changing landscape.”
Some of the study’s key predictions were the arrival of 25,000 new jobs by 2023, due to the growing competition for talent, which in turn, leads to growing competition in wages as well.
It also pinpointed concern for the future workforce pipeline; and it focused on things like housing, childcare, and even a national perception as it relates to miscommunication about the state of Alabama and the North Alabama region.
“The Chamber keeps these predictions in mind with all the activities we are doing.”
Three key recommendations came from the 2019 Deloitte study.
The first is how does Huntsville continue to attract more talent outside our region to the jobs we have here?
“Based on census data, the Chamber and its partners are doing a good job in this area,” said Fergusson. “But it is clear we need to not only continue, but up our game to meet the workforce needs we have, which is a collaborative and collective effort.
“One of the ways we are doing that is through our aSmartPlace Recruitment Campaign.”
That campaign is implemented here in Huntsville as well as outside the are
a to generate thousands of online impressions using social media and the aSmartPlace website. It was active during the Space & Missile Defense symposium in Huntsville a few weeks ago; through attendance at the National Space Symposium in Colorado last week; and they will be implementing the campaign again at the National Cyber Summit September 28-30 here in Huntsville.
“We used targeted online and social media impressions during these events to share the good news about Huntsville and we got news exposure in national media like Fox News, the Washington Post, Forbes, etcetera,” said Ferguson. “We found pride in that campaign when U.S. News & World Report recently ranked Huntsville as the #3 Best Place to Live in the nation.”
The campaigns focus on four key targets: Mid-career professionals with over five years of work experience; those who have existing security clearances; college students; and transitioning military.
Ferguson said they also work with Morgan and Limestone counties to collaborate with their economic development agencies in trying to ensure the North Alabama region grows together, successfully.
They collaborate with North Alabama Works, the 13-county North Alabama workforce regional footprint, taking aSmartPlace on the road looking for opportunities to do recruitment pushes like those at Auburn University and with the University of Alabama Alumni Association later this fall.
Along with programs like Hiring Our Heroes for transitioning military; and working through central services partnerships like Community Connection and Charity Tracker, the Chamber can share career opportunities with people who are searching for jobs but may not be plugged into Indeed every day.
And finally, the Chamber is doing a great deal of talent retention events like LinkedUp!
The third recommendation is to increase investment in early education from pre-K to post-secondary education.
Ferguson acknowledges that childcare was important prior to COVID, but after seeing the impact it had on the workplace during COVID with a lot of kids out of school and parents who needed to be at work, planners recognized how badly creative solutions were needed to bring people together in a collaborative.
Programs like high school Ready-to-Work programs became a new initiative for Limestone County schools and Decatur City schools.
They also scheduled a Career Coach Retreat to Huntsville later this year that will provide opportunities for 125 career counselors who work with hundreds of thousands of students in Alabama, to better understand Huntsville’s industry so they can reach students who are about to graduate.
“By continuing to align education with industry, it will build a bridge to a better, smarter workforce,” said Ferguson.