July 12, 2013 at 5:20 p.m.
Expanded 'Heavy Metal Tour' being planned for area eighth graders
Expanded 'Heavy Metal Tour' being planned for area eighth graders
At a small business roundtable held at the Al-Gen Dinner Club Tuesday, representatives from area manufacturers expressed concerns to the lieutenant governor about the long-term outlook for finding skilled workers to fill open positions. It has been projected that through expansion and attrition Northwoods manufacturers will have 500 positions to fill in the next five years.
A glimpse into the future job outlook statewide was provided Wednesday at the Northern Advantage Job Center in downtown Rhinelander where Kleefisch went to meet its staff along with Jonathan Barry, deputy secretary of the state Department of Workforce Development. Barry said state employers will have approximately 1 million jobs to fill by 2020 and most of those positions will require education beyond high school, but not necessarily a four-year college degree.
One thing being done in the area to address the issue is the "Heavy Metal Tour," which aims to educate eighth grade students about the possibilities a career in manufacturing can offer and the type of education that is required. It was held last fall for approximately 350 eighth graders from 10 different Northwoods school districts. Students visited Nicolet Area Technical College's Rhinelander campus and traveled among eight area manufacturing facilities.
Plans are already in the works to host the "Heavy Metal Tour" again this fall. And this time it will be expanded. The tour, set for Oct. 9, will involve nearly 2,000 students from the Nicolet College district as well as the Northcentral Technical College district. Up to 35 different manufacturers in that entire region could be participating as well.
"It's a start," Bruce Trimble, employer services director of the North Central Wisconsin Workforce Development Board, said to the lieutenant governor during Wednesday's job center visit. He explained to her that even with education and awareness initiatives like the "Heavy Metal Tour," it won't be easy to change the mindset of many students and their parents - that the next step after high school is always the four-year college route.
Still, Trimble said one of his main focuses at the moment is expanding the "Heavy Metal Tour" to other regions of the state.
"The best way to improve the manufacturing workforce and increase the number of available employees is to the increase the awareness at a younger age," Trimble said. "That's why we're doing the 'Heavy Metal Tour.' Eighth grade is where I think we'd like to stay (with the tour). At that time students are starting to make decisions about what high school track they want to take."
He said last fall's tour focused around schools in the Nicolet College district caught the attention of manufacturers in the central part of the state who wanted to be involved as well. That's the reason for significantly expanding the tour. Trimble estimates that up to 600 students in the Nicolet College district and 1,200 students in the Northcentral Technical College area will participate. On Oct. 9, they'll be spread out among three different college campuses and manufacturing sites across the northcentral region.
It's a long-term solution rather than a quick fix to the skilled workforce issue. The idea is to get students at a younger age thinking about different career options - and the appropriate educational tracks to get there - which will hopefully gradually alleviate the workforce issues forthcoming.
"They all have a lot of business and could potentially have more if they had the skilled workers," Trimble said, referring to area companies like Printpack that is expanding into a new facility and Oldenburg Group, which recently was awarded $40 million in new contracts from the U.S. Navy. "Right now manufacturing is on the edge. It could increase substantially if the workforce is there."
In the short-term, Trimble said his agency continues to strive to retrain the current workforce for the jobs that are available. He said 5,200 workers have been displaced in the last two years in the nine-county region his agency covers.
"We have a varied pool of applicants and there's work but it's in areas they may not have been working in so they need some retraining," Trimble said.
For example, he said while a worker who was on a job for 25 years may have evolved along with the changing technology, those skills are not necessarily transferable to a completely different company.
"Manufacturing is a great career but it also requires a lot of skill," Trimble said. "It's so computerized and technical now. That's what we're finding."
He said a lot of work is being done with area manufacturers to find out what kinds of skills are needed by employees, as well as with technical colleges to develop more short-term training programs.
"It's a lot of work but the manufacturers and technical colleges are great to work with," Trimble said. "We'll make it happen."
Kyle Rogers may be reached at [email protected].
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