State-run system will certify, train potential employees
Posted on Tuesday, January 15, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/213771/
Arkansas employers now can have another resource, courtesy of state government, by which to evaluate potential employees.
Gov. Mike Beebe on Monday announced an assessment system to gauge the skills of workers before the state refers them as qualified workers.
Beebe said he learned of the need for such a system shortly after taking office last year.
“We were confronted by some negative feedback,” he told a gathering of college and business representatives at Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock. “Existing manufacturers in Arkansas [expressed ] unhappiness with the way the state was providing a pool of potential employees. A significant number of people sent to them were unfamiliar with, unprepared for, or not willing to do the type of work with the type of hours.”
Beebe also said that employers complained about “an enormous amount of turnover” in Arkansas. He said workers often were reported as leaving after a couple of days on the job.
Those factors hurt productivity and limited the state in recruiting businesses.
Several state agencies have combined to offer the Arkansas Career Readiness Certificate. To receive it, a potential worker must take a computer assessment at an Arkansas Workforce Center and another one at a computer lab in a state community college. Each takes about an hour.
The tests — called KeyTrain and WorkKeys — judge workers’ overall job skills and skills in working with others as well as skills specific to the job being applied for.
Artee Williams, director of the state Department of Workforce Services, says it costs Arkansas $ 12 per applicant. Arkansas also paid a $ 400, 000 one-time membership fee for the program, which is also used in 20 other states.
KeyTrain is a product of Thinking Media of Chattanooga, Tenn., and WorkKeys is a product of ACT Inc. of Iowa City, Iowa.
Williams said any Arkansasbased company can sign up with the state to use the program.
Williams has headed Workforce Services since March 2004. He said he heard about problems with the state’s referral of employees. Previously, his agency would refer employees based on qualifications without any assessment of how they would fit particular businesses.
He said he started looking into improvements about a year and a half ago, shortly before Gov. Mike Huckabee left office.
“It took some time,” Williams said. “It’s not something you do overnight. We were well aware of the problems. You can send forth someone who looks like a qualified applicant but you don’t know if they have the skills to do the job. This system compares jobs skills needed by employers with the skills the employee possesses. And if there are deficiencies, this system helps workers build their skills. This system helps take some of the guesswork out.”
He said he expects the system will work everywhere, including the Marion area where there were reports of workforce problems that contributed to potential auto plants choosing to build elsewhere.
Adam Ruple, human resources director for LM Glasfiber, a Danish windmill blade company that announced last year it would open a plant in Little Rock, said the assessment system was essential. His is one of the few companies that have already signed up for it.
“It’s about a two- to threeweek process to have a chance to get a job,” he said. “Over a three-year period, we’re bringing about 1, 100 jobs to the city of Little Rock. I can tell you we wouldn’t have been here without this process.”
Entry level production workers will make $ 12. 73 an hour, he said.
Jimmy Hightower, 53, of Conway acknowledged that he “struggled a little bit with the program” but was glad he passed it and was hired as a production worker at LM Glasfiber. He had been out of work for about nine months and is taking a significant pay cut from a supervisory position at his previous employer where he worked for 25 years. He graduated from Mayflower High School but has no college degree.
“For [the state ] to be set up with the system, it’s a plus, it’s an asset,” Hightower said.
Joe Franklin, the director of the assessment project for Workforce Services, said to get started all a worker has to do is stop by one of the agency’s 32 offices around the state for the initial assessment.