Editorial: Business leaders need to recognize workforce development takes time

Good news has been pouring out of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. of late with big announcements about companies locating high-tech manufacturing facilities for batteries, pharmaceuticals and microelectronics.

But as the jobs announcements pile up, so do some concerns about whether those companies will be able to find qualified workers to fill their positions—immediately and in the long term.

It’s a challenge that policymakers and education officials are trying to address through new pathways that help prepare students for the workforce, whether that’s through better training in high school, post-secondary training and credentials or four-year college degrees.

IBJ also explored the issue this week with our first Education Power Breakfast, an event focused specifically on apprenticeships and other work-based learning models.

Noel Ginsburg, CEO of Colorado-based education not-for-profit CareerWise, was the event’s keynote speaker and talked about the need for the business community to be fully invested in both developing and implementing an education system that prepares the future workforce.

Colorado is developing an apprenticeship model, one in which students take paid positions in companies early in their high school careers and then take on additional responsibilities over time. It’s a program modeled after an extensive apprenticeship system in Switzerland that Indiana education and business leaders have also been studying.

Several of the people on IBJ’s panel Wednesday have gone to Switzerland to learn more and are now working to implement the program here. Already, pilot programs are in place in several areas of the state.

Ginsburg, who has been working with several Indiana leaders, lauded organizers of the effort for pulling business into the conversation early. The Indy Chamber, for example, took a delegation of about 100 people to Switzerland.

But Ginsburg emphasized that business commitment to a program is key. Too often, he told the 270-or-so people at the event, business leaders jump in to help with a program or new policy with gusto, then get restless when the payoff doesn’t happen quickly, and they drop out too soon.

That won’t work when it comes to education policy—or almost any significant systematic change, he said.

Fully implementing an apprenticeship model won’t take just a few years, he said. It could take a decade. And reaping strong results will take much longer.

He challenged business leaders to embrace the journey and stay in for the long haul.

Indiana University Health President Dennis Murphy reiterated Ginsburg’s sentiments later. He’s been to Switzerland to study the apprenticeship program there. And IU Health is participating in the pilot apprenticeship program in Indianapolis in addition to a work-study program at the private Providence Cristo Rey High School.

He told the crowd that developing a winning statewide program will require a shift in mindset for business leaders. The programs are not about companies training their next dozen or two workers. They are about training a new generation of workers who will benefit not just business but society as a whole.

We urge Indiana’s business leaders—and its policymakers—to embrace that idea. An investment of time and resources into an apprentice system or other workforce training is about all of our futures, and we must work together to make it happen.•

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