Program Highlight -

Workforce Development

Technical skills are important in a lot of workplaces.

But so are people skills.

Just ask Dan Brockett, a Penn State Cooperative Extension educator, who has spent more than a decade in workforce development.

Venango County, he says, currently has quite a few people on the unemployment rolls due to the economic downturn. They are largely people who have worked long, hard and tirelessly for companies and are likely to be called back some day.

In the meantime, Brockett urges people who are waiting to return to the workaday world to get off the couch or off the keyboard and take some classes. And the same goes for people who still have their jobs but want to move up the ladder to better positions as well as to students preparing for the job market.

“We hope students recognize that if they want to be valuable to their employer, there are things they need to learn and know and practice to be a sort of rock star in the workplace,” he says. Employers, he says, want workers who “aspire to greatness.”

Jim Ladlee, Clinton County extension director, has been steeped in workforce development for the past year as the Marcellus Shale Natural Gas play gears up in 14 central and northern Pennsylvania counties, bringing with it the promise of as many as 10,000 good jobs in the coming decade. The challenge, he says, is to make sure that the educational infrastructure in those and neighboring counties can provide enough workers with appropriate skills to fill them.

To that end, Ladlee and Penn State have joined forces with Pennsylvania College of Technology to set up a statewide open forum at the Blair County Convention Center on Dec. 7 and 8, for educational institutions, from high schools and vocational technical schools to universities, to help them understand what specialized training and educational programs they can offer in preparation for the arrival of hundreds of gas rigs.

While the two efforts may seem different, they are very much the same under the Extension umbrella. The goal is to provide programs that help both employers and employees. The way it is done is through education and training. The vehicle that zeros in on the specifics of each case to develop good workplace practices is Extension’s workforce development programming.

Ladlee says the collaboration between Penn State and Penn College produced a report that is available online at www.msetc.org. Based on research done by Marcellus Education Team members, who traveled to other shale natural gas plays including the Barnett in Texas, it tells the story of what Pennsylvanians can expect in the next few years. It has been downloaded 28,000 times by industry insiders, economic development professionals and regular folks across Pennsylvania and the nation, he says, emphasizing that the number hints at the level of interest in Marcellus natural gas activity.

Pennsylvania has seen other boom industries, timber and coal, but none that require highly specialized skills and a unique work ethic, Ladlee says. Three-quarters of the jobs call for high school diplomas along with specific training like commercial drivers’ licenses, welding and clerical skills. The other quarter calls for professionals including geologists and cartographers with four-year degrees. The question that naturally follows, he says, is where so many new skilled workers will come from if today’s students are already on a path into an established business.

Ladlee and Brockett are both working on specific types of workforce development projects. But since they are both working within the framework of Penn State’s Cooperative Extension, they are able to share what they’ve learned and developed with people in other regions and with different types of workforce issues. The format is part of a system wide reframing effort geared toward a wider distribution of a consistent quality of Extension programs to greater numbers of Pennsylvanians. Part of reframing calls for gathering data to assess impacts. It also calls for county-level Extension workers to invest a portion of their time on statewide programs.

Brockett is part of a team of Extension workers from different areas of the state who are dedicated to helping provide a good workforce for employers and clear career opportunities for students. One current course offering, he says, is in the area of “soft skills,” including classes on conflict management, making diversity work for you and sexual harassment in the workplace. Communication skills, he says, are important because an employer needs workers who are able to deal effectively with colleagues, customers, suppliers and vendors. “You need those soft skills …”

Ladlee says it’s important to have a workforce ready to go when the drilling begins for natural gas that remained locked thousands of feet underground until recent years when the new technologies of hydrofracturing and horizontal drilling came together.

Drilling companies from other regions of the country can bring workers with them but they prefer to hire 70 to 80 percent of the workers they need from the local area, he says. “From a workforce perspective, there will be tremendous opportunities.”

Written by Linda Hudkins