You might have seen me on WKBW’s
newscast last week. The station was at Confer Plastics to do a story about
seventh graders from West Buffalo Charter School who came to the plant to film
footage of our processes and interviews of our people as a part of a contest called
“What’s So Cool About Manufacturing?” which pits middle schools against one
another in producing a flashy video about local factories.
The contest is a wonderful thing. It
gives young men and women the chance to intimately explore a workplace on the
plant floor and behind the scenes, giving them an understanding of what drives
our economy and what is there for them in the future, showing them a clearer
path to personal and professional success and fostering ideas about educational
paths to pursue, be it college or trade school.
Kids need more of those experiences.
So do employers.
Here is my challenge to the latter:
Business owners and managers who routinely complain about the deficient
workforce and the lack of available personnel need to do something other than
whine. Get involved.
There is no doubt a crisis in the
job market. Well-paying full-time jobs with good benefits are go unfilled with managers
of blue-collar companies (factories, farms, trucking firms, the building
trades) having a difficult time finding skilled workers or even apprentices
interested in that line of work.
It’s an outcome of a few decades of
misplaced priorities in society and education. Adults, whether in the home or
in the classroom, had purposely driven kids away from the trades, thinking that
such careers are demeaning and low-paying, on the path to extinction, and that
college is the unquestioned key to success.
None of those beliefs are true nor
have they ever been. Now, the adults who once believed them are waking up to
that, especially since recent college grads find themselves crushed by debt and
unable to find a good job due to an overabundance of college degrees, alleged
over-qualification, and a lack of opportunity.
Teachers, counselors, policymakers
and parents have done a 180 over the past half-decade or so, changing the
culture that their predecessors had put into play for far too long. They are
seeing the value in all work and all trades and doing what they can to promote
them among today’s students.
But, after decades of society going
in the other direction, it’s a tough sell and a slow one.
That’s where employers can help out.
They need to do as they do in their
workplaces – get their hands dirty, get involved. They need to reach out to the
schools and put themselves out there. Guidance from real world people can go a
long ways in getting students interested in skilled work and settled on a career
that will keep them comfortable for life.
It’s an easy and effective pursuit,
one that we’ve practiced for some time at the plant and I strongly encourage
other employers to follow suit. There are two simple ways that you can do this:
host tours and let kids shadow.
Experiential learning is the best
way to garner interest and that’s why tours are so effective. The kids can see
people working, machines functioning, and goods being produced. The awesomeness
of what you do every day can be an attention-grabber. It doesn’t matter if you
manufacture kayaks, milk cows, or build houses – kids will eat it up. I’ve had students
from fifth grade through college students go through the factory, all of them
with wide eyes and keen interest.
Shadowing takes tours to another
level and to make it happen it generally requires a full day and your
willingness to share a lot of your time and knowledge -- and that of your
coworkers – with students. We’ve done this quite a few times with students from
schools like Barker and the former Niagara Catholic and with an Explorer Post
we hosted on-site. They were able to choose from various career paths and
observe what our folks do while hearing of the finer details of why they do it
from various mentors.
While most employers won’t directly
benefit from such activities -- the chances of you recruiting someone for your
company is slim (and it should not be
your goal) – those kids with whom you speak will. It will give them interest,
purpose, and direction.
If you are serious about the quality
of our workforce, the future of our kids, and the health of our economy, partner
with our local schools and open your doors and open your hearts -- doing so
will open the students’ minds. Your investment of time is in an investment in
the future.
From the 18 March 2019
Greater Niagara Newspapers and Batavia Daily News
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