To slow down losses, the Indiana State Legislature formed the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority (RDA) in 2006 to invest in economic development throughout the region. This was welcome news to Cimcor CEO Robert Johnson, who had been working diligently to create a pool of qualified and experienced candidates for his company for many years.

Johnson grew up in Indiana, went to Purdue University, and wanted to stay in the general area. His background imbued him with a strong work ethic that he knew was held by the employment pool in the area.

“I like the work ethic in the Midwest,” said Johnson. “Midwesterners are hardworking people who do a job until it’s done right. The people who move from blue to white collars are highly dedicated, highly productive and very proud of their work.

In 1997, Johnson co-founded Cimcor, a company that develops innovative IT security and integrity software solutions that protect corporate, government and military computer networks from unauthorized access. The company required employees that were high-level thinkers and experts in technology systems.

“The area was shifting away from manufacturing, and those jobs were going away, leaving people needing jobs without the right skill base for those jobs,” Johnson continued. “I wanted to be a catalyst for change in Northwest Indiana and to help begin to create a technology-oriented economy. It certainly would have been easier in a place like San Francisco, but I wanted to stay here.”

Through his active work in the community and with Purdue University, he knew he could initiate programs that would help prepare a workforce for the future. Working with other board members from a handful of programs and associations, he brainstormed ways to develop ways to prepare the workforce for the future.

“Purdue listened to our ideas and requirements,” said Johnson. “We identified skill gaps of candidates in the area and critical needs for our company and others like it. Purdue was very responsive and proactive. They actually modified their curriculum to help close those gaps.”

Since 1998, Johnson has worked with Purdue to recruit from its great pool of talented graduates. Today, 90 percent of Cimcor employees are Purdue graduates, including Johnson himself.

Johnson’s loyalty to Northwest Indiana and education has paid off in terms of Cimcor’s success and employee loyalty. Turnover at Cimcor is low for a tech company, and many of the employees have been with the company for five to 10 years.

Johnson’s hard work towards transitioning the Northwest Indiana workforce away from manufacturing and into high-tech jobs may have helped his company, but it has also had long-term positive repercussions in the region. By identifying the skills and abilities needed for the Indiana workforce to compete for high-tech jobs, working to educate them in those areas and placing them with compatible high-tech jobs, Johnson and Purdue University have created what we at Unleash the Monster call a high-performance workforce.

A high-performance workforce is one in which the local employee base has been trained in the unique skills and abilities needed to perform in the jobs available in the region. With a high-performance workforce in place in Northwest Indiana, the region can now work to attract other companies in the high-tech growth markets. The end result is the growth of a new market in Northwest Indiana, and a subsequently thriving and improving economy.

“As a pure software developer, we’re the leader in this area, but we are seeing others come here,” Johnson continued. “We welcome them.”

We applaud Robert Johnson’s work and dedication to the Northwest Indiana region. With the programs he worked to start with Purdue University and an increasingly qualified high-tech workforce, the region’s economy is primed for continued growth and success today and into the future.

By embracing a high-performance workforce, local governments and stakeholders can ensure that they have a workforce that can lure companies in growth industries into the region, and keep them there.

Huntsville’s recent embrace of cyber security is an incredible example of a city working towards a high-performance workforce.

With the knowledge that the battlefield of the future is in cyberspace, the city is looking to become a nationally recognized hub of expertise in cyber security, research, development, test and evaluation, engineering, experimentation and life cycle management.

The Mayor recently used the 13th annual Space and Missile Defense Conference at the city’s Von Braun Center as a launching pad for a new initiative that will include the construction of a multi-story “Cyber Systems Innovation and Security Center.” The focus of this center would be securing weapons systems and the technology supporting them against computer attacks.

While the city begins its march towards growing the cyber security industry within its borders, the city’s education institutions are doing their part on the backend to ensure that the workforce is prepared with the skills and knowledge it will need to flourish in the industry.

The University of Alabama in Huntsville has established a new master’s program in cyber security that focuses on protecting information systems from attack. The Master of Science in Information Assurance and Security (MSIAS) is designed to emulate the real world challenges of engineers, managers, and scientists who must work together to resolve their IT security challenges.

Essentially, Huntsville is working to draw in a hot growth industry to the city that will provide jobs while simultaneously training the workforce that this industry will need to thrive. Huntsville is working to create a high-performance workforce in an industry that is not only emerging, but will have a positive economic impact over time. The end result will ensure that the city continues to be an example of economic and population growth even in the country’s ongoing economic downturn.

How could your region benefit from working towards a high-performance workforce?

Although the economy has showed signs of improvement, hiring remains down and the unemployment rate in many regions remains high. While it seems counterintuitive, there are many reasons why companies would be hesitant to hold off on hiring despite increasing revenues.

With many companies nervous of a repeat of the economy’s downward spiral and subsequent credit crunch, they are holding onto every dollar they can. Additionally, many companies are hesitant to consider the economic downturn behind them and begin operating and hiring as such.

And who can blame them, really? Hiring people is expensive.

But Ohio is betting on their people. In an effort to help put their large unemployed population back into jobs and back on the private sector payroll the state has implemented a new program to take the risk out of the new hiring process for local companies.

The program, called Project Hometown Investment in Regional Economies (HIRE) is a statewide Workforce Investment Act initiative funded by the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Administered by the Ohio Department of Development in collaboration with the One-Stop Workforce system and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS), Project HIRE provides enhanced job matching strategies linking employers and job seekers at no cost to either.

Through Project HIRE, the State of Ohio is making federal funds available for up to six months to help offset up to 50% of the cost of on-the-job training for fulltime jobs in a handful of targeted, high-demand industries. These industries include, but are not limited to:

• Advanced Energy and Environmental Technologies
• Aerospace and Aviation
• Bioscience and Bioproducts
• Instruments, Controls and Electronics
• Polymers and Advanced Materials
• Healthcare

Project HIRE benefits both companies and prospective employees immensely. For employers, a high-performance workforce is created that is trained in the necessary skills and abilities on-the-job at a significantly reduced cost. This takes the gamble out of hiring new employees by reducing a company’s investment in each new hire while ensuring that they have what it takes to be successful in their jobs. For employees it provides valuable on-the-job training in a handful of high-demand, growth industries.

The State of Ohio is taking huge steps towards getting people back into jobs and creating a high-performance workforce. Between the Ohio Means Jobs portal that we discussed previously on Unleash the Monster and Project HIRE, Ohio means business when it comes to getting its citizens back to work.

What could your state learn from Ohio?

To help turn their economies around, state and local regions are turning to public-private partnerships, innovation and research to drive economic development through workforce training and attracting businesses in high-growth industries. They’re following the steps to a high-performance workforce in an effort to get job seekers into jobs that they are uniquely qualified for and drive economic recovery.

A recent article in Government Computer News discusses the role that Monster Government Solutions has played across multiple regions in providing the tools needed at each step to empower the high-performance workforce.

The ways Monster has assisted, include:

Get Informed: The WorkPlace, Inc., Southwestern Connecticut’s Regional Workforce Development Board, turned to Monster for real-time labor intelligence to help identify what industries were in need of employees so that they could invest in the training and skills development needed to place job seekers into those jobs.

Get Educated: Monster recently worked with Workforce Solutions Alamo, the local workforce board in San Antonio, Texas, to hold a Federal Job Information Exchange to stimulate interest in applying for federal employment through the USAJOBS Web site. The event was an educational opportunity for participants where they could learn to better use the USAJOBS site and work with experts to convert their resumes to fit the requirements for federal civilian employment announcements.

Get Employed: The Riverside County Workforce Investment Board (WIB) in California recently worked with Monster to create a customized online community for local businesses seeking qualified employees and for area job seekers who want the latest information about jobs specifically in their geographic area. The community allows job seekers to share job posting and educational content, and also allows local business to post jobs that are visible only to individuals in the local region who are looking for employment.

Monster Government Solutions is working on the regional level to help empower the high-performance workforce, drive economic development, and turn the economy around.

What is your region doing to improve the economy and drum up jobs?

In previous posts here at Unleash the Monster, we discussed the concept of a high-performance workforce, a regional workforce trained in the skills and abilities needed to perform the in-demand and available jobs in their region.

We’ve talked about the three steps needed to make a region’s workforce a high-performance workforce. These steps include: getting informed, getting educated and getting employed.

Some of the suburbs around New York City are on their way to a high-performance workforce thanks in large part to the WorkPlace, Inc., Southwestern Connecticut’s Regional Workforce Development Board, which helps people prepare for careers and strengthens the workforce for employers.

The WorkPlace, Inc. is also grant manager and fiduciary for a bi-state Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) region that covers southwestern Connecticut; Westchester County, Putnam County, and the City of Yonkers in New York. As part of its WIRED grant, The WorkPlace, Inc. commissioned Monster Government Solutions (MGS) and its partners, Thomas P. Miller Associates and ERISS, to get informed about the state of their workforce. This was originally intended to research long-term talent shortage and talent outflow. However, the recession and its impact on the financial industry soon changed the plan.

With a large population of now-unemployed workers from the financial services industry, the region was hard-pressed to create actions and plans to address this new critical situation. The region turned in part to the regional workforce plan, asset map and skills gap analysis produced by MGS and its partners for insight into the trends in the marketplace and help them plot a path of action.

This research, including MGS real-time labor intelligence, has since been used by the WorkPlace, Inc. and its partners to help direct investments in workforce development. The research even exposed an employee shortage in the IT market, which has led to a focus in the training and development of IT skills and abilities in the workforce to help get people back to work.

By utilizing WIRED grants and federal funding to get informed, get educated and get employed, the CT-NY Talent for Growth region is on the fast track to a high-performance workforce, economic growth and development.

For additional information on how your region can transform its workforce into a high-performance workforce, check out the Unleash the Monster State & Local Resource Center, which contains multiple useful documents, including:

How can Monster help you to create the high-performance workforce?

High-performance workforce Conversation Starter

One-Page introduction to the High-Performance Workforce

One of the steps that we’ve recommended is to form public-private partnerships designed to help regions get informed and help the local workforce get educated and employed. A great example of this was Wired 65, a partnership between a 26-county region stretching from North Central KY through Southern Indiana and a handful of vendors including Monster.

Another great example of a public-private partnership helping to get regional workforces employed is what’s currently being done in Tallahassee. WORKFORCE plus, the regional workforce board in Tallahassee, working with Monster, held Power Seeker Workshops designed to reenergize local job seekers, and to teach them new job hunting techniques and tactics.

With unemployment hitting the State of Florida and City of Tallahassee hard, the lines at local “One-Stop” unemployment resource centers were growing long and available resources were becoming increasingly strained. And that was with only about half of the local unemployed citizens coming to the “One-Stop.”

The Power Seeker Workshops were expected to supplement the services available for the region’s unemployed at “One-Stops.” What resulted was well beyond these expectations as over 250 individuals registered for the events.

A survey of attendees later revealed conclusive evidence that job seekers truly benefited from the two-hour events. The results showed:

• 95% of attendees found the information provided useful
• 96% gave the workshop a grade of “excellent”
• 98% found the presenters as knowledgeable and engaging

In addition to the positive survey results, the local workforce board benefited from an enlarged audience and increased exposure. Local “One-Stop” staff also learned valuable tools for helping local residents get employed. In fact, the events were so successful that they’re going to be repeated, and also replicated across the state.

How could public-private partnerships like the Power Seeker Workshops held by the City of Tallahassee and Monster help your region?

As companies continue to slash expenses and jobs, former manufacturing centers in the Midwest and other areas of the country are struggling with elevated unemployment levels. In fact the American unemployment level is well into the double digits and not expected to improve in the immediate future.

One of the places currently suffering with high unemployment rates is New York. Despite playing host to the most expensive baseball team in the league, New York’s direct ties to the financial services and manufacturing industries have led to a significant downturn in the state’s economy.

A recent NPR article discussed some steps the state has taken towards improving the employment situation. According to the article, the State of New York’s Department of Labor has turned to a Boston company called Burning Glass, which has developed a job search formula that it claims directs job hunters to the employers most likely to make a hire.

Job search tools remain critical for both employers looking for talent and job seekers looking for jobs. In fact, Monster recently unveiled its new Power Resume Search functionality designed specifically to simplify and expedite the process of finding qualified candidates for available positions. But regardless of how important job search tools are for seekers and employers, they’re just one part of the overall employment picture in a region. To bring unemployment numbers down and get people employed, a larger workforce development strategy is needed.

In our recent Unleash the Monster posts about the high-performance workforce we laid out a roadmap to help regions identify what skills their workforce needs in the current economy, ways to train them and then tools that can be used to place them into the jobs that they are uniquely qualified for. Job search tools are just one piece of this puzzle, and a piece that falls very far along the path to an ideal workforce and job marketplace.

We applaud New York State for thinking outside the box and trying new things in the pursuit of gainfully employing its constituents. But we have to ask, will addressing one piece of the puzzle be enough? If the Empire State has aspirations of ascending to its throne at the end of the recession it just may be time for a more robust employment strategy.

But now that your workforce is educated and prepared to fill the available jobs of both today and tomorrow, you need to connect available employees with applicable jobs where they can use their skills.

One of the best ways to accomplish this is a basic tenet of the High-Performance Workforce methodology – to foster relationships among stakeholders, including the education systems, workforce and economic development teams, and the private sector. These relationships help to create well-qualified employees for positions at every level in the targeted sectors and high-growth industries where they can make an immediate impact.

Using social networking, career and job search tools, and targeted job boards can be an effective approach in bringing employees and employers together. Custom career and job sites can be constructed to drive employees to high growth industries. Also, establishing social networks dedicated to regions and sectors, using internet-based media, and participating in online events can all be useful in helping high-growth sectors attract top talent.

An example of this can be seen right here at Monster. The company’s new “Technology Center of Excellence & Innovation” in Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA was in need of approximately 80 new technical employees. To staff these positions, the company hosted a career fair within its EducationXpo online event and reached out to colleges and universities with strong reputations for producing top-level technical talent. These types of targeted career fairs can be instrumental in placing potential employees in jobs in high growth industries.

Of course once the available talent is employed in positions where they can truly use their skills and abilities to succeed, employee retention becomes very important. On-boarding, the ability to integrate and assimilate new employees into an organization, and retention remain big question marks for employers, especially government agencies, but that’s a blog post for another time.

We’ll begin by looking more closely at what real-time labor intelligence can do to improve a region’s employment situation. Up-to-date information can serve as a navigational system for a regional economy, providing a clear picture into the region’s current employment situation and informed insights into education and funding decisions.

Using real-time labor intelligence, governments and other regional stakeholders can learn a tremendous amount about their current workforce – the supply side – and the skills and abilities needed to maintain full employment. Should a disconnect exist between the skills currently available in the workforce and those that are needed, regions can begin education and training programs to teach new skills at local educational institutions. They can also then identify at-risk populations of individuals who lack needed skills and help to get them the necessary training.

Real-time labor intelligence can be instrumental in attracting companies – and new jobs – that compliment your current workforce. Knowledge that a workforce exists with the skills and abilities necessary can make your region far more competitive in the site selection arena. Having a prepared workforce gives your region a leg-up in attracting new and established companies, which brings in additional tax dollars and ultimately additional employment opportunities that match the available workforce’s skills and abilities.

The current economic condition coupled with an unprecedented environment of change has created a difficult situation for many states that are operating with reduced budgets and resources. Real-time labor intelligence ensures that states have the information necessary to make the correct decisions and helps to drive policy that will allow them to achieve their goals.

As a result, an increasing number of residents seek assistance from state-funded programs at a time when government is cutting support staffs. Large numbers of unemployed workers from shrinking industries clog the unemployment system. Regions must create new jobs to support emerging industries while finding new ways to compete within the global economy.

This is the perfect time to re-imagine and re-tool our regional workforces.

Regional stakeholders – employers, workforce and economic development agencies, government, and workers – must start by understanding where the employment needs are, which industries are growing, and what types of employee skills and abilities are required, now and into the future.

Using that information, the educational system will be better prepared to align its curriculum with workforce needs, contributing directly to more effective economic development, as well. Institutions can deliver to the workforce the skills and knowledge they need to perform the jobs that are available now, are emerging in selected sectors, or that the region is working to attract.

Further, employers will be matched with job seekers who are uniquely prepared to perform these evolving roles. This will help to create a more attractive and competitive regional economy.

By creating a sustainable regional dialogue, deploying and driving traffic to targeted social networking and other collaborative career resources, and using real-time information to track progress toward objectives, a region can begin to build unity of vision, deeper relationships, tighter collaboration among various interests, and a more cohesive approach to solving problems.

Taken together – data-driven insights, curriculum alignment, and new levels of collaboration – regions can begin to create the High-Performance Workforce. Just as importantly, the infrastructure that enables and supports this High-Performance workforce becomes another source of jobs and opportunities within the region, creating a positive cycle of economic growth.

How can your region’s stakeholders tune up their workforce?