Gary Box
Business Retention Coordinator
WIB of SW Missouri
Gary Box has successfully used Strategic Advantage to provide convincing data on workforce availability to businesses looking to relocate to his region. Recently, he had the opportunity to assist in a project that resulted in the acquisition of a Best Buy/Geek Squad call center. He used Strategic Advantage to show the site selectors that Southwest Missouri has the necessary number of available workers in the target occupations within a 30-mile radius. The Best Buy/Geek Squad call center has already hired 200 employees and is now open and in full operation.

Erika Volker
Partnerships for Innovation
FutureForce Nebraska
Erika Volker recently used Strategic Advantage to provide data-driven reports to a consortium of educational providers throughout Nebraska. This group, Partnerships for Innovation, aims to improve programs, increase student achievement, and meet Perkins IV requirements throughout the state. Erika created three reports for secondary schools in 20 service areas. These reports included a look at the educational attainment, economy overview (industry size and growth), and career clusters (ranked by size) of each region.  These reports connect the economic demand/labor market side of program creation with student interests, which student surveys provide. Both are necessary to provide program development with a well-rounded, data-driven and student-driven environment. These reports have already begun to generate dialogue among secondary and post-secondary institutions, and Erika hopes that the education consortium will use these reports to form common goals and data-driven program offerings.

In 2006, a major confectionary plant in South Central Pennsylvania announced that it would be closing, and another four in the area indicated that they would be making significant cutbacks. The total job loss would potentially reach around 600 jobs. To respond, the Lancaster, Berks, and South Central Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs) partnered to build a strategy around the looming dislocation in this industry sector.

Read the full case study here (PDF):  Threats of job loss lead to innovation in south central PA

A couple of weeks ago EMSI hosted a webinar for Strategic Advantage users to be (re)introduced to the Career Pathways module and the O*NET data that powers it.

The webinar kicked off with a description of the basic components of O*NET data and how the Career Pathways module integrates O*NET data with EMSI labor market data. Tom Tveidt, Director of Research for Asheville Chamber of Commerce, shared a personal example of how EMSI’s Career Pathways tool has reinvented the way he shows workforce availability to prospective businesses. Dave Williams, EMSI Customer Solutions Consultant, demonstrated how to apply Career Pathways in two scenarios:

• Business Recruitment: How to show workforce availability to prospective employers based on O*NET data and the region’s potential labor pool.
• Rapid Response: How to quickly find viable job options for displaced workers.

Follow this link to see the recorded webinar (requires the Flash plugin for your browser).

Note: Due to some screen resolution issues we encountered during the webinar, the screen will appear somewhat “stretched” in the second part of the recording.

Education

Eileen Storck
Director of Enrollment Management, Indian River State College
Florida
Eileen Storck, Director of Enrollment Management, is helping Indian River State College lead the way in Florida’s transition to a new state college system which will play a vitally important role in the state’s workforce preparation and economic development. Indian River State College, formerly Indian River Community College, is using Strategic Advantage to align baccalaureate programs to the workforce needs of both the region and state. As Eileen reflects on the recent changes, she states, “As a state college, we have a responsibility to provide degree programs that will lead our students into high-skill, high-wage, and high-demand occupations. One big difference is that now we research a broader area as we address potential gaps in the workforce.” As Eileen provides detailed data to the baccalaureate program sub-committee, Indian River State College can make strategic, data-driven decisions on four-year degree programs—from the very beginning.

Jeanne Fadelli
Research Analyst, Santa Rosa Junior College
California
Jeanne Fadelli, Research Analyst at Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC), uses Strategic Advantage to prepare Institutional Effectiveness reports and the Community Needs Assessment (CNA). EMSI’s bi-annual data updates provide the most current data available, which is helpful for Institutional Effectiveness reports on time-sensitive issues like the “District Population Served by Gender, Age and Ethnicity” and “Population Participation Rates by ZIP Code” for the college’s annual Fact Book. The CNA includes detailed regional industry, occupation, and demographic detail for strategic planning purposes.  With SA’s integrated data and flexible regions, Jeanne could focus on the projected regional occupation growth and decline, as well as follow high school enrollment patterns and demographic trends.  This CNA will serve as a guide for outreach to targeted demographic groups, and it will also inform program planning.

Brett Riley
Director of Grants, Columbia Basin College
Washington
When Brett Riley hears of a grant opportunity, his first stop is Strategic Advantage. Before he does anything else, he uses SA to identify whether or not Columbia Basin College has a need for a particular grant opportunity. Brett says, “Using SA makes my job significantly easier, since I can find everything I need in one place, from start to finish.”  Recently, Brett helped Columbia Basin College win a grant for an Apprenticeship Growth Funding program. To accomplish this, he based the projection years on the grant funding period and looked at the forecasted demand for the specific occupations in the region. Then, he used EMSI GIS to visually display that his region has a 2% greater demand for these jobs than the rest of the state. This convincing data and clear presentation gave Columbia Basin College the competitive advantage they needed to win the grant.

Workforce Development

Rebecca Bloomquist
Special Projects Coordinator - High Country Workforce Development Board,
High Country Council of Governments
North Carolina
Rebecca Bloomquist uses Strategic Advantage as a resource for discovering regional trends and making recommendations based on these trends through allocation of workforce resources and strategic planning. She is currently using SA to perform a wage study for a small town in High Country’s service area. Stakeholders in this town fear that they are losing employees to surrounding counties due to lack of competitive wages. Rebecca will use SA’s Occupation reports to compare this small town to the state as well as surrounding counties and verify whether or not this town’s wages are lower than those surrounding counties. Once the report is completed, she can make wage recommendations to make this town more competitive with the surrounding regions.

Eddie Foreman
CEO, Central Oklahoma Workforce Investment Board
Oklahoma
Eddie Foreman, CEO of Central Oklahoma WIB, uses Strategic Advantage to proactively plan for future workforce needs. For example, he recently used SA to confirm that without any intervention, central Oklahoma could face a workforce crisis in several years. He found that by 2014, central Oklahoma is projected to grow by 20,000 jobs, but the working age population is only expected to grow by 3,000.  With such an immense difference, Foreman knows that creative strategies are necessary to counteract the workforce decline.   Instead of merely targeting populations outside of their region, it has led the WIB to sponsor several training programs inside of correctional facilities within the region, and the results have been positive so far, with former convicts transitioning into the declining workforce. As the workforce crisis looms, Foreman proves that proactive and creative solutions are a must for successful economies.

Economic Development

Jim Held
Senior Economist, Empire State Development
New York
Jim Held, Senior Economist with Empire State Development in Albany, New York, doesn’t know what he would do without the flexibility of Strategic Advantage. He says that one challenge of being an economic developer in New York is trying to keep up with the changing regional distinctions between Upstate and Downstate (i.e., metropolitan New York City).  With 62 counties in the state, there are many possible definitions for the two mega-regions.  Creating a region in SA is so simple that Held is not fazed by creating and combining different regions as policy needs change, and this helps him stay on the cutting edge of economic development in his state.

The Cape Cod, Massachusetts economy is primarily driven by small businesses in the hospitality and retail sectors. Many of these businesses are sole proprietors, and 90% have fewer than 20 people. This creates a unique labor market and workforce environment, according to David Augustinho, Executive Director at Cape and Islands Workforce Investment Board.

Augustinho found that most small businesses in his area promote their employees from associates to managers with little or no training. Because of the relatively small size of the businesses, they do not have the resources to provide the kind of customized management training programs not normally found in areas dominated by larger companies. To help fill this resource gap, Augustinho applied for and won a $500,000 grant for cross-sector management training from the Massachusetts Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund. Though the Fund is primarily aimed at sector-specific training programs, Augustinho successfully argued that a cross-sector management training program would provide significant returns to small business owners.

Read the full case study (PDF): Cape & Islands WIB Uses Strategic Advantage to Win Training Grant

In this updated and expanded version of our previous site selection whitepaper, we talk about the need for labor market analysis for today’s businesses, challenges in using various public and proprietary data sources, and EMSI’s solution to facilitate instant access to detailed data.

Labor Market Analysis for Site Selection (Expanded) - PDF

This study, “Economic Contribution of America’s Community and Technical Colleges” (PDF link), was authored by CCbenefits (now EMSI) in 2004, and showcases the socioeconomic impact model (SEIM) framework used in EMSI’s college studies.

The analysis is based on a sample of 262 colleges in 14 states, representing roughly one-third of the current total enrollment in community and technical colleges in the country. The findings from the sample were used to generate results by inference for the some 1,200 colleges in the United States. Two major analyses are conducted: 1) investment analyses from the perspectives of the students and the taxpayers, and 2) economic growth analysis to determine the relative contribution to GDP by the community and technical colleges.

Some of the findings include:

• The average associate’s degree holder will earn $9,000 more annually ($325,000 lifetime) because of that degree.
• Associate’s-level education confers a number of benefits to students as well as the general public. The analysis translates the economic growth effect of community and technical college education into increased state and local government revenues (via increased tax receipts). Added to these are an assortment of social savings, e.g., avoided costs stemming from reductions in incarceration, welfare, health care support, and others.
• Taxpayers, who bear about 58% of community and technical college costs, receive a 16% return on their investment in the colleges—well above the 4% opportunity cost of funds.
• The bottom line: colleges return more to taxpayers than they cost.

In 2002, lawmakers on the Wisconsin Assembly’s budget committee began their biennial session to set the state’s spending priorities. In the wake of the dot-com bust and the 9/11 attacks, the national economy was starting to enter a recession and committee members were concerned about reducing state spending. Early in their deliberations, the committee voted to cut state funding for the state’s technical colleges by $14 million, or 10 percent.

To read on and see what role EMSI’s SEIM study played in this situation, open the full case study (PDF): Wisconsin SEIM Case Study

Bruce Corrie, Dean of the College of Business at Concordia University, has released a report that attempts to quantify the “ethnic capital” of Liberian immigrants in the US as a whole and the state of Minnesota in particular.

Though a small community, Liberians in the United States and Minnesota have a significant impact on the national and local economy. This report will document the multidimensional economic contributions of Liberians in Minnesota and the nation. The local analysis in Minnesota can help estimate the national economic contributions of this community to the nation.

- Liberians in the United States have a buying power of over a billion dollars. This is equivalent to two times the GDP of Liberia in 2005.

- In Minnesota Liberian buying power is an estimated $157 million dollars which is almost as large as the 2007-08 Liberian National Budget of $199 million dollars.

Read the report here.

Ten years ago, when Dr. Robert “Rab” Thornton became Dean of Outreach Services at Housatonic Community College (HCC), the college had slow enrollment growth, very little interaction with the local business community, and low visibility in the state legislature. His duty was to reverse this trend and effectively “make an invisible college visible.”

Thornton quickly realized that one of the problems behind this was that the college primarily focused on enrollment figures when talking about its community value, and not on what stakeholders were truly interested in—economic revitalization, bottom lines, and return on investment. They were not communicating because they were speaking completely different languages. This discovery spurred Thornton to redirect HCC’s outreach efforts by looking for new ways to communicate the college’s real value to the community and state.

Read the full case study (PDF): Housatonic Community College: An urban renewal success story