Workforce Developments

Grants for technology-based job training

The Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration has just announced they plan to make $10 million in grants through a Technology-Based Learning (TBL) Initiative. According to the grant announcement, the purpose of the grants is to "expand the vital role of TBL in helping workers quickly acquire the training and skills they need to be successful in today's global economy, and thereby increase the nation's economic competitiveness and growth."

Government agencies, nonprofits, businesses and educational institutions are eligible to apply. DOLETA expects to make about 20 grants of between $100,000 and $500,000. A webinar for potential applicants will be held on July 29 - visit Workforce3One for info on how to participate.

To read the summary click here, and here for the full solicitation.

Due date is August 19, 2008. 

Workforce development blogosphere keeps expanding

I've added some new links on the Blogroll Page recently. In case you've missed them:

• The Rubicon National Social Innovations blog tracks trends in social innovation
• Bob Giloth, Director of Family Economic Success at the Annie E. Casey Foundation has gone web 2.0 with his experience and knowledge 
• Find out what local workforce board staff are thinking at the World of Bigbry blog
• Stay up to date on the progress of the green jobs movement at the Apollo Alliance Blog

Welcome to the ever-expanding workforce development blogosphere.  Visit these blogs and join the conversation.

Job seeker services of the future

Friday's L.A. Times business section had article about how young people are voluntarily signing up to receive messages on their cell phones from companies where they shop. Why? Because they're not just getting ads, but also what they consider valuable, timely advice.

For example, Seventeen magazine is right now sending subscribers daily messages with suggestions of what to wear to the prom. Cosmo Girl offers advice on how to say no to alcohol. One company sells a video of a guy asking someone to the prom. For 99 cents you can send it to the person you want to ask.

This is one possible future I can imagine for workforce development services. A job seeker signs up to receive periodic messages by phone with tips on job hunting, interviewing, resume writing, networking, etc. from his or her local one-stop or WIB.

What about messages to job seekers' phones announcing new job openings related to their areas of interest? Someone at one of my CWA workshops suggested this last year.

There are details to work out. We wouldn't want to send out messages that would cost job seekers money to read. We'd have to make sure the messages are substantive and meaningful, not a waste of their time. This won't be for everyone - older job seekers will likely have much less interest than younger ones. And of course the 80K gorilla in the room: how would a one-stop get credit for this in their performance standards?

It's possible that getting an upbeat weekly reminder and useful info by phone might help keep job seekers focused and on track, thus improving outcomes. We won't know until we try.

Read the article for yourself (click here), and think about the kinds of information you share with customers regularly. Could you get it to them by phone?   

Cell phone photo by Johnathan Lyman

Web 2.0: coming to a government agency near you

Last week I highlighted how foundations are using new interactive online technologies to get out their message and influence policymaking. Today, let's talk government.

Government? That bastion of slow-moving bureaucracy? Embracing change? Engaging their own workers in problem solving?

The May 2008 issue of Governing magazine has a big article about how government agencies are using wikis for improve internal management, Working in Wiki. Don't know what a "wiki" is? Click here for a short glossary of some key terms they use.

Authors Perlman and Maynard explain why it's important - and why it's so challenging - for government agencies to embrace these new technologies:

The wiki world is all about making government more effective by enlarging the idea bank and making it possible to tap into the minds of those all along the job line — from workers in the field to middle managers to top brass. It's like the old Suggestion Box, only more specific, immediate and rewarding. And more challenging. The adjustments needed in terms of mindset and operations can be huge, even for the chief information officers of government agencies. They have to master the new tools, then persuade their agencies to experiment with the technologies, and then support them as they do.

They offer examples of government agencies that are on the cutting edge, from the chief information officer for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, to California's largest public health district, to the community mental health department in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Take this latter case for example - the agency is using wikis internally to keep their caseworkers updated as new information is available. Case workers can add to the wiki as they learn about new resources for clients, making that info available to their peers. Sound like something a workforce development agency could do?

Check out this article. You might be surprised to learn what other government agencies are doing.

(Thanks to Virginia Hamilton of the California Workforce Association for passing this one along!)

Learn how to podcast!

I'll be teaching a podcasting workshop in Los Angeles on June 1. If you want to learn how to record, edit and upload your own work online and you're in the area, this is a great place to start. I'll be teaching the class at Writers at Work, a local nonprofit writers' center. The workshop is designed primarily for writers, but the basic audio editing and internet skills are the same for everyone. Here's the 411:

Podcasting for Writers: Getting your work heard online

When: Sunday June 1, 2008, 2-5 p.m.
Where: Writers At Work, 4022 Fountain Avenue, Suite 202, Los Angeles, CA 90029
Instructor: Bronwyn Mauldin
Cost: $45
Pre-registration is required. Space is limited.

From the course description:

With today's technology, podcasting is as easy as sending an email and can be done from a home computer.  Audio editing software is "point and click," and uploading mp3 files to the Internet is just like adding an attachment to an email message.

In this workshop we'll cover the basics of how to record, edit and upload your own podcasts. By the end of the workshop you'll have a rough draft of a podcast that you can finish editing and post online.

To get the most out of this workshop you'll need to bring your own laptop and headphones.

For more details on the workshop and how to sign up, send me an email.

How foundations are using new web technologies

The current Chronicle of Philanthropy has four articles all about how foundations are experimenting with new interactive web tools to tell their stories and share knowledge. They're posting videos, creating online radio shows and inviting readers to comment and react. They're also offering readers ways to act on what they've learned. Read the main article here; the article about how one small foundation is making itself heard is here.

At this stage, a lot of what these foundations are doing is experimentation by trial and error to find out what will work - and what won't. In that way they're right on pace with the newspaper industry and even with television and movies. No one really knows how these technologies will develop and what will turn out to be the next must-have tool. Remember the days before e-mail? Can you imagine life without it now?

What foundations are learning is that they can't be left behind. They have to try out new ideas and be willing to fail, if they're going to have an impact in a rapidly changing world.

We're in the same boat in workforce development. We need to do some experimentation of our own to figure out which of these technologies will work for us. One key principle is that the technology shouldn't drive us. Instead, we have to start from our overall goals - helping job seekers find good jobs, helping businesses find skilled employees, and strengthening our local economies.

In our day-to-day tasks to achieve these goals, how can we use tools like blogs, wikis, podcasts, MySpace pages and YouTube videos to help us be more effective? All those links are workforce development examples you might want to check out.

Web 2.0 image: Markus Angermeier

Welcome to the new and improved Workforce Developments

Yes, this is your same old favorite blog, redesigned and easier to read.

If you're looking for the blogroll, it grew so big that I've given it its own page, right here. You'll find a link to The Blogroll Page in the right column. I've also trimmed down the number of categories that appear on the front page - the most popular and my personal favorites are highlighted under the Best of Workforce Developments. Others can be found by clicking the category names under each post.

Want to find out if I've blogged about a topic you're interested in? Try out the yellow Blogbar box. It will search through everything ever written here at Workforce Developments.

If this is your first visit to Workforce Developments, click over to the For First Time Visitors page. Find out more about me on the About page. For even more, visit my consulting business website.

Questions or comments about the redesign? Having trouble finding what you're looking for? Comment below or email me.

Video contest for nonprofits

Tell the story of your work through video, and you could win a White House prize.

They're calling it the Portraits of Compassion video contest, and it's sponsored by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. But you don't have to be a recipient of FCBO funds to participate. Any grassroots nonprofit that has received any federal funding to provide social services since 2001 are eligible (click here for more FAQs).

Your video must be no more than three minutes long, and you'll want to start by uploading it to a free video filesharing service like YouTube or Google Video. Applications are to be submitted online through this application form. One important note: you must provide signed media release form from everyone who appears in the video (click here for a sample). The winning videos will be shown during the upcoming White House National Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in DC on June 26-27.

Deadline is midnight, May 1, 2008, so get out there and start filming! You can do it with as little as a digital camera with a movie setting and Windows Media Maker (provided for free on many of today's computers).

To get you inspired, here's a British video I found when I searched "workforce development" on YouTube:

If you don't see the embedded video above, click here to watch it on YouTube.

Anniversary greetings, and thanks from Workforce Developments

Amazing but true - Workforce Developments has been online for two years. 

When I started this blog in March 2006, it was a bit of an experiment. I'm not a techie, and I didn't know what to expect when I started talking about this important but not-well-known topic online. Yes, blogging takes a lot of time, but it's been worth it. I've read some of those reports that I usually put on the shelf and think "one of these days, when I have some time...." I've met some people doing great workforce development work in their communities. I've gotten help from some terrific guest bloggers (thank you!). I've created my own logo, and I'm selling t-shirts and mugs to promote the wonderful world of workforce development. I've blogged several conferences. I even used this blog to get in the door of the Singapore Workforce Development Agency to learn about their work.

My blog is now syndicated through BlogBurst. If you'd like to see Workforce Developments on Hoovers.com, WNBC in New York, WSOC in Charlotte, NC, KITV in Honolulu and other places, click here and follow the links. Last July, when USA Today picked up my blog post about a video created by a group of nursing students, some 1.9 million people saw the post.

Just goes to show, you never know what's going to work until you try.

As I start into year three, I'd love to hear from you. Feedback, ideas for future posts, your thoughts about what's working and what needs to be improved in our field.

Most of all, thanks for reading, and thanks for the friendly, supportive emails and comments I've received over the past two years. I hope you've enjoyed reading this blog as much as I've enjoyed researching and writing it.

--Bronwyn

Web 2.0 Survival Guide

On Friday I ran a workshop at the California Workforce Association's 2008 Spring Conference, Web 2.0 Survival Guide. My thanks to everyone who was there, and to those who asked good questions. The full powerpoint presentation is embedded below:

| View | Upload your own

If you don't see it here, just click over to slideshare.net to watch it.

Click here for the handout summarizing the powerpoint presentation, and here for a worksheet walking you through key decisions needed before starting a blog.

Links to all the websites and examples I mentioned can be found on right here on del.icio.us. 

If you start your own web 2.0 site, or start using web 2.0 technology to enhance your workforce development site, please let me know. I'd love to showcase it here on Workforce Developments.

March Madness, workforce development style

We're less than one week out from... the California Workforce Association's annual Spring Conference in San Diego. (Yes, and also from the first round of March Madness.) 

If you're there, I hope you have a chance to drop by my workshop on Friday morning at 9 a.m., a Web 2.0 Survival Guide. We'll focus on ways workforce development programs can use blogs, podcasts, YouTube, MySpace and other low-cost web 2.0 tools to manage programs and serve participants, in an era of shrinking budgets.

I'm also delighted to announce I'll have some help blogging this year's conference, providing a Northern California one-stop perspective. Racy Ming has ten years experience in education and workforce evaluation and program administration. She's currently manager of the Marin Employment Connection, the one-stop in Marin County, CA. She is also chair of the board for the California Re-Entry Program at San Quentin. A San Francisco native and Stanford alum , Racy hopes her men's basketball team  makes it to at least the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA tournie.

See you in San Diego!

The California Workforce Association's Spring Conference is less than two weeks away. As usual, Virginia, John and the gang have lined up a terrific series of workshops, speakers and plenaries, including an all-day training session on the hottest new tool around: activity based cost accounting.

The theme this year is Survival Guide, "survival" being something all of us in workforce development are all too focused on these days.

I'll be at the conference, offering a Web 2.0 Survival Guide workshop on Friday morning at 9 a.m. We'll learn about ways workforce development agencies and organizations are using web 2.0 tools to do their work more effectively while lowering costs. Hope to see you there! 

WIRED gets a wiki

 

Last week I told you about workforce development on YouTube and wikipedia. Now DOL's WIRED initiative is joining the web 2.0 generation, with a new site, WIRED Nation. It's a collaborative workspace you can read and where share your own ideas and knowledge with your peers and colleagues. You'll find a blog, discussion forums, stories from WIRED projects and an events calendar.

You don't have to be part of a WIRED project to join - I just did. Free and easy to do. For more FAQs about WIRED Nation, click here.

If all this talk about "wikis" and "blogs" still doesn't make any sense to you, don't worry. Just click over to the site and start exploring. See what looks interesting, and if you want, join the online conversation.

[And if you happen to be going to the California Workforce Association's upcoming Spring Conference, I'll be hosting a workshop where you can learn more about web tools like these.]

define: career pathways

Want to know what career pathways are? Ask Wikipedia. The folks at the Workforce Strategy Center have gotten the ball rolling by writing an entry for the online encyclopedia. Click here to read it.

Want to edit, refine or improve on their definition, or write an entry about another term? Click here to learn how.

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, whose content is written and edited by volunteers like you and me.  A "wiki" is a type of software that allows people to create, edit and link webpages easily. It's based on the idea that collectively, we are smarter than we are as individuals. Over time, people will correct each other's work and continually improve on the webpage. Wikipedia is probably the best-known wiki out there, but there are many others. Some are open to the public; some groups and companies working on projects use wikis to manage them.

Wikipedia isn't perfect, and it isn't without its controversies (see also here and here). Nonetheless, a study published in the respected journal Nature found Wikipedia entries to be about as accurate as those in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The bigger differences are that all Wikipedia content is completely free (not so for Britannica), and if you don't like the Wikipedia entry, you can change it.

Here's another little web tip on the side. The headline for this post [define: career pathways] is a cool little trick you can do in Google. Type in define: in the search box, then the word or phrase you're looking for. Google will search the web for only definitions of that term.

Workforce development stars on YouTube

Project QUEST has just uploaded video testimonials online from three of its graduates. They're great! In addition to the video below, you'll find one more here, and another one here.

Project QUEST provides long-term training to residents of San Antonio, Texas, who would otherwise be out of work or on public assistance. They use a sector-based approach to workforce development, and they're currently focused on health care/medical, information technology/business services and installation, maintenance and repair sectors. 

Their work has been honored by the Enterprise Foundation, J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation, and they've won an Innovations Award from the Ford Foundation and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. You can read more about Project QUEST in this Investing in People report, and in this case study from the Aspen Institute. Or just listen to what this graduate has to say:

If you don't see the embedded media player, just click here to get to the Project QUEST Channel on YouTube.

Tripping down the sidebar

If you've never taken a tour of the Workforce Developments sidebar, now might be a good time to do just that. Scroll about halfway down the page and you'll find the Blogs listing, right between Workforce Intermediaries / Think Tanks and Government. I've added a couple of blogs there recently(-ish) that are worth checking out.

SEblog contains news and commentary about social enterprise. A good place to stay up-to-date on what's happening in the world of social enterprise. The blog is linked to the Social Enterprise Reporter, and they're preparing to launch an SEwiki soon as well.

Corporate Citizen '07 "is a collaborative blog developed to discuss the State of Corporate Citizenship Survey 2007." I like their model of breaking up the findings of a huge report into bite-size chunks and delivering them over time through a web 2.0 medium. I hope that in addition to covering survey content they'll also blog about what they learn of what works and what doesn't in this distribution model. Hey, isn't this how Charles Dickens' novels were first published, in serialized form?

inclusion is engaged in high-level discussions around how to reframe the national debate around poverty. Absolutely fascinating. inclusion links to lots of research reports, books and other organizations working on communications and public policy. You'll find some good charts (like the one you see here, Producing More, Earning Less), and they have a Mobility Agenda page on one of my favorite issues, transportation-related barriers to work.

Although I've had a link up to Bamboo Project blog for a while, Michele has been doing some notable work recently for new bloggers, or for people and organizations just thinking about blogging. If you're in that camp, check out this post and this one especially. She's gotten good advice from a wide range of bloggers (full disclosure: including me!), and she's sharing it for free. Bamboo Project will keep you informed about the latest in technology, from the perspective of a workforce development professional.

So when you visit my blog and don't see anything new in the center column - hope that doesn't happen too often - take a trip down the sidebar and see if you find anything you like.

Taking an industry-based approach to developing America's workforce

For the past two weeks I've focused on sector-based initiatives here on Workforce Developments. That is, a systems-based approach to workforce development that focuses on a specific industry or cluster of industries. Sector initiatives link low-income and low-skill individuals to job opportunities in a specific industry, helping lift workers out of poverty while providing businesses with a skilled workforce. (Definition courtesy of the Aspen Institute's Workforce Strategies Initiative). Here, then, is a brief recap of the last two weeks.

I started with a week's worth of posts (plus a few others) about people who blog about their work in particular industries. Some workers who tend to blog:

• Truck drivers
• Nurses
• Call center reps
• Cab drivers
• Firefighters
• Pilots

And I found a smattering of other bloggers who blog about their work. These bloggers offer a worker's eye view of what it's like to work in their industry. Useful info for job seekers and workforce development professionals.

Last week I followed up by blogging the National Network of Sector Partners' biennial conference. Click here for all the conference posts. Check out the posts that were republished by mainstream media outlets. My thanks to Allison Gerber of the Aspen Institute and Tim Lohrentz of the Insight Center for helping blog the conference.

If you want to learn more about the sector-based approach to workforce development, visit any of the following websites to find research report, best practices, contacts and learning opportunities:

• National Network of Sector Partners
• Aspen Institute's Workforce Strategies Institute
• SectorStrategies.org Knowledge Exchange
• National Governors Association Center for Best Practices
• Sector Skills Academy

Or visit the websites of any of the organizations represented on NNSP's advisory committee.

Workers with a tendency to blog

This week on Workforce Developments I've focused on how you can use emerging new web 2.0 technologies to research career opportunities. Whether you're a young person just beginning to explore your future career, someone who's looking to change careers, a career counselor or a workforce development professional, you can find a wide range of blogs, podcasts and videos by workers in many different industries.

So far this week I've highlighted blogs, videos and podcasts by truck drivers, nurses and call center workers, all of them jobs in high demand. Earlier this year I wrote about cab drivers and firefighters who blog. If those don't pique your interest, perhaps one of these will:

• Sea Change - a businessman chucks it all to become a construction worker
• Waiterrant - the name says it all
• Clublife - a blog by a bouncer
• Views of TSA from the Inside - a short-lived (but fascinating) blog by a former TSA employee

These sources aren't perfect. They aren't written by professional writers. They sometimes (often?) digress from writing about their work. Most certainly, they aren't always nice. However, they can give you a real-world look at a career that no amount of wage and job openings data can offer.

It can be difficult to find blogs and videos about the career you're interested in. For example, a quick search for the phrase "construction worker" on Google blog search,  Technorati or YouTube generates a lot of links that don't have anything to do with a career in the construction industry. The reality is most people in most industries don't write about their work. It seems people in certain types of jobs, like those I've highlighted this week, have a tendency to blog.

To find good sources that are useful to you or your clients, you'll have to dig around. When you do find a good one, bookmark it, then start clicking through their blogroll to find their colleagues blogging, podcasting or YouTubing about their work. And if you find something good, let me know. I'd love to share it with my readers.

Find your calling online

Being a customer service rep must be one of the toughest jobs out there. All day long you're dealing with dissatisfied, frustrated, upset, disappointed, angry people. I mean, does anyone call the company to say "Thanks! This was the best product ever! It worked just like the ads promised, and it met all my expectations!" Doing that work trapped in a call center all day must be even worse.

Although offshoring of call centers has grown in recent years, the Bureau of Labor Stats says the outlook for customer service jobs right here in the U.S. is very good. Bilingual customer service reps are especially in demand these days. In the past these jobs only required a high school degree; today, an associate or bachelor degree is increasingly needed.

If you're thinking about working in a call center, you could visit blogs about the industry to learn more about it, like QA QnA or Service Untitled

For another point of view, there are some great blogs out there by call center workers:

• Call Center QA Blues
• Call Center Purgatory
• The Supervisor of Customer Service Hell
• Call Center Steel Cage Death Match

Some of them aren't being updated any longer, but they're still good sources of information. Several of them have lengthy blogrolls where you can link to many more sources offering a workers'-eye view of the industry.

For a completely different angle on call centers, Callwork by a Filipino cartoonist is about working in the call center industry in the Philippines. Or watch this funny video by a call center worker in Great Britain.  He really does need to get out more:

(Click here if you're having trouble seeing the video.)

This post is just another example of how blogs and other web 2.0 tools are becoming useful sources of information about different industry sectors, for job seekers, employment counselors and workforce development programs.

Bone up on nursing in the blogosphere

Nurse training programs are all the rage these days in workforce development. We have a serious shortage in the U.S. of nurses and other health care professionals. Because the shortage is global, we're competing with Canada, Australia, Japan and all the European countries to recruit foreign nurses, so if you want to make money and be assured of a job at graduation, nursing is the way to go.

But nursing is a very demanding career. After all, people's lives hang in the balance. Misreading a label and giving a patient the wrong medicine is rather more serious than misfiling a document. Nurses work long hours, and they have to deal with people day in and day out who are sick and not always nice about it. What's more, nurses often specialize in a specific type of medicine. If you're thinking about nursing, you'll want to know more about the pros and cons of those specialties to decide which one is right for you.

If you want to know what a nurse's work looks like day in and day out, check out some of these blogs:

• ERNursey tells what it's like to work in an emergency room
• At Your Cervix works in a labor and delivery unit
• ONCRN is an oncology (cancer) nurse
• Musings of a Highly Trained Monkey, well, perhaps the blog name tells it all
• I Am a Nursing Student looks to be finished - because she graduated. If you're thinking of nursing school, this might be for you
• RehabRN tells about working in a rehab hospital
• About a Nurse works in a medical-surgical telemetry unit. If you're looking for more nursing blogs, she has an amazing blogroll.

I could go on. There are many smart, insightful nurses in the blogosphere. Point is, after you check out the labor market data on nursing where you learn nursing is the largest health care occupation, with 2.4 million jobs, then read these blogs to see what nurses do every day, both the joys and the heartaches.