Transcripts

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

 

 

Joe (00:11.809)

Welcome to Voices in Local Government. My name is Joe Supervielle. With us to talk about the power of workforce development and public works and the positive impact economically from LCP Tracker are Amanda Hesse, Chief Revenue Officer and Stephanie Ramos, Customer Success Manager. Thanks for joining.

 

Stephanie Ramos (00:32.238)

Hi, thank you for having us.

 

Joe (00:32.321)

Yeah, glad you are here. Glad to get into this topic. So first question right out the gate. Why is workforce development so important in today's economy and specifically how are those two things related in that whole realm of local government?

 

Amanda Hesse (00:49.315)

Thank you, Joe, for the question. Excited to be here. Well, workforce development initiatives are really the backbone of our economy. We need to invest in our people, and we need to give opportunities to our youth, our most vulnerable population, into giving them an opportunity for a career. We all know college is super expensive, and not everybody is meant to go to college. We need to have other pathways and opportunities to provide our youth.

And again, our most vulnerable populations, opportunities to get into different career pathways. And I'll pass it over to Stephanie to give you some examples of those.

 

Stephanie Ramos (01:27.81)

Yeah, thank you, Amanda. I think you bring up a great point of making construction sound interesting and exciting, right, to those who are just graduating high school, right, or the women that are at home and, you know, being able to go out there and have an opportunity in construction, right? In my culture, in Latina culture, you know, women in construction, what is that, right? But I think it's really exciting and empowering also to be able to attend some of those conferences or just award ceremonies and hear those real life stories of individuals joining these apprenticeship training programs and these opportunities in construction and getting them placed and really impacting the life of the individual so they can have a sustainable way of life, right? A lot of this is that investment in the individual because at some point it's going to come back to the community, right? It's that return on investment. and being able to really just hone in on those communities and encourage them, right? 

 

Joe (02:42.221)

Yeah, and it's not necessarily just the old cliche of the construction, you know, the middle-aged male construction worker with hard hat on. There's probably dozens of different specific avenues and opportunities within that field. Also, whether the funding is from federal level or state level, ultimately, a lot of these are local projects, hopefully with at least a portion of that local workforce. So do you have any specific examples that you can share about this happening in real life, helping real people?

 

Stephanie Ramos (02:49.9)

Yeah.

 

Amanda Hesse (03:14.231)

Yeah, absolutely. I'll jump in here. Stephanie mentioned lot about construction, but apprenticeship programs, they can go to any kind of industry. There's about nine different industries that the Department of Labor is really pushing down. And back in the day, people are listening, these used to be called the ROP programs in high school, where there's specific skill sets that you're teaching high school students in order for them to get into a different career. So this could be manufacturing.

This could be IT. This could be hospitality now. And what's really neat about these examples is it targets even colleges. It targets high school students of what am I going to do when I graduate? Do I want to be paying this much money going into a college or can I make an earning right when I graduate high school? Some people don't have the opportunities in order to go to that four year degree. So what we've been seeing a lot across the country is government agencies really investing in their community. And when you look at your community, that ties to your university system. That ties to different career pathways, like Stephanie's mentioning, of different neighborhoods of how do economically impact a neighborhood who's historically poor? How can we get those individuals to understand that there are opportunities to build their families and generations to come?

So when you talk about real world examples, you in governments, you have to look at where you live and where you reside. How can you help your community and what are their needs? You have to meet your community where they're at and also understand the resources that are part of it and how you can impact them directly.

 

 

Joe (05:03.885)

So there is that kind of buzzword of skills gap and how to close the skills gap or maybe bridge it. Can you speak to how does that tie in and how do these initiatives, because you mentioned a few of the paths, but it's beyond just the word training as well. But how do these programs actually accomplish that instead of just talking about it?

 

Stephanie Ramos (05:28.942)

So in my experience, I have come across actually just recently, I came across a high school and this high school is all for the trades. So it's a high school that is focused on trades, right? And we hosted a symposium out in Nevada and we invited them to our symposium, right? And during the symposium, we also invited industry leaders. for them to talk about workforce development, exactly what we're doing today, right? The city agencies, the local union, just coming together and being able to discuss what are the next steps, right? Or how can we come together and address those gaps, right? So when they sat there and they heard this story of this high school that is very successful and it's for the trades and their main goal is to just really prepare the individuals and give them opportunities and place them into projects. they were amazed, like, where have you been, right? Like, how can we work together? I think being able to A, have someone that's really going to drive this and continue believing in training programs and in the individuals, being able to collaborate with partners, that definitely helps build that bridge, right? It's easier said than done, absolutely, right?

But through this example and the experience that we had with this high school in Nevada, I was very excited to see how everyone's light bulb just kind of went up, right? And they said, okay, how do we collaborate? How do we come together and work together in a way that we can address this gap? And this is actively working in Nevada.

 

Joe (07:12.931)

So are you getting feedback from whether it's a construction company or the unions that you mentioned? So they have input on, here's what we actually want to see to hire someone. Let these programs build the training. it's kind of reverse engineering what they actually need instead of the front end just guessing. And then here's your certification. Good luck. This is actually working to do a full circle.

 

Stephanie Ramos (07:24.93)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Stephanie Ramos (07:32.108)

Yes. Yes.

 

Amanda Hesse (07:38.627)

And the construction industry, what's really neat is the foundation is already there. And that's why we focus a lot on the construction industry because they have the apprenticeship program that's established. They have steps within their career that these individuals have to get to in order to journey out. And when I'm referencing journeying out, means making the highest wages possible. And part of that apprenticeship program is they partner with journeymen to learn those skills and traits.

Because construction's scary. You have to think. You look at our buildings across the country. They're huge. There's highways. It's dangerous. So it's really important that there's programs that are teaching our next generation on how to be safe, how to build good projects, and to build up our infrastructure in our community.

 

Joe (08:27.747)

Okay, and it's kind of a process here too. It's, as you mentioned, the training, education, apprenticeship, and then ultimately the goal is job placement. That is the end goal of this entire program, yeah?

 

Stephanie Ramos (08:42.414)

Correct.

 

Amanda Hesse (08:42.883)

Absolutely, I can jump in and talk a little bit about one experience with higher lax or a fantastic program that was created back in 2017 and They had about 32 billion dollars. I don't know if anybody on the phone. They've all just gone through LA lax There's probably some positive experiences Yeah, we gotta go all the way over to those lift, you know walk all the way over let's see fly Southwest

 

Joe (08:59.811)

Not always smoothly, yeah.

 

Amanda Hesse (09:11.287)

But they're doing so much construction at Higher LAX and they do have a champion, Veronica Soto, like Stephanie mentioned, which is so important. And I was meeting with these groups for the last 10 years. And what they do is they get together with all these organizations that are their stakeholders. So we'll have stakeholders from the unions in that case. We'll have stakeholders from the city and county of LA, non-profit organizations.

 

Stephanie Ramos (09:18.029)

Yes.

 

Amanda Hesse (09:39.619)

Work source centers. So work source centers are providing resources to these individuals. And what the goal of this program was is to focus on the local area of LA and hire people in that area. And some of those people they identified were coming from low income, formerly incarceration. So part of this process is identifying what the program needed and how to eliminate the barriers. Because you can't just throw a program out there and go, Hey, good luck, here it is, let's get started. You have to meet the people where they're at. And what was beautiful about this is they sat down with all those community stakeholders and said, how can we help them? One group raised their hand and goes, I can provide anger management services. And what this did was these people coming out of prison, they were like, OK, how do you deal with authority? How do you deal with these different circumstances that may occur in your life to make them successful?

So what was really neat is they met the people where they're at and they started with the individual in these programs. They started with an intake process that are you interested in this apprenticeship program? And first they had to train them through a pre-apprenticeship program. And there's a pre-apprenticeship programs that are established across the program. Some have the curriculum that's called MC3. They put this through an eight week rigorous course that includes fitness.

Stephanie and I keep joking that we want to go attend one of these fitness courses. They are going, they showed us videos of these individuals going up and down these stadiums for training. And then they go through this whole eight week process and then the goal is to get them placed on it through a construction company, through a prime contractor or through a unionized apprenticeship program to start their training. And then they get to start learning the crafts.

 

Joe (11:14.179)

Yeah.

 

Stephanie Ramos (11:19.586)

You

 

Amanda Hesse (11:36.203)

And then the goal is for them to keep moving up the ladder of that apprentice level one to journeying out in their career. Does that help Joe a little bit?

 

Joe (11:41.699)

Yeah, yeah, definitely. let's if we can shift to the local government side of it a little bit because there's going to be a lot of moving parts, including how LCP tracker fits in the nonprofits, all these little entities that can provide a piece of the puzzle. But if for the people listening here, if they are a city, county manager or the director of a public works department, and this sounds great, the obvious question is, what's the first step? And then the follow up question, you answer that first, but then we'll have to get to

How is this paid for? How is it funded? How do we actually get this approved from the board or the council, whatever it might be? But let's start with that. What's the first step for local government to move forward with something like this?

 

Stephanie Ramos (12:28.736)

I think in my experience working with Sandack, for example, they were inspired by higher legs. And that's exactly what they asked. What is our first step? And really is creating a plan. And Amanda talked a little bit about this in the beginning, having those seven steps and being able to say, OK, I need to be able to have funding, which is important, be able to collaborate with organizations that will give me the training that I need for the individuals, right? And ensure that I am working closely with the contractors. So I know there is placement opportunities, right? Because you can throw a program together, but the real objective is to get the individual placed and ready to go, right? Being able to form a team and again, that collaboration piece, you're gonna hear us talking about this across the entire time, Being able to collaborate with other partners is what...makes your program successful and will definitely be able to continue the growth of the program, right? With Sandack, what they did is they created a plan. They collaborated with higher legs. They asked all the hard questions. How do we get started? And then they took that to their board of their executives, right? And they said, we want to create a program. How do we get started, right? This is what we're proposing.

This is the area that we want to come after, right? We wanna focus on a disadvantaged zone here. This is the possible X amount of dollars that we're going to need per individual. So again, going back to the core of things, it sounds really basic, but having a plan is how you, would say your first step would be, and then following it up with the funding piece, right, Amanda?

 

Amanda Hesse (14:19.765)

Yeah, I'll add to that. Like Stephanie mentioned, having a plan, some agencies have the funding for this. Some may not have the funding. In California, the DIR does have grants that they push down. And I'm assuming across the country, there are other grants out there just like that. And the grants are specifically for, like Stephanie was mentioning, to pay for the program. Because the program requires money. Obviously, you need to be able to pay for the education.

 

Amanda Hesse (14:49.345)

There is Boots for the Construction job. And part of that collaboration, like Stephanie mentioned, is there's groups called the Workforce Innovation Boards, Workforce Innovation Groups, that are across the entire country. And they have funding specifically for these individuals and the programs. So you can go to your local web and work with them on funding, and then establish the program, establish the goals, and then get the community buy-in. you have to get that buy-in from the community.

 

Joe (15:18.773)

you clarify the sand dag? Is that the, a specific local government in Southern California or what, what entity is that?

 

Stephanie Ramos (15:33.262)

So this is in San Diego, San Dac, yeah, so it's a government entity, right? They created a program by the name WORC, which is a Workforce Opportunity for the Rising Careers. And in conjunction with their benefit agreement, they created the program, right, with the San Dac Community Benefit Agreement. And this came effective back in May, 2002, I believe, right? So they really are, they're growing, they're continuing to work with the unions to get the individuals ready for placement and provide them that MC3 training program that Amanda was talking about earlier.

 

Joe (16:16.771)

Okay, yeah, grant funding's typically a consistent, reliable way to get this started when there's not necessarily quote unquote budget for it. But even through the approval process, in your experience, the city, county manager, the public works director, or even just the program manager who gets put in charge of this specific initiative, what, after they, well, as they map out that plan on the back end, what are the expected outcomes? Are there stated goals? Are there metrics by quantity of people, quantity of placements, the actual construction, projects within a jurisdiction? How are they measuring the success on the back end?

 

Amanda Hesse (17:03.939)

So I can talk a little bit about the project and then Stephanie you can get in a little bit more on the placement side. So what we've seen across the country, more more projects are putting requirements on for hiring goals. So we need to hire a 20 % females on our project. We need to have a 10 mile radius, five mile radius of a local workforce working on the project.

So what Public Works are doing now is they're tying goals. They're tying all these goals for their local community to make sure they're getting those individual workers. And what we've seen is when the government agencies tie these goals to the project, they end up being a lot more successful. Because if you're requiring your contractors to hire these individuals, you're also now needing to find these individuals.

So in order to boost these programs and to find them, that's where this workforce development initiative comes into play because you're having to get the economy and get the people ready to get onto the construction career. And there's so much construction going on right now. You need to have that pipeline of people.

 

Joe (18:14.307)

Yeah, that ties back into the beginning when we talked about local economies too. You're now creating good paying jobs, even I hate to say entry level, but young career, early career, good paying jobs for the people who actually live there to then spend the money there and potentially even buy a house there and pay taxes there, et cetera, et cetera. And it kind of all builds together. But Stephanie, go ahead. It didn't mean to interrupt, sorry.

 

Stephanie Ramos (18:39.052)

No, no, no, no worries. Going back to the Sandag example, they had a goal. They said, OK, we need to get women in construction. That was their main metrics when we're talking about goals and what they wanted to achieve. At the moment, they have 235 graduates. 20 % of them are females. So that's already speaking volumes to the success of these programs.

Sure, it's not easy and we understand that, right? The grass is not green on the other side, right? It's not easy. It's a heavy task. But being able to say, have minority goals, which Sandag is at a 70 % minority goals. 91 of them are in union construction workers and 19 of them are non-union, right? So, but they're able to tell this story through these goals that they're setting, right? So women is a big piece of this.

Minority is a big piece. How do you also hone in on specific zip codes, right? I'll give the example of higher LAX. I am an LA County resident, okay? But say I decide to leave LCP Tracker and join higher LAX and become a construction worker, right? Guess what? My zip code is not part of the higher LAX zip code area that they're looking in, right? So being able to really address those communities, and set those goals and say how many individuals are coming from a specific zip code and grow that area is what's really making these programs successful and keeping them focused and aligned to that same goal, right?

 

Joe (20:16.547)

Okay, so just looking ahead a little bit, what are your thoughts on how this might evolve in the next 10 years? It sounds like it's come a long way since the early 2000s, as you kind of referenced earlier, but where do you think this is headed? Where do you think this whole space might be in another 10 years or so? And hopefully you tell me, but maybe this is more widely adopted or there is progress. What are you seeing?

 

Stephanie Ramos (20:42.2)

don't know if you would agree, Amanda, but I feel like this year was the year it actually boomed. Not boom, maybe I'm not using the right terminology here, but this is the year that I have had more conversation around workforce development. I can see how more organizations are asking these hard questions, like how do we get started? I can see how more organizations are open to collaboration. So to me, the next 10 years is just a matter of building on and just creating these pathways, right? Again, this year for me was the first year and I've been involved in workforce development for the past five, seven years, right? This is the first year that I really saw a change and a change from top to bottom, right? And it's not how it was before. It was, you know, from bottom and then they have to push all the way up. But this year was really a big change for workforce development. So I'm excited for what's coming next in the next 10 years.

 

Amanda Hesse (21:44.577)

What I see is I see a shift in businesses today. I see a shift that people care. People go to companies if they have a mission. And I really see government agencies wanting to make a difference. Because when you hear the stories of these individuals, I'm just going to jump a quick story in, Joe, and then I'll make sure to answer your question. So Jermaine Gordon is one of the individuals that we met about 10 years ago now and he went through the Higher LAX program. He spent 30 years in prison and he ended up getting the opportunity to go through this program and he was provided boots for the construction job. He had a case manager who went to him and goes, you need to do this. You need to make this change. And he was motivated. and he made the decision in his head to make this next change for his life. And he went through the program and he ended up getting onto a construction project. After that, he became a safety manager and now he's making a wage that is sustainable. In LA, he recently went to our LCB Tracker user conference and spoke about his stories and the struggles he went through emotionally. the struggles he went through to get into the career, and then now how he is now getting engaged to his fiance, and now he has a beautiful life. And I think agencies and governments are seeing the impact they can make in their own backyard, and they want to make that change. So what I'm truly seeing is the buy-in from these government agencies to step in and to help their community and make a difference and share about it. So the technology also in this 10 years I think is shifting because before you weren't able to reach as many people because people had to go into the office and go, I want a job or how can I get the help? Where now they can go onto their phone and go, they can go, what's out there? How can I help myself? So I see technology being the transformation in the workforce development sector and providing more information and resources to these people to get into these pathways.

 

Joe (24:02.947)

Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that story. I asked early about metrics and how do you kind of prove, quote unquote, prove the success. And that's all important stuff to keep this going, but it's nice to hear the individual stories and see real differences. It's not necessarily big stats or metrics, but the antidotes are helpful. So thanks for sharing that. And Stephanie, I think I agree with that. You kind of shied away from the word boom maybe, but maybe a tipping point at least where it kind of hit that point and then hopefully upwards from here.

 

Stephanie Ramos (24:29.272)

Right.

 

Joe (24:31.683)

And as we talked about, there are a lot of moving parts. LCP tracker does play its part. You can go to lcptracker.com for tools to track this workforce development from intake all the way to career placement. And that will be linked wherever you're listening. So I think it's clear you guys are very passionate about this and just want to help the bigger picture. Obviously you all have your solution and your software that helps, but there's a bigger goal in mind that you all are really pushing for. And that's what we're trying to do here at ICMA as well. 

Thanks for your insight and expertise, Amanda and Stephanie. Thanks for sharing about these programs that help local government and help them utilize and improve their public works workforce and boost local economies. So thanks again for your time today.

 

Stephanie Ramos (25:22.306)

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

 

 

 

Guest Information

Amanda Hesse, chief revenue officer, LCPtracker

Stephanie Ramos, customer success manager, LCPtracker
 

Topics

The Importance of Workforce Development and the impact on the local economy.

Real-World Examples of local government Workforce Initiatives.

Steps for Local Government Engagement.

Measuring Success.

Future Trends.

Resources

Workforce development program tracker

Case Study on the ROI of hiring local