Competitiveness

Chambers of Commerce across the country have a unique challenge - to protect and promote the local business community and support their needs as they face the nation's workforce challenges. The New Braunfels Chamber in Texas reflects on what worked for them over the past year of actively working to build a community system that would solve for some of those challenges and gives us four lessons learned in the progress.

For hiring managers to attract top talent, they must view the aging workforce through a new lens. Today, we consider those 65+ to be “older” and less skilled or capable. But we must shift our perspective on age. The average life expectancy for a man is 80 years old, and for a woman the average is 85 years. A 50-year-old is no longer a “senior.” 

On Monday, the U.S. Chamber revealed a new art installation, “Building the Workforce of the Future,” showcasing some of America’s leading employers in workforce development efforts. These employers are: PNC, The Home Depot, IBM, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, the Greater Houston Partnership, Wyoming Machine, and Novelis. The display illustrates the work of these companies, across the four phases of the nation’s talent pipeline, to close the skills gap and cultivate a highly-trained workforce of tomorrow.

Learning and development (L&D) leaders need to shift how they’ve traditionally approached their jobs—from being the gatekeepers of knowledge to being facilitators of learning. It’s time to put employees in the driver’s seat with self-service learning resources that satisfy both immediate hard-skill needs as well as the soft skills they’ll use and refine over the course of their entire careers. Though no one has a crystal ball to tell you exactly where to focus, here are some core principles to follow as you set up a learning culture where employees are free to learn and upskill on their own terms.