Recently in the Workforce Category

On January 13th, I attended a Workforce Development and Employment Training hosted by Penny Pritzker, President's Economic Recover Advisory Board, and Chair of the Education and Training Subcommittee. Staff from the Treasury, Department of Labor, National Economic Council, Education, Commerce and SBA attended the session, held at the U.S. Treasury. The meeting addressed the following questions:

1. What do small businesses need from publicly-supported programs designed to increase skills and facilitate creation/retention of jobs?
2. What do small businesses bring to public/private partnerships focused on meeting the job preparedness needs of the 21st century?
3. What changes need to happen?
4. What are participants interested in doing to help make those changes happen?

The purpose of the meeting was to gather perspectives from industry leaders on how to maximize the impact of federal investments in workforce development. Objectives included:

1. Explore public-private partnerships in support of specific initiatives/pilot programs
2. Advise the President on this critical issue

Prior to the meeting, WIPP surveyed its membership because I wanted to bring up-to-date information from the small business community on job creation, education and workforce training with me. This information enabled me to carry your situation, your perspective and your solutions to the taskforce meeting.

The data: In terms of hiring - no surprises: First, overwhelmingly, you want to see consumer demand before you start putting people to work again; second, you want to see solid signs that banks are lending to small businesses again; and third, you want to see more opportunities in the federal procurement marketplace.

Next, I wanted to let the attendees know about the power, and economic strength of women business owners: In October, 2009, at WIPP's Annual Meeting, we released data from our Economic Impact survey, and I was able to report highlights to the attendees that if women business owners were their own country, they would have the 5th largest GDP, ahead of France, Germany and Italy, and that we employed 16% of the U.S. workforce.

The startling statistic for me, of course, was that 80% of the survey respondents were non-employer firms - that means that only 20% of women business owners employed 16% of the workforce in the United States. Why? I took advantage of our hiring and workforce surveys to query a little further and asked those that were self-employed that very question. While 30% did not want employees, 55% did not have sufficient cash flow. A further 15% felt they needed additional education before they hired employees. Because of its correlation to job creation, this was important information to present at the meeting.

In terms of data gleaned from the job creation survey:

1. 62% of women business owners feel that sustainable job creation is impacted by a well trained workforce, but 68% say their small business is not at a disadvantage and that they don't have difficulty finding employees. You hire on "potential" - meaning, you find the best possible employee, and train that employee to fit your company.
2. The major issue facing small businesses (70%) is that they cannot compete with big businesses.

Not to be forgotten, in terms of education - 66% believe the nation is becoming competitively disadvantaged and 96% are worried about the ranking of the United States among other industrialized nations (in regards to education).

So what are the problems facing women-owned businesses? The impediments are a lack of capital, educational tools and resources and being able to compete with larger businesses.

And what do you want?

1. To complete your own training, and receive tax credits for workforce training;
2. To have easy access to educational tools and resources and mentorship programs;
3. More collaboration between business groups to help you with training so you don't have to be the "expert" on everything, with an emphasis on innovation programs;
4. Public/Private partnerships, including more participation from community colleges and other public educational/training programs (SCORE, SBDC, Women Business Centers) - and work/study programs and regional technical training clusters.

Thank you for your quick response to the surveys and for all of your input. It was refreshing to participate in a session focused on small businesses and hear perspectives on workforce education. I am glad I was able to provide our solutions and the detail to support them.