John Henry
Mike Coffey, far left, president of Imperative, a background security business, moderated a discussion on workforce skills gaps at Build Your Fort Worth: Workforce on Tuesday at the Fort Worth school district Teaching and Learning Center. The panelists were, from left, Laura Bustamante, Justin Dorsey, Dwan Bryant, Shannon Bryant, and Daphne Rickard.
Soft skills ain't what they used to be.
That was one conclusion panelists made during a discussion at Build Your Fort Worth: Workforce on Tuesday at the Fort Worth school district's Teaching and Learning Center.
Among those in attendance seeking guidance and feedback were employers, HR reps and recruiters.
Panels of professionals and academics gathered to discuss a variety of topics, including measuring the workforce skills gap; diversity, equity and inclusion; nontraditional recruiting sources, and company cultures for attracting and retaining talent.
The workforce skills gap was particularly enlightening, especially in terms of entry-level jobs.
Those soft skills – those personal attributes that enable employees to interact harmoniously with other people and allow them to do their job effectively – are lacking, the experts say.
“We have something called the ‘problem of the front desk,’” said Justin Dorsey, senior HR business partner with Freese and Nichols, one of Fort Worth’s oldest companies.
The company can’t keep them. It’s a revolving door, Dorsey said. They’ve tried direct hire and temp to hire.
“We’ve had folks come for a day, and they don’t show up the next day,” Dorsey said, echoing a problem a number of companies know all too well these days.
That reliability and dependability, which ranked high as very important to those in attendance, is getting more and more difficult to find, according to the panelists. These skills gaps might be being victimized by what some consider the demon potion of our times.
“All of us can remember 16 was a huge rite of passage because we got our independence through our driver’s license,” said panelist Daphne Rickard, career and technical education executive director of the Fort Worth school district. “Current research shows that that timeframe is moving later and later and later. It’s because [kids] don’t necessarily see it the way we did. Their independence comes from their computer, their video gaming system, their phone and quiet time in their room when they’re left alone, which makes it that much harder when it’s time to step into the real world and be at work every day.”
Other panelists on that discussion included Laura Bustamante, vice president HR, Ag Resource Management; Shannon Bryant, executive VP of corporate solutions and economic development, Tarrant County College, and Dwan Bryant, of Tarrant County College, who has an expertise in leadership and organizational effectiveness.
Bryant told listeners that the employee is not always fully to blames but rather leadership in the organization who tolerate behavior.