Carly Smyly: Our mission at Talent First is to create an aligned talent system that will make West Michigan a national leader in talent creation. So, we're a CEO-led organization, leading that work in partnership with education, workforce development organizations, policymakers, and community partners. And so, as we lean into our strategic plan, which talent planning and strategic workforce planning is a huge part of that, we knew we needed to bring a solution and framework to West Michigan to do this well in a way that would really engage the entire talent ecosystem. And so, upon doing our research, we already knew about and had great partnership with the U.S. Chamber Foundation. About 10 years ago they created the Talent Pipeline Management Framework, which is a strategic workforce planning process that takes supply chain management principles and applies it to talent pipeline management.
So, it was a no-brainer. It's a proven process. It's data-driven, which aligns very well with how we do all of our work at Talent First and knew that that was what we were going to bring to the table. And so, we elected to start with a small cohort of manufacturing employers, because that's such a large section of our economy in West Michigan, and we have some great partners with those employers in West Michigan. So, started with them and uh we're off and running.
David Limbaugh: What are some of these things that manufacturers say they need right now?
Carly Smyly: Yeah. So, our first step in the process, and we kicked off this cohort on July 16th, and the first step was to really identify critical jobs that are common across all nine employers involved in the cohort. So, we did that. Each of them submitted about 10 jobs that in their organization that either have high turnover rates, high vacancy rates are just really hard to fill because the skills aren't out there in our ecosystem. And we landed on three common critical jobs across all nine manufacturers. Those include like a high-volume role that's really those entry level production and operations lines, you know, that general kind of production line roles. First line supervisors in production and operations. And then machine repair technicians on the floor. So that's really where we're starting. Some of the challenge with like the production line, those entry level roles is a lot of these employers in our cohort do intentional, like talent development and internal mobility, career development and career pathing. And so of course, at that entry level, they're pulling from that to other roles in the organization creating turnover and vacancies. And so, there's just this constant need for those workers in addition to tenure of employees today is much shorter than it was10 years ago. So that adds to it as well. And then there's just another big issue, especially in manufacturing is the baby boomer bubble bursting, right? So, there's a lot of retirements happening and an increasing rate. In fact, in manufacturing, almost 25% of the work force will retire between now and 2035. So, in the next 10 years due to their age, right? So, a lot of manufacturing, you know, the skilled trades that are in manufacturing will turn over and create additional vacancies. So, we got a plan now so that we're not, you know, up a creek without a paddle later on.
David Limbaugh: Are there any other reasons for this gap? Did COVID play a role?
Carly Smyly: Absolutely, right? You COVID changed the workforce forever, right? It changed the industry. A lot of people did retire during COVID, you know, took early retirements or buyouts, you know, things like that. Obviously, it's nuanced and different per employer, of course. But yes, COVID had an impact. And then I would be remiss not to mention automation and AI, not necessarily reducing the workforce, but changing the skills needed. Right. So, there's more technical skills needed even on the production floor than ever before. And that will continue to increase as well.
David Limbaugh: That was going to be my next question, which is, is the technology moving faster than we can train people for these jobs?
Carly Smyly: Depending on the company? Yes. Yeah. I mean, think what to, to really just emphasize the talent pipeline management framework is a very systematic approach to talent pipeline management. It's a problem-solving framework. So, we really are getting to identifying the problem, really understanding what the root causes is for that problem. And then once we have that root cause, we are going to bring in solution providers. So, a lot of times what we've seen, you know, from other cohorts across the country, it is an education training solution. And so, we will bring in education training institutions, workforce development partners, maybe even community organizations that can help design and scale solutions to close the gap. And then, you know, our goal and plan that is by December of this year, we will have a very clearly articulated action plan that will deploy to solve for these problems in West Michigan.
David Limbaugh: Carly Smiley with Talent First. Thank you so much for speaking with me today.
Carly Smyly: Awesome. Thank you, David. Have a great one.
