Manatee-Sarasota businesses need skilled workforce

Developing a skilled workforce is about more than creating partnerships among colleges, job agencies and businesses.

That was the resounding message of a luncheon hosted Wednesday by the Lakewood Ranch Business Alliance. Businesses and companies indicated through an alliance member survey that finding talent in the area is an issue, alliance executive director Heather Kasten said.

“The No. 1 concern in businesses’ minds right now — and this bubbled up in both of our surveys — was the concern for being able to acquire talent and a skilled workforce and being able to recruit good people,” Kasten said.

Jeff Maultsby, director of business and economic development for Sarasota County, said finding the right workforce for companies is also the “No. 1” question he’s asked.

“Usually we point to the tremendous school system we have here, and all of the assistance we are able to provide,” Maultsby said. “And not only developing a pipeline of talent, but also being able to attract talent to our community because we have such a high quality of life here and a tremendous amount of amenities.” Though bringing people to the Manatee-Sarasota area is “less daunting” compared to other regions, finding available, affordable housing for employees and their families is “one of the bigger challenges” to overcome, Maultsby said.

Five speakers from economic and career development organizations and universities addressed the many facets of developing a skilled workforce, including preparing college students for a career post-graduation, providing employees with proper training and orienting universities and economic development organizations toward the same goals.

Dr. Terry Osborn, vice chancellor at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, spoke about how internships and methods of college advising impact a future workforce.

“Internships actually are part of a vision that needs to be evolved a little bit,” Osborn said. It’s often difficult to convince college students to give up a paid job for an unpaid internship, though the internship may lead to a strong career opportunity in the future. But before students consider trading money for experience, they have to be in the right profession, Osborn said.

“What happens in college is you go in and discover yourself, and you do that through switching majors, which is horribly cost-inefficient,” he said. “We have to back up and think about careers on the first day when they come to us.”

USF advisers are asking freshmen what they want for a career instead of what they want to major in, and encouraging involvement in campus activities to improve potential employee pools.

Daisy Vulovich, associate vice president of corporate and community development/career and technical education for the State College of Florida, emphasized the importance of developing degree programs that are responsive to job market demands.

“We had several local companies, including Allstate and FCCI, come to us and say ‘We are drying up in the pipeline,’” Vulovich said. “We’ve got lots of people leaving risk management because of retirement, and we’ve got to get more people in the pipeline.” In response, SCF created a risk management insurance degree program.

Approaching students before they reach college age about career opportunities, and not limiting those opportunities to the confines of a college degree, are just as important as encouraging kids to go to college, said David Auxier, director of the Career Resource Center at the Boys and Girls Club of Sarasota County.

“Because the reality is, while it’s great to talk about university and college with all the folks up here and it worked for me, and probably worked for most of you out there, for 80 percent of us, it doesn’t,” he said. “There are great jobs in our community that are going unfilled in things like heating and air conditioning and plumbing and electricity.”

While Auxier’s Career Resource Center will still encourage college-bound students, he said, it will also show kids the value of a trade career.

This story was originally published May 25, 2016 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Manatee-Sarasota businesses need skilled workforce."