 The coming of this is especially important for us to receive this report, the Department of Labor and the State Court's development board, on these hearings that were held around the state over the fall. I think a lot of us were able to attend at least one of them. I think Gene has a number of them, but we're interested to hear what you all heard around the state and what the recommendations are and what we can do to help facilitate some changes. So with that, Dustin needs to get you out. Sure, yep. For the record, Dustin agrees, Special Assistant to the Governor and Director of Workforce Expansion, also Executive Director of the State Workforce Development Board. Chairman Sorokin and Mark Hop, members of the Senate Economic Development Committee and House Commerce and Economic Development Committee, I'd like to open with an old short quote. There's no simple solution to address the demographic trends facing Vermont. Rather, Vermont must approach the future holistically by viewing economic development, workforce development, and education policy as necessarily integrated. It is crucial that Vermont simultaneously implement strategies to expand its skilled workforce, attract and retain businesses, and encourage skilled workers to move to the state. That was one of the key conclusions reported in the legislature in December of 2006 from Vermont's Next Generation Workforce, the Next Generation Commission. 14 years later, we're dealing with the effects of those same demographics in real time as we see major reductions in our labor force statewide and most of our regional economic centers across the state. Franklin, Chittenden, Washington counties have seen the smallest declines, all three losing less than 2% of their peak labor force. Orange, Addison, Grand Isle, and Orleans counties have seen their labor force drop between 4% and 7%. Lamoille has lost over 10%, so has Wyndham. Bennington, Windsor, and Caledonia have lost between 10% and 13%. Rutland has lost over 13%, and Essex County has lost over 18% of its labor force. It's not just our workforce. We see these demographics in our declining school and higher education enrollments. We see it in our population and birth rate, and we hear it from businesses every day as they search for workers to fill good-paying jobs and for available positions. With our more rural and smaller counties feeling the full force of these negative effects. As you are all aware by now, Governor Scott has made reversing our demographics the cornerstone of his administration's economic policy in an effort to add to our workforce and grow our tax base to ensure state government has the needed revenue to support crucial services and programs now and into the future without having to increase taxes and fees on Vermonters and Vermont businesses or reduce the services that we provide to Vermonters. That's why in 2018 our team was grateful that your committee spent a large portion of your time on Act 189 giving us the tools and the mandate to begin to realign our workforce system from the bottom up to better serve Vermonters ensuring that opportunities to receive the training and instruction they need to succeed in today's economy and businesses the employees they need to succeed in Vermont. Today we're here to discuss the findings of the statewide outreach program you tasked the Department of Labor and the State Workforce Development Board to conduct over the last few months. Partnering with the Regional Development Corporations 24 separate meetings were held in 12 locations across the state with over 600 participants representing businesses, service providers and non-profit advocacy groups. I had the opportunity to attend a large majority of these summits and was able to observe the members of our communities committed to finding better ways to support their neighbors. Businesses willing to innovate and evolve to create pathways and in-house training programs to grow their own employee base and frontline state employees who truly care about the Vermonters they serve and who understand better than most the need to align and rethink how we deliver certain services to create better outcomes. We also saw unique and creative efforts happening in individual communities that are opening lines of communication and areas for collaboration across sectors to grow the workforce. I hope that the committees find the information in this report helpful. There is indeed much work to do to understand the major issues and successful strategies in individual regions and how those come together to help us create a path forward. And we must act quickly. Our demographics present the single greatest threat to all we do today and all we're able to do in the future on behalf of Vermonters. I look forward to our ongoing work together and I would like to turn it over to Sarah Buxton, the Department of Labor, to talk about the RFP process and how we ended up with the RDCs as our contractor. Good morning. I'm Sarah Buxton. I'm the State Director of Workforce Development at the Department of Labor. I will keep my remarks brief because I think the people you really want to hear from are seated to my left. But let me give you just a little bit of context about why we're in front of you today and point this... make sure that you have some place in your brain to file this report because we'll be coming back to many of its findings throughout the legislative session. So back in 2017, we all started a conversation which was the first time I think I was before you on this side. And we all started a conversation around how we could do better to align our very complex, complicated at times disorganized workforce development system. We were talking about transitioning from many of the service providers from a place where our customer for public-facing programs had been the job seeker and now it had to be the job seeker and the employer. We discussed a few initiatives that the state funded including return ships and additional funding for adult career technical education and through the conversations that we had you have now produced two rather significant acts Act 189 and Act 80 of last year that really pushed us to work with public and private partners, meaning the Department of Labor, to try to take measurable steps in promoting alignment at the state and local level. The workforce summits were one of a number of activities that we worked on and I just, for context I want you to know that this is just the first step. I encourage you to resist the urge to look for high flying themes because what really is going to help us come together and figure out our solutions for employers and for job seekers which is why I insisted that you actually have the whole 172 page report is looking at the individual regional recommendations. These are important recommendations this is data we are still digesting and it's going to require not a one size fits all approach but some structural changes I would even anticipate through partnerships and coming together and fixing some of these challenges and learning from one another. So with that the labor was the contract the entity that contracted with the RDCs and there was a dual aim as was stated before the aim was not only to get the work done but to use this as an important stepping stone in developing a relationship with a really critical key community partner. We have learned a lot we had some bumps along the way in our way of communicating with one another the way we describe things like job development employer engagement that we are coming at this in some instances in very different ways and being able to surface some of those those areas of mal-alignment or non-alignment misalignment gives us another set of work plans in the course of the next year or two. So I just wanted before I pass to Fred Kenny I just want to let you know that we are deeply deeply grateful to the men and women sitting behind me now and to my left who did the hard work beyond the scope of their contract to produce this really important data and that is saying a lot. They did not only putting on the events they didn't just facilitate they didn't just plan they didn't just write reports they helped us to really structure these conversations in a way that it wasn't a one and done activity. This is going to be something I'm not sure what will be something that we replicate in the next year or two and try to find out ways to build systems of ongoing communication both at this state and local level. Thank you. Thank you Sarah. Thank you Chairman Markott and Sirotkin and committee members. Good to see you all again. I'm Fred Kenny Executive Director of the Addison County Economic Development Corporation. AEDC EDC act that is the lead Regional Development Corporation on this project but I'm here representing all 12 Regional Development Corporations and most of them are with me right behind me under the directors of all of your Regional Development Corporations. The RDCs of Vermont appreciate the support of the General Assembly and the administration for economic development generally but specifically in the area of workforce development. We were pleased to respond to the Department of Labor's RFP and to partner with the Department and the State Workforce Development Board to convene 12 standardized workforce summits and we appreciate the confidence of the administration in the RDCs to carry out these convenings. It made sense for us because we're already working regionally to address workforce issues. We have regional knowledge existing relationships with employers and in many cases regional workforce development networks are already in place. It made sense for the administration because they could leverage an existing relationship with the RDCs in a new way that brought value to the effort to strengthen and align the workforce system in Vermont. While planning and convening these summits the RDCs strengthened connections with employers in their regions and deepened relationships with service providers, educators and other partners. There say we forge some new partnerships with and among some of VDAL's core partners. When the RDCs were selected to convene the summits we contracted with two experienced incredible facilitators Jeff Lewis and Erika Hoffman-Kies who are here with us and you'll hear from them in a minute. Together we collaborated with VDAL the State Workforce Development Board and their core partners to plan a standardized agenda that would primarily listen locally and report up but also answer key workforce questions identify strategies appropriate for each region and for statewide consideration and identify common themes or learnings. Those outcomes are the primary content of the report that we've submitted to the Department of Labor and that's being released today. So the summits occurred in Department of Labor regions in October and November. We agreed upon a two-session approach with employers attending in the morning and service providers, educators and other partners in the afternoon. The report gets into the rationale for that decision to have two separate sessions. The two groups overlapped at lunch which included networking time and a program that was designed by the Regional Development Corporation to be significant for their region. For example, in Addison County we had recent graduates of four workforce development programs. Community College of Vermont, Job Corps, United at Work and the Hanford Career Center present their experience to each table in a sort of speed dating format that emphasized how the program they attended helped them with their success. Also, we were honored that Governor Scott attended four of the summits and a video of the Governor was shown at the others indicating the importance of those summits to the participants. So both groups were asked, how has the current workforce situation impacted your business or work? And then in the employer session they continued with a SWAT exercise and incorporated some real-world analysis by expanding the discussion to include the constraints they face and strategies that have worked for them. So they were able to share that with other employers. In the afternoon service providers did a scenario mapping exercise where they were asked to map a specific employer or client scenario that ended up getting the client employed or an employer finding an employee. They were asked to map what actually happens not what should happen. So the insights and lessons learned from that were all documented as well as the mapping themselves. All the information gathered during the 12 summits was captured and rolled up into two broad sections in the report that we submitted to the Department of Labor. First, the report identifies actionable strategies specific to each region that will be implemented locally by the formal or informal workforce partnerships that have evolved in each region such as the Addison County workforce alliance in my region. These are strategies that were identified and prioritized by each region and you'll notice that in the report it includes an appendix with a single report from every region. So if you want to look at what happened at a single summit you can read that section of the appendix. Second, the report identifies five common themes and prioritizes seven strategies to inform state level discussions here and at the Department and at the statewide board. And I think I sent to your clerks one pager that summarizes those five themes and seven strategies. So you should have that available to you. It's in the report as well, of course. The Department of Labor has accepted our report and will be reviewing and considering our recommendations as they developed the state's workforce strategies and goals. Generally we found that we still have some work to do to be completely aligned but everybody on the front lines are working hard to collaborate and coordinate to get people trained and into jobs and to get jobs filled. The report identifies some strategies informed and the report at the regional level to accomplish that goal. And while the report marks the end of our scope of work for the summits the RDCs look forward to continuing this public-private partnership with you and the administration to create new ways to do workforce development and continue building an integrated workforce system. I'm going to hand it over to Jeff and Erica to get into a little bit of detail and you need this. Thank you Fred. For the record I'm Jeff Lewis, independent contractor of the RDCs to design and work on these with my partner, Erica Hoffman-Keyes. You want to introduce yourself for it. I'm an independent contractor working here in Vermont at this point. My background is designing, implementing and evaluating workforce and economic development initiatives overseas in South and Southeast Asia for the U.S. government, other donor governments and international NGOs. Chairman Saratkin, Chairman Markott, Senators and Representatives, it's a pleasure to be here today reporting on this fall series of summits and to try and pull together 12 summits of all-day events into a two or three pages is a bit of a challenge so that's why you have 170-some-odd pages to look through. There's a lot of material in there, a lot of detail, but we've tried to summarize it. There is, I think, a 12-page report in there that you could read that summarizes that overviews the whole thing so we're going to even cut that down a bit. As practitioners we bring a variety of workforce experience to the table. Erica, as she said, in South and Southeast Asia for a number of years working with international organizations and the U.S. government. We, with the Wyndham County RDC and, as you may remember, with the Vermont Futures Project two or three years ago. Building on our complementary experiences in concert with the RDCs, we designed a program aimed at involving employers and workforce service providers and the Provider Air definition is fairly broad from education to direct counselors and advisors working with individuals so we tried to cover everything on that side. We'll talk a bit about that in a second. But to engage them each in a productive discussion about the issue of workforce availability. Ongoing, well documented, demographic challenges have produced as Dustin outlined, as the governor outlined in his press conference this morning, as the future project has outlined for some time, have produced a consistent decline in the number of reminders in our workforce which has and will have a significant impact on our economic capability. The absence of an informed, coordinated and transparent workforce development system has created a good deal of frustration for those seeking work and for those seeking workers. The 2019 Regional Workforce Summits were a concerted effort to increase the flow of information to support improved coordination. As has been noted, our focus in this case was to generate information from the field, focus it and deliver it in a way that it could be used for policy making and system development. So that's why there's frankly a great deal of detail because that was our intention to hear from people in the field what was actually happening. We'll talk a bit in a second about how that was structured. Each summit as Fred has outlined had exactly the same design, a morning session with employers whom we have called the demand side. We talk about a workforce market with a demand side which is employers of all kinds and a supply side which is providers, educators, schools, trainers, facilitators, support systems, et cetera and so forth. We thought that was important to help conceptualize what we're looking at here. We are not all independent individual players running around. There's a system here however in co-ed and hard to see but there is a system there at that way. In the morning to tie the discussion directly to actual experience which was our goal as Fred noted we asked employers what we called the big question which was how has the workforce situation affected your business? Every time we had to stop people because they kept talking about the impacts and they ranged from little tiny things to really big things. People talked about increasing costs for wages because of competition, benefits, other ways they had to compete about the great difficulty simply of hunting and of retention of finding qualified people and that's why the great need for training so that and it included one of the most striking examples I guess I'd have to cite was an employer who said during one of these sessions well actually this is going to force us to change our whole business model so they had to rethink who and what they were and what they were able to deliver because they could not staff their prior model that's a pretty radical shift in what an employer has to do in order to meet their requirement it happened to be a social service entity but they were there as an employer the point there is that a social service delivery system is having to rethink what they do that's pretty consequential there were a number of businesses who said very clearly very clearly we are turning down work we could grow in some cases we could grow a lot and we cannot do the work this touches by the way on an issue that we talked about in the futures project sorry to bring back old work but I haven't forgotten it Senator Clarkson thank you it's nice to be remembered as I say the issue of productivity as we noted in the futures project Vermont is just barely above Maine in terms of productivity and we heard several times from employers that the workforce situation is damaging their productivity because the quality of workforce that they can attract they have to invest more time and energy in training and in support systems which again impacts productivity that in the long haul for an economy is a heavy blow and not one that's easy to see unless you're looking for it but the impact is very very serious subsequently after we had the big question when people talked about the issues that I just outlined we engaged in a much more detailed discussion which again Fred has touched on but we extended it in a system to deal with constraints to try and get opportunities and threats down to real world things that we have to do to limit us from our ability to work and then some strategies the reason we wanted to work that way was so that each individual region would walk out of this with things that they could do that their employers had said because we had a voting system these are the most important things for us so they could look at that and say I'm going to put time into this because that's what I've heard that was really helpful the good news is most of the RDCs knew those priorities they already had heavily engaged but it helps to validate their investment in time and energy and I hope that works up to the state level those turned into the top 7 statewide strategies which were voted out of the 60 and those are very helpful because the RDC directors were asked to look at the issues have statewide relevance and it requires statewide investment support or coordination to address so those 7 top strategies are a really good view of the whole system and they focus on the supply chain because a lot of it was supply stuff education training employer based language and support systems we heard about child care every single place every single place in one particular place I remember the most striking example because there are very few by the way very few 24 hour child care opportunities in the state as I'm sure you know in one case to support a hospital one child care worker took children home with her at night so their parents could work I won't tell you where because I'm not sure how legal it is I'm serious but she did it because it had to be done it was the only way those people could work and they were working in a medical environment which meant they had to be there it was just really powerful we would not have heard that if he'd not been out on the street listening to individuals tell us those stories so it reinforced something that again I'm sure you know statistically that child care is important it is crucial in the afternoon sessions we worked with the workforce service providers the supply system comprised of the core partners AOE ReachUp, VDAL and voc rehab plus educators the CTEs there were the CTE director at each one of these so they were present and articulate and vocal CCV was present almost all of them VTC at several of them to talk about what they were trying to bring to the table here again the discussion began with something the same question the big question but the answers were very different as you might imagine from the supply side those people said well actually here's what's happening we may be dealing with slightly fewer people because the people on the bench the number is even smaller but the people we're dealing with are much more highly challenged they require more time more resource more support more transportation more child care more recovery etc so we have this tilting line in which we have fewer people but the cost we're getting each one into the workforce and supporting them there is increasing which leads to a kind of frustration I'd have to say for people on the supply side because it's very hard for them to feel successful because of how much effort it takes to get someone and keep someone in the workforce so there's that's something I think we need to pay attention to that there's we're putting a lot of strain on people on the front lines about how to do this stuff a particular interest in the afternoon sessions was learning how the various workforce service providers work together in that region it has been our view my view particularly since the futures project and our view in this that the workforce system is fundamentally regional because workforce is regional people drive to work they tend not to move long drive long distances so that's where your resources are it's where your workforce is your employers are your services so you need to look at what happens in that area so as we were happy to get people across various agencies talking to each other we used a technique called scenario mapping which many have used in other settings which we gave we identified six or eight different scenarios they're listed in the report that Eric and I depending on which one we're at would choose which ones to assign to a table to work with we tried to make sure that there was a range of providers at a table so it wasn't all labor people over here and welfare folk over here but that they had to mix up a bit so they had to learn from each other because intentionally each scenario had a number of components to it you had to solve this and you had to solve that and you had to solve this and you had to make it work for that person which was pretty fascinating I can see Senator Clarkson because she came to several of these it was pretty interesting to watch people work at this most of them went well I would only say to be expected that there were a couple places where the conversations just didn't get off the ground they didn't figure out how do we approach this problem that was a deep concern deep concern that it just couldn't get out of their own way to do that on the other hand in many there were great solutions there were great discussions people saying I didn't know you did that or I'm glad I met you this is terrific now give me your car I need to call you about somebody right now so that there was a huge win in that area you'll see the learnings from each of these in the back because while we have all the scenario maps and we wanted to bring them but we understood we couldn't tape them up so they're pretty instructive but the learnings are equally powerful and people were pretty good about that there were some powerful learnings there were some powerful learnings I'll just highlight a couple which show up in the report in one particular region a group of providers were talking working through a solution I'd go over to the table and talk for a minute and go away and come back they were engaging it as they went through it they realized it was a situation in which somebody had an opportunity to grow in their job and we needed to deliver training to them and some other support to get them to help them move up the employer needed to move up what do you do the providers realized and I give them great credit for seeing it is we're really good at problems we're really good at things that don't work we're not very good at opportunity this is a client who has an opportunity and we don't actually know how to address that if somebody calls and says I don't have food, housing, transportation childcare we know how to do that that was interesting the second thing in that that was equally interesting and I give them great credit for this insight because it's painful was to say that client's sense of urgency is different than ours we're happy if we can call back in a week or two weeks he needs an answer today because the job opportunity is today I give them huge credit for that because that's a tough thing to say is we're not structured to answer that need and that's a real need the second one that I would have to cite is equally as colorful in a different region wonderful discussion going on different scenario people went through it, mapped it all out drew the picture, talked about it had a great discussion about how this would work and talked to Fred and this will happen and that'll happen and then somebody said what happens if they don't start with Fred and the answer was literally, crapshoot, don't know and there was nothing that directed you to that person you just had to find out that that was the right call to me that was again a piece of insight self insight which is I think should be treasured because people looked at themselves and said we do some stuff really great but if you don't enter the right door we don't know what to do we tried to treasure those we're not trying to be critical it was a whole point, what happens out there and as Fred noted we made a big effort to say to people tell us what really happens not what ought to happen because frankly agency folk and this is their job work on what ought to happen here's the way it ought to we ought to get you from here to there but as you know people don't always fit the model that we built the policy around so we were trying to get a picture of what happens what really happens and that's why this particular example really shown it's like we've got a great process but if you don't knock on the right door the last thing I would say before I turn it over to Erica is the other and this is an equally painful insight sorry to mention painful ones there were good ones but the painful ones really catch you because they're the learnings with people saying and one person wasn't particularly honest about this to say yep the solution to this for this problem is for the person to do this this and this that's absolutely right but if they come to me I'm keeping them because I need the head count it was again a piece of honest insight that you almost fell backwards to say wow but it was it made you rethink a bunch of things about how the system structured funded organized measured etc and so forth so there you go Erica to kind of start off and build a little bit on what Jeff just said the positive takeaway was that in the process of preparing for these summits and doing them all over the state we discovered a huge amount of incredible work that is going on and I was really moved by how honest people came to the table I fully expected the conversations to be a little bit more difficult to get started and in the very first one we actually talked about that a little bit how do we get people to be honest and have an exchange that's open and that turned out to not be a problem in fact more of the problem was like I'm sorry I have 150 suggestions I think we're going to move on now but that's huge because you don't want to look at something completely from the negative side though that is where a lot of the learning happens when you're trying to address things and improve things but there's a ton of good work to base things on and one of the interesting tie-ins with why we separated out lawyers and the providers this year was because there are good models out there but not all the models apply in every single situation so this gives us a little bit of a guideline to go back and say okay in Addison County we think that a model that we found up in Franklin would be great let's get that person to come in and talk to us so it just drills down a little bit more and makes things a little more responsive so as this series of 12 meetings came to a close Jeff and I were asked to reflect on our overall experiences and kind of pick out any common themes that we saw coming out of all of these meetings and we identified five they may have been mentioned earlier they're in the report I'll list them here and then I'll talk a little bit about each one because that will give you a little more context they don't necessarily make sense just as a label the first is regional leadership which we have talked about a bit second is supply side actor interface the third is an entry level imbalance the fourth is ex offender locus and the fifth is a regional resource directory so on the first one regional leadership it's crucial that there be confident well supported leadership at the regional level that's something that came up in every single one of these meetings in some cases that doesn't mean there's nothing happening but in some cases RDCs have stepped in to provide the coordination though they don't necessarily have authority or direct responsibility in this area in other areas there are individuals I think that everyone right now is like Bing Franklin County who have become central to successful execution but this lack of direct responsibility for coordination quality and outcomes weakens the entire systems ability to sustainably deliver effective workforce services for employers and job seekers on the supply side interface in the scenario mapping exercise which we've talked a little bit about here we found that many individuals were principally concerned about the integrity of their own entities procedures and again I say this in the context of a lot of really good work going on but that was something that kind of came to the surface frequently providers talked about what ought to happen versus what does happen and the other side of that was that they had very little experience or strategy to deal with the reality as opposed to what the system ideal design looks like they kind of were at a loss in many cases they discovered that they were well structured to address failures and problems but not necessarily to realize opportunities if you were coming in with something to put on the table they weren't really quite sure where they could point you that led us to thinking about a significant reorientation of how the supply side systems think about their work and we kind of came up with something more that we called a medical model which the reason behind that being that that would allow for more of a people centered focus as opposed to a resource or process oriented perspective so on entry level imbalance the third issue throughout our preparation and the events themselves the majority of the discussion the supply and the demand side centered on entry level workers at large employers only very occasionally did anyone and it was always an employer talk about the challenges of hiring management or technical experts so the higher end of the skill level spectrum and the only people talking about small and mid-sized employers were the very few small and mid-sized employers who participated so based on this we created what we call a workforce market matrix and this was us sitting down I think on a napkin literally the first time dividing the labor market into nine combinations of company size and skill level and that helped us to think about the fact that really an effective workforce development system addresses the needs of each of those combinations utilizing both public and private resources so that's important for all of the resources on the table not just what's coming through the public coffers but all nine of those boxes we should be able to look at it and say okay boom this is the challenge we're faced with these are the resources that we have to help these folks the ex-offender locus is called out because it presents a unique challenge we did have an ex-offender scenario that was included in this scenario mapping exercise and we did work with the department of corrections on developing this scenario it came through their offices because we were able to kind of dovetail this project with some work that they were doing on process mapping and they thought well hey instead of doing this twice and asking the same people to answer the same questions let's see if we can work this together what we found was that despite the risk and cost of reoffending the experience through the summits indicates that support resources are not well organized in practice the theory is sound everyone knows what should happen it goes back to that again but awareness and implementation in fact are uneven no functional system exists and in the early days of release ex-offenders have a critical need for support in order to avoid high-risk situations those early days are absolutely crucial and going back to the kind of healthcare model again we started thinking about a possible response that we just labeled emergency room model and that's where the support resources that are required everybody knows what those resources are so those resources that are required whatever they are and whenever they're needed in the process are on call for immediate response and that's because not everybody needs the same resources at the same time and it just gives a little more flexibility on the resource provision side but it also answers the specific need at the specific moment in time and finally the regional resource directories and this was an important one because it was a part of the original contract objectives and I just mentioned it here with the ex-offender locus it brings us to one of the high priorities that showed up in most regions and also kind of rose the top on the statewide ranking and that's a guide or a directory to available workforce services however the interesting part and the part that should give us pause is the needs for this kind of tool were expressed very differently on the demand side and the supply side providers the workforce service providers are more comfortable finding people by title and role whereas employers want to search by problem or solution they don't know or necessarily care who does what they know the problem they have and they want help with it further employers and I took the word we originally had in here out and I put loathe because most of the employers I talked to were just like the bureaucracy it needs to be fast it needs to be easy or I'm not going to do it they don't want to have to learn the bureaucratic process in order to secure the support whereas providers it's built in to their existence they can they consider it a price of doing business and that can be a big mismatch when you're talking about providing a tool like this so while a directory when you think of it as a list seems like it might be an easy win or an easy place to start serious time and thought should be given to the design of the experience in order for it to have a desired impact and utility for the end users so these are just some of the and it's an iceberg the tip of the iceberg of some of the things that we discovered through this process and all of them are in this report and it's huge you don't have to read it all at once yes you do but I really really encourage you to read through it because it's fascinating and it's the product of a lot of work and time invested by the over 600 people who attended this thing not to mention all of the people who were involved in the organization of each of these sessions and the overall project itself it's frontline commentary and in that is its importance for insight and context so thank you for coming and listening to us today and thank you for involving the RDCs in this project and involving us in the project it was a very significant experience Any questions? We're going to have everybody so we're not here so the State Workforce Development Board and the Department of Labor are hoping to move forward we have to recognize that there's more that goes on than what's in this building and I think getting out there and talking to folks in their communities was not only easiest for them but it gave us the opportunity to really get that frontline commentary which I just wrote down that's a wonderful term and I think that's important we were able to see the very unique things that are happening in different counties that are neighbors that not only are enhancing but could be replicated and scaled so it really gave you for this to be a one-off and I know the Board feels that this is part of its role to really go out and hear folks and be that that advocate for the entire state and I think in some form maybe not 12 or maybe not 12 over 3 weeks that was a bit much but yeah in some form this is something that we found incredibly valuable that folks that were able to visit found incredibly valuable and certainly partnering with the RDCs just gave us a natural landing pad every time we came into a different region to have the employers there and those regional partners available to us so it is our hope that this is an effort that moves forward into the future for sure. So my reason for my name is and I appreciate the effort that was put in this report and having woken up this morning I've already undertaken understood try to understand this I like the idea of goals and I like the idea of the collaboration of the 12 various agencies that put this report together and that's very much appreciated but I'm concerned that that these goals may lose some momentum as we go forward and I think the replication process and revisiting it to other providers may enhance this in the future and I think that's a great project to see the reflection on. I think we all see this as a first step and there are certainly things that I don't need to bring up but I could say that I would fix about that I'm excited about changing to have different outcomes and receive different feedback from the way we did it just two months ago so we're already learning what we could do different and different questions we could ask in different ways that we could manufacture it but it's certainly the outreach and I think that just the importance of those folks who are on the front lines that we're coming to them and they're not having to come here it's very important as well. Something that came out while all of these RDCs were looking at trying to put this together was that there's a degree of reflection on the side of many of the employers and they weren't as anxious perhaps to participate because they hadn't seen as much action being taken in the past based on things that had happened so I think that's something that everyone that I talked to sitting behind me was a big concern and I would reckon this is just my personal experience that now having these five or six strategies regionally that they can then go work on once people start seeing that they're continuing to work on things that they pulled out as priorities you're going to start to see more involvement just because they're like oh wait something is happening this is something that I want to be a part of so Yeah, the RDCs are committed to moving forward with the regional strategies that were identified in their own regions at some capacity obviously this is an additional it's an add-on to what all the RDCs are mandated to do but I think we're all committed to partnering somehow in the future but definitely taking the strategies that were identified on the regional level and moving forward with those in our regions Fred, it's not really an add-on it's like core it's sort of core to what we are doing in the state it's core and importance but it's not a mandate for the RDCs we're not authorized or funded to do workforce development activities so I think I just want to point out that this is part of us building a system and this isn't the only tool that's informing what the next steps are we're going to be submitting for a start date of July 1 but we're submitting to the federal government a collective workforce plan and you'll be able to take a look at that that includes a lot of the findings and a lot of the themes that I think bubbled up here in terms of customer service and coordination and a dual customer approach but I want I want to accept all of these findings and the honest feedback with a very open mind both us and our staff at the regional level but I'm cautioning our staff to take an opportunity to move a ball forward and then have it just stop I think we need some time as partners at the state level to say how can we empower activity to happen at the local level but not have it be part of a larger system and have it be informed so that it can continue past one or two or three years or one funding cycle or some decisions that are made about those funds or apprenticeship funds and that activity stops because that is what a lot of the good work that we have, the good learnings that we have had around ex-offenders and youth and many of those things have been demonstration projects and we can keep doing that and impact systems and people at the local level but I feel like you told us the state partners a few years ago you need a system you need an integrated aligned engaged coordinated system and we have to be doing a little bit of both we have to fly the airplane and be repairing it and we are but I think that does cause many more opportunities for us to talk and digest and plan and poke holes at one another's plan so we can have a better plan and then do it with money oh yesterday we talked about VEPSI and the success of VEPSI we remount the quality and some of them are alive but the representative the coronizer when I was with employers were 30 or fewer and I can tell you what happened with VEPSI those smaller employers don't have the resources, the employee resources to explore those programs and you know most of the businesses in the state of Vermont we're going to streamline and maybe here's one to catch if there were either a mentor the state would help supervise and make sure that they meet the criteria and the landmarks with respect to achieving the VEPSI obtaining advantage of how we consider exploiting that program I think all the ideas are on the table especially for supporting employers because this is a new approach one of our findings, at least from the service provider side was that a lot of the staff who were there looked around the room and they saw employers that weren't the ones that they usually work with that are the grocer down the street or the retail outlet that might T.J. Max and I think those are some of the conversations we have to have if we're talking to different employers on a day-to-day basis not one person I think is talking to all the employers but we need to make sure we're supporting all of them as our customer in an organized way and not letting anyone fall through the cracks with the resources that we could offer it's a bit off topic but I used to run VEPSI in the VEPSI program I thought I had to dive in here and the RDC is myself and the other sitting behind me that's one of the things we do is core to our job and we work with all companies in our regions to help them through applications to veggie or the Vermont training program and all kinds of state programs we're usually the ones introducing those programs to businesses I've talked with Beeswrap and Champlain Orchards and Bristol Bakery all of which are 30 or below employers about those programs but to bring it back to workforce development that is one of the recommendations in here is that if we do do a portal or a directory or something in addition to it having various ways to access it like by identifying a problem and not just having a list but to have someone a concierge or a navigator a navigator, a wayfinder kind of like in healthcare to help businesses and clients on the demand side find the right program to get trained or the right pathway I think is something that's needed