The state CRC web site is www.careerreadyalabama.com.

The state web site is www.careerready.alaska.gov

Sue Rusch is now coordinating CRC implementation and may be reached at sue.rusch@state.co.us.

Peggy Severson reports from the Office of Economic Development, Division of Workforce Development (OED/DWD) in Denver on the city's CRC program.

After pilot sites (in Denver in 2008) proved the economic value of the CRC, the governor implemented a statewide initiative in December 2009.

In the first 6 months of 2010, the City of Denver implemented a sector strategy approach that has become a best practice. Here are the details from Peggy:

With the downturn in the economy and the reduction of city government, we’re serving more customers with less staff and something had to change. Subsequently, the Denver Workforce Center created a new workforce service model known as Job Ready 1-2-3. It is a streamlined process for providing customers with (1) information, (2) job-seeking tools and (3) referrals to job opportunities.

Beginning in January 2010, job opportunities developed under the Sector Expansion Team (SET) in our target industries – Construction/Skilled Trades, Energy/Green Jobs, Healthcare, and “Core Growth” which includes businesses that provide the basis for tax revenues to the city including, retail, restaurants and hotels – required a minimum standard for job placement into wage subsidies and individual training awards.

To qualify for consideration for these opportunities, all jobseekers must complete and have the following five products approved by our trainers . . .

WorkKeys CRC
an updated quality resume
sample cover letter
Job Search Plan
a 30-sec commercial (from interviewing class)

The Assessment & Training team was poised to support those requirements through additional class offerings starting in January 2010. As a result of the sector strategy product requirements under Job Ready 1-2-3, the number of CRCs increased significantly—by 32% from 1/1/2010 though 6/30/2010.

Marsha Harmon of Aims Community College in Greeley, CO has been using WorkKeys assessments and issuing CRC's with great success to students at an alternative high school. Marsha may be reached at mharmon@aims.edu.

Florida Ready to Work is one of the most comprehensive career readiness credentialing programs in the country. The program provides unlimited access to the WIN skill building courseware, assessments and credential at no cost to any Florida student/jobseeker and is being delivered in partnership with 600+ high schools, community colleges, technical centers, adult education programs, regional workforce boards, juvenile justice programs, corrections and community-based organizations statewide.

While the program has been fully operational for less than two years, outstanding results have been reported.

In 2009, the Florida Department of Education released the first comprehensive report on the effectiveness of the CRC as an economic development tool.

Shands Jacksonville is one of the largest of the nine hospitals in the Shands HealthCare family, serving Northeast Florida and employing more than 3,300. Employees at every level impact patient care, so every employee must have strong communication, reasoning and problem-solving skills. “Florida Ready to Work is helping us identify trainable employees who are up for the challenge,” says Pamela McCaleb, Director of the Success Academy at Shands Jacksonville. Shands Jacksonville has hired 50 new employees using the program. Results include double-digit reductions in new hire turnover, faster training times and better attendance.

Terremark is a global high tech employer with operations in South Florida. The company is hiring, even in these challenging times, but continues to struggle with finding qualified candidates. “The South Florida workforce is in need of skills upgrading, and I think that this program will help provide the level of skill we are looking for in the high tech arena ... and allow Terremark to better compete worldwide,” says Cindy M. Oliver, Corporate Director of Human Resources.

PGT Industries, the nation's leading manufacturer and supplier of residential impact-resistant windows and doors, has manufacturing and distribution plants in Venice, Fla., and Salisbury, N.C. and has 1,300 Florida-based employees. PGT is using the program as a hiring and promotional tool. Within the first 10 months of implementing the program, PGT reduced performance-related turnover among new hires by 30 percent and cut training time in half. “The program has been good for our business and for our employees," says Liz Evers, PGT manager of training and development. "Our employees are excited about the possibility of learning more to earn more."

Volusia County government has 3,500 employees and was looking for a way to identify more qualified, trainable employees, streamline its hiring process and reduce hiring costs. This spring, Volusia County government began requiring the Florida Ready to Work credential from all potential new hires for administrative support positions and all current employees being considered for promotion into administrative support positions. Florida Ready to Work is endorsed by the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Associated Industries of Florida, the HR Florida State Council, Manufacturers Association of Florida, and other business/industry groups statewide.

Starting with the 2008-09 school year, all high school students who earn the Florida Ready to Work Credential will receive a special designation on their high school diploma.

Contact Colleen Englert, Executive Director of Florida Ready to Work, at cenglert@floridareadytowork.com. The state web site is www.floridareadytowork.com.

Chicago Public Schools recently distributed "Work Ready Certificates, College Career Proficiency Awards" to about 26% of approximately 17,000 taking the 2005 PSAE exam. These 4,438 students were certified as being at Level 5 or higher on the RFI and AM WorkKeys® assessments.

McHenry Community College in McHenry County is enthusiastically using WorkKeys to assess the skills of students, and they are working with leaders in economic and workforce development with a view to issuing CRCs. Contact Nancy Leger-Bollman (NLEGER@mchenry.edu)

The regional effort headed by Kirkwood Community College is going well with more than 1200 Certificates issued so far. The governor recently set aside $500,000 to take the CRC statewide. Contact Amy Lasack.

In 2006, 12 employers committed to using the CRC in the hiring process. Now that number has grown to 93!

The Council for Labor and Economic Growth unanimously approved the MI NCRC Implementation Plan in their June 9th 2007 meeting. The MI NCRC will be delivered through the Michigan Works! system in partnership with the K-12 educational system, community colleges, economic development agencies, employers, business associations, and other local partners.

Leadership contacts for Michigan are:

Cindy Leyrer, Chair of the Michigan NCRC Advocates, cleyrer@inghamisd.org, 517.244.1338

Rachael Jungblut, Executive Director, Michigan NCRC Advocates, rjungblu@grcc.edu, 616.234.3623

Bill Guest, NCRC WorkKeys Innovation Champion, WIRED West Michigan bill.guest@metricsreporting.com, 616.430.0828

Irma Zuckerberg, Mid-Michigan Innovation Team, i.zuckerberg@primacivitas.org, 517.999.3382.

Visit www.michigancrc.org for more information.

 

 

 

Minnesota

There is significant interest in a statewide career readiness credential and the CRC is being discussed.

 

Missouri

Members of the Missouri Workforce have earned more than 16, 000 CRCs. Contact Don Rahm or Mike McKown at the state department of economic development

Marcos Martinez heads state initiatives in NM, and this includes the CRC project. He reports that the state has issued 5000 CRCs so far and that they are adding to this number by about 500 per month!

University College of Syracuse University is continuing to issue the Syracuse University Certificate of Workplace Competency on a regional basis. Last year, more than 400 were issued, and it is expected that another 500 will be issued this year. (workkeys@syr.edu).

Tracy Check , Manager of Assessment Services at the RochesterWorks Career Center in Rochester, reports that her local WIB has issued 126 CRCs (22 Bronze, 72 Silver , and 33 Gold).The goal for the coming year is to increase employer awareness and support for the CRC, and to look into taking a regional approach to deployment.

Tracy may be reached at tcheck@rochesterworks.org

Look under "Resources" on the NOCC web site for a summary (written as one-liners!) of the evolution and use of the CRC in NC. It's an impressive document and it may help others to expand their work.

The state has now issued approximately 37,000 CRCs.

• The news from Oklahoma just keeps getting better! Two cities and their associated counties were recently recognized as Certified Work Ready Communities.

Chickasha and Grady County were the first city and county in the state to achieve certified Work Ready status but Pryor and Mayes County were hard on their heels.

"Today and into the foreseeable future the key to economic development in Oklahoma is workforce recruitment, training, and certification," said Oklahoma Commerce Secretary Natalie Shirley. "Work Ready Community certification is another tool we have to focus efforts and prove results."

Oklahoma's Certified Work Ready Communities is an innovative program that encourages communities to put workforce at the front of their economic development agenda. It builds on the success of Oklahoma's Career Readiness Certificate (CRC) program, which assesses and certifies individual workers' skill sets and abilities.

Work Ready Communities elevates the certification to a geographical area. A certified "community" can be individual communities or counties, groups of contiguous cities and counties, or a regional partnership. However the community defines itself, certain criteria must be met. Certification is reviewed annually.

To be certified Work Ready, a community must meet the following requirements:

3% of its incumbent or existing workforce must have a gold, silver, or bronze CRC;
25% of its workforce not currently employed but looking for work must have a CRC;
The school system must graduate 82% of its high school seniors or 82% of its high school seniors must have a CRC.

Every state in the country is competing to attract industry and grow existing businesses. But it takes a skilled, available workforce to compete effectively.

"When communities are certified Work Ready, they gain a competitive advantage over non-certified communities because they can quantify a skilled workforce to an existing employer or a new business considering Oklahoma for a new location," said Norma Noble, Deputy Secretary of Workforce Development for Commerce.

Oklahoma has now passed the 30,000 mark for CRCs issued.

Norma Noble, 405-815-5278, Norma_Noble@okcommerce.gov
Susan Kuzmic, 405-815-5204, Susan_Kuzmic@okcommerce.gov

http://www.okcommerce.gov/workkeys

Pennsylvania

South Carolina has launched its statewide CRC initiative. Contact Joan Mason at jmason@commerce.state.sc.us

When SC initiated its statewide CRC effort, they worked with ACT to identify ALL South Carolinians who were eligible to receive the certificate. While not all of these CRCs have been awarded (people are sometimes hard to find!), the result is that the numbers from SC have taken a dramatic jump. Below is information from Melinda Eagle Peterson who leads the statewide effort in SC:

80,657 Certificates have been earned (identified) from 2002 to date. Over half have been requested by partner sites, printed, and mailed.
The number of Certificates earned in 2007 was 73% greater than the number of Certificates earned in 2006.
1,000 (WorkKeys) Profiles have been completed, involving at least 250 employers.
The number of Profilers has increased from 36 to 54.
Progress has been made with ACT on employing simpler and less-expensive methods to obtain Certificate data and build a statewide database of scores.
Return on Investment
If WorkReady SC reduced turnover costs by only 15% for the current employers that use WorkKeys, their collective annual savings would be $2.92 million, a 177% return on the SWIB’s investment ($1.65M). When using inputs exclusively for the manufacturing sector, the results show a turnover savings of $3.2 million and a return on investment of 195%.

 

The state is deploying the CRC through it's career centers as it is being funded by WIA and Wagner-Peyser. The focus will be on the job seeker.

They reset the counter when the pilots were concluded and statewide deployment was initiated in October 2007, and they have issued 1805 CRCs since then. This makes a grand total of 6196 from the beginning of the pilot period during the preceding year.

The state contact for the CRC initiative is Wil Hammond at the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, 615-741-7808, Wil.Hammond@state.tn.us

After using WorkKeys for many years, the Houston Community College System has begun issuing CRC's. Contact Elizabeth Buerkle.

Northeast Lakeview College, one of the Alamo Community Colleges in San Antonio, has received a sub-grant award from the local workforce board, Alamo WorkSource, to implement a CRC pilot project during 2008.

Rick Graham from Salt Lake Community College reports a partnership between the college and the Jordan School District Applied technology Center in Sandy, UT to assess students and awrd CRC's through the college. To date, 135 CRC's have been issued (11 bronze, 62 Silver, 47 Gold) in just 6 months.

Rick may be contacted at rickj.graham@slcc.edu and at 801-957-5215

• On November 4, 2008, former Governor Mark Warner of Virginia was elected to the US Senate. Because many readers of these newletters are new to the CRC Consortium, it is worth repeating the history of the CRC and to give credit where it is due. Gov. Warner supported the development and deployment of the CRC across the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2003, and he suggested that a Consortium of states be formed to ensure that the CRC would be truly portable across regions and the entire country. Consequently, in January 2004, seven states (including DC) developed a charter document that defines the CRC name, its definition, and the role of the CRC Consortium. Over the last five years, many other states have asked to be included in the CRCC so that now 46 states are represented in the CRCC matrix. Since 2004, hundreds of thousands of public (aka tax) dollars have been spent by governors, community colleges, and workforce development agencies on this economic development tool that is helping employers and career seekers across the country. The portability and value of the CRC has been repeatedly demonstrated, and state web sites and data bases associated with it have proven their worth. The governors of Georgia and Oklahoma are leading the nation by using the CRC as the basis for certifying cities and counties as Work Ready Communities.

  As a Senator, Mark Warner will continue to be a strong advocate for education, skills training, and credentialing. If you have not already done so, you are urged to make your state congressional delegation aware of the work you are doing with the CRC, and perhaps you could mention Mark Warner's visionary role as the initiator of the CRC Consortium.

• Governor Warner wrote an introduction to the Virginia monograph that was written to explain the CRC and its development to other governors and organizations. This monograph and two others from Louisiana and Kentucky are available for download on the CRC web site. For a more complete history of the development of the CRC, click here.

Virginia is forging ahead with extensions to the CRC. At a presentation at the ACTE conference in Atlanta, Gloria shared information on the CRC+ initiative that includes:

Hospitality, Health care, Manufacturing, and Apprenticeships.

Presentation slides are available on request but the gist of the initiative is as follows:

Certified Manufacturing Specialist--CRC any level + Applied Technology level 3

Hospitality--Bronze CRC + Customer Service skills (in development)

Apprenticeship (pilot)--CRC any level

Healthcare Clinical Technician (pilot)--Silver CRC with the healthcare context. The CAEL healthcare apprenticeship model is also being used.

• Northop-Grumman and Morningstar Foods are using the CRC in their hiring process.
  
• Participants in the Governor’s Middle College Program, a drop-out recovery program are required to have a CRC to graduate from the program.
  
• Participants in the Race To GED program are also being tested for the CRC. Most now graduate with the two credentials.

• Career Readiness Certificates are issued in 3 areas of Washington state – Southwest Washington, Spokane area and Puget Sound area. Certificates are issued through partnerships with area chambers, economic development councils, worksource, dshs, and local colleges.
  
• An exact count of CRC’s issued is not available but is estimated to be several hundred. They have case studies of individuals who were hired based on the certificate, and those with gold level reported earning at least $1 more per hour than those earning the lower level certificate.
  
• Two school districts, Castle Rock and Longview, are testing juniors and seniors and issuing certificates as part of career exploration. Additionally, Longview is using WorkKeys® assessments to measure skills of 9th graders.
  
• ESD 112, which covers most of Southwest Washington, is using the certificate with young adults through a project with the local WIB.
  
• Goodwill Industries of Inland Northwest is working with area manufacturing businesses, as well as Coeur d’Alene Tribal TANF clients, and Coeur d’Alene Tribal School-to-Work kids that will be entering 9th grade.
  

Robin Morgan, Business Services Manager at Region 1 WorkForce West Virginia reports that since May 2007, 4413 CRC's have been issued to clients at the Center, CTE Centers, Adult Education centers and at Community & Technical Colleges. The CRC's were at the following levels: Bronze 839, Silver 2727, Gold 847.

Robin may be contacted at ramorgan@r1workforcewv.org

As a result of this and another pilot, the Governor initiated a statewide CRC program on October 28, 2008. State coordinator Ron Radcliff may be contacted at Workforce West Virginia (rradcliff@workforcewv.org)

www.workforcewv.org