March
2004
BUILDING A SKILLED HEALTHCARE WORKFORCE
PROGRAM AND PRESENTATIONS
Welcome and Introductions
National Healthcare Training Models for Incumbent
and Entry - Panelists:
Maryland's Healthcare Workforce Initiatives
- Panelists:
Baltimore Healthcare Coalition Action Plan -
Panelists:
Keynote Speaker: Robert Giloth,
Director, Family
Economic Success, Annie
E. Casey Foundation
FORUM SUMMARY
By Tom Waldron
Momentum is growing behind efforts to build a
skilled healthcare workforce in Baltimore, efforts that promise to help
both low-wage workers and hospitals and other employers.
That momentum was evident during a March 2, 2004,
conference in Baltimore that brought together more than a hundred people
with a stake in the issue – including representatives from hospitals,
unions, advocacy groups, community colleges, foundations and community
groups.
Organized by the Job Opportunities Task
Force (JOTF) and supported by grants from the Abell
Foundation, the Annie
E. Casey Foundation, Open
Society Institute–Baltimore and the Association
of Baltimore Area Grantmakers, the conference sought to examine key
issues surrounding healthcare workforce development by looking at results
of similar efforts taking place both outside Baltimore and within the
city.
“With the input from the conference participants, we should be able
to take the Baltimore Healthcare Coalition’s efforts to the next
level,” said Deborah Povich, executive director of the JOTF. “We
have an opportunity to meet employers’ needs by targeting job-training
efforts to create healthcare career-ladders for incumbent workers and
job-seekers in the city.”
An analysis of the Baltimore region’s economy has pinpointed healthcare
as an industry sorely in need of workforce development. That group, known
as the Baltimore Healthcare Coalition, has more than 60 members and has
been meeting for almost a year to consider new approaches to attracting
and training healthcare workers.
Attendees at the conference heard from leaders of workforce programs in
Philadelphia, Boston and St. Paul, Minnesota – reports that outlined
program successes and sketched out challenges that the Baltimore effort
can expect.
Representatives of a Maryland state worker training program known as STEP
also reported on the positive gains the program has produced, both for
low-wage hospital workers and for their employers looking to find trained
employees for hard-to-fill jobs. Participants in the conference also took
part in small-group discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of various
programs described during the day, assessments that will be used by the
Healthcare Coalition as it continues its work.
“There’s a lot of momentum coming together to develop a coordinated
plan to meet these workforce needs,” said Patrice Cromwell, associate
director of OSI–Baltimore. “There are real opportunities for
collaboration and this conference was a great opportunity to connect the
various people and institutions that will be involved.”
The conference was highlighted by reports from the directors of three
workforce programs that focus on the healthcare field.
Cheryl Feldman, director of the Local 1199C Training and Upgrading Fund
in Philadelphia, outlined the operations of a program that has been in
existence for 30 years. After modest beginnings, the program served more
than 17,300 people last year – with literacy classes, training,
assessments, placement help or tuition reimbursements. The Fund is financed
in part by contributions from 59 employers, with each putting in 1.5 percent
of their gross annual payrolls. That collective approach has been crucial,
Feldman said. “By pooling the funds of employers, we can make the
whole bigger than the pieces,” she sad. Feldman stressed that the
Fund has two sets of customers – employees and employers. “We’re
very, very intent on addressing the workforce and recruitment needs of
employers. It’s a win-win situation.”
Feldman noted that a key to the Fund’s success has been being able
to schedule services, including classes, at times that are convenient
to workers; it operates from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week.
A second speaker, Mary Rosenthal, director of East
Metro Health Careers Institute in St. Paul, also echoed the importance
of a flexible schedule of services. Her organization is a collaborative
effort of four St. Paul hospitals and two community colleges to build
healthcare career ladders that will lead to stronger skills and better
pay for low-wage workers.
The Institute, which was launched in 2001, has placed 156 of its graduates
in jobs, with an average increase in pay ranging from 20 percent to 55
percent, depending on the job category. Among the challenges facing the
Institute is being able to accurately project which kinds of jobs will
be vacant at the member hospitals. Securing funding has also been a problem,
Rosenthal said, in part because some funders want quick “proof”
that the program is working.
“You can’t get that kind of proof in two or three years,”
Rosenthal said. “It’s a much longer commitment needed.”
The third speaker, Sarah Griffen, director of the Boston
Healthcare and Training Institute, described that organization’s
success providing training, education and support services for workers
with 11 employers in healthcare and research.
The Institute’s collaborative work is paying off for employers,
she said. “They are seeing the benefit of the program and know this
is a worthwhile effort,” Griffen said.
She stressed the importance of establishing good communication with employers,
and not just with their top-level executives. Support from mid-level supervisors
at healthcare institutions is crucial as well, as they deal directly with
employees and have to approve, for example, leave time for workers to
take classes or attend training sessions.
Like her counterparts in Philadelphia and St. Paul, Griffen noted the
dire need for basic skills and education of many low-wage workers in the
field. “Almost to a person, supervisors say their employees lack
basic foundation skills,” Griffen said.
While Baltimore does not yet have a large-scale, collaborative workforce
development initiative for healthcare workers, some city employers and
workers have benefited from the Skills-Based Training for Employment Promotion
(or STEP) program. Under the program, local grant recipients team with
employers in selected fields to provide training for certain job categories.
The cost is shared: the state-funded STEP program pays for the actual
training while the employer pays the wages of workers being trained. However,
no funding was allocated for STEP in this year’s state budget.
Jo-Ann Williams, human resources manager for the University
of Maryland Medical System, said STEP has helped the hospital address
pressing workforce needs. And giving low-wage workers an avenue for advancement
to jobs with higher pay and better career opportunities has improved morale,
she said.
“People are feeling good about the place they work,” Williams
said. “It’s just been a wonderful experience.”
Projections show that the need to recruit and train healthcare workers
in Baltimore and Maryland will continue to grow in coming years. Pamela
Paulk, vice president for human resources at Johns
Hopkins Health System, said that Maryland’s hospitals will create
roughly 1,000 new openings a year in seven “hot” job categories
that require an associate’s degree or less, including nurse extenders
and surgical technicians.
Catherine Crowley, vice president of the Maryland
Hospital Association, said solving the staffing problems collectively
will require new thinking on the part of employers.
“For at least 15 years, the hospitals in Maryland have been committed
to the concept of ‘grow your own’ employees,” Crowley
said.
Keynote speaker Robert Giloth saluted the conferees for exploring new
approaches. Giloth, director of Family
Economic Success at the Casey Foundation, has written extensively
about workforce development, particularly the involvement of “workforce
intermediaries,” a broad term describing various kinds of organizations
and collaborations involved in job-training, recruitment and career-advancement
activities. Researchers and policy-makers associated with a recent American
Assembly dialogue on workforce intermediaries are studying such organizations,
looking at how they work well – and why. Among the findings: such
organizations should have multiple funding sources and should be collaborative
efforts among various partner groups.
“You need to be entrepreneurial and flexible,” Giloth added.
“This is not a one-time design. It needs to happen again and again.”
The stakes are high, he added – for workers struggling to make ends
meet in low-wage jobs, as well as employers and the larger society.
“Not only is it good for low-wage workers,” Giloth said, “but
it’s good for the city, the state and the country.”
Among the attendees was Robert W. Seurkamp, executive director of the
Governor’s
Workforce Investment Board for the state of Maryland. He applauded
the diverse group for working collectively on a solution to a pressing
workforce problem.
“What’s most important is that people like this are coming
together to deal with the workforce development issues that can’t
be done by any one individual or one company or one group,” Seurkamp
said.
In particular, he said he was pleased that the discussion focused on assisting
both workers and employers.
“Workforce development is economic development. That’s become
the new mantra for the state,” Seurkamp said. “It’s
clear that if we don’t do workforce development, we’ll be
struggling with the economy.”
At the same time, Seurkamp said the fiscally strapped state government
will be hard pressed to provide additional funding to workforce development
programs.
“The pie is finite in size,” he said. “Unfortunately,
I don’t see any relief by the state.”
At the same time, the federal government has established a new pool of
resources for training in growth industries. Leaders of the healthcare
workforce effort in Baltimore said they expect Baltimore and Maryland
to attract additional federal funding to help solve their labor challenges.
And they called on state leaders to examine ways of reallocating state
funding to assist with the healthcare training effort.
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