Business Leaders United Five-Step Platform to Close The U.S. Skill Gap

Dr. Ralph Soney has served as vice president of corporate and continuing education at Guilford Technical Community College in North Carolina since 2013. With more than 30 years of experience in post-secondary education and administration, Dr. Ralph Soney recently joined the Business Leaders United national initiative.

Business Leaders United for Workforce Partnerships (BLU) is a group of business professionals striving to close the skill gap in the United States. Comprised of companies around the country, BLU and its partners want to create a pipeline to train individuals and hire them for skilled occupations. The group concurrently encourages relevant changes in policy by taking its case to Congress and the public at large. BLU’s effort to close the U.S. skill gap is being deployed with a five-step platform:

1. Invest more, and more effectively. BLU pushes for the investment of more public funds in the education and development of skilled workers, whom many employers have difficulty finding in today’s workplace environment.

2. Deliver industry-recognized credentials. The initiative works to make technical certifications more widely available, so workers can become skilled tradespeople without requiring a university degree.

3. Create regional industry partnerships. This goal helps smaller employers build a group of skilled workers with less of a monetary toll than certifications generally take. This may be done by creating partnerships within industries that develop uniform training and skill-set expectations, which can then be adopted by educational institutions.

4. Help employers partner with community colleges and service providers. By pairing employers with low-income community services and educational institutions in their area, BLU can help ensure individuals find work after they have completed training programs.

5. Accelerate hiring with on-the-job training assistance. By offering publicly funded training to new employees, the government could help to encourage the hiring of promising candidates who require a few additional skills, and remove some of the cost burden from small employers who cannot currently afford on-the-job training.