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[00:00:03] Chelsea Miller: Good afternoon. My name is Chelsea Miller, and I’m the Associate Director of Upskill America at the Aspen Institute. Thank you for joining us this afternoon for an exciting conversation about how foundational skills impact the workforce. Foundational skills, defined for this conversation as literacy, math, digital fluency, and English language proficiency, are critical elements for a thriving workforce.

Over the next hour, you’ll hear from the Lumina Foundation, get early access to new Upskill America research on foundational skills, and hear directly from employers on work they have underway to shore up foundational skills for their workforces. I’m thrilled to be joined by Georgia Reagan of the Lumina Foundation, Della Adams of Tyson Foods, Quentin Bradley of Ochsner Health, and Joe Dunlap of the CJK Group for our webinar today.

Before we start, a quick review of our technology. All attendees are muted. Please use the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen to submit and upload questions. We’ll get to that at the end. If you have any technical issues during the event, please message us in the chat or email us at [email protected]. This event is being recorded and will be shared via email and posted on our website. Closed captions are available for this discussion. Click the CC button at the bottom of your screen to activate them.

Before we dive in today, I want to take a quick moment to thank Harrison Diskin with Luminary Labs for being a thought partner on this webinar. His idea is what led to this great conversation we’re going to have today. Now I’ll hand things over to Georgia Reagan, Strategy Officer, Credentials of Value for the Lumina Foundation, to share what she’s looking forward to about today’s conversation.

[00:01:55] Georgia Reagan: Thank you so much, Chelsea, and thanks to Harrison as well for inviting us to be a part of this conversation. As Chelsea mentioned, I’m with Lumina Foundation. We are an independent private foundation, and we’re committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. We have a pretty ambitious goal, which is by the year 2040, we want 75% of adults in the US labor force to have a college degree or some kind of credential of value that leads to economic prosperity.

There’s two pieces of that goal that I think are really important for today’s conversation. First is that we’re talking about adults in the labor force. These are people that are already working. They can’t stop working and become full-time students. We need to think differently about where learning happens for them and how they access it.

Secondly, our goal isn’t just about earning more credentials but ensuring that those credentials have value and translate into better jobs, higher earnings, and real economic opportunity, which is why we’re investing in foundational skills, as Chelsea mentioned. Thinking about it, if someone wants to earn a credential that could lead to a better job, but they need additional support in literacy, numeracy, English language learning, or digital skills there, then those skills shouldn’t be required to do before they start learning or working.

Many adults we know could benefit from foundational skill development, and they’re already showing up to work each day. Really, employers are in this very important position in the learning ecosystem where they can connect learning directly to people’s jobs, potentially to advancement, higher wages, and potentially further education. We don’t really have a clear idea of what this looks like across the country.

That’s why in Lumina Foundation, we are supporting Upskill America to conduct a landscape scan because we want to understand more about which employers are investing in foundational skills, what does that look like, who are they reaching, and what can we learn from others that are doing this well. I am really excited for you all to hear from the employers and to really think in this space about how we can better support the adult learners and workers that we all work with in our daily lives. Pass it back to you, Chelsea.

[00:04:15] Chelsea: Awesome. Thanks so much, Georgia. Really appreciate your insights and thinking about how this foundational skills work connects back up to Lumina’s broader goal. Before we hear from the employers, which I’m sure is what we’re all here to do today, I want to lay the context for this conversation in research. At Upskill America, we like to describe ourselves as a think-and-do tank. We really wanted to bring some research to the forefront that I think will lay a foundation, so to speak, for the conversation we’re about to have.

The first piece of research is the PIAAC. This is the international benchmark for adult literacy across the globe. The OECD runs it across its member nations. It’s the closest thing we have to a longitudinal study on the United States’ literacy and numeracy for adults. Data has been collected at three points in time since 2012, and it shows that the US has declining scores across both literacy and numeracy over time. As of the last analysis, the United States ranks 14th in literacy and 24th in numeracy out of 31 nations.

Shifting this perspective from what’s going on nationally to what’s happening with employers, Upskill America recently wrapped up our Room for Growth survey of over 600 employers, and the findings are starting to emerge. You all are the first to hear some of these insights, and it’s really exciting for us to share with you today. One caveat to keep in mind with this is it’s not a representative sample. Results may not apply to all employers generally, but of the employers that we talked to, just over half offered foundational skills training. This was more common than AI training or apprenticeship.

Not all employers train on foundational skills or have the need to. This is something we’ve also heard as we’ve talked to employers in the landscape analysis that Georgia mentioned. The programs that ranked most successful by the employers who offered them focused on core academic basics, reading and math. Other content, such as digital literacy, didn’t seem to have an impact on whether or not a program was deemed successful or not.

About 70% of employers who offer foundational skills training had their own internal program, and those tend to be rated most successful as opposed to those leveraging external providers. Taken together, early results suggest that, at least for our samples, employers thought foundational skills training was more successful when applied to the specific needs of the employer and incorporated basic reading and math.

To help validate this and put it in context for specific workers, I’m really excited to bring our employers, Della, Quentin, and Joe, into this conversation to help bring context to these data points. Good afternoon, you all. So excited to see you. Let’s get started. Can you share your name, your role, your organization? Then tell us a little bit about your workforce. Where are you based? How many folks do you employ? What is your frontline workforce like? Della, we’ll start with you.

[00:07:46] Della Adams: Yes. Thank you. It’s really wonderful to be here with you all today. My name is Della Adams. I work at Tyson Foods. I’m a senior manager in HR located in Springdale, Arkansas, where our headquarters is based. For our global workforce, it’s around 130,000. Here in the US, we have 88,000 frontline team members, and roughly half of those prefer a language other than English. So we are hugely diverse. We have over 60 different languages represented in our facilities, and that leaves us with definitely a very unique frontline.

[00:08:32] Chelsea: Awesome. Quentin, what about you?

[00:08:36] Quentin Bradley: Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Quentin Bradley. I am the director of talent management at Ochsner Health. We’re a nonprofit healthcare organization serving the Gulf South region, including Louisiana, Mississippi, pushing into Alabama, to Panhandle, as well as the Carolinas. We employ about 50,000 individuals, but we are Louisiana’s largest nonprofit employer. Our frontline primarily consists of clinical and support roles from nurses, medical assistants, patient care technicians, CNAs, to environmental services, food services, patient escorts, access, and other team members who make care possible every day.

[00:09:20] Chelsea: Awesome. Joe?

[00:09:22] Joe Dunlap: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Joe Dunlap, and I am the director of training and development for the CJK Group. CJK Group is a global organization in the print and finishing business, roughly about 5,000 people globally, and about 80% of our workforce are frontline operators on the machines that we use to print the various journals and books and things like that.

[00:09:46] Chelsea: That’s awesome. Let’s talk a little bit about how foundational skills or gaps in those skills create challenges for your business. Quentin, I’d love to start with you.

[00:09:59] Quentin: The goal is not only to help somebody qualify for a job. It’s to help them transition successfully into the job, and then remain employed, and then actually have an opportunity to grow in that job. The challenge we see most often is not necessarily a lack of technical training. It’s durable transitional skills required to move from education or training into a career that sustains success within the workplace.

In healthcare, when you think about literacy, numeracy, digital fluency, critical thinking, communication, and English language proficiency, it shapes how safely and effectively work gets done. Team members, they have to read manuals, document clinical charts, apply math, and use these systems to communicate across teams and across networks.

These challenges are also affected in terms of their life realities, such as transportation, housing, and childcare, that’s where we come in and combine that with support for our managers, so they can combine those foundational skills and understand that there are some outside external forces that also apply to those foundational skills being able to come across efficiently in workplace for their employees. We’re really working for us, the foundational skills and supportive skills and management really have to come together to create that ecosystem that we’re looking for in healthcare.

[00:11:34] Chelsea: Della?

[00:11:37] Della: Yes. For us, there are a couple things that when we see foundational skills gaps, we really have these challenges. Talent pipeline issue, of course, you have to have some foundational skills in order to move up into more technical roles like industrial maintenance positions, which are higher skilled and higher paid. We definitely want to have that to build in our talent pipeline. It’s also the challenge of we need more staff to support our frontline. We have to have staff like interpreters.

Also, when we have people in the ground like our HR staff, maybe they’re not as used as efficiently as they could be because they’re helping team members with basic tasks like finding their pay stubs and other things like that. That kind of work is time-consuming. Then we also find that gaps in digital literacy have really hurt some of our enterprise-wide rollouts of different systems and things. That’s another challenge that we have.

[00:12:48] Chelsea: Go ahead, Joe.

[00:12:50] Joe: For us, the challenge really occurs when the foundational capability that our employees have are not the same as what their work context will actually be. We have to make that transition for them of whatever their education may be, wherever they may have come from, how do you now apply that within the context of work?

We have to do that very quickly because their work actually affects our safety, our quality, our productivity, as well as the training time to get them up to speed in competency as quickly as possible. Most importantly, their ability to advance into other roles and grow. Much like Della was saying, we have a talent pipeline shortage and we need to grow that talent pipeline. Getting them up to speed quicker through their foundational capabilities is priority for us.

[00:13:40] Chelsea: That’s great to hear. I really appreciate how each of you talked about different moments, whether it’s as they come into your organization or as they’re ready to move to that next role. I’m curious, for the individuals, the workers themselves, how are they identified through this process? Is it sort of a peanut butter and jelly? Everybody gets the training? Are they raising their hands? What does that look like in each of your workforces? Joe, can we start with you?

[00:14:10] Joe: Yes. We actually start off with an assessment of the basic skills, depending upon the role that they’re coming into. We’ve identified what those core skills are for them, those foundational capabilities, and we assess them as they come in the door. Depending upon where their strengths and weaknesses lie, that could be a full-fledged training for that individual before they start in their role, or it might be just small components of some foundational learning that they need so that they can actually start in their role.

[00:14:38] Della: Hey, just real quick. I love that, Joe, and want to talk to you about it after.

[00:14:43] Chelsea: That’s great. Della, the floor is yours. Why don’t you share a little bit?

[00:14:49] Della: Yes. Our frontline roles don’t require any skills. You don’t have to speak English or work a computer or have a high school diploma. We see a lot of the gaps in foundational skills as they’re entering into the workforce. We know that our team members do come in with a wide variety of skills, but we’re still seeing that reading, writing, basic math. Of course, the English is huge for us.

Like I mentioned earlier, of course, in order to move up, you have to have these foundational skills. With English, for example, we may have team members that have been engineers in their home country. It’s just that English bit that is trapping them in that spot so that they can’t move up into other positions.

[00:15:45] Chelsea: Quentin, what does this look like for you from a worker perspective? [silence] Oh, you’re on mute, my friend.

[00:15:57] Quentin: It’s twofold. We have clinical roles, of course, that you have to have some technical skills, some type of a certification already complete as you come in. Then there are non-clinical roles such as support service roles, environmental service, and things like that where, in order for an individual to move out of those roles, they would have to then have some foundational skills, and those would have to be identified.

There are several ways that we can do that. We have our own in-house career center. We have in-house programs that bridge individuals from one job profile to another job profile. For the most part, because we are highly regulated and a lot of our positions do require certifications, when an individual is looking to move up or have some upward mobility within their career, a lot of it comes down to identifying, “Okay, what is your next step, and where are those skills lacking, or what gaps are missing?”

A lot of that comes from self-identifying. I wish I can say that there was an easier way, but a lot of it is based off of an individual’s role plan or their own development plan. When an individual comes to our career center, they speak with our career coaches, and we’re able to then put them through some assessments through some of our vendor platforms that allow us to see, “Okay, these are where your skills are lacking. We may need to enroll you in some adult education and enhance those skills in that way.”

[00:17:43] Chelsea: That’s great. I heard you all talk about different points in the pipeline, really, but one of the things I heard really intentionally throughout all of that was the intention of where these individual workers are headed, making sure they’re set up for success in that role because it likely results in better benefits for both the individual themselves, but also you all as a business. I really appreciate the way you all elevated that.

Joe, I want to turn to you. We’ve already got questions in the chat for you in particular. As a manufacturer, you’ve got a lot of different considerations you have to make about how to leverage the talent you have in various contexts. You all at CJK Group have developed a solution that gives folks the time to develop the foundational skills they need and also assures you that the folks you’ve brought in to work on your equipment have the skills that they need. Can you tell us about that? How did you arrive at the process you have today? How does it work? What are you seeing as a result? Bonus points, Joe, if you can share a little bit more about the assessment because it’s already getting asked about.

[00:18:49] Joe: Absolutely. For us, it was out of necessity. 43% of our workforce is going to retire within the next seven years. That creates a talent pipeline problem for us. Of course, it’s hard to get, especially Generation Z, into the trades and especially into manufacturing. You’re already fighting some of that stigma. We had to present to anybody that is coming in off the street and to our workforce what their career could actually look like.

In order to do that properly, we had to look at every role on every machine and define what were the foundational skills, the knowledge, the capabilities, and the competencies that an individual had to perform in that role so that everybody understood what their growth pipeline actually looked like and they could be measured appropriately.

Once we were able to identify those, then you start backtracking from there for each of those roles on that machine to identify, how do we now assess where this individual is at coming into that role based on the competencies that we’ve defined to figure out where they actually are in that role on that machine and then start to build their training plan, often very customized by that individual around their assessment scores.

What it’s done for us is it’s identified what our talent pipeline looks like. Across our 15 plants here nationally, our 24 plants globally, we can look across our employee base and see where there might be machines or roles where we’re not quite where we want to be. We can also see the skill levels of individuals who are employed by us and maybe start cross-training them into other roles. We have individuals who are jumping from the press side to the bindery side, as an example, back and forth on a weekly basis based on production needs. We know who those individuals are so we can move them around.

[00:20:36] Chelsea: Awesome. That’s really exciting to hear that it’s hyper-customized to the individual and their needs and that you really give that space to learn and grow meeting people where they’re at. I think that’s sort of– I imagine all almost 300 of us on this call would love for that to be the reality for every adult working learner in the country.

Quentin, I want to turn to you. Healthcare is a critical industry for many communities. I’m sure many of us on this call are thinking on a daily or at least weekly basis about how to support healthcare employers across the country. What are you seeing that’s unique? During our interview for the landscape analysis, you focused on communication as a really important skill where you’re seeing some significant gaps. Communication being both written, reading comprehension, and speaking. Can you tell us how you’re experiencing these deficiencies and how you’re working to build those skills for both workers entering your workforce and incumbent workers?

[00:21:39] Quentin: Yes. We see a lot of communication challenges that often show up alongside the foundational skills. A lot of it has to do with just basic, how to handle a conversation, individuals how to advocate for themselves, and how to talk to your supervisor, how to talk to a patient. A lot of it comes back to when a student is in secondary and they’re transitioning from secondary to either school, post-secondary, or career.

We’re coming out of generations that went through COVID and were homeschooled. They’re technology native, but they’re– in terms of talking to an individual or a person, their social skills are not where we would want them to be. That’s no knock on them. It’s just something that they haven’t practiced a lot. What we’re doing now is we’re trying to engage these individuals at an earlier time and at an earlier age. We’ve set up a lot of different programs within the K-12 school system and our secondary school systems, in which case we’re allowing students to come in and get those exploratory options, maybe in 8th or 9th grade.

Then from there, really, transitioning them into work-based learning opportunities, whether those be internships, job shadows, apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, those things where they’re actually being able to take things that they’ve learned in the classroom, come in and apply them in the workplace, and be given feedback in real-time from those professionals that are in those careers.

Being able to do that allows them to not only practice a little bit of those technical skills that they’re learning, but also start building relationships in the workplace and start building mentors with those professionals that are in the workplace so that can help them when they’re dealing with stress or they’re having a problem on the job. They may not be able to put that into words, but they can go to somebody and help them deal with whatever that challenge is that they’re dealing with.

The biggest thing is creating those opportunities and having your workforce and your industry be open to allowing those students to come in and transition a little bit earlier and get those opportunities because a lot of it, it will be communication skills that are lacking coming out of post-secondary and K-12 due to our literacy and fluency rates.

[00:24:32] Chelsea: That’s awesome. I love that there are multiple solutions to shore up these skills. It’s not just sit in a classroom and take remedial reading or whatever. It’s mentorship. It’s career visibility. It’s on-the-job learning and training that enable folks to strengthen these communication skills. Thanks for sharing, Quentin. Della, I want to turn to you. You shared a little bit about Upward Academy in your introduction, but I know that you all offer both in-person and virtual opportunities. Is that right? Did I call it the wrong thing? No?

[00:25:10] Della: No. You did great.

[00:25:11] Chelsea: Okay. Great.

[00:25:12] Della: Great. Good job, Chelsea.

[00:25:15] Chelsea: That blended approach of online and in-person offerings is unique, as is your workforce. You mentioned folks preferring a language other than English. Can you tell us about how you’ve organized your learning and upskilling programs, how people find them, engage with them, and what Tyson Foods is seeing as a result of the investments? I’m curious, for those on the call who are thinking about how to help employers make a business case and sustain programming, how do you do that?

[00:25:47] Della: Yes, absolutely. Our foundational skills program is called Upward Academy Onsite. It’s set up like a traditional school in a lot of ways. It has an in-person instructor. Classes are held at our facilities at convenient times, either during their shift or directly before and after their shift. It’s been around for more than a decade. It really grew out of this need for English language classes at our plants and then has really blossomed over the years to become not just ESL, but also GED, citizenship, financial literacy, digital literacy, and all these other foundational skills that we see are really important for our team members.

We’re in about 40 locations right now. We serve close to 2,000 students a year. We have run-of-the-mill student registration. Three times a year, we will set up in the break room, and we just talk to every team member, or as many team members as we possibly can in their native languages and tell them, make them aware of this opportunity. We also have digital signage that we use, and we have an app that we also have comms to our front line on.

We find that in-person in the facility is really the best way. Obviously, it’s not me and my team traveling to all these places three times a year. It’s really we’ve armed the onsite HR partners and learning partners to be able to register students for these classes. They do a little assessment with them as well so we can understand where their digital literacy levels are, where their English levels are.

If we get to the assessment point and then we feel like, “Actually, you’ve got pretty good English. You’ve got pretty high digital literacy skills. We think this online option might be a better fit for you.” Then at that point, we funnel them to our online option. This is mainly for those foundational skills. The online option that we have is called Upward Academy Online, and we have that in partnership with Guild. It really just allows team members to, if it’s a better fit for them to have that online option or they’re at a higher digital literacy level. We’ve nudged them into that direction.

It’s been great having both programs because, honestly, we can meet all team members where they are. I love to be able to say that “Come to Tyson Foods. You can learn basic literacy skills or a master’s degree and everything in between.” We’re really, really proud of that. As far as the business case goes, we have demonstrated ROI with both programs, the online and the onsite program, through the normal retention, career progression, higher engagement scores.

Our onsite program alone, it touts a 91% retention rate for Tyson team members that participate in the program. Just to be clear, that’s not retention for our classes, that’s employee retention. Nine out of 10 team members that participate in our onsite program stay with the company, and that’s, of course, huge. For so many of our plant managers and complex managers, they actually don’t even need to see that retention stat.

We tell them, of course, because we’re proud of it. They know that their team members need this, and they know that they need their team members to have these skills if they want to continue growing that talent in their facilities. So many of our facilities are in rural areas, and so it’s really imperative for us to build our talent from within.

[00:29:54] Chelsea: That’s great. Della, one live-time question in the chat. Can you share a little bit more about that retention metric? Is that annual, like year-over-year retention?

[00:30:04] Della: Yes, it’s annualized retention.

[00:30:06] Chelsea: Perfect. Thank you. This is great. You’ve all shared how, for each of your sectors and your workforce, what this looks like in practice and what you all are prioritizing. I want to shift now and ask all of you to share a little bit about how you engage with education and training providers. Some of you are blending company-developed learning and training alongside programs supported by K-12, post-secondary workforce organizations, or ed-tech providers. What are you looking for in your partners, and what drives your decision to develop training internally versus go to an external partner? Quentin, can we start with you?

[00:30:52] Quentin: Yes. We work across an ecosystem that includes K-12 systems, community college, community-based organizations, workforce commissions, career centers, and post-secondary partners. What we look for in our partners is partners that understand both the learner and the realities of the job. They have to be willing to co-design, they have to be flexible, they have to be able to personalize learning. They have to be accountable for the outcomes.

We also vet our partners and candidates carefully so participants understand job expectations early. We tend to build internally when learning is what we like to call “auctioneer-specific,” such as culture, patient experience, workflow systems, or work readiness expectations. We use our external partners for academic instruction, foundational skill support, accredited credentials, licensure, specialized roles, or if we’re looking for that one-on-one learning. Traditional programs continue to produce strong talent, but quality varies. We value personalized, self-paced, and targeted models alongside classroom instruction as well.

[00:32:11] Chelsea: That’s great. Joe, what does that look like for you all at CJK Group?

[00:32:16] Joe: We actually have partnerships with Department of Workforce Development in all 11 states that we actually work in. We have a working grant with most of those states. We work with the DWD in each of those states as part of our assessment of foundational skills. As they have people entering those offices at the DWD, those assessments are given to those individuals that they believe would be ideal for our working situation. We also use the same assessments onsite if we have people who just apply directly to us instead of going through their DWD.

We’re looking at both of those assessments that occur in the DWD as well as in our own offices, and then we’re tracking those employees. Once they’ve actually passed those initial skill sets and start working, then we’re monitoring them as they continue to progress in that role in regards to certain milestones that we’ve set at three months, six months, nine months, and how are they progressing forward with that. If we start to see an indicator that maybe thinks that they’re starting to decrease in some capability, then we actually jump in at that moment and do a refresher for them and continue that process.

[00:33:22] Chelsea: Joe, I want to sort of double-click on two aspects of that. My understanding from our conversation was that both the assessment and that jump in and provide support are both internally developed assets. Is that correct?

[00:33:35] Joe: They are. They are. The assessments that we do, we’ve given to the DWD, and they do that for us in their own offices if they’re sending us employees for hiring.

[00:33:44] Chelsea: That’s great. That’s super helpful. Then, Della, what does it look like for you, these partnerships? One of our Q&A questions is sort of on how you select both for your organization in particular, not only these foundational skills providers that you partner with, but also your bachelor’s and master’s degree offerings.

[00:34:08] Della: Yes. We have a lot of partnerships with community colleges. Our plans are spread out all across the US. We do partner with local community colleges to do adult-based education or provide ESL or whatever it may be. Then, when we’re thinking about starting new programs in new ways, in new facilities, we really have to make that decision. Do we want to just go internal, contract a teacher ourselves? Do we want to go external?

I’ll tell you, what we look for is, is it an organization that’s agile? Are they employer-friendly? We need fairly quick turnaround times. If we get a plant manager to say yes to a program, then we don’t want to wait until after your fiscal year. We want to do it now. Also, it shouldn’t take several months to get an MOU, things like that. That’s what I’m talking about when we think about agility with our workforce organizations that we partner with. We also don’t want requirements for students that are burdensome, like maybe an excessive amount of class time per week required. Things like that.

Those are the things we’re really considering when we’re thinking like, “Okay, should we talk to the local or create a local partnership, or should we just keep this internal?” We’re also looking for orgs that are innovative. I saw MCC in the chat earlier, and I’m not sure who it was. We have a partnership with MCC where they help us with industrial maintenance pathways. They’re in Nebraska, by the way. Great community college. They also help us with foundational skills. We can pipeline from frontline to industrial maintenance, which is life-changing wage, by the way. We can do it in a way that really creates this cohesive, user-friendly experience for the team member.

When we find partners like that, we’re all in. Yes, we’ll jump through the hoops. We’ll do it. The last thing that I’ll say too is that– and this is a complicated thing that I’m about to say, so I don’t want it to sound like it’s not complicated but we need orgs that can source talented educators. Adult learners vote with their feet. They will leave a program if it is not beneficial to them. So much of that comes down to the teacher. We really need really great educators that will work crazy hours that are convenient for our team members. It’s not the easiest ask in the world, but that is a requirement for working with us, and that’s what we’re looking for.

[00:37:20] Chelsea: I think you may have just given me the title for my recap blog, which is Adult Working Learners Vote With Their Feet. Thank you for that, Della. That’s really great to hear. I think it is so important in this moment where there are so many solutions for so many problems right now. We will know if it’s useful if people are continuing in the program. If they’re stalling out, that’s a clear indicator that something’s not working. Having a responsive partner, or Joe, in your case, being able to go in that moment of need and provide that assistance directly is so essential. Thank you all for sharing.

Georgia, as we start to wind this conversation down and head towards the Q&A, I’d love to bring you back in and hear a little bit from you around what you were hearing in your conversations based on the work you’ve done with higher education and other funders that you’re in conversation with. What from this conversation has resonated with you?

[00:38:25] Georgia: Yes. I first want to say I love this conversation. I can’t think of another time I’ve attended a conversation like this. I think this, in and of itself, is remarkable. One of the things that’s working in this work is you have to really touch a lot of different entities. As you all know, many of these entities and systems are very siloed.

One of the things that I think is often a constant frustration, I think, probably with employers and community-based organizations and education institutions, is really just like, we don’t know what they want, or they’re not giving us what we want. I think what I’m seeing from this conversation that really resonates with me strongly is that each of the companies, you all have identified that you are looking for experts in your community, in your areas that are experts in this field of teaching K-12 or support services, or they have a strong reputation, trusting reputation, and respect in a community with a specific demographic of folks.

I think it’s important for you all to see that you all are not trying to do it all. You’re working with people who are the experts to really build a solid network of folks to support these adult students, these adult workers. I think that’s really what’s integral in this work is just having that large network, admitting when maybe this is not where we should focus on. This is not our lane, but you know what? Somebody else in the community, this is their expertise. Let’s bring them in to do this process and be a part of our network.

I also think that it’s important to continue maintaining this network because it’s not– once the folks you have at the table today may not be the same that you will meet with tomorrow. Keeping working on these partnerships and strengthening these relationships, I think is just so remarkable. I just think kudos to you all for your diligence and work in this space.

[00:40:51] Chelsea: That’s great. Thank you, Georgia. We’re about to open to Q&A in the next few minutes. There have been great questions coming in, but if you all have more, please add them to the chat. I’m curious. When Georgia and the Upscale America team started working on this landscape analysis, there were really three provider audiences that we thought about.

The first was employers. What are employers doing? What can they learn from fellow employers? The second audience was academic institutions and ecosystem partners, the folks who really, really care about making sure that adults have the skills they need to be successful in the workforce. Based on what’s going on in the chat, we have a lot of folks from the adult basic education, English language proficiency space, and it’s really exciting to see.

Then the third audience that we wanted to focus on was public policy leaders. For public policy leaders, what do you all wish that they understood? Where do you feel like there’s a disconnect for these public policy leaders and the work you all are trying to do as employers on the ground? Whoever wants to go, I know I’m throwing this at you all.

[00:42:11] Joe: I’ll start. I’ll give a great example. Recently, the US Department of Labor released their AI foundational skills. It was five core things and seven sub-things. The only thing that they addressed in that release was how to understand AI. The rest of it was all we’re in the work context. That’s the part that’s missing in these conversations is understanding the work. It’s great that you might have AI literacy. How are you using it on your job? That could be for any topic, really, is that you have to get to the work to understand the work being done in order to create policy for that.

[00:42:48] Chelsea: Yes. Quentin, Della, other thoughts?

[00:42:52] Quentin: Yes. I would say if policy creates a pathway to a better job, but makes people risk housing, transportation, family stability to use it, then that pathway is not truly accessible. Benefits, cliffs, and things like that are real. Those are real. I just think if there is a opportunity to create a better way for an individual to take advantage of a program while not having to give up or get off of another program, I think that’s the most important thing I would say to a policy leader.

[00:43:32] Chelsea: That’s great.

[00:43:33] Della: Yes. I can just add in here, and there have been some great departmental labor grants out there recently that are for employers and have been really employer-friendly, which I’ve really appreciated. I think as we’re continuing to see gaps in foundational skills coming out of high school, employers need to be able to access. We want to train our people. We love our people. We want to invest in them, but ways in which we can do that in a better, easier way with our finance folks in mind, too, I think that would be great. Just easier access to grants, I think, would be my main point.

[00:44:24] Chelsea: I think that’s a great point. Let’s talk about what this looks like when it goes well. Do any of you have a recent success story that you’d want to share with us of a moment where these foundational skills clicked, and a worker had mobility and was not impacted by the benefits cliff, Quentin? Della, not to pick on you, I know you were just talking, but do you have any stories you would want to share?

[00:44:55] Della: I would love to share stories and did not get them approved by Comms, Chelsea, so I’m sorry. [chuckles]

[00:45:01] Chelsea: That’s okay. No, it’s totally fine. Quentin or Joe, do either of you have a story you’d like to share?

[00:45:08] Quentin: Yes, I won’t name names, but we have an employee who entered in an entry-level access role. They participated in some upskilling, progressed into supervision, and ultimately became the manager of a clinic. That’s one. What really excites me is the work that we’re doing at the K-12 level with engaging students earlier, getting them enrolled in dual enrollment, getting them to understand what pathways look like, what different careers look like, and where those can actually go.

Those are some of the best stories that I can tell. Just being able to see an individual, being able to understand, “Okay, this is what my career mobility looks like.” That’s where I get the most success and joy that comes out of these types of programs.

[00:46:06] Chelsea: All right. Joe?

[00:46:08] Joe: Yes. One of the things that we did with the Department of Workforce Development is we created what we call our Fast Track Operator Program. Typically, to become a master operator in print finishing business is six years. Really, that’s just cutting the surface of being a master operator at that point. Usually, there’s much more experience involved.

We don’t have that kind of time. We actually created a program in each of these states where we do it now in two years. 34% of my workforce who are in senior operator positions have gone through this program in the last three years. That’s our success story at the moment because, again, our talent pipeline, we had to do this. There were no other choices.

[00:46:49] Chelsea: That’s incredible. That’s incredible. Georgia, did you have any you wanted to share?

[00:46:56] Georgia: Not in particular, but I do want to highlight that there is a lot of momentum right now in career-connected learning. Dual enrollments are some of the highest numbers that we’ve ever seen. A lot of folks are talking about shorter-term credentials or shorter-term programs. I think folks are also talking about upskilling. I just think it’s a win that this conversation, again, is happening and that we’re really building on this momentum.

Especially regarding the previous question you asked, Chelsea, about policy leaders, this is a really prime time to talk with them and share the work and the highlights that you all are seeing and the partnerships because I really think there’s a momentum to maybe get some lasting policy changes that really make long-term impacts for the students and adult workers that we are all working with.

[00:48:02] Chelsea: Awesome. My last question for you all is one of my favorite questions to ask anytime I’m in these situations. What’s a piece of advice that you all would give if someone was just starting out on this journey? You’re a little further down the field. What do you wish you’d known at the beginning? What’s one piece of advice you would give an employer or an organization starting to think about foundational skills development for their workforce? Joe, I’ll have you go first.

[00:48:31] Joe: I would say start with the work. Once you understand the work, the processes, the technologies, whatever’s involved in that person’s job, that’s how you can start building up the rest. You have to understand the work and the context first.

[00:48:45] Chelsea: Absolutely. Georgia?

[00:48:49] Georgia: I would say to check your assumptions at the door. I think when it comes to foundational skills, there’s a lot of assumptions that, “Oh, we figured out reading, right? We figured this out a long time ago.” That’s not the case. Check your assumptions at the door and really listen and learn from the folks at the ground level about what their needs are.

[00:49:10] Chelsea: That’s great. Quentin?

[00:49:13] Quentin: Find and engage with people who are passionate about this work. If you’re going to start this, you need somebody who’s going to lead it, who’s passionate about this type of work. Pilot before scaling, and then provide high-touch support, like handhold to the finish line, so you can create those wins and grow those champions.

[00:49:35] Chelsea: That’s great. Della, you want to take us home?

[00:49:38] Della: Yes. I would say know your workforce. Talk to your frontline. Don’t build it in a corporate bubble. Gather lots and lots of data. Definitely, you need to understand your frontline’s digital literacy skills as well. Then you can adjust your expectations appropriately and build in lots of wraparound supports because you will need them for this population.

If you’re working with a vendor, push them on this. Ask them about their strategy to meet frontline workers where they are, and make sure you’re walking through that user experience. After you understand your workforce, you’re walking through that user experience with any vendor that you might meet, and make sure that that’s going to actually hit with your frontline.

[00:50:31] Chelsea: That’s all wonderful advice. I want to turn now– We’ve gotten some great questions in the Q&A function. I want to start with one from Rosette Botello. “How do you engage employees into taking part in these opportunities? We have great workforce development resources for our employees, but we struggle engaging our workforce to partake in these growth opportunities.” Does anybody have thoughts?

[00:51:01] Quentin: Is she coming from education?

[00:51:04] Chelsea: It sounded like she was an employer.

[00:51:11] Della: What we do, ideally, we’re paying them on the clock, and it’s during their shift. That’s gold standard. That’s the best incentive. We really have an offer. We don’t do that in all locations, though. We’ve built our program to be very, very flexible. We know our plant in Vineland, New Jersey, is not the same as Finney County, Kansas. It’s the plant manager’s decision to pay them on or off, make it off the clock or on the clock.

In places where we don’t do it during shift or don’t pay our team members, we do have some kind of incentive to keep folks engaged. That looks like a ton of different things, but a paid day off. If they attend 80% of the class, it looks like $100 gift card. It looks like snacks and drinks, like nice snacks and drinks in the classroom. We have graduation ceremonies as well that really support team members, but that’s what we do.

We’ve also done a lot of data analysis on team members who are paid and take classes during shift. First is unpaid and not during shift. We have better educational outcomes. They learn twice as fast if they’re paid and it’s during shift than they do. It’s the same content, same everything. It’s just that when a team member is being paid and it’s during their shift, it’s all of a sudden like, “Okay, I’ve got the energy to do this. I can sustain this.” They’re learning twice as fast.

When we’re talking to our plant managers, we’re really saying like, “Okay, you want to use this as your strategic talent pipeline? You want your people to learn as fast as they can and get in and out of the program, then you really need to pay it and do it on the clock.” That’s just how we’ve approached it.

[00:53:08] Quentin: The only thing I would add to that is keep it in their face. We have monthly meetings with MarCom. We also will use voice of the customer, have those alumni come back and speak and give their testimonies. Just keep it in front of them because they’ll lose sight of it because they’re working. They’re doing their job. Just keep it in front of them and make sure that they know that these things are available to them and they’ll take advantage of it.

[00:53:41] Chelsea: Joe, Georgia, other thoughts?

[00:53:44] Joe: I would add. One of the things that we’re very clear about is the inter-career mobility. Across our plants, they can see, somebody in any role can see what their vertical and horizontal path actually looks like. If they see an opportunity in another plant, they understand what it takes to actually get into that particular opportunity. Every time they grow a skillset in a particular role, they get a raise in their actual pay. I’m sure that many of them are motivated because the higher up they get, they get the first choice of the shift that they’re working on. If you don’t prefer the midnight shift, then you’re going to work a little bit harder to get into those operator roles.

[00:54:23] Chelsea: That’s great. You all work at organizations that are quite large, at least in the region you’re in and the industry they’re in. You all are large employers. Are there specific advice you would give to small businesses that may have limited time or resources or staff? How can they take steps, particularly on the skills identification? Joe, you all built your own assessment. If I were a small business owner, that would be quite daunting to me. Are there advice or perspectives you have for folks who may not have access to some of the resources available to you all?

[00:55:12] Joe: I’ll give an example because we are not certainly as large as Tyson or Ochsner. We’re only 5,000. We actually set up channels in MS Teams by role, by topic. Then we would bring in the experts and say, “Okay, let’s talk about your critical workflow. What does it take in the skills, knowledge, and capability to do this job, these standard operating procedures?” We work very closely with them and created those resources through that process. It’s a lot of work. I’m not going to be shy about that, but it’s certainly worth it because the end result, as we’ve seen right now, is we can truly look across our talent pipeline and know where people are at.

[00:55:48] Chelsea: Right. Joe, that connects to what you were talking about earlier. It’s not just enough to have the skill, but it’s the skill in the context, right?

[00:55:56] Joe: Correct.

[00:55:57] Chelsea: It’s not enough to be able to read a ruler. It’s for your work in particular, being able to measure and convert and do the things that are required for print manufacturing.

[00:56:07] Joe: Correct. Yes.

[00:56:09] Della: I’ll just add–

[00:56:10] Quentin: I would say– Go ahead.

[00:56:11] Della: Oh, sorry, Quentin. Go ahead.

[00:56:13] Quentin: Go ahead, Della. [chuckles]

[00:56:15] Della: Okay. [chuckles] I’ll just add, one thing we’ve done in our smaller facilities, maybe have less than 100 people in a facility, and they don’t have the budget to hire out a teacher or something like that. We upskill our internal Tyson team members to teach the classes. We either put them through a TESOL course, teaching English to speakers of other languages. We put them through a TESOL course. We have team members teaching GED in our facilities. We’ve really like, “Okay, you’re not a teacher today, but we’re going to make you one because we don’t have other resources to use.”

[00:57:02] Quentin: I would add in. You don’t have to be the subject matter expert. A lot of community colleges have adult ed programs. Most of them are fully funded, meaning they’re free. You have your community-based organizations. They all have programs and trainings and upskillings. You can work with your local workforce commissions. They receive funding through the government to pay for these trainings and funding. There are several different opportunities. The number one thing you should do as a smaller organization is get out in the community and see who’s out there, what’s out there, what’s available.

[00:57:39] Chelsea: That’s wonderful. I want to take a moment and thank each one of you for giving your time and your perspective today. I don’t know if you’ve been following along with the chat, but there has been a lot of positive feedback, [chuckles] as well as a lot of additional questions. I feel like we could all keep talking for hours. I really appreciate you all spending the time with us today.

Before I let you all go, I want to share this. As Georgia mentioned, we’re at the beginning. We’re six months into a foundational skills landscape analysis. A lot more content is going to be coming over the coming weeks and months as we continue to expand and finalize our research. If you know of employers who are doing exciting work, like what Della, Quentin, and Joe described, we’d love to hear from you.

I know my colleague, Frances, has put our follow-up email in the chat. Please reach out to us. We’d love to talk to you and learn more about what you all are doing. Thank you for taking the time to join us as viewers and participants today. We’ll follow up next week with a recording and resources that were shared during this call. We really appreciate you spending this hour with us. Thank you so much.

Read the blog from National Skills Coalition: https://nationalskillscoalition.org/blog/news/when-it-comes-to-soft-skills-its-more-than-clothing-its-the-teamwork/