By By Adam Prestridge
Preparing for the future growth of south Alabama was the main topic of discussion during the inaugural six-county Region 9 Workforce Development Summit Monday morning in Bay Minette.
Several industrial players from Escambia County were on hand during the meeting, which was held at the Branch Building on the campus of Faulkner State Community College. Those in attendance included Marshall Rogers, executive director for the Escambia County Industrial Development Authority; Peggie Byrd, Atmore Industrial Development Board member; Dr. Susan McBride, president of Jefferson Davis Community College; Kathleen Hall, dean of instruction at JDCC; Latitia McCane, associate dean of instruction; Al Bennett, coordinator of training for business and industry for JDCC; Ernest Marvin, director of adult education; Rep. Alan Baker (R-Brewton) and Emilie Mims, executive director for the Atmore Area Chamber of Commerce.
The meeting opened up with Dr. Tim Alford giving a brief summary of Alabama Regional Workforce Development. Alford, founder and executive director of Enterprise Economic Development Corp. who has worked under three governors as a member of the State Workforce Development Board, gave several crucial workforce development points including the three he believes are key – productivity, availability and cost.
"I really do want to continue to try to help our state meet the workforce challenges and work with those groups that are sincere about doing something," Alford said.
Alford also shared several state statistics as they relate to workforce development including standard of living vs. education and skills
"Globalization is here and it's not going to go away," Alford said. "Smart people go where the money is and money goes where the smart people are."
Sam Covert, a member of Region 9 workforce development board, later addressed those on hand explaining how the board was started.
"The goal of this is to develop more skilled workers for the whole area for the county to draw from our existing industry or any potential industries we may have come to the county," Rogers, who played a key role in developing the Workforce Development plan, said. "Because of the low unemployment rate right now, the workforce is slim therefore we need to prepare the next generation for the jobs of the future."
Al Etheridge, workforce development coordinator for Region 9, went on to give a brief history of the Region 9 forums and where the group goes from this point.
Etheridge shared the workforce challenges each county in Region 9, which includes Escambia, Baldwin, Monroe, Conecuh, Clarke and Washington counties, identified during forums held the past three months.
Below are the challenges Escambia County industrial officials identified during their forum held at JDCC's Atmore campus in late March:
The group then divided into 12 discussion groups to talk about issues that came out of the forums held in each county. Rogers said the groups were a big help.
"It generated ideas from other areas of our region to know what their thoughts are about what we should be doing to help obtain a skilled workforce and what we can do to help the situation," she said.
The six topics discussed in the groups included: recruiting, communication and marketing, soft skills development, employer roles in pre-K-12, preparing adult learners with low skills and employee development.
"We're really making a push to get business and industry involved in this effort," Etheridge said.
With the recent announcement of ThyssenKrupp and the potential for all the counties in Region 9 to secure spin off industries, Mims believes summits like the one held Monday are a must.
"A workforce development initiative could not be more important at this time," Mims said. "This entire region is in a position of tremendous opportunity. The I-65 developments at Rivercane and with the Poarch Creek Indians will produce many jobs. Add to that the recent ThyssenKrupp announcement just south of us and our future becomes unbelievably bright, but we must be prepared. For workers to qualify for many of these jobs they will need specific skill sets. The purpose of this meeting was to begin the task of fulfilling Gov. Riley's mandate to establish regional workforce development initiatives so that training will be in place to prepare workers. This is a win-win for the citizens of Atmore and our community."
To conclude the meeting, the group convened again to discuss the six topics discussed and Etheridge challenged the group with setting up task forces around those issues and encouraged them to go out and work those issues.
"I thought we had a great turnout and I think everyone was very, very willing to participate," Etheridge said. "I was very excited about the attitude and opinion of all the participants."
Another Region 9 summit will be held in September where each task force will give reports about what progress they have made on acting on those six issues.