Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Business Steps Up, a presentation of Hiali, one of the recognized voices in Long island business. We'll focus on cutting edge topics important to the Bi county region and beyond. So sit back, relax and listen to some of Long Island's most influential business leaders here on Business Steps Up.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Well, good afternoon everyone and welcome to this episode of AAI Business Steps Up.
This was, and for many of you who follow us know this was a series that began through Covid.
We felt strongly that we needed to better connect, obviously virtually as well as really promote a lot of the magnificent things that were happening and partners that were helping out through Covid get us through that situation.
Very excited that this afternoon we're going to talk about building the Long island workforce. It is a subject that is near and dear to Hiaoi's heart.
And we have with us Mr. Rich Human, Mr. Ed Bonahue and Mr. Kim Egan. Kim, you're on. Great. Good to see you. I'm gonna, let's start, I'm gonna ask you each to introduce yourself and tell just the audience what you do. You wanna start, Ed?
[00:01:15] Speaker C: Sure. Thanks Terry. And thanks to you and thanks to the HIA for talking about workforce and all the work that we're doing together to support Long island business.
At Suffolk County Community College, we are the largest trainer of workforce really on Long Island. Whether students are doing a short term certificate, whether, whether they're doing a two year degree, whether they are on a pathway maybe to a bachelor's degree that's going to turn into a career.
We're serving about 30,000 credit and non credit students a year in just about every economic sector from health sciences to IT to business services to applied engineering and building construction. And so as a comprehensive community college, we're very proud of our workforce mission and we're proud of the relationships that we have with employers really in every sector.
So that's a little of what we do at Suffolk. And thanks for, thanks for inviting me here today.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Thank you. And the audience should know Ed Barnaby is also an hi ally board member and he also serves as a co chair of our workforce development task force which we'll talk a little bit about. So thanks Ed.
[00:02:37] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:02:39] Speaker D: Sure. Thanks Terry. Thanks Hia Li it is a critical topic for us here on Long island and I'm also an hiatus board member and I am co chair with Ed on the workforce development task force, CEO of H2M Architects and Engineers and we're a leading employee company here on Long Island. We, we employ about 450 professionals and the.
The whole topic of. Of talent pipeline and workforce development is not only critical to. To my company as a growing company, but also I've seen the needs in so many diverse market sectors here on Long Island. So I'm looking to provide whatever support I can and insight I can to Hia to, you know, help the island as a region tackle this critical issue.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Great. Thanks, Church.
And I think we might have just lost him, but if he comes back on, everyone know that. Sam, can you hear us?
[00:03:46] Speaker E: I. I can. My. My apologies. We're having some Internet issues today over here.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: No worries. So can you just introduce yourself to the audience?
Sure. My. My name is Timothy Egan.
[00:03:59] Speaker E: I'm superintendent here in Kings park and been here for 12 years. And this past year, I had the pleasure of being the president of the Suffolk County School Superintendent Association.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Great. Thank you. And Tim is very actively, or becoming a lot more actively involved in the Hili and a strong advocate for business and education. So thanks for joining us. We appreciate. So let's begin. You know, it's interesting, this topic when you look at the Hiali. As you know, one of the things we do is we're a major support for business right on Long island and absolutely. Also the community.
And when we are out and about, that is the number one challenge that when we meet with CEOs, they tell us, is there difficulty sometimes to build a talent pool and. Or find the right types of people to fill some of the jobs that they have job openings for. So we'll start there. Rich, I'll ask you, you know, as the CEO of a major architectural and engineering firm, why do you feel there's a difficulty? And there's probably a lot of different reasons for that.
[00:05:12] Speaker D: Yeah, we've been in what I termed a war for talent for a long time, and it actually predates Covid, but it really evolved during COVID because especially in my sector, architecture, engineering, professional services, the types of people that graduate from college can not only go into my industry, which is design and consulting, but engineers in particular, they can go into finance, they can go into health care, they can go into sales. And my responsibility is to make sure that looking to get to young talent as soon as I can to educate them about what it's like to have a career in the design and consulting industry.
And as we've grown, we're headquartered here on Long island, But I've got 14 different offices. And I will say that recruiting is still my number one challenge.
And it's the number one reason why my growth.
It's inhibited in a sense, because, you know, we, we work on projects and, and we, you know, we sell our experience and our, and our expertise to clients. And when you don't have enough people, you can't sell your services the way that you need to in all in order to grow and to thrive. So for, for us, especially here on Long island, competing with other industries is going to continue to be an issue.
And it's also a challenge for us in terms of, you know, just the cost of living. You know, there are, you know, young professionals, especially in my industry, are sought after.
They can go to other geographies, other regions, they can, they can find employment.
So I need to make sure that I pull every lever I can to overcome what I see is some inherent challenges here on Long island.
And, you know, being able to make sure that I'm getting involved everywhere I can to, you know, try to help the talent pipeline to support companies like mine is really where I'm committed to.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, certainly very competitive. Right, right. Whether it's an architectural firm or any other, you know, type business. That's what we're hearing. Ed, how about from your perspective, right. Why do you see there being such difficulty to be able to fill those talent pipelines?
[00:08:00] Speaker C: Well, what Rich has just said about his area of design and engineering, construction, architecture, we see it kind of across the economic sectors. I think here in Long island, we're aware that there is some, some ecosystem challenges and demographic challenges, some cost of living challenges. But I think the opportunity that lies in front of us is to try to make visible all the great opportunities that exist on Long island for jobs and careers.
And it's really vertical. There are again, whether it's healthcare, whether it's construction, whether it's business services, there are opportunities for students at the certificate level, at the two year degree level, at the four year level, the graduate level.
And we have to, we have to find a way to make all of these job opportunities available.
I hope that we get a chance to talk about the new Long Island Jobs website because I think that's an important development for us.
But I think right now we're in a very competitive education landscape. We're lucky on Long island that we have five, two community colleges and three SUNY institutions, including our flagship institutional, Stony Brook. We also have great private universities, but it's still a very competitive marketplace for students.
Some of our students, they leave Long island and I think our opportunity is to make careers visible right here and to show students that, look, you can have a no Matter what your educational goal is, you're going to have a great career right here on Long Island.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And you know, we'll talk a little bit about later on our ability to make a much better connection that so our kids understand is great opportunities.
So Tim, how about from your perspectives, you know, you're at a obviously intention of the school district, but even at a high school level, what are you seeing in terms of some of the difficulties to help students really see the 38 veterans?
[00:10:17] Speaker E: Yeah, great, great question. So, you know, I want to echo what Ed and Rich have said in terms of the, the importance of making sure that we do that. But you know, in the K12 sector, our goal is ultimately that every student one graduates, but number two graduates with an actionable plan for future, whether that's into more, more college and university study, into, into the workforce, into the military. And being able to expose students to real life work, whether it's in a paid or an unpaid internship or you know, even just exposure to local area businesses and things that could be part of their future is, is really important.
So most high schools have some sort of a coordinator who will coordinate internships and things of that nature.
So we're growing that out through shared service, through boces and you know, really just trying to give kids more experience in high school and even middle school to what the possibilities are when they graduate.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: Great.
So let's talk a little bit about if we, if we back up a little bit. You know, one of the things I remember, I think it was 2000, probably 23, that the Hiali did a workforce development study in collaboration with the Suffolk IDA and the Workforce Development Institute to really look at what are the skills that are needed right when kids come out of school, whether it's high school, college.
And one of the big things that came out of that survey was the ability to be able to really understand how to communicate. Communicate and how to collaborate, how to problem solve. A lot of the soft skills, right?
Not so soft necessarily, but we call them soft skills. So Rich, just talk to us from a CEO perspective about what does that mean to you? How is, how important is it in an organization like wars for these young professionals come out with those sort of skills?
[00:12:34] Speaker D: It's, it's critical. And so just this week we run a pretty robust internship program every summer. So we had 65 interns at H2M this summer.
You know, all disciplines, all different types of professions, finance, marketing, human resources, architecture, engineering, science.
And we give them your real world project work during 10 weeks. So they, it's, it's no longer the, you know, I'm going to go, you know, get coffee for my supervisor. Those days are long, long gone.
Now it's about giving them practical, hands on experience. And what we do to the point, Terry, is we have every intern do a public presentation of what they did over their two and a half month internship program in front of the executive team, in front of the supervisors. So this past Tuesday and Thursday they get five minutes to do a presentation and we give them areas that we believe they should focus on in order to best deliver their experience and things that they talk about.
My supervisor stressed to me how important it was for me to communicate or for me to collaborate or be responsive.
We hold resume building sessions with them, we hold networking sessions with them so they can understand how do I network myself.
So, you know, the especially, I think, you know, engineers are not known to be the best communicators in the world. You know, we're a little introverted, but getting these kind of experiences early on as they're even figuring out what they want their career to be, I think it's invaluable for them. So I'm a huge proponent of that. And just my last point, I tell people, you know, when I'm interviewing, your resume gets you into the interview, but you are, your character gets you the job. And, and they should all view it that way.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Right. What a great opportunity. Rich for them. Right. Because as we talk to other CEOs, absolutely. Same thing is we feel that the technical skill can be trained.
Right. Receptacle piece, whether it's, you know, whatever it is. But those soft skills are so critical. So for both Ed and Tim, talk to us a little bit about how do you foster that in your institutions? What are you doing to help with those soft skills?
Ed, you want to go first?
[00:15:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll jump in, sure.
You know, it's interesting. There was probably a time in the world of career focused education when the emphasis was really on your technical, your technical skill.
You had to know all the steps for solving a problem.
But then I think it's because of the feedback that we have from employers that we know that I guess what I would call the citizenship skill, the idea that, you know, you're going to be part of a team, you're going to have to solve problems, you're going to have to work with others, you're going to have to be able to communicate up, you might be able to communicate this down.
These are all the professional skills that we need to have and it's interesting because I think in all of our career focused programs, especially in college degrees, this is where things like the other classes that you take coming to play, the fact that this is why everyone takes an English class or this is why everyone takes a communications class. And it's funny because students sometimes say, oh, why do I have to take that? I'm going to be air conditioning mechanic.
But the answer is, is really because it's going to make you more employable as a person. It's going to help you communicate better. It's going to help you be able to work with anybody that you come into contact with. So we're trying to do that both at the program level and really that's also part of the joy, if you will, of going to college, of getting to take some of those other classes.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: That's great. And you know, it's equally as important that they understand why they're doing it. They're right. Absolutely.
Yeah.
[00:16:57] Speaker E: Yeah.
I would definitely echo what Ed and Rich said. And I think what Rich said about the resume versus the ability to communicate is so important.
We do a real good job on Long island in the K12 sector through our clubs and sports.
You know, the number of club offerings that school districts have is huge. You know, a small district like Kings park with 2,800 students, you know, we have like 90 after school clubs. And each one of those clubs has a president, a vice president, a secretary, a treasurer.
They set goals, they set agendas.
You know, robotics, deca, Interact, marching band.
You know, same thing with our sports.
But the place we could do a little better is on the secondary level. You know, if you were to walk into an elementary classroom, you're going to see clusters of desks and kids not necessarily working in isolation, but working together. And that model, for whatever reason, breaks down a little bit when you get to middle school and high school.
You know, most of the classrooms I observe on the, on the high school level are still organized in rows and columns like we did in, you know, the turn of the century. And that needs to change and we need to do a better job at that so that kids are working together.
But we also need to collaborate with families. Because if the work that we do in the classroom six or eight hours a day, if the kid goes home and spends, you know, the next 10 hours on their phone and isolation in their room, we're probably not going to change soft skills as much as we want. So, you know, we need to get family buy in as well.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: Was very young in grammar School going into a classroom and the teacher got them right up on their feet and they were all giving presentations and I thought, wow, this is great because that makes a future leader. Right? Where when we went to school, I'm aging myself, but did. We didn't do a lot of that at all.
So, you know, those skills become critical. So I think, Tim, you were the one who said, and we've all said, probably it takes a village to raise a child. Right.
So that speaks to what you just spoke about, I think. So talk to us a little bit about what do you think those roles should look like?
Both being a parent, someone in business, and obviously someone in education. What does that look like in a perfect world?
[00:19:41] Speaker E: Sure, great, great question.
So, you know, in recent history we've become more collaborative, but you know, traditionally we've worked in our own silos and we've worked really hard. But what we've discovered, I think collectively over the last couple of years is that, that, you know, getting, getting K12, getting college and university, getting our business owners and, and you know, the private sector and also families on the same page is really important. And that's what I mean when, when I talk about the village.
So, you know, that, that connection with the business world and you know, being able to place kids in internships like H2M is so supportive of, you know, and all of us have local chambers of commerce and Rotary clubs and things of that nature. But the more we can work together and give kids that, that hands on experience in high school and even in middle school so that they know where things could potentially lead and present them with, you know, questions like, what are you passionate about?
What are you good at? You know, what kinds, where do, where do you envision yourself in five years after high school?
And how, how can you plot a course to get there?
And maybe that course involves higher ed, which is wonderful and we've developed great partnerships with Suffolk community and our other local higher ed entities. But in many cases that next step after high school doesn't need to involve higher ed necessarily, but we need to engage the trades and the local unions, the plumbers, the craftsmen, the welders, you know, and make sure that every kid has a path that has a reasonable chance of success after high school makes
[00:21:55] Speaker B: a lot of sense. Right. And, and as you know, we facilitated a Long island workforce development summit. And that's really what came out of that, right, is that every kid needs to go to college. Everyone is different. You need to do what we enjoy, things like that. So when do you think for career exploration just specifically should start, you know,
[00:22:20] Speaker E: truth, truthfully, I think we started in elementary.
You know, kids are curious. You know, very often when you ask, you know, an elementary student what they want to do when they grow up. You know, we'll get what mom or dad does or, you know, know, what an uncle or an aunt does, you know, but we. We can and should start right in elementary school with exploration, you know, grow that a little bit as we get to middle school, We. We can do career fairs in middle school, we can do trade fairs in middle school, and then, you know, step it up a notch when. When we get to high school where we can actually get, you know, you know, folks from local area businesses, again, working with chamber of commerce and some other local entities, you know, so. So we can get boots on the ground talking to kids about what these careers really look like.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: So let's talk a little bit about. We began with, you know, the Hili, right? This is near and dear to our heart. We have a workforce development task force course that both Rich and Ed lead.
And to Rich's credit, he's really broken that into what we call working groups. So, Rich, talk to us a little bit about. We've met twice. I know we'll meet again right after the summer. What your. What you saw there and what you think will come out of it. What do you hope to come out of it?
[00:23:51] Speaker D: Yeah, I think it was a fantastic first step. And what's interesting, besides I was thinking about our conversation today.
Workforce development on Long island is so challenging because our needs are so diverse and, you know, to Tim's point, making sure that we are exposing, you know, our young people to all the different career opportunities they could have so that they're able to help Long island support our workforce needs in the future. Because they are. They're so diverse. So we held a couple of working sessions, you know, what I call whiteboard sessions. And participation was.
It was great. It was kind of full breath.
We had school districts participate, leaders in school districts. We had boces leaders participate in. We had business leaders participate.
We had higher education participate.
So if you think about all the stakeholders who could have points of view and influencing potential, they were all in the room. And what we did is we talked about all the things that we believed were most important in terms of success, workforce development.
So we brought all that together.
Terry and Hallie and myself got together and said, okay, let's prioritize.
We engaged everybody, and now we've got people that are going to be leading sub Task forces so that we can talk about things like how do you most effectively expose students in middle school and high school to career opportunities, whether it's through internships and shadowing, career days, getting to faculty.
Faculty probably is the greatest influence over students. And the more faculty understands about all the various career opportunities, the more effective I think our process can be engaging. Boces, I have to say, Boces was probably the most excited in this thing. And I almost get a sense. I know you said you dated yourself. I'm going to date myself, too, a little bit. Is, you know, Boces was, you know, the, you know, kind of the place that students went to when they didn't really know, you know, other things they wanted to do in high school. Oh, I'll take shop class. And they went to shop. And there's so much work has gone into the value of the technical elements of education that I. And I think Boces is primed to be super engaged in this effort for us here on Long Island. So I'm excited about that. And over the balance of the year, Terry, we're going to be holding some committees. We're going to focus on action items and developing strategies that we can implement and then going back out, communicating publicly with what we believe our drivers are going to be to, you know, really, I'm going to say move the needle in a way in workforce development that hasn't happened yet on Long Island. You know, a lot of studies, a lot of conversations, but I think there's so much opportunity for meaningful movement, and I think that we're in a great place to help that happen.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And listen, super excited because, you know, as Rich said, it's not easy. And there are a lot of different people in different groups. Right. Working in workforce development, some very specific, some a lot broader, but we need to make it consistent and we need to really look at it as an exciting partnership. So I think that's one of the things, obviously, that we'll be working on.
So, Ed, for you, and let me just preface and say, Ed brought up when we first started as well, that our collaborative efforts with the Health and Wellness Council of Long island came from a direct result of these working groups. And we were able to collaborate on this Lijobs.org portal. We are so excited about this because it really takes everything in one place at educators can post and volunteer organizations can post and training organizations can post and businesses can post jobs and people can find jobs all in one post. So, again, I think that momentum has begun and we have a responsibility to keep it up. So, Ed, talk to us a little bit about the community college art in that as a bridge, because you're a wonderful bridge too. And you develop customized training as well, right?
[00:28:52] Speaker C: We do, we do.
I'll talk about Stupid's role specifically, but I just want to kind of tie some of this together. I think there's a lot of momentum right now behind that involves everybody pulling in the same direction toward recognizing local needs for business development and the need to give some priority to workforce development as well.
We got higher education, we got secondary education, we got the business case community, we got local government all pulling toward the need to kind of recognize Long island and especially Suffolk county and, and the Hopog area as a real economic driver, not just for New York, but for Long island in particular.
And the fact that we are kind of generating this momentum in every sector of the economy and is something that is really a testament to the hard work of organizations like the HIA and the LIA local government. Everybody who is trying to focus on this region and the opportunities that are here right now.
I think one of the things that we do at Suffolk in order to support that is we meet people where they are.
Whether a student is still trying to finish high school and needs an entry level job, whether they are a new American and are learning English so that they can get a job, whether they have a sense of urgency and need something to get a job within three to six months, whether they are ready for nursing or cybersecurity or something that is a more high tech intensive career that requires a full year degree. Our mission is to meet the community, wherever folks are coming from, and to try to connect them with an educational opportunity that leads to an economic opportunity.
I think that's really the role that we have. And of course, more than anything, our students tell us, well, someday I want to earn a bachelor's degree.
But as we've talked about in the Work in the Workforce task force, there's a lot of pathways to a bachelor's degree.
We talked with several companies, several of our healthcare networks.
They will support you as you're getting a bachelor's degree. You can start in a certificate program, move to a two year program.
Many of our hospital partners, many of our construction partners will pay you while you are in the process of getting your bachelor's degree. So that's a huge savings for families. It's a huge incentive to, to keep folks on, on Long Island.
So I just think we have the whole ecosystem kind of pulling in the right direction right now and A lot of, a lot of regions don't have that. That's a credit to you, Terry, to everyone who's been leading the HIA Long island and trying to make this whole opportunity, as I said earlier, visible.
[00:32:08] Speaker B: Definitely, you know, the time is now. Absolutely. We're all moving, it feels like in the right direction, in the same direction. So, you know, we're very fortunate to have all of you as leaders really understood the importance of this, but understanding how important the action is behind it that we need to continue to do you think about it, I can't believe it's past 2:30 already. We could have a whole other episode, seriously, maybe in the latter part of the beginning of next year about, you know, some of the results that we've seen and what we've done. Right. I think that's equally important. But to end, I'm going to ask you each, what do you feel right now would be the first step, the first step when we get off so continuing to make what happen better, Connecting between education.
[00:33:02] Speaker C: Let me jump in with something special that's happening right now, Terry.
Right now the fate of New York is offering tuition free community college for adults between the ages of 25 and 55. If you are interested in one of the high need, high demand programs that's been been established by the state.
So for anybody who's listening to this, if you're interested in health care, if you're interested in engineering or construction or IT services, if you're interested in education and you've never had the opportunity to attend college, this is for folks who are 25 to 55.
The state offers free community college tuition.
It's called SUNY RECONNECT.
RECONNECT. You can come to sunysuffolk. Edu if you're listening to this in Nassau, you can go to NCC Edu and find out more about free community college that's happening in New York right now.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Great. How about Rich for you, One step, looking ahead. What do you think?
[00:34:13] Speaker D: Yeah, I think what you started with the portal is 100%, I think the best place for us to put our energy right away.
Fundamentally, whenever I'm talking to business leaders, especially small businesses don't have the kind of infrastructure you need to go and recruit and be very visible about your opportunities. Connecting businesses to, to students and just to the public at large so that everybody knows in a more routine way where do I go to find out about job opportunities or where do I go if I want to get interns? How do I go about doing that?
That's a huge service. I think that as we advance it, it's going to be just a tremendous
[00:35:06] Speaker E: opportunity for Long island and then in the K12 sector.
I just love the work groups that Rich and HIA have created.
My work to do on my end is to keep my colleagues focused on this topic and make sure that the work that we've done not only with you, but also with Ed and the college presidents continues that, you know, it's not just a one and done that we continue this, this focus.
And just about every school district at this point has somebody who helps coordinate between students and companies with, with internships, paid and unpaid, getting those folks a little bit more involved so that they're current and what they're sharing with the students is accurate. I think is super important. But I'm excited and glad to be part of this, this initiative.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: Well, thank you gentlemen. And Hiali's initiative is to keep it moving, right, keep it moving forward and just every step we take remind people of how important it is. So for those watching, we would invite you to join us. On October 15th we have a workforce development conference actually which human is moderating with a group of young professionals and we will be recognizing this year about 20 young professionals and rising leaders on Long island, as well as giving out some scholarship awards. So don't miss it and thanks again.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: Business Steps up is a production of hiali, one of the recognized voices for business on Long island and a powerful voice and economic engine for regional development. Check back for more interest. Interesting thought provoking episodes with some of Long Island's most influential business leaders. For more information, call us at 631-543-5355 or log on to hiali.org.
