Workforce leader says realigning priorities requires listening

Cody Waits gets up every day with the goal of helping more Arkansans find meaningful employment. The executive director of Arkansas Workforce Connections leads initiatives across the state aimed at matching workers with employers looking for specific skill sets.

With National Apprenticeship Week taking place the last week in April and first week in May, Waits sat down with Talk Business & Politics Editor-in-Chief Roby Brock to discuss the progress being made and what comes next on the workforce development front.

Roby Brock: When you came into this position, it was couched that you were going to realign some things in workforce in the state of Arkansas. What have you been realigning? 

Cody Waits: Really, the entire division of what was known as the Division of Workforce Services for a long time. Through the governor’s workforce strategy and Commerce Secretary Hugh McDonald, we’ve realigned the Division of Workforce Services into three divisions. One is Workforce Connections, which I lead, which is made up of a lot of the workforce development programs within the Department of Commerce. This is all your federal and state workforce programs, WIOA (World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment), Rehabilitation Services, Adult Education, the Office of Skills Development, and a new division that started on July 1 that was transferred from economic development, formerly known as the Existing Business Resource Division, now Industry Connect. It really functions as our one-stop shop and business engagement unit for the entire team. 

Then you have the Division of Reemployment led by Chris Rhodes and then Workforce Policy and Innovation by Dr. Charisse Childers. That’s been the realignment of sorts leading up to now. 

We’re at another pivotal moment where we’re really looking at our entire workforce system, inclusive of local workforce development boards, rehabilitation services, and trying to figure out how we ensure that we get more money into the pockets of Arkansans and serving people to the best of our ability. So there’s plenty of work to do, plenty of conversations to be had over the next 30 days or so, and we’re looking forward to it. 

Brock: So more philosophically before we dive into some details of some things that you’re working on. There are a lot of different philosophies about how to approach workforce. For decades, we’ve seen plenty of money wasted on things that did not work. We’ve seen some things work very well. How do you come at the issue of workforce strategy in talking with businesses and industry and what their needs are to make sure that you’re putting some of these programs to use in a way that it provides business leaders with the employees and the workers that they need? 

Waits: I think it starts by first listening and quit talking about programs. Like I kind of mentioned a minute ago, I mentioned various different programs. I think a lot of times over the past, we have gone into companies and tried to sell programs versus listening to what the employers really wanted. If you listen hard enough, they’ll tell you what they need, then our team should be able to come back and find the various resources without the employers having to understand the dynamics of what every program is and how every program supports them and be able to just deliver the services that meet their needs at a given point in time. 

Whether that’s grants, the Office of Skills Development for workforce training and incumbent workers, whether that’s standing up apprenticeship programs as another workforce strategy that they may not have ever used before, or whether that’s finding additional opportunities for recruitment services, identifying talent pipelines that they may have never tapped into like adult education. 

From our perspective, we always want to listen to the voice of the customer, and the customer, in our opinion, is the businesses that are out there hiring Arkansans every single day. 

Brock: When you look at demographics, you’ve got a declining number of people entering the workforce, just fewer people are reproducing basically is the issue there. We’re seeing that cliff in education, but it’s coming into the workforce as well. You’ve also got AI (artificial intelligence) and technology, which is changing the equation too. How does that change the conversations that you guys are having? 

Waits: I think everybody’s trying to understand AI. Certainly, you have leaders who are adopting AI at a much more rapid pace than others, but then you still have some who are trying to figure out how to leverage it. We have an organization within our group called Manufacturing Solutions. I was just having a conversation with one of our employees the other day around a company in West Memphis who was saying, “Hey, we want to figure out how we leverage AI.” And our team said, “Well, what do you want to use it for? “ And they said, “Well, we’re not real sure.” 

I think that’s the kind of conversations people are having from our perspective. It’s really about the governance and the change management and the leadership aspect of how do you convey what AI is going to be to your company and even to ourselves, right? 

If we can’t convey how we’re going to leverage AI to make our jobs more efficient, more effective, and be able to cascade that down throughout the organization, how do we expect our own teams and even employers around the state to be able to understand that as well? So we’re spending a lot of time with organizations trying to figure out how we position AI and how we see the impacts they’re having, not just in the short term, but in the long term as well. 

Brock: Arkansas is the recipient of a $36 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. Give everybody a little understanding of what that is and what Arkansas’ role is in this. 

Waits: Last year, we started working with the U.S. Department of Labor on an American manufacturing apprenticeship incentive fund. When I say that a lot of times, I have to make sure people see here that I don’t say Arkansas Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund, but an American Apprenticeship Incentive … 

Brock: You’re managing it for the whole country. 

Waits: Yes, we are. So the U.S. Department of Labor selected Arkansas, and I think that speaks volumes to our workforce system and the work that we’ve done in apprenticeships over the last six, seven, eight years. If you look back at apprenticeships in the state of Arkansas about 2017, we had roughly 3,500 apprentices. Now we have about 10,000 apprentices across various occupations, whether it’s the construction trades, electricians and plumbers will always be 90-plus percent of apprenticeships in Arkansas because of the licensing requirements of that. 

But we’ve had a huge expansion in manufacturing apprenticeships, IT and health care. I think this U.S. Department of Labor grant was a way of them recognizing the work that we’ve put into this over the course of a number of years, and it’s really a pay-for- performance model. We’ve received $36 million to go out and expand manufacturing apprenticeships across the country. 

There are 120 occupations that are currently out there and available. If you’re a registered apprenticeship sponsor and you have one of these 120 occupations and you’re working with employers, you can submit an application to our Office of Skills Development. They’re the agency that’s actually administering the fund. Once we approve you, there’s a 90-day window that you have to register your apprentices. And once those apprentices reach that 90-day probationary period, we’ll cut you a $3,500 incentive payment no matter where you’re at in the United States. 

It’s been interesting to see how quickly it’s picked up. We officially launched on Jan. 28, I believe. And right now we’ve had a little over 200 applications from 35-plus states. We think we’ve had requested about 2,500 apprentices. What I always tell people is if just 50% of that completes here within the next couple of months, when they hit that 90-day mark, we’ve already awarded 10% of the incentive fund just within the first five or six months of the program, so it’ll be interesting to see if these funds last the full four years. 

Brock: You said Arkansas has gone from about 3,500 folks in the apprenticeship programs to almost 10,000. What flipped the switch on that? 

Waits: I think some was the intentionality of it. I think apprenticeships were always thought of as construction trades, electricians and plumbers. Again, that’ll always be that way. We have a lot of good program sponsors at organizations that help around paying jobs. When these men and women retire, there is nobody in the workforce. And there’s no shortage of electricians and plumbers right now, right? 

Employers are out there looking for the individual that has the right training experience, the right education experience, and a lot of times they just don’t exist depending on where you’re at. So we really started pushing this “earn while you learn” model and bringing in somebody that may not have the right education or may not have the right skill sets and be able to build that within your company. They learn the company way, they learn the company culture, and you’re paying them a wage while they’re progressing through their career and through that training. It makes an employee that has more retention. There’s a lot of data out there as it relates to the retention of individuals that go through apprenticeships. And so it’s valuable to the employer and it’s valuable to the apprentice as well.