Employee Skills Necessary for Companies in the U.S. Market

There are two substantial challenges involved when opening a facility within the U.S. market: discovering which skills are required for specific jobs, and finding labor pools that match the skills needed to fill those jobs. The Toyota Motor Company, for example, recently invested $230 million to expand operations for the company’s most successful production line. The challenge: finding a location with highly skilled employees to operate state-of-the-art equipment.

Brad Rhorer is a group leader at Subaru of Indiana Automotive (SIA). In early 2007, SIA’s Lafayette, Indiana, plant was contracted by the Toyota Motor Corporation to meet demand for the Toyota Camry — the best-selling car model in the United States. Toyota wanted to expand its operations in a region within the United States with a significant number of workers whose skills matched those needed on the Camry production line.

“They were looking for manufacturing experience,” Rhorer said. “But more than that, they were looking for people who had good teamwork skills, good listening skills, and could follow standardized work instructions. Here, you do the same process the same way every time to ensure quality in the car, so you need people who can follow those instructions.”

Finding pools of skilled labor is extremely important when determining site selection. But how can an overseas company determine where the skilled labor resides? Government data — such as unemployment and high school and college graduation rates — provides some useful information, but rarely indicates the employability skills of residents. Some communities conduct local labor surveys that are useful in estimating the percentage of workers in the region that may be interested in changing employers, or identifying the degree of underemployment in the area. But this information still does not provide executives with a solid understanding of a region’s work force skills.

Toyota, on the other hand, had access to data on regional work skills that were used in making the decision to expand to Lafayette. Thousands of Lafayette-area residents have been tested for employability skills using ACT’s WorkKeys assessment system. The Tecumseh Area Partnership, a work force and economic development entity covering 14 counties in west-central Indiana, has worked with regional companies for years in hiring and developing workers using the WorkKeys system.

“Part of Toyota’s decision to relocate to Lafayette was our database of more than 6,000 job applicants who were assessed using WorkKeys,” said Deborah Waymire, chief operations officer of the Tecumseh Area Partnership. “We could demonstrate that we have not only a large work force, but a skilled work force that meets their specific needs.”

During the site selection process, executives should look for regions within the United States that have workers with the foundational skills that indicate job readiness and trainability. The WorkKeys system helps to identify those regions. The WorkKeys system was created by ACT, the U.S.-based nonprofit company well known for its college admissions exam, a national standard for college readiness, as well as for its professional development services and work force assessments used around the world. WorkKeys has been used by employers for more than a dozen years for hiring new employees and for staff development of existing employees.

The system assesses the foundational and personal skills needed to perform jobs or build upon job training, including reading for information, applied mathematics, locating information, writing, teamwork, discipline, sociability, attitudes toward work, and tendency toward unsafe work behaviors. The “job profiling” component of WorkKeys allows businesses to identify the specific skills required for a particular job. The skills profile for the job can then be compared with the individual’s profile based on WorkKeys test scores. A comparison of these two profiles enables the employer to identify any skills gaps. Because the skills assessed by WorkKeys are developmental, job seekers can boost their scores by participating in skill-specific training tailored to the WorkKeys system.

A National Skills Database
While the WorkKeys system benefits job seekers and businesses in this way, economic developers — such as the Tecumseh Area Partnership — collect WorkKeys data and use it to tout residents’ skill levels as they seek to attract multinational industries to their regions. ACT is further aiding companies and site selection consultants by creating a national certificate system based on WorkKeys, which includes a skill database that is searchable by region to help businesses locate populations of skilled workers.

ACT’s National Career Readiness System awards National Career Readiness Certificates to job seekers in the United States who possess specified levels of the skills measured by the WorkKeys assessments. The system also helps job seekers to connect with employers looking to hire individuals who have those skills. Just as the ACT college admissions exam helps colleges determine which students are ready for postsecondary education, the National Career Readiness System helps businesses identify highly skilled job candidates who are ready for jobs. The system, when fully operational, will include a national “Job and Talent Bank,” giving employers a way to find highly skilled employees in a database searchable by ZIP code, school district, and other criteria.

Because WorkKeys is used widely across the United States, it provides a national skills “snapshot” for multinational companies looking to relocate or expand within the country. The Indiana Department of Workforce Development has brought national industries to the state for years through federally funded services available at its network of WorkOne employment centers. It offers pre-commitment packages for companies looking to relocate. This involves dispatching a job profiler to an existing company plant, determining the skill level needed for specific jobs, and assessing and matching highly skilled residents to the jobs before the new Indiana plant has opened. One example is Autocar, which relocated to Hagerstown, Indiana, while the state assisted with hiring and training more than 200 employees, as well as with facilities planning. The plant became profitable 18 months after the relocation.

“We’ve been pretty aggressive in working with companies that are seeking to expand or locate in Indiana, offering a wide array of economic and work force development tools and services,” said Andrew Penca, former commissioner of the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. “We have found that the WorkKeys system provides us with a very efficient and effective tool to assess a company’s work force needs.”

Likewise, the North Carolina Community College System has attracted industries to its region — and encouraged others to grow — via its New and Expanding Industry Program, which includes funding for the WorkKeys system. The state-funded program is designed to bring high-skill, high-wage jobs into the state using work force development services at each of the state’s 58 community colleges.

In addition, the program offers skills training for North Carolina residents, helping them boost their skills levels and matching those needed by incoming industries. “We use WorkKeys as a funneling system to help new and expanding companies find the best skilled candidates from a large number of potential candidates,” said Maureen Little, senior regional director with the North Carolina Community College System.

Assessing English Language Skills
In addition to foundational skills, language skills are highly important when considering international site selection. English, the predominant language of the United States, is also generally accepted as the language of international business. This is why ACT adapted the WorkKeys system as the foundation of an English language skill assessment system used by multinational companies.

English WorkKeys assesses skills necessary for English language communication: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. International companies use English WorkKeys to evaluate the language skills of employees whose native language is not English. The system compares the employee’s skills to the language requirements of the job by analyzing a particular position for those skills.

Using English WorkKeys helps multinational companies determine which employees can represent a company in international business settings. One example is the Spanish branch of Janssen Cilag, the international pharmaceutical company owned by Johnson & Johnson. The company sought a way to identify the language skill levels needed to perform jobs within the company, along with an objective assessment system to compare employees’ skills to those jobs. It found a solution in English WorkKeys.

The company now uses English WorkKeys to determine which employees will participate in international meetings, conferences, and other work-related events outside of the company’s main office in Madrid, Spain. The company has integrated English language assessment into its training programs, making English WorkKeys a prerequisite for any employee looking to boost their English language skills. The system is also used for selection purposes for anyone seeking employment at the company.

Meeting the Challenge
Businesses competing in the global marketplace face many of the same challenges, including rising production and employee training costs. They are also facing a new kind of supply-and-demand issue: a depleting supply and urgent demand for skilled workers.

Determining the foundational and language skills needed for jobs, and then finding employees who possess those skills, helps companies reduce expenses associated with employee training, turnover, and production errors. The process also ensures that a company’s work force is competitive and able to adapt to the increasingly complex and technological global marketplace.

For more information about WorkKeys and the National Career Readiness System, go to www.workkeys.com.