KCSpeaks

Workforce development is a strange business. We hover somewhere in the land of social services, government services, economic development, and business. We are neither here nor there by many standards. Our work is somewhere between all of the above mentioned and personal self-help. One of those crazy standards is how we measure success in customer service. Most business wants return customers- banks, stores, airlines, but in workforce development if we never see someone again, we think that is success.  R ecently, a woman I had worked with came back. Three years ago, this woman was a dislocated worker, laid off from a program administration position at a utility company. She had worked there for many years and had come to seek workforce development services to help her get back to the labor market. At that point in time, there were many changes to the way people look for work since the last time she was job seeking. She needed assistance to get back to work. It took time,...

I think that every parent wants the best for their children, to ensure that their children are making the best choices in their life. I am the mother of a 17 year old son that is a junior in High School. This means that every choice he makes can potentially impact his soon to be college admissions and future career. One night recently, my husband and I were having a conversation about our son. We were discussing what he likes to do for fun. One of the things he likes to do is play role playing games on the computer, i.e. – Dungeons and Dragons. As I am always thinking like a workforce development professional, I made the comment, “I hope he is getting some transferrable skills from this game.” Since that night of parenting pillow talk, I have been exploring this further. Do these games translate into a future or is my child going to be eating cat food at age 50 while living in my basement? After much discussion with my husband about how these games work, I have learned that may...