LEADERSHIP TEAM MEETING NOTES – April 29, 2015
In Attendance: Lewis Boren, Linda Angel, Susan Kamas, Vivian Naramore, Jerry Haisler, Vickie Gideon, Horace Dicks, Sue Bailey, Debbie Gommert, Kimberly Patterson, Gerry Fluharty, Ben Lopez, and Roy Highsmith.
Last Meeting:
NCP: Ben has met with the federal representatives. Target is 30 surveys per month. We are at 26 and should hit the target. Added funding needed.
Name Tags: looked at possibility of having magnetic slide cards. Cost per door is $1100.00. We will not be doing this option. A vendor in Killeen can do ID’s with lanyards. Number of years of service or experience in WSCT will be acknowledged and displayed in some way. Linda met with vendor this week.
AUSA Scholarships: We will be scoring these. Applications are due to AUSA May 1 with every app being examined by 3 scorers. Turn around is 3 days. Linda will do a score sheet and we are committed to finish May 11. NOTE: completed on time – Great work!
Workforce Update:
WIOA Regulations, See WIOA Handout: Several TWC conference calls will address these. Linda discussed the first call. Commission guidance is to keep what is good for Texas and the Texas workforce system. Keep it flexible with clear intent. Combined state plan will cover TANF, child care and other things as well as training programs. Keep waivers the same as WIA. Adult basic education and literacy will not be integrated as much as co-located. Locals should retain control within the national framework. Allocations are out from DOL and $ amounts are coming soon with slight increases. Are they inclusive or exclusive of state set-asides?
DARS Transfer to TWC: delayed to September 2016. We believe that more time is a good thing. See page 28 for excerpts from the Bill with important issues highlighted. This will be a complex assimilation and certain advocacy groups are pushing back on it. Local service information meetings scheduled for May 13 with 2 sessions each in Killeen and Temple to discuss what each DARS does, not transfer issues.
New HOTDA Director Retired Gen. Ken Cox. He will be very good as he will move directly from active duty at Ft. Hood. His style will be different than Bill Parry - page 45: Will start July 1.
HIV Coordination, page 46: MOU with CTSS HIV Prevention Project. Free distribution of supplies noted.
State Initiatives, page 48: for recognized skills certification. We do not have a plan for our grant and allocated funds. There will be discussions with state and ED’s at the upcoming Texas Assoc. of Workforce Board (TAWB) meeting. Susan will attend and will bring back ideas.
Wellness Group, page 55: Wanda proposed a 5-week eat-right initiative, possibly with some “administrative leave” for participants who successful complete. ACTION: LT approved for CTCOG and TWC employees. TVC will not follow as their policies on this are different. We will implement knowing some partners may not be able to provide the admin leave – still a good initiative.
East Temple Revitalization Skills Training, Go2Work Notes, Page 56: Vickie has worked diligently with other partner staff to design several tools for this project e.g. screening/assessment, employment plans, I&R referral sheet, and a flow chart as to how this will work. Committee is meeting monthly and making good progress on this initiative.
System Orientation: Next session scheduled for June 19th. Ben Lopez and Bud Alexander will lead and facilitate.
Glenn Shepard Video and Handout: We purchased a printed and DVD/CD policy reference that Vivian has reproduced for WF Admin and Supervisors.
Monitoring, page 66: Horace reviewed. Good report with only a couple of discussion issues. Child care disallowed cost is something we had already identified for follow up next year. It was a paperwork error. He will be meeting Monday with Chuck Ross of the monitoring section. There is a process in the works to set up a portal to send all our policies to and update them through this portal when required, eliminating the requirement to send them the policies prior to every visit. Procurement questions were answered and our system is strong. Our system recertification is next year. Horace will seek clarification about a new recertification process as changes were made without the boards being aware of them. Data validation was not included in our internal monitoring. We need the state report in a timely manner so that Richard Rogers can address in his next internal monitoring review for WFSCT. Financial issue involved a question on a travel document and allocation of time. There were a couple of questions about completion of nurse state board exams. These questions were resolved we believe.
Camp Workforce, page 69: Lewis covered the comment sheets; everything went well. GREAT job Camp Workforce Team!
22nd Annual Quest for Excellence Conference (Texas Quality), June 22nd-23rd, Addison TX
Susan and Jerry have a conflict with the U.S. Mayor’s Conference – Workforce Development. ACTION: For LT. Supervisors, and Belton staff, let Sandra Russell know if you want to attend.
FT Hood NEG, page 73: DOL/TWC has expanded the eligibility to soldiers that are involuntarily separating i.e. leaving prior to their contracted or designated ETS. Includes most soldiers unless there is a dishonorable discharge. The Army (unit commander) will provide a letter or orders verifying the change in ETS, which makes them a dislocated worker. Outreach for the Ft. Hood NEG: Lewis met with Soldier for Life (TAP) marketing director, Bob Schumacher, and we are looking in the wrong place for eligible soldiers. He referred us to the out-processing section (Copeland Center) where we can get info directly to the soldiers affected. Lewis staff at that and other locations on Ft. Hood. ACTION: By May 22, Roy will revise the Ft. Hood NEG policy to note the expanded eligibility for soldiers.
Hire our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program, page 79: setting up classroom and internship program for soldiers (typically senior NCO’s, and officers with 10 years experience in management or leadership or a baccalaureate degree plus 5 years of experience). Army is paying for the time they are in school and internship. Page 81 shows Joint Base McChord (Washington State) data. One half of those graduates are now employed. Highlights valuable experience gained in the service with the corporate world. CTC is our training partner (see Jerry’s notes on page 87). U.S. Chamber will fund certain portions of this with workforce as a key partner. There will be a conference call Friday to coordinate. How do we select and interview? Who does it? Kimberly is the WSCT point of contact with the U. S. Chamber. We will match willing employers with qualified soldiers (sort of like OJT). Page 90 is Chamber notes. Ft. Hood is very excited and supportive of this opportunity. Our position is that it must be manageable and focused so that we can demonstrate success with this first class of 15-25 participants. There have been suggestions to include retirees and military spouses. That increase complexity and raises many questions about who would pay the internship, recruitment, qualifications, etc. This is high profile and we will need to focus much attention on implementation. Local employers that have expressed an interest to join are Seton Health Care, Kasberg, Patrick and Associates Engineering, Lott-Vernon, Baylor S&W, and BISD, City of Killeen, and City of Rockdale. This project is pretty flexible and does not have the same restrictions as OJT plus you are dealing with a higher experience, skill and education level applicant. Marketing is ready and classes start in around the first of August and run 17 weeks. If selectees are NEG eligible, we can offer child care and other support services. ACTION: after more organizational meeting in the next 2 weeks more information on roles and responsibilities and recruitment and selection of enrollees as well as employers will be shared.
St Michaels Academy, page 97: Gulf coast certified school and program. Ft. Hood is fully engaged on their offering of SAP (a specific software certification) and signed an MOU with them to do this training. They are a TWC exempt provider since they are on federal property and so TWC has no oversight i.e. Ft. Hood does. St Michaels indicated scholarships are available for those who can’t pay but that has not come to fruition when questioned further. ACTION: WFSCT agreed to sponsor up to 15 Ft. NEG eligible persons. If they’re successful i.e. complete the program and get employed, we’ll do more. We are paying ½ up front and the ½ at successful graduation or completion of the coursework. St. Michael’s will diligently work on facilitating job placement. Note: 3 more NEG eligibles were added for a total or 18 as they could not use the GI Bill for this program (which was an early question).
Improvement Teams:
Vickie: Customer satisfaction survey was sent to staff with a good response. What do we want to measure, demographics, staff assistance (direct or general)? These questions will be reviewed with Executive Team and Leadership Team. Of those that tested the survey, 50% thought the survey was too long and redundant. Feedback and comments were helpful. Team will go back and shorten with a goal of a June completion or possibly sooner.
Lewis: indicated people are being identified to do the workshops. Joy and Shannon are working on soft skills with a draft due today. Next similar work with be done between Joy and Virginia. Some workshops may be placed on-line.
Kim: Self-service vs. staff-assisted improvement team, page 110. It shows both centers and workload of each. LT reviewed the flow and how each center does the process and the time staff spends with each activity. Kim explained the chart noting that the boxes on the 2d page should be all customers and priorities 1, 2, and 3. The chart points out that our emphasis has been on successful performance. This is the 2d step of a 3 step process. Next is, what will we really do to touch more people. What is our philosophy here? What do we want the universal public to get? Right now there is no one-on-one so what can we do for those? They want help from us. Options: hire more staff and use others to help, ignore performance? Other program people do job marketing? Are they proficient to do what center people do (some yes and some no)? Can Joy and Virginia take up some of the slack in their activities with customers? That is probably not the case. The space to do this was also discussed. Jerry noted issues to include technology, room access, different processes, and number of customers. Need a conversation about streamlining and possibly getting new technology. Why are we doing things differently in both centers? What is of value to the customers? Need to include Vickie and Lewis in planning in step 3 and pull others in as required.
Terry emails - signage workgroup, page 112: Might be more focus on non-technical or digital and simply have professional well position signs. Digital is most appropriate where customers gather and they might see a recurring message. It appears Temple needs more directional signage (although customer’s often don’t notice or follow directions.) ACTION: Agreed to remove the WF logo from the Business Services entrance and customers try to enter there when they need to go upstairs.
Document Management, page 120: need approval from the CTCOG on use of digital or automated signatures for payables and personnel action forms. Team has redefined the goals. NOTE: Meeting with CTCOG was successful and they are supportive of the use of digital signatures.
Performance, pages 125-136: We are meeting staff guided measure. Workforce assistance is OK. Incentives were: #1 dislocated worker, #4 WIA, literacy/numeracy #4. Choices is strong, NCP $325k collected to date, SNAP increased allocation to CT is being monitored by TWC and outreach has been increased with 125 more served since March, so we should be OK.
Sue: noted TWC tech assistance visit on May 14.
Next LT Meeting: KWFC May 20-21 - Stephen Covey training for LT, Supervisors and Belton staff.
Meeting Evaluation:
What was good?
Great discussions, great topics, great camaraderie
Thanks everyone for the good grub.
We are all doing a lot and working together to solve problems. Happy to be a member of the LT!
Good, sometimes painful but necessary discussions.
Appreciate everyone’s good work.
Report on improvement teams; career service plan.
What Could We Improve?
Maybe look to expand the meeting time in advance of the LT meeting when we know the agenda is this big.
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