LEADERSHIP TEAM MEETING NOTES – January 15, 2014
In Attendance: Lewis Boren, Sue Bailey, Linda Angel, Susan Kamas, Vivian Naramore, Jerry Haisler, Vickie Gideon, Horace Dicks,Kimberly Patterson, Debbie Gommert, Ben Lopez,Terry Gearhart, Gerry Fluharty, and Roy Highsmith.
Review of Last Meeting Notes:
Staff Recognition: is complete and out to staff. Several kudos have already been published. Question was raised as to whether or not to place them in the board book. Main source right now for the book is the customer comment card. Jerry and Linda will discuss. So far feedback is good. No brags yet.
EUC: ended December 31. Further congressional action on this is not known, but unlikely.
Workforce Update:
Appropriations, Page 5: shows available funds for the rest of this fiscal year. WIA appropriations do not start until in July, 2014. Adult is stable, Dislocated Worker is down from last year. Youth is up a bit. The Governor’s set-aside is lower and may affect incentive awards.
Conference of Mayors WF Development Council is next week with many “new faces” for WF Directors..
Chamber of Commerce (COC) Visit: The COC from Clarksville, TN, the military community similar to Killeen next to Ft Campbell KY, will visit Killeen in late January. Lewis or Kim will attend with Susan at a meeting in the Killeen center. Purpose: to understand and replicate how we work with Ft. Hood.
Temple East Side Revitalization Committee, Pages 7 & 8:Committee wants to bring a core group to meet about support for education, especially in the area of Clear Creek Town Homes and Waymon Manor, both areas having high truancy and other problems. Other discussions involved mobile tutoring, school-to-work transition (possibly TISD holding career planning with elementary students), and a job fair. The job fair was tabled in favor of existing job fairs. They wanted to know our certified training programs for the area. We provided them with our demand occupations list and cross walk to our certified WIA programs that support it.
Soldier for Life, Pages 9-14: is a nationwide project with stakeholders meeting in military communities. There are 35 people in the committee here. The recent local meeting discussed why soldiers have a hard time becoming employed after leaving the service. Could an App or job portal be designed for this? Page 14 shows the top 10 unemployed Military Occupation Specialties (MOS).
TWC Personnel Changes: Susan discussed the changes at TWC including Louis Ledeaux and John Moore, TWC attorney.
Workforce Center Customer Tracking (WCCT):A presentation was made after several LT members and WF Supervisors made a field trip to WF in San Antonio to see this system in practice. There were some questions raised and not consensus on how to proceed. Wendy and Tom are ready to implement in the centers.Lewis discussed his meetings with Killeen staff. In the process of getting consensus, selected staff met, were briefed, questioned answered. Generally the feeling was that WCCT could be implemented in a positive way. CHOICES would have the most impact and they believe it can be done as well. One of the problems to be worked out is the requirement for the system to be constantly refreshed in order for it to be current. It was mentioned that the administrative specialists can give support to workforce specialists in this area as they also monitor it. Per Vickie’s comment, the same kind of discussion is in process in Temple and will be finished soon. It was emphasized that the system is not to be used as a “gotcha” for staff. The intent is to have a consistent method to collect data on customer contact and access. Roll-out should be office by office and not all at once. Terry indicated that hardware-wise we are in good shape but access points for Vets needs to be discussed. ACTION: Debbie will be the lead for the plan for implementation. Consideration should be given for how to implement including an incremental approach by office or service area. It has to make sense and staff has to understand the system and the positive aspects. Lewis is to discuss the Vet access point with Gene.
TWC WD Letter on TAA: Kim reported about a recent TWC WD Letter wherein TWC requiresthat only state staff will key TAA info into the system. This will be monitored by TWC. Kim needs names of persons doing this now. Horace indicated that TAA dollars are available for training but none for the case management of TAA participants. He will re-check this as we are looking at another TAA event with ALCOA. He also thought that a few other workforce areas have charged off case management time.
UI Claims for Soldiers Leaving the Service: There was a short discussion about soldiers applying for UI benefits after leaving the service. ACTION: Kim will see if we can get the lengths of time (duration of claim) from TWC for Vets filing for UI. Linda will see about getting number of UI claims by installation.
Walmart is giving Good-Will $5M to conduct training for vets in Waco, Temple, and Belton.
File Management System Update: Vivian reported that administrator and library training was last week. They are back to restructuring the hierarchy.
Windows 7:After the Windows 7 roll-out there will be staff training. We need to identify staff “champions” in order to put a positive outlook on it. She indicated that phased training would start 24 January.
NEG and OJT Grants:
Fort Hood NEG: Roy reported that the Policy (pages 21-24) is ready to be published as a stand-alone policy. The LT made several change recommendations which will be incorporated prior to release next week. Marketing has expanded to other areas at Ft Hood that laid-off relative to the loss of civil service to include contractors and non-appropriated fund employees. Outreach is continuing using UI data and lists from other sources. A marketing firm is also assisting with outreach. The TWIST code came in but was impacted by the recent TWC recall of the TWIST matrix, therefore tracking is being done by each office pending resolution of the matrix issue. DINTS will be necessary to address this issue. TWC is aware and supports that. Staffing has been assigned to the grant. We would like for customers to given testimonials concerning the services received. ACTION: Sue and Kim to query TWC as to the eligibility of soldiers who are leaving the service. LT consensus is that they are not but the question needs to be asked.
OJT Grant: Roy reported that the OJT Policy (pages 16-20) is ready to be published to be incorporated into the current WSCT Training Policy. The LT made some change recommendations that will be incorporated prior to release next week. Kim is working on the new forms to be used for OJT.
WSCT Staff Training Events, pages 25-27:
The list for 2013 was extensive. ACTION: Debbie to find out how many attended these sessions.
Future Staff Training Events:Per staff feedback from our SEE and Best Companies surveys, Debbie will do a staff survey to determine what new training staff would like to have or training they want repeated in 2014.Vivian indicated that there is a possible resource for training at a web site she is familiar with that has hundreds of training events that would cost a monthly fee (Lydia.com) that could be much cheaper than having TWC come here. It is also available 24/7. The question was raised as to whether or not staff would avail themselves of this opportunity on their own. Jerry indicated that we have a training budget and we can expand that if necessary based on survey results and LT evaluation and recommendations. Jerry wants to see what comes out of the survey before we take further action on this.
Greg Newton Training, page 28-58: is scheduled for February 12 and 13. The LT discussed who would be invited to each session. Pages 29-58 have input concerning our workshops for WSCT. Do we use workshops in lieu of one-on-one discussions with customers? Many are targeted to specific audiences. Could they be all on-line in the future? Jerry will package this to send to Greg. The training should include a broad spectrum of staff and workforce partners such as vets and BRC, especially for the Workshop session. This is an excellent training opportunity for staff.ACTION: Debbie to get schedule out to WF Administrators, Supervisors and partners. Jerry will contact Gene Hall and Marcus Carr about the workshop session.
Strength Training for Staff: will be held sometime in 2014. Insights needs to be done first, then the Strengths training. ACTION: Debbie is working on a plan and report to LT as that develops.
Performance (Pages 59-78): Employment engagement all good. Staff guided not good; many factors affect this. We have been providing info to TWC about possible impact by Vet staff. Adam Leonard evaluating to see if this has a significant negative impact. PIT meeting will focus on this. We need to check with areas doing well in this measure and how they do it. We could possibly check with HOT WF as they are meeting this and are also #1 in CHOICES and # 2 in training placements. Also check with TWC on how they would advise us to do better but we should wait until Adam responds. Child care is doing well and the NCP phone survey shows that some are working but not making payments. We are successful in helping them find work, however.
Next LT Meeting:February 20, 2014, KWFC, 8:30 A.M.
Meeting Evaluation:
What was good?
Performance
Presentation of performance data was slow and clear enough to understand; not fragmented as is so often the case.
Good quick flow to the meeting
Susan’s report, good food
Good discussions
Updates, good stuff
Always enjoy these meetings-truly! It’s good to stay updated on happenings.
Everything as usual
What Could We Improve?
Got a little slow for me toward the end. Some probably can’t be helped. Good rule of thumb-ELMO.
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