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Beyond Job Training
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Business New Haven
11/27/2000
By: Fiona Phelan
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Louis Hendrix earned his high-school equivalency diploma at the age of 71. Virginia Mancine was 69 when she received her GED. It's remarkable and commendable that these two New Haveners felt compelled to achieve that far down the path of life.
What's more impressive is that they earned those diplomas on company time with company support.
What kind of company would do that? One with a commitment to its employees. A company called Applied Engineering Products Inc.
Plenty of businesses offer workforce-development programs, but what makes Applied Engineering Products' program unusual is that it helps employees learn basic, essential skills such as writing, math, reading, language proficiency and computer literacy. AEP believes in helping its employees gain these basic skills so they can move ahead at work - and in life.
AEP began its workforce-development program back in 1983 when the company relocated to New Haven. In 1994, the company formalized its program and began offering courses that allow employees to earn a high-school equivalency diploma; learn English as a second language; promote computer literacy; provide one-on-one tutoring, educational planning, mentoring; and paid college tuition.
The company also helps its employees learn life-management skills such as opening a checking account, setting life goals, communications, time management, problem solving, functioning as part of a team and civic empowerment.
In addition to these benefits, the company also offers traditional benefits such as a 401(k) plan, free medical insurance, an employee assistance program, flex time, paid tuition, bus tokens and much more.
Why bother? Because the company sees the results. The results, says AEP Training and Education Manager Nick Lavorato, are workforce retention, self-confidence among employees, improved morale, increased motivation, employee contributions to process and procedural improvements, greater internal committee participation, enhanced interdepartmental communication and increased company recognition.
“Our philosophy is that learning is lifelong,” explains Lavorato. “We constantly keep the educational stimulus in front of our employees and this helps them to motivate themselves.”
The privately-owned company maintains a library stocked with books, daily newspapers, subscriptions to more than 20 industry and general-interest magazines, notes Lavorato. The employees are free to take advantage of what the library and AEP has to offer.
The 27-year-old company, located on John Murphy Drive, makes coaxial cable and connectors used in the electronics, telecommunications and aviation industries. According to Lavorato, 40 percent of the company's employees come from local neighborhoods. Many of them walk to work from home. Most of them stay with the company until retirement or they move away. Employee turnover is negligible, says Lavorato.
Approximately 60 percent of the company's 150 employees are currently enrolled in one or more of the eight classes currently being offered, says Lavorato. The classes meet an average of three hours per week. Production workers have the opportunity to enroll for up to 117 hours a year of continuing education.
“We encourage our employees to stretch and to grow - both professionally and personally,” says Lavorato. “We give them a choice to self motivate.”
Lavorato, or a hired teacher, teaches the classes. During each session, the company is careful to avoid having more than one employee from a department in each class. In this way, no one department is left short-handed while a worker learns a new skill. Besides reducing staffing conflicts, this arrangement also allows employees to interact with workers from other departments and learn about what other areas of the company are working on and share ideas.
“Investing in the people who make us what we are fosters an attitude that pays back to the company as well,” notes Lavorato. “Employees recognize that they are valued as human beings first, and employees second.”
In 1999, the National Association of Manufacturers released results of a study that found:
On average, employers reported that they had to interview six applicants to find one qualified employee;
One-quarter of the companies surveyed said they could not improve product quality because employees were not capable of learning appropriate skills;
About 30 percent of respondents complained of being unable to install modern work systems because employees could not learn new skills;
And 23 percent of the adult U.S. population functions at the lowest literacy level (these people have a difficult time filling out a job application or finding the pertinent information on a bus schedule).
In order to develop an effective workforce development program, a company must: assess what's not working in the organization and decide where the business needs to go; assess the firm's learning environment - are learning opportunities made available? Do managers support time off for learning?; be ready to take the steps needed to make it happen - and make it safe for employees to learn.
Once a company has made that assessment, it needs to develop an action plan. This plan, notes Lavorato, needs to include a customized education curriculum that fits the needs of the company; identifies talent within and outside the organization that can build the intellectual and skill capacity of the workforce; develops monitoring and tracking mechanisms to measure performance and flags for fine-tuning; gets involved in the community - finding out what future workers look like and what they may need now to work for your company later.
Applied Engineering Products adheres to those principals by not only offering in-house education programs, but also by providing on-the-job-training for new employees as well as sponsoring a generic manufacturing training program for unemployed and underemployed youth in conjunction with Gateway Community College. To date, that program has produced 40 graduates who have found employment in local manufacturing industries.
The company also supports, and Lavorato chairs, the New Haven Public Education Fund, which seeks to: demand high achievement in learning, teaching and child development; hold itself, the community and the schools accountable for sustained results; listen to and inform the community about critical issues and effective strategies in public education; empower parents to become more involved at every level of their children's education; supports teachers and administrators in achieving higher standards for themselves and their students; and lead multi-partner collaborations to champion systemic reform.
“Workforce development contributes to developing a highly motivated, high-performance workforce,” says Lavorato. “AEP's investment in these areas would have paid back a fraction - at best - of the benefits we've realized.”
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