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The following article appeared in the December 2003 edition of the Illinois Business Journal

Q&A with Dr. Richard Judy, PhD
Workforce Associates Inc.

This edition’s Q&A is with Richard Judy, PhD, who together with Jane Lommel, PhD (his partner in the firm Workforce Associates, Inc.) conducted the first intensive study of all facets of the workforce spanning Bond, Madison, St. Clair, Washington, Randolph, Clinton and Monroe counties in southwestern Illinois.The former director of the Hudson Institute, Judy earned his doctoral degree at the Harvard School of Economics and taught economics at the University of Toronto. He can be reached at wf21@workforceassociates.com

IBJ: What led your company to produce a study a southwestern Illinois’ workforce?

Judy: In 1999, I gave a presentation to the Illinois Workforce Board, which had recently been reconfigured due to the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. After the meeting, one of the executive directors of WIA 15 (the five–county area surrounding Peoria) asked if we’d ever considered doing this type workforce study at a local level…so that was the first one we did in 2002, and it was funded by the Illinois Department of Employment Security. I didn’t really understand it at the time, but the U.S. Department of Labor was pushing something called a community audit. It turned out that what we did was an expanded version of that. I call them “community audits on steroids,” because they’re much broader and look more into the local economies, focusing on education as well as employment. This type of study, or audit, compares workforce education to realities in the system so we can figure out where the gaps might be.

IBJ: In your recent workforce study of the two county area including Madison and Bond counties and the five county area encompassing St. Clair, Clinton, Washington, Randolph and Monroe counties, what stood out as one of southwestern Illinois weaknesses?

Judy: First, let me say that these counties’ workforce investment boards are fairly new; they’re the successors to what were known as private industry councils - they got a new name with the passage of the Workforce Investment Act five years ago. That being said, these WIBs haven’t yet studied themselves and created a solid identity, and that’s true of many such entities across the country. It is detriment to self-study.

The WIA tries to cobble together a unified system from a number of disparate pieces, and it’s some heroic stitching. Each has its own funding source, and it’s very confusing to the employer and workers seeking assistance – it’s confusing to those looking in from the outside.

Our study of these countries in southwestern Illinois revealed that these workforce investment boards – and the services they oversee – do not market themselves well to the public. Many of the good people who work in this system have come up through the unemployment system and have a social worker mentality; that’s not all bad when it comes to serving the customer. But they’re not experienced in a fee-based system, like a for-profit business is. They receive their money through an appropriation means, via federal and state funding by way of some governmental stream. It is not fee-for-service. These (program administrators) get their funding irrespective of what their clients out there think. There’s nothing particularly unusual about that; it’s how government works. It’s a passive mind set that says, “Our clients will come to us.”

What we’re saying in our study – and what we’re urging – is that the program administrators need to refocus. But it’s a tough slog.

IBJ: Who are today’s “clients” of the workforce training/employment system? Do program administrators understand exactly who the client is?

Judy: That’s another sticking point we found in doing our research. Fortunately, on a federal level, the U.S. Department of Labor has redefined its party line. The current administration is telling the entire workforce development system that it needs to be reinforcing itself on the employers as the clients, not the individual job seekers.

To forge the right kind of workforce and to supply employers with what and who they need to stay competitive is the DOL’s message to the workforce program administrators. The DOL is saying, “You’ve got to do more than just send a list around to the employers in your area, showing them what you can give them. You’ve got to go out there, meet with these employers one-on-one and ask them what they need and how you should customize your resources to meet their needs.”

Essentially right now, the workforce system here (and in many other parts of the country) are passive. They need to be asking Mr. Employer, “What do you need to be competitive in your markets, what kind of skills/workforce do you need and how can we help you find, attract and maintain the kind of talent you’re looking for?” That’s the problem – workforce programs need to be much more aggressive.

IBJ: What’s the first step these workforce investment boards and the program administrators they work with can take to become more proactive, profitable and useful to the companies who are their true clients?

Judy: I think the first step - better marketing themselves and their services – has to start with leadership, meaning the membership on the local workforce investment board itself. The workforce board is required to have a majority of private sector employers, and then it’s filled out with other stakeholders such as community college corporate trainers. The private employers out there need to say, “Look, we understand this system and we want it (ours) to be much more proactive - we need to be going out and assessing the needs of all sizes of employers, because those are the ones from which the future economy will emerge. If the private members of the workforce board sa