Great Lakes Workforce Quality Initiative
Developing High Performance Skills
Skill standards are important for the emerging (in school), existing
(current) and transitional (dislocated) workforce. Standards identify
abilities that businesses require for an individual to operate their
technology and equipment successfully. Companies and individuals
can benchmark themselves against measurable goals and objectives
regardless of a person’s current job status. In addition,
companies can assess the impact of training or re-training programs
using skill standards.
For a business and its workers to be truly competitive, skill standards
must meet several quality criteria. An industry can have skill standards,
but if they do not meet the technology or competitive requirements
of businesses, neither the worker nor the company succeed. The Great
Lakes states recognize that programs operated within their boundaries
must meet these criteria so that they remain competitive in the
global marketplace. This is the first step to building a truly portable,
quality workforce training system.
Programs that issue skill competencies and their support systems
recognized under the Great Lakes Guarantee must meet six critical
quality indicators. This will ensure the quality and portability
of the individual skills endorsed. Guarantee-endorsed skill standard
or support system programs must include:
- Industry-Validated Competency Based Standards: The definition
for skill standards varies from state to state. Standards have
been defined in some states as ‘Industry-identified and
validated lists of competency statements that define the knowledge
and skills needed to enter and advance in a given occupational
or career area.’ In other Great Lakes states, the definition
has been expanded and is more prescriptive. ‘Skill standards
represent specifications of content and performance standards
for critical work functions or activities and the underlying workplace
and academic skills needed for an occupation, occupational cluster
and/or industry.’
- Industry-Recognized Credentials: The credential certifies the
holder has demonstrated competency on a core set of content and
performance standards related to an occupational cluster area.
Serving as a signal of skill achievement at industry-benchmarked
levels, skill certificates may assist individuals in finding employment
within their community, state, or elsewhere in the nation.
- Performance Assessment Strategies and Criteria: A process/framework
for performance assessment and implementation that includes a
specification of the criteria used to judge successful performance
of a work activity or the demonstration of a skill.
- Continued Stakeholder Endorsement and Involvement: Endorsement
of occupational skill standards by stakeholders designed to help
companies achieve world class performance through improved business
practices, a highly skilled workforce, and the use of appropriate
technology.
A System of Quality Improvement: A system for an on-going or scheduled
review and evaluation of all aspects of skill standards. This
would include an industry review of the current applicability
of the skill standards, an on-going refreshment and updating of
credentialing and assessment instruments, documentation, and the
use of continuous improvement processes in implementing the skill
standards in state administered programs.
- Career Development Planning: Career development is the process
by which an individual develops and refines and career- identity,
work maturity and the ability to plan. It represents all the career-related
choices and competencies through which every person must pass
and is envisioned as a lifelong process through which individuals
come to understand themselves as they relate to the world of work
and their role in it.
Career guidance is intended to assist individuals
in managing their career development and is a systemic program
of counselor-coordinated information and experiences. It consists
of support services to help students and individuals gain understanding
of their social, intellectual, and maturity levels; become knowledgeable
about educational, occupational, and social opportunities; learn
decision-making and planning skills; and combine these insights
into personal plans of action.
Career counseling is primarily the communication that
takes place between counseling professionals and their clients
concerning issues of preferences, competency, achievement, and
the array of factors that facilitate or inhibit career planning.
This may include but is greater than job counseling.
Career education emphasizes the teaching/learning
process in career planning and decision making, enabling individuals
to access information and plan their courses of action independently.
The process will provide a guarantee that endorsed programs meet
these criteria. States and communities can use the Guarantee to
market themselves and their skilled workforce by using it as a business
attraction tool. Workers who hold credentials under the Guarantee
will have the ability to market themselves across the Great Lakes
region so that they can move to areas where there are more opportunities
for skilled employment.
Toward this end, the Great Lakes states will create a regional
job development system that helps link workers and businesses throughout
the region. Each state currently has a world-wide web based job
link system that identifies employment opportunities within the
states. The states will link these pages together as a first step
toward creating an integrated, regional job network system.
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