October 2010
Monthly Archive
October 29, 2010
By Judi Casey
I am thrilled to inform you that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced funding for the Work and Family Researchers Network, a social and virtual connector for interdisciplinary work-family researchers based at the University of Pennsylvania. The new Network builds on the well-established Alfred P. Sloan Work and Family Research Network that has operated at Boston College since 1997. Sloan Foundation support will enable the current Network to transition from a Foundation-funded project to a sustainable organization enhancing future work-family scholarship.
“This represents an exciting new stage for the Work and Family Research Network,” said Kathleen E. Christensen, Program Director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “This is a new and unique model for professional societies that includes an innovative open access web platform that will provide a new level of community in which scholars can share their work and ideas – at all stages of development.”
University of Pennsylvania Sociology Professor Jerry A. Jacobs, a leading work-family scholar, will be the principal investigator and executive officer of the new Network. I will continue to be the director of the new Network via a subcontract to Boston College.
“The challenges of combining work and family confront a large and growing segment of American society,” said Jerry Jacobs, who has conducted research on this topic for fifteen years. “This grant provides an exciting opportunity to bring together scholars and researchers from diverse disciplines, to communicate more effectively, to share ideas and to advance the ability of America’s institutions to address the needs of our nation’s families.”
By relocating to the University of Pennsylvania, the new Network will be able to draw upon the skills and resources of Penn’s renowned Population Studies Center, the Wharton School and more than 20 interdisciplinary work-family scholars located in 8 different schools across the university.
The Work and Family Researchers Network will be comprised of a virtual online community, a membership organization, biennial conferences and two new cohorts of the successful Early Career Scholars Program. An innovative open access web platform will be built with similar benefits to the current Network but at significantly lower costs. This is a natural evolution of the Network’s existing model of staff-produced content to a decentralized, user-based model of community resource generation and dissemination.
Capitalizing on the latest technological advancements, the new website will include an open access repository of academic work-family literature including journal articles, reports and working papers, a ‘news tagging’ system for updates in the field, a Who’s Who database as well as a document download center archiving much of the current Network content.
The membership network will have many of the characteristics of a professional society, but more importantly, members will be the driving force behind populating the site with content as well as contributing dues to ensure sustainability. Over 150 scholars have already signed on as either Founding (senior scholars) or Sponsoring (junior scholars) members.
The synergy between the integrated open access and membership components of the Work and Family Researchers Network will offer an exciting new organizational model for 21st century work-family research and scholarship. The next generation Network will significantly contribute to the vitality of academic work-family scholarship and ensure that high quality work-family content continues to be available and accessible on the World Wide Web into the future.
Jerry Jacobs and I are so grateful to the Sloan Foundation for this opportunity and will be providing you with more information about the new Network over the next few months. During the transition, all the information and resources of the Sloan Network will continue to be available to you.
Judi Casey is currently the Principal Investigator and Director of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network at the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work. She was hired as the Director of the Network in September 2005. Prior to the Network, she worked at the Boston College Center for Work & Family in various roles for the past 15 years.
October 28, 2010
Workplace Options, a global provider of work-life and employee support services, today announced a partnership with Corporate Voices for Working Families, the leading national business membership organization representing the private sector on policy issues involving working families, to conduct research and polling on issues related to the workplace. In conjunction with Public Policy Polling, Workplace Options recently conducted a survey producing troubling results—56 percent of respondents feel that more than a quarter of the nation’s youth does not have the skills they need to be prepared to work, and 21 percent feel that more than half of the nation’s youth does not possess the skill sets to be workforce-ready.
Based on the polling results, Corporate Voices published a blog, entitled “The Public and Employers Agree: Our System is Failing Youth Work Readiness”. The blog provides an in-depth analysis of the survey, which found that the American public agrees with many employers—young people are unprepared to succeed in the 21st century workplace. The results highlight the need for more cooperation among businesses, educational institutions, community leaders and policy makers to ensure success for the incoming workforce and strengthen the future economy.
Whose Role is it to Help Youth Prepare?
More than 70 percent of the general public believes K-12 or higher education plays a key role in preparing youth for work and only three percent believe that employers have the most responsibility to prepare young people for work. The majority of the general public (68 percent) feels that young people with a high school diploma are not prepared to work; whereas 35 percent of the general public expresses the same concern for young people with college degrees.
According to the general public, young people are lacking the following skills:
- Professionalism (37 percent)
- Critical thinking and problem solving skills (19 percent)
- Basic skills (writing, reading, and math) (16 percent)
- Communication skills (written and oral) (15 percent)
- Creativity (5 percent)
“Our nation’s businesses and communities must step up to the plate to help prepare our youth for entering the workplace with the right skills and competencies for tomorrow’s success,” said Dean Debnam, chief executive officer of Workplace Options. “Effective partnerships with businesses, state and local leaders, education systems and communities will help produce a competitive workforce and enable these young people to realize their full potential.”
Lynn Fetterolf, Senior Advisor to the CEO – Workplace Options, Inc., is a member of the Corporate Voices Board of Trustees, which provides oversight and advice in guiding public policy initiatives that affect the workforce. Collectively, they bring together hundreds of years of management-level experience and expertise with public and private sector organizations.
For more information about Corporate Voices for Working Families, visit www.corporatevoices.org. To view full survey results from the poll of workforce readiness, visit http://www.workplaceoptions.com/pdf/polls/corporatevoices.pdf.
Workplace Options helps employees balance their work, family and personal life in order to make their lives healthier, easier and more productive. The company’s world-class Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) and work-life services provide information, resources, referrals and counselling on a variety of issues ranging from dependent care, legal and financial issues to mental health, stress management and addiction.
Drawing from an international network of accredited providers and professionals, Workplace Options is the world’s largest integrated EAP and work-life services provider. Service centres in London, Raleigh. N.C., Toronto and Dublin support more than 23 million employees in 16,000 organisations, across 153 countries. To learn more, visit www.workplaceoptions.com.
Publications, research studies, and toolkits on a host of workforce readiness, workplace flexibility, family economic stability, and work and family balance issues are available online at www.corporatevoices.org.
October 27, 2010
Posted by Rob Jewell under
Uncategorized 1 Comment
By Sara Toland
Corporate Voices for Working Families has been following with great interest the recent media blitz focused directly on our country’s public education system through:
- Target® announcing a contribution of $500 million to launch a nationwide reading initiative
- The announcement that Facebook’s CEO and Founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is donating $100 million to the Newark, New Jersey, public school system.
Why all the focus on the public education system?
Geoffrey Canada, CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams (September 27, 2010) put it best when he said:
“problem [we are the] only remaining superpower in the world and we’re moving toward a third world education system . . . we are not in the top 10 [in education], not even the top 20 . . . need to do something dramatic.”
This direct tie between the quality of education our youth are receiving and our future global economic status is imperative for all citizens to understand. A quality education not only develops young people intellectually but it serves as one of the crucial factors in ensuring achievements through post secondary work, employment and in life. Superintendents from across the country agree as stated in a public manifesto (Washington Post, October 10, 2010):
“ . . .until we fix our schools, we will never fix the nation’s broader economic problems.”
There is a serious education and skills gap in our country. Corporate Voices for Working Families, along with national partners, produced research focused on employers’ perspectives of the education and skills gap and found that employers report that nearly half (42 percent) of high school graduates lack the skills they needed to make a successful transition to the workforce. Even among those recent college graduates, employers say only 24 percent have an “excellent” grasp of basic knowledge and applied skills.
So what can be done to improve the education and talent development pipeline?
Many of the recent education events have spurred conversations nationally and locally on reforms that need to take place within schools, such as a stronger focus on hiring and retaining quality teachers – this debate and potential solutions is highlighted specifically in recent research by McKinsey and Company, an international consulting firm, released in September 2010. Although attracting and retaining talented teachers is essential for the public school system to succeed, Corporate Voices and other national partners have been focusing on ways to improve supports for the future workforce both inside and outside of the K-12 education system through the development of private and public partnerships.
Corporate Voices, as a member of the Ready by 21® National Partnership, believes that all leaders – nonprofit, government, business, foundation – in the community need to ensure that youth have the supports and engagement opportunities available in school and out of school in order to be ready for college, work and life. It is essential that these local leaders develop community-wide vision and goals for youth and families that are focused on ensuring that there are no gaps in services and supports across the cradle to career education and workforce readiness pipeline.
In order to develop these goals and work closely together, the private and public leaders in the community must build partnerships. Corporate Voices recently produced three items focused on building partnerships:
o The most recently released report highlights best practice partnerships between employers and community colleges. This paper explores the innovative collaborations between employers and community colleges, and finds that they can and do play a positive role in increasing workforce readiness skills and college completion rates.
o The other released tool and webinar highlights business and education partnerships in the K-12 system. This tool delves into the benefit of these partnerships, tips for engaging educators and business leaders, and a case study illustrating these partnerships in action.
o Finally, a business engagement menu details the various opportunities for business leaders to get involved and build partnerships with community organizations.
Through our workforce readiness platform and our three main areas of work: Learn and Earn, Ready by 21 and Alternative Pathways for youth, Corporate Voices creates bridges between public and private entities ensuring that all stakeholders are coming together to find solutions that span the education and talent development pipeline from cradle to career to ensure the U.S. remains competitive. As our national leaders focus on education and its impact on the economy, making sure that business and community leaders are partnering to produce a skilled and prepared workforce is essential.
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