Welcome and Introductions
Co-chairs, Tom Hall and Tom Warren, called the meeting to order at 10AM. The chairs asked those present to introduce themselves by name, title and company.
Post Summit Report
Mr. Hall and Mr. Warren distributed official H&T Post Summit Report presented in a color, four-page newsletter format. They reported presenting the newsletter and a report about the Summit to the March 13, 2007 GWIB Board meeting. Six new Maryland Secretaries, including Thomas Perez, DLLR attended that meeting.
(Note - the Post Summit report will be mailed to forty-five steering committee members not attending today's meeting and nearly 175 summit attendees, as well as various State agencies later this week.)
Developing a Plan of Action
The co-chairs reaffirmed that the committee's objective is to write a plan of action based on the issues and recommendations developed in the monograph. The chairs would like to present the plan to the Board at its June 13, 2007 meeting. A key step to developing a written plan is to narrow the list of 14 recommendations to the 3 to 5. The goal of today's committee meeting is to select those 3 to 5 recommendations and organize the writing subcommittees.
Issues Survey
The fourteen recommendations were ranked at the Summit and the results published in the Post Summit Report. At the February meeting committee requested that GWIB conduct a survey of committee members and those attending the summit to rate/rank the 8 workforce issues. The issues were not ranked at the summit. It was noted that one or more recommendations were linked to each issue.
Mr. Reynolds reported that a survey was conducted using an on-line application called SurveyMonkey. As of 8AM, March 27, the survey has generated sixty-three responses. He reported on the general findings (A summary is attached.) Mr. Reynolds noted that the issues survey, as was true of the Summit workgroups, were to provide the committee with guidance on the most critical issues that might be developed in the plan of action. The committee was free to use the data as they wish in the selection and narrowing of recommendations.
Group Discussion to Refine the Issues
Mr. Warren organized the committee into four working groups. He asked each group to discuss the findings of the Summit (see Post Summit Report) and the Issues Survey. Committees were asked to rank the issues. The purpose of the exercise was to narrow the eight issues into no more than four.
As a result of this process the steering committee organized the issues into these four groups:
1-Industry Appeal and Exposure
(the committee combined two issues because of overlap of the recommendations)
2- Seasonal an Immigration
(the committee combined two issues because of overlap of the recommendations)
3-Benefits and Compensation
4-Skills
The Labor Saving Technology and Housing & Transportation issues were tabled. The proposed grouping still encompassed 12 of the 14 recommendations.
Group Discussion to Refine the Recommendations.
Mr. Warren then asked committee members to form a discussion group for each of the four issues. They were asked to review the recommendations associated with the issue(s) and to rank those recommendations. The groups were asked to take into consideration the rankings completed at the Summit. However, the purpose of this exercise was to reduce the twelve remaining recommendations to four or five to be developed in the plan of action.
Each group reported and the committee agreed that the following four recommendations would be included in the plan of action:
- (Market Plan ) Develop an industry-wide marketing plan to improve the industry's image (note: ranked the #2 recommendation at the Summit)
- (Immigration) Support the development of a state liaison office for immigration issues (note: ranked #8 at the summit)
- (Benefits) Help small-business owners to provide competitive benefits (note: ranked #4 at the summit)
- (Partnership) Continue to build partnerships with educational institutions and other workforce service providers (note: ranked #1 at the summit).
It was agreed that three additional recommendations which rated high, would not be included in this initial writing phase:
3 - Improve and publicize benefits and career opportunities
10 - Support tax incentives for ESL and adult basic skills training
11 - Develop and disseminate recruitment plans
Writing Subcommittees
The co-chairs asked that committee members volunteer to serve on one of the four writing subcommittees. A list of those who volunteered at the meeting is noted below. An invitation will be sent to all committee members.
The co-chairs will distributed worksheets and instructions to the subcommittees to help them organize the assignment. The subcommittees were requested to conduct meetings (either face to face or by conference call) before the April 17th committee meetings. |
