At the Board Meeting of the Economic Development Coalition in January, Executive Director Doug McAllister lobbed out a new, bold initiative: The Future of Work. Addressing the need to anticipate and get ahead of the workforce needs of our current and future employers or lose them, The Future of Work is designed to be an innovative, world-class effort to set our region up to be the best region in California to do business in California. It will be held April 18th at the MSJC Temecula Valley campus.
He explained: “In today’s world, industries and businesses have a decent idea of what the workforce needs to look like. However, the training of that workforce typically lags behind the need. Due to the nature of our current educational model coupled with the incredible rate of change in what employers need, there is frustration on both sides. As a result, by the time the new graduates are ready to be hired, either the need has evaporated, or the employers have gone somewhere else where the employees they need already exist.
McAllister’s plan is to develop a strategic plan that educators and employers use to stay ahead of the game. As such, The Future of Work will be a massive work group developing quantifiable outcomes, not just another talking club. “I will guarantee you have never seen anything like this in our region,” he said. “We are working to overcome the ‘Lag’ that is associated with this kind of planning—because we can’t assume that work today will look anything like what work will be like in the future.”
Among the initiative’s stakeholders are the region’s major and small businesses, all five of the region’s cities, Riverside County and at least four major colleges and universities. “If we don’t know what the future of work looks like,” McAllister said, “we’re planning for yesterday.” This new kind of planning could have an impact on everything from zoning to college courses; from general city planning to attracting developers.
Next, the delegates will meet with futurist Nancy Giordano, described as one of the top female futurists in the nation. Her job at this conference is to project into the future by taking all the data and developing what the future of work will look like here, in this region. At the end of the day, the taskforce will build a substantive plan based on the raw data and designed to meet the future needs of employers, employees and education.
This event will sell out, according to McAllister. The first 400 attendees will be seated. Individual tickets are on sale for $75 per person. Please see the website for more information: www.edcswca.com or call 951-694-9800 to register.