If you look at the history of business’ role in education, employers have typically taken a support role in schools – they acknowledge that educators are the experts and look to them for guidance as to how they can support the education process. Now; however, given the intense and immediate impact of the Great Resignation, employers are becoming more vocal about their needs and more proactive about building education relationships, as well as the shape of those partnerships.

One surprising example is found in an article titled, “Houston Is So Short Of Construction Help, Developers Are Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands” published by BizNow in Houston. The article begins:

Horizon International Group had just nabbed the contract and city tax breaks to develop the W Hotel, a 300-odd-room luxury hotel set to sit atop the Partnership Tower in downtown Houston, in early March 2020. A week later, pandemic lockdowns ground the construction industry to a screeching halt, setting off ongoing labor shortages and project delays that have since been compounded by layoffs, the Great Resignation and severe materials shortages.

When the W Hotel project picks back up later this year for Horizon, it will mark more than two years of labor and materials difficulties that have driven up costs and delayed projects for the entire American construction industry. For Horizon, specifically, the travails of the past 24 months have boosted project costs by tens of millions of dollars and driven the firm to consider a unique solution — creating its own trade school to train construction laborers.

The construction trades have been hit particularly hard by the workforce shortage:

What is sure is that shortages are at crisis levels. Data from the Associated Builders and Contractors last month showed the country needs 650,000 more construction workers this year, and ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu said in a release that the workforce shortage is the most pressing national issue for the industry.

“ABC’s 2022 workforce shortage analysis sends a message loud and clear: The construction industry desperately needs qualified, skilled craft professionals to build America,” ABC President and CEO Michael Bellaman said.

Facing a desperate need for workers in order to fulfill their contracts, Horizon jumped with both feet into opening their own school.

To gain better-trained workers, Kashani has an idea in mind: He’s building a trade school to create them.

Horizon Workforce Development School, a new school in the former Peck Elementary School in Houston’s Third Ward, will train construction managers. Instructors, Kashani said, are not trained teachers; instead, the nine-month program requires instructors have $15M worth of project experience. The program, which will initially be free until Kashani can get successful alumni to encourage outside funding, will cost the company about $600K for 75 students. The school is underway and set to open on an undetermined date.

“If you have a shortage of tomatoes, what do you do?” Kashani said. “Create a tomato farm. If it’s cold and freezing, what do you do? Build a greenhouse. Our idea is to come up with solutions [for the labor shortage].”

To Sum Up

The workforce situation was so dire that a company launched its own school with instructors straight out of industry. While there are some similar models, such as the apprenticeship programs led by various trade unions, this may be the first time I’ve heard of a company bypassing its education relationships and taking matters entirely into their own hands. As we go forward, I would expect to see many more such bold actions on the part of employers as they wrestle with this intractable problem.

Our recommendation?

Take that energy and that drive and try to harness it. Rather than just directing your employers’ efforts into your own plans, sit down and have conversations about what they want to accomplish and how you can help them reach their goals together. Don’t allow yourself to be constrained by how things have been done in the past; break the rules and look at new models for collaboration. That approach will allow you to significantly increase opportunities for your students and resources for your program, rather than have that energy be directed outside the school.

Brett Pawlowski is Executive Vice President of the National Center for College and Career (NC3T)
(www.nc3t.com). NC3T provides planning, coaching, technical assistance, and tools. These strategies help community-based leadership teams plan and implement their college-career pathway systems and strengthen employer connections with education.