When Jesus Aguilar came to the United States from Guatemala during 1994, he was almost 20 years old, didn’t have a high school diploma and spoke little English.
He was able to find a job in the assembly department at Cumberland-based Hope Global Inc., which then paid $5.35 per hour.
But Hope Global and other Rhode Island companies say that such employees today with limited education or low-level math and writing skills are benefiting from internal and company-sponsored education programs that are customized for all skill levels.
Aguilar is proof of that, said Dorothy Mattiello, vice president of human resources at Hope Global. Through in-company and subsidized training, Aguilar has earned a GED and now has advanced computer skills.
And he’ll start working toward his associate’s degree in business technology at New England Institute of Technology in March, with the company footing the bill. That will be a $36,000 investment for Hope Global, said Mattiello.
For entry-level positions, like Aguilar’s first job at Hope Global, about 20 percent of U.S. workers read at a lower skill level than their jobs require, according to a November study released by the National Endowment for the Arts.
That study, “To Read or Not to Read,” also says that 49 percent of U.S. employers rank writing in English as a “very important” skill for high school graduates, but 72 percent of the same employers rank high school graduates as being deficient in that basic skill.
And paying for those employees has become a big business in the United States. The study says remedial writing classes cost employers – including municipalities – more than $3.3 billion each year. For Hope Global, more than $200,000 is annually invested into employee education, Mattiello said.
That’s “because the company is its employees,” she said. “If the employee is investing in the company, we want to invest in our employees.”
In Rhode Island, one of the largest-population job markets affected by low-level education standards is certified nursing assistants, said Marguerite McLaughlin, manager of educational development with Quality Partners of Rhode Island, a Providence-based nonprofit that acts as the state’s Nursing Home Quality Improvement Organization.
About a year ago Quality Partners set up an education program – Career Help for the Upwardly Mobile – that’s intended to be an out-of-company training program for the 2,000 CNAs estimated by Quality Partners to be working in Rhode Island without a diploma or GED.
“It’s still one of the entry-level jobs where you don’t need a high school diploma,” said McLaughlin. “As a result, though, what we know is that about 25 percent of the folks who take that job on – and when you multiply that by 16,000 nursing homes in the country – are people who don’t have a high school diploma or a GED.”
One of the partners in that program is the Community College of Rhode Island, which operates a Lifelong Learning department that runs the largest GED test site in Rhode Island, said Sharon Hoffman, the school’s director of lifelong learning. About 70 percent of the school’s adult literacy students read at a fifth-grade level, she said.
And many R.I. Chambers of Commerce offer computer and skills training. At the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce, Paul Ouellette, vice president of community development, said the Chamber will be pushing its training programs next year. He said the Chamber can help smaller companies that might not be able to afford an in-house education program.
“We see the value of offering our members low-cost training in a convenient location,” Ouellette said, adding that the 30 seminars that are offered this year will be almost double what it offered last year.
Low-level reading and writing aren’t the only skills needed in the Rhode Island work force. At Gilbane Building Company, where most of the 2,000 employees – about 400 of which are in Rhode Island – are college graduates, there isn’t a high demand for basic math, reading and writing courses. The construction company instead offers higher-level training through courses put together by seasoned employees.
Those courses – run through the “Gilbane University” program and started in 2000 – are designed and taught in-house, said Wes Cotter, director of communications. There are more than 400 available courses, he said.
“We find people within the company who are smart people, people who have achieved well throughout their career” to teach the courses, he said. For example, if Gilbane wanted to offer a course in negotiations, they’d look to a high-level sales person. “Those are probably good people to be teaching negotiating skills, because they’re good negotiators.”
Gilbane Vice President Larry Bacher has for five years taught a course called “Managing with the Architect,” which he designed to teach students how to manage construction projects.
For Bacher, that management is second nature.
“It’s part of every project,” he said. •
