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President’s Message – Passport Credentialing Program Going Gangbusters

WCA is truly experiencing a breakout year for new candidates entering our Passport credentialing program!

As of early May, we have issued Passports to over 750 new candidates. In addition, we have already awarded 336 credentials to students and professional woodworkers.

I believe the video we produced with AWFS and AWI last year has really helped our industry attract young people into the woodworking profession and made parents aware of all the viable careers in the secondary wood processing industry.

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play-sharp-fill

Speaking of young woodworkers, the SkillsUSA National Cabinetmaking competition is just around the corner. It will be held June 20-24 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, GA. The AWI and WCA are among the proud partners of this annual event. If you have a chance to attend, so so. I guarantee that you will be totally amazed by the skills demonstrated by students of all levels.

Speaking of the Georgia World Congress Center, IWF 2022 is just around the corner. WCA Board Member Bruce Spitz and I will present a three-hour nuts-and-bolts workshop focused on helping woodworking companies develop in-house training programs.

The session, “Building a Training Program for Your Workers,” will be led by Scott Nelson, president of the WCA, and Bruce Spitz, former owner of Classic Millwork & Products and a member of the WCA Board of Directors. It is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Aug. 25 at the Georgia World Congress Center.

We’ll also be on hand at the WCA’s booth #10946. Stop by and learn more about our nationally-recognized Passport credentialing system, Woodworking Skill Standards, and opportunities to help us develop and grow a skilled woodworking workforce.

I hope to see you there!

Scott Nelson
President
Woodwork Career Alliance of North America
snelsonwca@gmail.com

WCA partners with Woodworking Network on crucial workforce study

Survey results to be presented at 2021 Executive Briefing Conference.

Woodworking Network and the Woodwork Career Alliance of North America (WCA) have joined forces to conduct a ground-breaking survey exploring the woodworking industry’s top workforce development issues.

The main objectives of this benchmark study are three-fold:

  1. To assess the U.S. and Canadian woodworking industries’ challenge to find skilled production employees now and in the short-term future.
  2. To gain insights into how woodworking companies currently train their production employees.
  3. To determine what resources and programs the WCA might provide to help woodworking companies better recruit, train and retain skilled production employees.

“The challenge to hire workers and develop their skills is anything but new,” said Harry Urban, publisher of Woodworking Network. “We hope this study will not only help us better understand the extent of the woodworking industry’s skills gap but even more importantly, shed light on what types of things individual companies and the industry at large might do to close that gap.”

“We greatly appreciate the opportunity to partner with Woodworking Network on this very important research project,” said Scott Nelson, president of the WCA. “We developed woodworking skill standards and a credentialing program to provide pathways for people to pursue and grow woodworking careers. The responses to this survey will help WCA finetune current programs and develop new ones that will better suit the needs of the North American woodworking industry.”

Highlights of the study’s results will be presented by Patrick Molzahn, director of the cabinetmaking program of Madison Area Technical College during the Executive Briefing Conference, Sept. 8-10, at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colo. The results will also be published in FDMC magazine and online at WoodworkingNetwork.com and WoodworkCareer.org.

The organizers strongly encourage all owners and managers of secondary wood product manufacturing companies to invest 10 minutes of their time to take the survey. All respondents will qualify for either or both of these discounts:

Take the Survey

 

Closing the Skills Gap: A Call to Action

Kent Gilchrist is not an evangelist; he’s a woodworker. Still he is passionate about woodworking education and training and fervent in his belief that all sectors of the industry must come together to meet the long-standing challenge of developing and growing a skilled work force.

Gilchrist, owner of Fremont Interiors of Indianapolis, has been active in woodworking education and workforce development with the Architectural Woodwork Institute (AWI) for more than two decades, including serving as president of the AWI Education Foundation. For the past 10 years he has also served as chairman of AWI’s SkillsUSA Committee and is technical chair of the national SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking competition. In addition to his role as a member of the Woodwork Career Alliance’s (WCA) Board of Directors, Gilchrist recently was appointed director of business and workforce development by the WCA. In this latter capacity, Gilchrist is charged with rallying industry participation in the Skilled Labor and Workforce Development Coalition, a new initiative backed by the WCA.

At the AWFS Fair in Las Vegas, Gilchrist will take to the main stage of the show floor to deliver a special presentation to woodworking executives, “Workforce Crisis – Job One,” 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. Wednesday, July 19. The free session will explore the root causes of the skilled labor shortage; where to find woodworking candidates; and how to educate, train and retain current employees.

Gilchrist also will discuss the Skilled Labor and Workforce Development Coalition and how industry associations, manufacturers and suppliers can get involved to become part of the solution. These topics will carry over in one-on-one conversations with woodworkers, suppliers and educators throughout the four-day show.

Connecting the Dots
“We all know that we have a skills gap problem. That conversation has been worn out,” Gilchrist said. “What I plan to talk about at the show is our need to discover why we have a problem and realize that it’s different from state by state and region by region. To combat the problem we need to research where the career and technical education schools are, where the employees are and what jobs are available to build a better database of information and build better lines of communication. We haven’t done a very good job of communicating when it comes to discussing the skilled labor shortage with one another. You can talk to two shop owners who have problems finding help but they might be two very different problems. One might need a skilled bench person and the other might be looking for a CNC operator. That makes a significant difference in where you can find that kind of worker.

“We need more members of our industry to be aware, utilize and support their local high school and postsecondary schools, as well as job training and apprenticeship programs,” Gilchrist continued. “We also need to continue to get the word out about the WCA’s Woodworking Skill Standards and how woodworking companies can integrate them into their training programs.”

Gilchrist added that it’s also important for industry to work together to promote woodworking as a viable career opportunity not only to students but their parents. “Our industry has long suffered from a negative image as being backward and dead end. We need to get the word out about the new technologies that we are using on our shop floors and how today’s woodworkers can advance their careers and grow their incomes by increasing their skills.”

Now is the time to work toward enacting positive change, Gilchrist said.

“We need to put the days of moaning about not being able find good help behind us and start addressing the problem head on,” Gilchrist said. “Unless people in this industry step up and get involved it’s not going to change.”