Rethinking the health care worker pipeline

Opinion: LAEDC senior director of workforce development

January 1, 2020

Jessica Ku Kim, LAEDC Senior Director of Workforce Development (Photo: LAEDC)

How we care for our aging population is one of the most daunting and important challenges we face as family members, as community builders, and as leaders. That’s why Honor, a home care company and the founder of the Honor Care Network, launched SAGE, an annual conference to develop innovative solutions for better aging.

As I participated on their workforce focused panel during SAGE 2019, I quickly learned how many companies are struggling to find home care workers and are turning away clients as a result.

I asked the room if they were connecting with their local America’s Job Centers of California (AJCCs) to recruit and saw no hands—no hands for community colleges, adult education, older worker programs, workforce development boards and others.

Though what I proceeded to share would be nothing new to workforce development practitioners, it was surely new for many of the employers and healthcare professionals in the room.

At first glance, home health care workers typically do not fit the successful employment outcome for these systems. That is because low-wage employment opportunities are not the ideal employment placement for our publicly-funded AJCCs, community colleges, and other workforce and education systems.

These workforce institutions are driven by performance-based funding which calls for job placement into middle-skills occupations with living wages. However, these home care occupations can be an entrance point into the healthcare industry or a flexible employment opportunity to support students.

As I shared with the room, if employers are not looking towards our community colleges as a source of talent then they are missing out on approximately 750,000 individuals in our Los Angeles Basin region. If employers are not partnering with our America’s Job Centers throughout Los Angeles County, they are also missing an opportunity to connect with job seekers in the brick and mortar places they visit to find employment.

I have three recommendations for home health care agencies. First, approach your AJCCs as a partner for immediate employment for those who urgently need to earn while they attend training. Home health care provides flexibility in scheduling and location. This allows an individual to attend their training while gaining work experience.

Second, partner with your local education institutions like your community colleges and adult education institutions to be a partner and provide work experience and work-based learning, provide part-time employment to those students (especially looking to work in the health care industry) and provide your expertise as a part of the college’s industry advisory council.

Lastly, think about your older worker population. The fastest-growing segment of our workforce is the older workforce. Employers should think through how they attract older workers especially since these occupations are not physically strenuous, often provide companionship to individuals, and offer flexibility.

As employers continue to struggle to fill their demand for lower-wage, lower-skill employment opportunities, it is an opportunity for our workforce and education institutions to innovatively strengthen the career readiness of our students and customers.

I encourage both employers and our workforce and education systems to rethink how we can leverage flexible employment opportunities to advance the careers of those we teach, educate, upskill, and support.

Jessica Ku Kim is the Senior Director of Workforce Development for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC).

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.