Employability Skills Unlock Opportunity

The White County Chamber set out to create a more dynamic and efficient labor market by strengthening collaboration between employers and educational institutions.

The idea was to create an employer-led initiative to close skills gaps by aligning talent pipelines with the evolving needs of local businesses. After years of focusing on the education system and asking them to address skills shortages, the chamber turned to its employers and told them they were going to have to be part of the solution.

Business leaders stepped up.

“We identified nine key industry sectors and invited leaders from each of those industries to participate in a steering committee,” said Beth Truelove, President of the White County Chamber. “The leaders on the steering committee became the chair of their industry sector. While the steering committee met as a group, we also met with each individual industry sector.”

The key industry sectors included agriculture, hospitality, childcare, logistics, construction, manufacturing, healthcare, professional services and utilities. Months of work with the industry sector groups and steering committee led to greater collaboration with the school system and greater flexibility from employers.

The employers slowed down enough to think about what skills candidates really need to get hired. Many employers had been so focused on industry-specific skills, they were overlooking one of their biggest challenges: employability skills. When the employers came together as a group, they realized they all had similar problems. They were willing to train new hires, but many of their candidates lacked basic employability skills:

• Critical Thinking: Thinking objectively, assessing information accurately and making sound decisions based on the information they receive.
• Communication: Expressing themselves clearly and showcasing the ability to listen to instructions, understand direction and ask clarifying questions.
• Tolerance for Frustration: Showcasing resilience and the ability to persist through setbacks, without frustration, stress or by disengaging altogether.

Truelove said the school system continues to be an outstanding partner. They organized teacher externships for everyone from Pre-K teachers to high school teachers. It helped connect classroom learning to real world activities. It also helped to ensure the teachers feel supported and understand how much the business community values the work they do.

They started with the high school then worked their way down. Then, there were employers interested in working with middle school kids to help teach critical thinking skills. For elementary school students, they implemented the Leader in Me program that helps equip students with skills to successfully navigate a world of constant change. With grant funding, the program is now fully established in one elementary school, with the chamber aiming to expand into the district’s three other elementary schools.

The chamber’s program set out to provide work-based learning opportunities to high school students, and it is now operating at full capacity. Their goal was to engage 20 companies; they exceeded that by gaining interest from 110 companies. The program now serves around 100 students and 62 students from the first cohort have graduated, with roughly 80 percent going on to four-year colleges and the rest entering technical college programs or apprenticeships.

“We went from a handful of kids employed at Walmart to having 62 kids employed across all of our priority industry sectors,” Truelove said. “We went from an average hourly pay of $7.25 an hour to $13.05 an hour because they were able to see an improvement in those skills.”

The chamber is building on its momentum. After working with the Georgia Chamber of Commerce to access detailed Department of Labor data, Truelove found the county's labor force participation rate had climbed from roughly 52 percent to nearly 72 percent. The chamber is also partnering with a solar panel manufacturer on career pathways and with the technical college system to advance a proposed poultry science degree for the region's agricultural industry.

Moving forward, the chamber’s central challenge is scale and how to add the staffing capacity needed to serve more students without losing quality. What began as a steering committee on employability skills has grown into a broader workforce and economic development coalition, drawing deeper engagement from regional workforce partners and major employers.