by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Lawyers who gripe about their Continuing Legal Education requirements can take heart. They’ll soon have plenty of company.
Professionals like doctors and lawyers have long been required to keep learning on the job to keep their licenses current. That emphasis on continued education is expected to become a trend as a dynamic economy continues to be shaped by rapidly evolving technology, said City Council President Kevin Hyde, also an attorney at Foley & Lardner.
Hyde expects Tuesday’s Regional Workforce Summit to provide employers and their hires with strategies to deal with the dynamics of the modern economy. Dubbed Workforce 2006, the summit is a cooperative venture among the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce, the City, workforce development organization WorkSource and others.
Workforce 2006 will bring regional leaders from government, business, education and community organizations together with national workforce and economy analysts to discuss long-range workforce strategies. Presentations will focus on trends in demographics, globalization, productivity, technology and training. The summit runs from 11:15 a.m.-4:45 p.m. at the downtown Hyatt Regency hotel.
Ideas for the summit began to percolate shortly after Hyde was sworn in (July 1, 2005) as Council president. Hyde saw workforce development as a means to address Jacksonville’s relatively slow-growing personal incomes.
“I wanted to make workforce development my personal theme and really get a handle on where we are and how we want our workforce to grow,” said Hyde. “I wanted to have a good understanding of what we need to do to prepare our workforce to meet the challenges of the evolving economy.”
Early conversations with Jake Schickel, an attorney with Coker, Myers, Schickel, Sorenson & Green and chairman of WorkSource, hatched the idea for a summit. The idea was to bring together stakeholders in Jacksonville’s economy to plot a development strategy, said Schickel.
“With globalization advancing the global economy, we felt like workforce development was something we needed to focus on,” said Schickel. “We wanted to talk about the future demands that are going to be placed on our workforce and put together a strategy to meet those needs.”
The global economy will require a workforce able to respond to near constant changes in workplace technology, said Schickel. It will require employers willing to train and employees willing to learn, he said.
Training will be a central focus of the summit. Presentations will also focus on: developing loyalty in the workplace; designing career paths; and capitalizing on coming challenges in the labor market.
Speakers include: James Womack, president and founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute and Mason Bishop, deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor among others.