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Source: Nashville Post
Author: Nicolle S. Praino
Date: August 9, 2024
Companies are collaborating to bring in locals with different experiences to boost the workforce
“Nashville is special.”
That phrase seems to have become a shared belief in the companies that are engaging local people and organizations in technology workforce development.
“We’re big, and getting bigger, but I think we still are working very closely together as a community in support of tech,” says Glenn Allison, vice president of IT applications at Tractor Supply Company.
It truly spans all industries — from the financial sector, with companies that recently moved to Middle Tennessee, like AllianceBernstein, to the health care giants that have long been established here, such as HCA Healthcare.
“If we really want to connect with our mission and change and transform health care, you have to bring in entrepreneurs,” says Brant Beard, HCA’s assistant vice president of talent engagement and development. “If Nashville wasn’t such an entrepreneur area, we would suffer because of that.”
Even companies that are not the type one would expect to focus on tech advancement are getting into the game. That includes retail-based businesses like Tractor Supply, which also encompasses another big Tennessee industry — agriculture. And then there are the kind of companies you would expect, like T-Mobile.
“As all of these different organizations have moved into Nashville, we take the approach that a rising tide floats all boats,” says Allie Feiner, AllianceBernstein’s vice president of global technology and operations. “We look at how we can build out the talent economy and fill the needs because all of these organizations have different needs and especially for technical talent.”
Partners in education
Kiesha King, T-mobile senior national education administrator, says that means recognizing how companies can contribute to the employment ecosystem by establishing partnerships in a community.
“When we think about diversifying the workforce,” she says, “it’s important that we think of it from a rural area perspective; we think of it from an HBCU perspective; we think about it from a community college perspective. It’s not just one angle. It’s a very dynamic solution that we all have a responsibility to be a part of.”
Leveraging the company’s 5G network, King says those partnerships with universities, in particular, allow students to have experience working on new types of projects for varying industries, from technology’s internet of things and autonomous driving vehicles to architecture or agriculture solutions.
“The experience is what then drives the innovation, what then drives that future pipeline,” King says. “When we sit at the table with university leaders, the sky’s the limit.”
Discussions on both the industry and education sides reiterate the need for collaboration from all levels in businesses and education to train the growing workforce.
“Our ability to stay in line, through having advisory boards and the like, really sets us up to provide our graduates with the best opportunity for not just a job but career with a potential employer,” Michael Torrence, president of Motlow State Community College, says.
One of the college’s biggest partners is Nissan, he says. They are working to train students for jobs and current employees looking to learn more skills.
“Employers are like, ‘We don’t need them to go through a 60-week program. We need them to go through a four-day or a 10-day program ... come back and train their colleagues. And then, we all get that knowledge so that we can move forward.’ Because that’s how quickly the industry is moving.”
He says that’s led to training opportunities where the college can generate income by training industry partners and their workers online, too.
“We added the world’s three largest robotic manufacturers under one roof, which was unheard of,” Torrence says.
These international companies are ABB, Yaskawa Motoman and FANUC. Since then, the college has added more than 120 partners in mechatronics and robotics, including Mitsubishi, Honda and Mercedes-Benz. Torrence says Motlow is training students on how technology is evolving in manufacturing and the automotive space. The college is opening an 8,000-square-foot electric vehicle addition to its McMinnville campus. Torrence says he hopes that will lead to studies not just on the EV alone but also on energy savings and AI.
Glenn Allison at Tractor Supply says the company partners with Nashville State Community College, where students can work on Tractor Supply projects while still in school, which benefits the organization as it looks to recruit talent from home.
“The demand for technical skills has continued to increase, and so workforce development is really important because it creates that pipeline of talent coming into the organization,” Allison says. “We’ve had great success just working with the students, giving them some training, and then hands on, applying what they’re learning.”
The company hosts hackathons in Nashville, where students form teams to solve problems the business presents and create proof of concept. One idea has even led to the company’s tech endeavor, Tractor Vision.
“We’re getting insights into customer traffic. We’re getting dwell notifications if a customer needs assistance in the side lot.
That started as a hackathon project several years ago,” Allison says. “Later we saw there was value in taking that capability out to the team and just further investing in it in-house.”
In the same spirit, King mentions how T-Mobile’s partnership with Tennessee State University helps the students work with new technologies before they get a full-time job, helping to create perpetual innovation when they enter the business world.
“Now you have this vast group of scholars at TSU that are pursuing these innovative careers, leveraging our network,” King says. “Not only do we want them to be innovators, we want them to have the expectation that the businesses that they’re working with and collaborating with in their future careers are going to want to innovate as well.”
T-Mobile’s first Customer Experience Unconventional Award in 2022 was awarded to TSU. The award recognizes innovations by organizations that create transformation for their customers or, in TSU’s case, its students. The university won the award for developing an academic Esports program to create a pathway from gaming to STEM.
That same year, Motlow State came in third place for its program, which provided students with smartphones to aid their connection to education and technology.
Investing in the team
Allison says reinvesting in Tractor Supply’s current employees and training them on new technologies is just as important as working to develop innovators in higher education.
“We’re rolling out innovative AI capabilities to the team,” Allison says. “It gives the team members the opportunity to kind of work with cutting-edge technology. It’s not just in the lab or in a classroom, but they’re directly applying what they’re learning with the stores or with the mobile app, with web or in-store technology.”
“Development is one of our values,” he says. “With the company, we want team members to develop and grow.”
Beard says what sets HCA apart is its values. Because the company prioritizes culture, the leaders have always emphasized this, leading to long-term retention of employees.
“If part of your values is to help build up,” Beard says, “that makes you intentional about having mentoring programs, that makes you intentional about looking internal, and getting people ready for those next opportunities. If you’re not intentional, they won’t happen.”
Anthony Plank, a senior vice president and chief communications officer at AllianceBernstein, also oversees some human resources functions, like talent and career development. He says AB offers mentorship and coaching programs for people in higher-level roles.
“It doesn’t really stop once you come through the door,” he says. “There’s different ways that we try to continue that learning and that development.”
To support programs for workforce development, Feiner says it’s crucial to prepare internally by having the managers who will support new employees.
“It’s always dependent on the people who are invested in it, and we’re very lucky at AB to have people who are really passionate about growing talent,” she says. “Managing that transition and having that support system as well as a very prescriptive mentorship system around it is make or break for these programs.”
Creating programs for developing current employees as well as for young people entering the workforce is where Torrence says partnerships with universities and other education organizations can help.
“We talk about pathways. We talk about on-ramps. We talk about off-ramps. But there are some opportunities to create what I would call middleware, or middle ramps,” he says. “You don’t have to stop, start, get off, to come on. You can do quite a bit of this simultaneously.”
Another example is AllianceBernstein’s partnership with the Nashville Technology Council, which many other companies also rely on for help with tech workforce training. AB’s program with the NTC gives employees an apprenticeship-type job while they learn new tech skills.
“Their prior careers came in really handy. One girl was working as a hairdresser. The way she described it was how she mixed chemicals, and the things that she did actually translated really well into how she learned how to code lines of software,” Feiner explains. “There’s a lot of studies of the correlation between musicians and people who have a propensity to write code. Here we are in Nashville, right, with all these folks in the music industry. So we like to think about how we can help support people are as they’re transitioning in their careers,”
Plank described a six-month program the company calls “reinvest,” in which people who have taken a career break and are looking to return can reengage in work.
“Talent is everywhere,” he says. “Don’t shortchange that. It’s really trying to find the best available people for the roles you’re looking to fill. And can you look at unconventional places? Because you might miss out on different perspectives, insights, a way of doing things that perhaps you thought was the only way of doing it within the walls of the firm.”
No matter the expertise, Beard says that from the start of the hiring process managers need to consider an applicant or employee’s future development in the company.
“It’s about when you make a hire, and I don’t care what level, we’re hiring you for two to three roles down the road,”
Beard says. “I’m hiring for a need today, but really if you’re a good hiring manager you’re hiring for the need two levels up.
It doesn’t mean they have to move there, but I can see them moving there. And it puts the company in a good spot 10 years from now.”
Training as fast as technology is moving may present challenges, but Torrence has a metaphor in mind.
“It’s a great cake to bake,” Torrence says. “But you know, if you reach your hand into the oven without a mitt, you’ll get burned.”
Still, he says the positives outweigh the negatives. And working as a team with other higher-education institutions like Tennessee State University and the University of Tennessee alongside corporate partners allows for an exchange of ideas and a pipeline for anyone’s career.