Training Industry Magazine - July/August 2020 - 58

CLOSING
DEALS

SUPPORTING WORKERS DISPLACED BY COVID-19
AND BUILDING AN EQUITABLE WORKFORCE
BY TARYN OESCH

The U.S. unemployment rate rose
to 14.7% - the highest since 1948 -
in April, a few months after the first
coronavirus diagnosis in the country.
Also that month, the International
Labour Organization estimated that
1.6 billion workers worldwide (almost
half the global workforce) were "in
immediate danger of having their
livelihoods destroyed."
The pandemic is hitting people hard.
But it's also exacerbating existing
inequalities, widening income gaps
between white workers and workers of
color, for example, and highlighting the
educational needs of workers.
"Even before the pandemic," says Rachel
Carlson, chief executive officer and cofounder of Guild Education, "the world's
largest employers were asking us to
develop education solutions that could
create pathways to economic mobility
for their workforce." They were also
looking for "ethical offboarding practices,
as they implemented technologies that
transformed their workforce needs - and
planned for the eventuality of a recession."
INTEGRATING TRAINING
INTO OUTPLACEMENT
To meet these demands, Guild Education
began a partnership with Entangled,
a "product studio" working on an
"outskilling" platform, which integrated
training into the outplacement process,
Carlson says. This collaboration aimed
at training displaced workers for new
careers using Entangled's platform, a
marketplace "backed by employers
that wanted to hire."

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Shortly before announcing this acquisition, Guild announced the launch of
Next Chapter, a product that enables
displaced workers to prepare for new
jobs in industries seeing an increased
demand. Guild built the product in
partnership with Entangled, whose jobs
marketplace enables employers joining
Next Chapter to provide displaced
workers with reskilling and coaching.
A HEIGHTENED SENSE
OF URGENCY
No one enjoys laying off or furloughing
employees, particularly in the large
numbers many employers have had
to cut due to COVID-19. Not only are
workers looking for new opportunities,
but organizations are looking for ways to
support employees they've had to let go.
"We continue to witness a tale of two
labor markets," Carlson says. "On one
side, we see business leaders faced with
unprecedented change and economic
pressures that lead to laying off talent.
But we're still seeing employers that are
grappling with huge talent needs [and]
skills gaps and are actively working to
attract and upskill their workforces."
"That's why we launched Next Chapter.
It's about helping laid off workers have
access to not only the career services,
but also the job training, that they need
to have a chance at, not just surviving,
but thriving, in this new economy."
THE NEW NORMAL
Even if we could return to the prepandemic "normal," we shouldn't want to,

Carlson notes. "In a recent op-ed, [author
and professor] Roxane Gay said that
while 'the rest of the world yearns to get
back to normal, for Black people, normal
is the very thing from which we yearn to
be free.' We're taking that sentiment to
heart ... Our work can't be about simply
returning things to normal - for workers,
for employers, it has to be about making
things better than they were before."
For both workers and employers,
education can "unlock profound growth,"
Carlson says. It provides employers
with a "competitive advantage" and is
also "a profound lever to address wage
and economic inequality that continue
to grow at alarming rates." She cites
research from McKinsey that found that
workers without a bachelor's degree
are twice as vulnerable to job loss than
workers with a college education. "Our
focus is on addressing the immediate
crisis, but it's also about helping workers
to build skills that will make them much
more resilient in the future."
COVID-19 has made upskilling even
more important, not only for business
success but for worker survival. "As rising
unemployment magnifies economic
inequality," Carlson says, "employers
have a heightened responsibility to
proactively help workers of all ages,
races and demographics gain access
to training that can help them become
resilient in the face of ... the sort of
catastrophic health, economic and
social crisis we're grappling with."
Taryn Oesch is the managing editor of
digital content at Training Industry, Inc.
Email Taryn.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/april-jobs-report-coronavirus-2020-11588888089 https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_743036/lang--en/index.htm https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_743036/lang--en/index.htm https://www.trainingindustry.com/articles/workforce-development/upskilling-during-a-crisis-benefits-everyone/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/articles/workforce-development/upskilling-during-a-crisis-benefits-everyone/ https://www.epi.org/publication/black-workers-covid/ https://www.epi.org/publication/black-workers-covid/ https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-sector/our-insights/covid-19-and-jobs-monitoring-the-us-impact-on-people-and-places https://www.trainingindustry.com/press-release/workforce-development/guilds-first-acquisition-pairs-education-benefits-with-jobs-marketplace-to-support-displaced-workers/

Training Industry Magazine - July/August 2020

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