Thanks to You, Iowa Policy Makers are Listening

This issue of The Business Monthly focuses on preparing the future talent pipeline. At the direction of the ABI Board of Directors, ABI’s public policy team has been focused on Iowa’s workforce as a top priority for many years in a row now. The ABI public policy team continues to educate policymakers on areas where the state government can assist, in an effort to influence legislative outcomes. And policymakers have stepped up. Read more about recent successes below. If you think your business could benefit from some of these programs, please email me.

To introduce high school students to career opportunities in their own communities, changes have been made to School to Work programming to allow private sector supervision of the programming and reports are created each year outlining which school districts are participating and the numbers are increasing.

During the recent reorganization of state government care was taken to create a “one stop” Office of Apprenticeship at Iowa Workforce Development saving employers the headache of navigating several state agencies until the right programming was discovered.

Recently, this office was granted the authority to approve apprenticeship programming without first seeking a green light from the U.S. Department of Labor, shortening the time from conception of an apprenticeship program to trained employees considerably.

Coming out of the pandemic, when many productive workers were forced into unemployment, was a perfect time to reinvent that system. No longer an unemployment agency keyed to delivering benefit checks, Iowa Workforce Development is now postured as a reemployment agency, checking in on the newly unemployed in their first week of unemployment, making them aware of opportunities with other employers in their area and opportunities to upskill to new opportunities through available programming. All this is happening while helping workers return to the workforce more quickly.

Other state programming has helped small manufacturing workforces become more productive with the adoption of advanced technologies under the Manufacturing 4.0 offerings.

Some Iowans that would otherwise be part of the talent pipeline are sidelined by barriers outside the workplace. Responding to the lack of affordable, available childcare, ABI staff worked with policymakers on the adoption of the Childcare Action Grant and the Childcare Business Incentive programs that have led to the creation of over 5,000 new childcare slots in Iowa.

Others are sidelined by the lack of suitable housing near a prospective employer. ABI has successfully advocated for the elimination of a backlog of Workforce Housing Tax Credit applications and increased resources to urban and rural Iowa to continue that programming.

Public Policy advocacy to solve workforce and talent pipeline issues will never be done, but the attention of public policymakers is focused on this top priority of ABI. ABI