Notes from Colleen’s Desk: The Common Denominator

You may be wondering what drives the initiatives we take on at SOREDI.  Initiatives like our long-standing and award-winning Industry Tours, our Southern Oregon Edge business profiles, the annual Rogue Tech Collective Tech Tour, and SOREDI Quest, were all initiated by SOREDI in the last decade. While we do love to create and implement relevant initiatives, the foundation and common denominator of all these successful business initiatives – and many more to come, you guessed it: we are wildly serious about business development and the prosperity of our local companies.

If you have been tracking with us over our 32 year history, SOREDI was created to assist traded-sector businesses (businesses who mostly sell outside the region) in their growth and expansion plans right here in Southern Oregon. We make more than 150 outreach calls each year seeking to help businesses launch, relocate and prosper in Southern Oregon.

More recently however in 2016, a special partnership was formed between the business community and our educational partners. After a successful season of industry tours, followed by a post- season breakfast sponsored by Regence and US Bank, SOREDI brought those two groups together to debrief and determine next strategic steps for attracting and developing the most fundamental key to their success: a skilled and reliable workforce.

And on that June morning in 2016, the Business Education Partnership (BEP) was formed.  Co-chaired by John Underwood of Timber Products – (SOREDI’s 2018 Inspiration Award recipient), Norm Kester of Quantum Innovations – (SOREDI’s 2015 Collaboration Award recipient), and Trever Yarrish of Zeal – (SOREDI’s 2016 Inspiration Award recipient), the BEP (clearly this is an exceptional trio) has had an unstoppable vision for nearly 3 years and there really is no finish line in sight – and that is on purpose!

Intuitively we know, that the work never ends; new innovations come into play, great people retire, and a new workforce must be trained up.  Together, we must cultivate a high performance region and intentionally nurture a continuous improvement process of connecting businesses with teachers, educational partners and service providers to ensure that our region is poised for prosperity. A prosperous region is critically dependent on an innovative, skilled, and reliable workforce.

The Business Education Partnership has been co-facilitated by SOREDI’s Business Development Manager Kathy Trautman and Dana Shumate of the Rogue Workforce Partnership. Since its inception this collaborative group of 25+ businesses and educators has tackled some great work.

What’s the mission of the BEP? Collaborate as a community to create a pathway system for our future workforce that is aligned with the needs and demands of our LIVE ROGUE economy.

So what top three objectives has the BEP been focused on and what are the results thus far?

1. Create an Employability Skills rubric for educators to utilize as a model to assess students’ skill levels in seven key areas of “soft skills” deemed to be fundamental to the success of an employee including: Reliability, Collaboration, Attendance, Communication, Respect, Professionalism, Attitude, and Problem Solving.   The employability skills rubric was created and is being used by a number of schools. The competencies are completed by the teacher in each category. Scroll down to the end of this post if you’d like to see the whole employability skills rubric.
   
2. Create a structured internship program for local high school students to expose them to businesses during the summer months between their junior and senior years. This program has just been rolled out. To date, 15 companies are participating and 26 internships have been created. There will be an orientation for participating companies on April 24at 5:00 PM at the Urban Cork in Medford.

3. Create opportunities for businesses to visit local high schools to discover the great things students are learning with respect to career readiness. This is an ongoing effort with many strong initiatives in progress. Feedback from all partners has been positive.

If we haven’t made it clear yet, SOREDI, the Rogue Workforce Partnership, and our Business Education Partnership have a concerted, contagious, and collaborative message to boldly share system-wide for every student, worker and citizen living in all 15 jurisdictions. (That’s every city and both counties in Southern Oregon.)

You do not have to leave the beauty, cultural and recreational diversity, and livability of Southern Oregon to thrive here! There is opportunity right here and you are in the right place! 

What is your action step? Visit just a few of the great companies already based in our region by reviewing their Southern Oregon Edge Profile here: https://soredi.org/relocate/southern-oregon-edge/ and then tell someone all about it!

Colleen Padilla,
Executive Director