EVOLVE Business and Professional Magazine February 2020 | Page 28

LIFELONG LEARNING: THE KEY TO
LONG-TERM EMPLOYMENT
by Robin King
CEO, CareerSource Flagler Volusia
Flagler Volusia is poised to work.
Governor DeSantis is asking the same questions and
looking at the same goal. According to the press release
from his office, Governor DeSantis’s first executive order
(19-31) in January 2019 was to “begin the process of
making Florida the number one state in the nation for
workforce education as well as ensuring that Florida
students are prepared to fill the high-demand, high-wage
A
s I am apt to do, I asked my taxi driver in
Washington, DC one day how he got into being
a taxi driver. (I’m curious about how people
select occupations and their career pathways.) Rather than
share his beginnings, he shared his current predicament.
“Congress needs to do something!” he proclaimed.
I replied, “do something about what?” to which he
responded loudly, “UBER!”
In a flash, this taxi driver showed me my future. My
task? To help those who are being disrupted by whatever
emerging technologies or sharing platforms find their
place in the current and future workforce.
It is, generally speaking, in our nature to define who
we are by what we do. What happens if what we do is no
longer needed or wanted or drastically changed on how
it is done? How do we take off the blinders and shift from
here to there? That is the space in which CareerSource
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jobs of today and the future.”
This led to the creation of the Florida Talent
Development Council, administered by the Florida
Department of Economic Opportunity. This Council is
tasked with creating a strategic plan to be delivered by
the end of December 2019 that ensures sixty percent of
working Floridians will hold a high-value, post-secondary
credential by 2030.
This is not an easy task; what is high-value today may
not be in the future. Think about it, do you do your job
the same as you did a year ago? Five years ago? Ten years
ago? What will it look like in the future?
The occupation with the expected highest growth rate
over the next five years is healthcare support occupations.
Can you imagine any healthcare workers’ tasks being the
same in 2030 as they are today? The highest projected
growth in openings is in food preparation and serving
and office support occupations, which, according to
the McKinsey Global Institute, has the future potential