Ben Hudnall Memorial Trust

Even during a pandemic, it’s important to keep learning.

When Kaiser Permanente storekeeper Vincent Woodard heard about skills days in May at Oakland Medical Center, he signed up.

“You’ve got to keep up with the times,” says Woodard, an SEIU-UHW member who orders and delivers supplies for doctors and nurses. “I’m always wanting to learn more. The more I know, the more I can teach and share.”

Kaiser Permanente encourages lifelong learning. With COVID-19 reshaping health care from the emergence of new roles to increased virtual care, the 2 Labor Management Partnership-supported education trusts are tailoring trainings to help employees adapt by building career resilience and digital skills.

Partnership Supports Upskilling

Northern California’s Workforce Planning and Development Committee was planning skills days when COVID-19 hit. The committee wanted to proceed. The administration agreed. In 2 weeks, labor and management organized skills days with the SEIU UHW-West & Joint Employer Education Fund.

“It’s a trying time with workflows changing to adapt to COVID-19,” says committee labor co-chair Sonya Allen-Smith, an SEIU-UHW contract specialist. “You have to stay skilled up because the work world is constantly changing.”

More than 80 employees participated in 2 Oakland sessions. Housekeepers, medical assistants and radiology techs met in a large conference room, wearing masks and keeping social distance, learning in person and virtually about communication, leadership and emotional intelligence.

Woodard, a 7-year Kaiser Permanente employee and longtime youth basketball coach, related to lessons about teamwork, bringing positive energy and managing frustrations.

“I’m definitely going to use this,” Woodard says. “You’re not always going to get your way. You’ve got to know when to walk away. Hold yourself accountable.”

Northern California is looking to expand skills days. Other regions also are exploring virtual skills days.

“This training is good for labor and management,” says Janis Cruz, support services administrator for the East Bay. “It helps develop soft skills to navigate uncertainty and ignite interest in continued learning.”

Building career resilience

To help adjust to changes, Kaiser Permanente and the education trusts offer online critical skills courses in collaboration, consumer focus, digital fluency and performance improvement.

In May, the Ben Hudnall Memorial Trust launched the Career Resilience Quest, an online course that explores the characteristics of resilience — the ability to adjust to workplace change as it happens.

“We’re experiencing drastic change,” says Ben Hudnall career counseling project manager David Rosenberg. “Developing resilience in general, and career resilience specifically, really helps to respond constructively.

“Career resilience characteristics are like muscles. We need to exercise those muscles, so they’re strong.”

Pharmacy assistant Sergio Romero, a UFCW Local 324 member in Southern California, knows the power of resilience. A few years ago, his mother and roommate died months apart.

He reflected on his career, worked with Ben Hudnall career counselor Jan Cummings, completed a certification program and then began the resilience course.

“With this pandemic, there’s a lot of hopelessness,” Romero says. “The resilience quest boosted me back up. It kept me going.”

Will robots replace our jobs?

As technology rapidly reshapes work, the future may be scary, but it’s also filled with opportunities, especially in health care. Kaiser Permanente workers can stay ahead by continuing to learn both technical skills and human skills such as communication and problem-solving, experts say.

“Cultivating our uniquely human skills may be the best way to prepare for an uncertain future,” says Michelle Weise, chief innovation officer at Strada Institute for the Future of Work.

“Don’t be a bad robot. Be a good human being,” says Benjamin Pring, director of Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work. “We don’t want to see a robot doctor. We don’t want to see a robot nurse. A lot of (future) jobs are caring jobs where we want to have the human touch.”

Weise and Pring headlined events in November and December in the Future Ready Workforce of the Future Thought Leader Series. The webcast series, sponsored by the Labor Management Partnership and presented by National Workforce Planning and Development, aims to help prepare Kaiser Permanente’s workforce for tomorrow’s jobs.

“We want to ensure our employees have the skills necessary for the jobs of the future,” says Jessica Butz, co-director of the Partnership-supported Ben Hudnall Memorial Trust.

The goal is to build on record usage for Kaiser Permanente’s tuition reimbursement and 2 Partnership-supported education trusts and have employees continuously skill up to meet changing work needs.

Building skills

“It’s a skills-based world that we live in,” Weise says. “For so many learners, a degree is a bridge too far. They just need to survive and get their foot in the door in a job that pays well.”

Today, 44 million adult Americans lack a college degree, don’t earn a living wage and face being left behind by the future of work, according to a Strada report.

“We’re going to need to reimagine education as much more like a variety of highways with lots of on- and off-ramps,” Weise says. “Sometimes when we’re skilling up, it’s going to be for technical expertise or digital fluency. Sometimes it’s going to be for a broadening of human skills.”

Jobs of the future

Pring also is optimistic.

“We think in the future there will be net job increases,” Pring says. “They’ll just be different jobs.”

These new jobs, highlighted in Cognizant’s “21 Jobs of the Future“ and “21 More Jobs of the Future” reports, include fitness commitment counselor and artificial intelligence-assisted health care technician.

As work changes, technology will enhance most jobs and create new opportunities.

“The only way to deal with disruption is to be proactive,” Pring says. “Invent your own future rather than allow the future to happen to you.”