THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 31, 1997 TAG: 9701310539
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LIZ SZABO, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 64 lines
A lack of skilled employees could create a ``work force crisis'' for Virginia business within the next decade, Robert O. Templin Jr., president of Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology, said here Thursday.
Templin addressed the Chesapeake division of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. The Center for Innovative Technology, based in Northern Virginia, supports economic growth through the technology industry.
Virginia's lack of trained workers is its ``Achilles' heel'' and the greatest obstacle preventing the state from becoming a technological powerhouse, Templin said. Hampton Roads has the fastest rate of growth in technology companies in the state, he said.
The technology industry already is a critical element of the state's economy. Technology companies create 10 percent of all the jobs in the state. And more than half of all Internet transmissions are routed through Virginia computers, he said.
Continued growth in the technology sector is essential to the state's economic health. The rapid growth of high-technology companies is the only thing keeping the state's economy from declining, Templin said.
``Virginia's economy is growing right now by adding workers to the work force, not by increasing productivity,'' Templin said. ``Virginia's economy depends upon new technology and upgrading the educational level of front-line workers.''
Many information technology companies are turning away work because they cannot find qualified people for the jobs. Northern Virginia alone has job openings for 18,000 technology workers at present. The California-based technology company SAIC, which has an office in Virginia Beach, has enough openings across the country to hire every information technology major to graduate from Virginia colleges and universities this year, Templin said.
Starting salaries for technology jobs average $40,000 a year, he said.
But Virginia's students are not qualified to fill many of these jobs, Templin said, noting that a quarter of Virginia children entering ninth grade do not even finish high school.
Simply recruiting new employees is not enough, he said.
``Companies think they can bring people in from the outside, but that's not going to work,'' Templin said. ``We're bidding up prices from a declining pool of workers but that's a losing strategy.''
Instead, managers should consider every employee to be a ``continuous learner,'' he said.
Businesses need ``to build up the skill levels of their own employees so that they will be able to find the innovative solutions, and then business will come.''
The business community needs to focus on two things, Templin said.
``Companies need to start investing in human resources the way they would in equipment,''he said. ``Virginia has to commit itself to its most valuable resource. . . . Employers look at this (education) as an expense the state should pay for. They don't see it as an up-front operating expense.''
Virginia's competitors for jobs in the future will not be its neighbors North Carolina or Maryland, he said, but sources of cheap labor such as Indonesia, India and Malaysia.
``Dumbing down the work force and trying to do it cheaply won't work,'' Templin said. ``Other countries can do that better and more cheaply than we can. We need to have a highly educated work force that can produce high-end products.''
In addition, business leaders should encourage college students to major in technology. ``We're not just talking about people with Ph.D.s and M.B.A.s, but people who graduate from high school and go to community college,' he said.