Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our series on STARS, workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes. Skilled Through Alternative Routes, STARS, with a focus today on what it means to hire for skills, not just degrees, because the alternative routes means without a bachelor's degree from college. We'll talk about how two organizations, one in industry and one in workforce development, are trying to change the way we think about talent. About half of working Americans today don't have a four-year college degree, but many have gained skills through other routes, community college, military service, apprenticeships, boot camps, or hands on experience, and still many are shut out of good jobs that post, "BA required," even when the work itself doesn't need it.

What would it look like for employers to rethink hiring from the ground up? Joining us today, Amy Volz, Head of Workforce Innovation at Trane Technologies. That's a global climate innovator, as they describe themselves, and a company that's developed a skills first apprenticeship program to build talent from the ground up. Ebony Thomas, managing partner at Grads of Life, a nonprofit that says it works with leading employees to create skills first talent strategies that deliver both business benefits and social impact. Part of that mission includes helping stars connect with career opportunities.

Amy, Ebony, thanks for joining this series. Welcome to WNYC.

Amy Volz: Thank you again for having us.

Ebony Thomas: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we invite you to help us report this story. If you're an employer, have you started moving away from degree requirements? 212-433-WNYC. Tell us why and how and in what circumstances, or what made you think or rethink how you hire. If you're someone who built a career through an alternative route, an apprenticeship, a certification, on the job training, how did you break in? Did you have to convince any employer to give you a shot without at least a bachelor's degree? We'd love also to hear from some employers today on how you're considering this issue as it rises in the United States. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Call or text.

Amy, just to set the scene on that specific question, what does your company, Trane Technologies, do, and what do you do there as head of workforce innovation to see that your requirements for prospective employees actually match the skills that they need to have?

Amy Volz: As you mentioned, Brian, Trane Technologies is a global climate innovator. We have about 45,000 employees all over the world that are focused on creating sustainable climate solutions for buildings, for homes, and for transportation. About 20,000 of those employees are frontline employees, meaning they're in the field helping to support our customers. They're working in our factories, making our equipment. For us, this issue is really central to how we operate as an organization, and it's also central to fundamentally, not only our growth strategy, but also our commitment to provide opportunity for all.

Workforce innovation is really at the heart of that. The workforce innovation team that I lead here at Trane Technologies is focused on how we can create programs, pathways and partnerships at scale for these critical roles, for these frontline opportunities that are really critical to serving our customers and central to our growth strategy as an organization. What we're doing within workforce innovation is really all about challenging traditional norms, not only around hiring, but also around how we support our employees, how we bring them into the organization, and how we remove barriers to opportunity for skilled workers.

Brian Lehrer: Before we bring in Ebony, what does Skills First hiring actually look like at a company like Trane? Can you give us an example of either a job description, a particular role, language you use in ads looking for recruits? Give us an example of how it expresses.

Amy Volz: Skills based hiring, I think, sometimes gets brought down to its most essential level, which is really, as you mentioned, removing that bachelor's degree requirement and fundamentally questioning the assumptions around whether a four-year college degree is really needed in the role, or whether it's being used as shorthand for the skills that are needed for success. The first step for us and for a lot of employers is to look at a job description that today requires a four-year college degree, and to really question the underlying assumptions that are in that degree requirement and break that down into the actual skills that are needed, and then bring those skills forward into the job description so that it's really, really clear to an applicant what's needed to be successful in the role and it's really clear to the organization who the best fit candidate is going to be for those opportunities.

What we've done over the last couple of years is removed the four-year degree requirement for more than 50 roles across our organization, and these are in business critical areas like account managers, maintenance managers, but also to think more broadly about the type of talent that we're bringing in and the expertise that they may have outside of the H Vac industry in other adjacent industries as well. For us, it's about really thinking about, yes, removing the degree requirement and bringing those skills forward, but also starting to expand our thinking at more of a systemic level to think about ways in which we could be bringing new talent into the industry in a really beneficial way.

Brian Lehrer: Ebony Thomas, you're managing partner at Grads of Life, I don't have to tell you what you do, but that's your title, which is a nonprofit that works with leading employers to create Skills First Talent strategies. Give us an example of how your group, Grads for Life, works with both employers and with so called STARS, people getting training through alternative routes.

Ebony Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you. Grads of Life has been around for about 10 years, and we are a direct initiative of Year Up United, which has been around for about 25 years. Year Up United specifically trains underrepresented talent in a variety of different pathways to include business, finance, software engineering, things of that nature. They're preparing that talent to be ready to be placed into Fortune 500 companies. For example, Grads of Life, on the flip side, is really looking at the demand. Year Up handles the supply. We look at the demand. We're working directly with the Fortune 500 employers, really looking at their talent management strategies and trying to think through how they'll be able to improve them.

We do that in a number of different ways, one of which is through our advisory practice where we have diagnostic tools to assess the maturity of an organization and where they may fall in their Skills First journey. We also do a lot of work with free credentialing, so looking at an organization's job descriptions and identifying the pieces of it that are most critical to perform the job well. In fact, we actually were able to partner with Trane. Amy, it's so glad to be on this call with you. Work with Trane in re-credentialing some of their roles.

The other thing that we do is training, and learning and development, and that really does center around hiring manager training and just train the trainer to make sure that the company is able to continuously advance and train their individuals on how to work with Skills First Talent directly. Then the final piece of what we do is around awareness building. Again, we've been around for about 10 years in Skills First back 10 years ago, but still a new concept. Really working to make sure that people understand what it is, what the benefits are, and how their organization will benefit from engaging.

Brian Lehrer: I see that your work is about changing systems, not just resumes or specific ads for applicants. What are some of the structural barriers that you see STARS facing even when they're qualified for a job?

Ebony Thomas: Absolutely. Access is definitely one of the top ones. I think oftentimes you don't know what you don't know. Then if you do identify an organization that you may be interested in pursuing, being able to get access into that organization. So many companies are four- year degree requirements, not necessarily because they're required, but because it's been the status quo, it's been what's been done. Not having companies that have assessed what the true skills are and still having those degree requirements on the majority of their roles really does create a barrier for a STAR talent to be able to access those positions.

Brian Lehrer: How do you help companies move from, let's say intention to action when it comes to inclusive Skills First hiring? Because I could imagine a lot of employers who maybe even haven't given this much thought, even just listening to this conversation and thinking, "Yes, that makes sense. I'd like to participate in that." Then maybe they come up against another impulse in their own minds, which is, "Well, but when you go through a four-year college program, you're kind of being vetted for a certain [unintelligible 00:09:29] or something that qualifies you beyond the particular skills to be a reliable employee." Ebony?

Ebony Thomas: Yes. I think you can look at that from a couple of different ways. I think the companies in general will find that many of them believe that it's a good idea but don't understand what are the implementation steps. Sometimes that is a challenge in them actually getting started.

A lot of what we do is working with the companies to assess where they are in their journey. It's not a one-stop shop for everyone, it's not a cookie cutter solution. Really working with the companies to understand where they are in that journey, and then giving them tangible action steps so that they can begin that journey.

Another key piece of it is change management. There's a huge stigma that centers around non-degree talent and the false idea that they're not qualified, when that really just is not the case. There are studies that prove that that's not the case. Helping to tell stories to champion situations where we've seen it work effectively, and, again, just really being able to amplify situations in which there's been huge success. Some of those successes are around just retention, faster time to hire, but being able to share those proof points and really convey the business case around Skills First has been very, very helpful in getting companies to get on board and to shift that culture.

Brian Lehrer: Amy Volz, same question for you at Trane Technologies. Are there certain certifications or associate degrees that Trane values as an on ramp into your industry, or ways you evaluate people's personalities that some employers may take a four-year college degree as representative of, whether accurately or no?.

Amy Volz: I think historically, experience in the H Vac industry has been certainly something that we've looked for. One challenge for us, and I think for other employers in the industry as well, is that in our space, hiring volumes continue to outpace supply of available experienced talent. We've had to be really intentional about looking at this issue, not just from the standpoint of what exists today and what opportunities exist today, but how we can create new pathways into the industry and new opportunities for talent who don't have that experience, who haven't been in H Vac and who might be bringing in potentially a broader perspective, and certainly skills that are applicable outside of our industry that could be really powerful being brought into the organization.

We focus not only on the existing job descriptions that we have, but also on those new pathway opportunities. You mentioned the apprenticeship model earlier, which I think is a really powerful articulation of how these pathways can be really great opportunities for STARS, for people who are skilled through alternative routes. Those pathway programs, like apprentices, open a door into an industry that's not only growing, but they open a door into an opportunity for really generational impact and generational uplift by creating great economic opportunities for workers in a space that also allows them to contribute in a really meaningful way to the communities that they live and work in.

Our Trane apprenticeship program, which started in 2023, is in place now and providing those opportunities and those pathways for STARS who not only not have that bachelor's degree, but might also might not have that industry experience that historically has been the way in for a lot of talent.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a question from a listener. Amy, I think this will go to you first. Listener writes, "I'm a former HR executive and a proponent of skills based hiring. However, one issue we had was that people we hired without college degrees would more or less be stuck in the job that they had because other more senior roles required college degrees. How do your experts suggest to address this?"

Amy, have you run into that or dealt with it structurally at Trane Technologies once STARS are in the door?

Amy Volz: I love this question so much because we are being really intentional about thinking about this. I also love it, particularly because I think it illustrates something both Ebony and I mentioned, which is really thinking about these issues at a systemic level and not stopping at the point at which we open the door.

Once that door is open, I think what this listener really beautifully illustrates is that there are certainly opportunities within the organization, and we have to be just as intentional about making sure those barriers to advancement are removed, but also that there's paths for reskilling and upskilling.

We've got a couple of examples within our organization of where a STAR has come in, and they've come into a certain function, but because of the opportunities that exist within the organization to reskill, to acquire new learning and to take advantage of new opportunities, they've moved over into adjacent functions. One of our employees came over with an associate's degree in engineering, is now working in our HR function, and was able to make that change because of the paths into our new function that exists, but also because of her own initiative. We find that a lot with STARS, is that this is a population that not only has tremendous resilience, but has a lot of initiative to learn, to acquire new skills, and to go after opportunities that exist. It's up to the company to make sure that those pathways are open so that our employees can be successful.

Brian Lehrer: Ebony, does your group, Grads of Life work on this issue, too, advancement once you're in the company without a college degree?

Ebony Thomas: Absolutely. I think one of the biggest things is career pathways, and Amy touched on it. I think those career pathways, what do you do after that entry level position? What is the next move? Career pathways are essential. Working with companies to identify what is step number 2, what's the promotion look like three to five years out.

The other thing is around upskilling, ensuring that employees have access to professional development and trainings and things of that nature that would allow them and prepare them for the next level.

Another thing that's been extremely beneficial is tuition assistance. Oftentimes, talent may not have the four-year degree, but it's not by lack of wanting it. It may be lack of access or resources to be able to attend. By having programs like tuition assistance, you may have an individual come into an organization, take advantage of that, and then go on to get their bachelor's degree, Associate's degree, Master's, PhD and so forth and so on.

The final thing I'll say is just that continuous assessment of roles. When it comes to re-credentialing, it shouldn't just be the entry level positions. It should be a full look up and down the organization at the roles that are offered, and identifying those ones that don't necessarily require a degree requirement. It's not just at the entry level where a degree may or may not be necessary, but it is definitely all throughout the organization. That continuous assessment is critical.

Brian Lehrer: Sherry, Manhattan-- Oh, go ahead, Amy, real quick.

Amy Volz: No, I'll just jump in quickly there. As Ebony mentioned on the tuition and assistance piece, that specifically has been something that we've changed within Trane Technologies and seem to be very successful in contributing to not only employee utilization, but in moving away from a traditional tuition reimbursement model to tuition assistance and tuition advancement, where we're providing those upfront costs before the employee goes through the program, expanding it to certifications beyond just bachelor's degrees. We found a lot of success there for our employee base.

Brian Lehrer: Sherry in Manhattan has a story, I think. Sherry, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Sherry: Hi. I have several things. I'm the daughter of a sheet metal worker. I remember growing up with the newsletter with all these fresh faces of young people who went through the apprentice program. The fact that they gained their skills through a union apprentice program means that they not only gained those skills, but they gained it within the culture of an organization that was fighting for workers' rights. In contrast, one of the other STARS programs is in the military in which people gain their skills through an organization that produces national killing of foreign populations.

I also want to put it in the context of the other things that come through a college or community college education, and that is the kind of cultural awareness also comes with a certain snobbishness. That's why we have to go back to free tuition to community college and college programs. We have to think about the context in which people learn their very, very valuable skills. I think these programs are valuable, but we have to think about the context. We have to think about this in the context of the political attacks on the university, because students do learn about other countries, and as in the protest movements against the US sending weapons to Israel to kill infants, that's what is being attacked now.

We have to see the skills programs in the context of how people are learning these very valuable skills, what context in which they are learning that, and what opportunity do they have to, in addition to the skills programs, also gain tuition to college programs where they might learn things in addition to the actual skills they learn.

Brian Lehrer: Sherry, thank you very much. A complicated comment that touched on a lot of things. Unions, the worst allegation, at least, against Israel and the war in Gaza, a lot of things in there. Ebony, let me throw you what I think is the overarching question that Sherry is raising.

We have a text message like this, too, from somebody who's also concerned about any attempt to discourage college educations among as many Americans as possible. Let's see, I'm going to see if I can find this text because it's interesting. I can't find it. The gist is employers don't actually want workers who are very well educated. They want workers who are just going to be focused on their skills and not have a broader view of realities in the world. Do you think about that at Grads of Life?

Ebony Thomas: Absolutely. I think Skills First is not about discouraging pursuit of a college degree. It's more about widening the aperture and leveling the playing field. When you think about it from that perspective, there are different routes for everyone. You mentioned earlier, Brian, when you talked about you may have gotten skills in the military, you could have gotten skills, but want to career switch. They're all different reasons why you may benefit or pursue a Skills First pathway. Again, it's not meant to discourage a college degree in any way. It's just to say that there are alternative ways and many different ways to seek out skilled talent and to seek out the individual that you need for your role.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another question from a text message. Sorry, these are coming in so fast, I'm losing some of them. Amy, I'll throw this one at you. Listener writes, "What about training offerings for those who are in their 40s, 50s, or 60s? So often these programs seem to be geared toward those entering the workforce for the first time. Anything like that at Trane Technologies?

Amy Volz: Yes, absolutely. I think that's a great point. I'll go back to apprenticeships for just a moment. The apprenticeship model is one that isn't new. It's been around for a long period of time. It's also, I think, often been associated with those younger audiences, early talent, people who are early in their careers, just starting their journey. Certainly what we've found is that these programs also represent a really compelling opportunity for folks to move outside of their current career path and into a completely new opportunity. That's absolutely true for our program where we have about two-thirds of our current apprentices, about 200 or so total across the country that are over the age of 30 and that have had prior career experience before.

What we're seeing is that there's a larger and larger percentage of people who are interested in programs like this because it represents an opportunity for them to not only create new opportunity for themselves and their families to put themselves on a new path for economic success, but also that it allows them to look at their prior experiences in a different way and bring those experiences forward in an industry that can represent a really meaningful career transition for them. We're certainly seeing that show up in our programs in terms of how these programs are able to really provide opportunity for not only that early talent group, but also for people who have had career experiences.

Our model allows those people to go through the program in a different way as well. We mentioned veterans as an example, those who have military experience. It's a great example of how applicable experience in life and in career can carry over and be applied to a program like this where if you are an older worker, if you do have that experience, you can actually earn accelerated placement in the program. We've structured our model in a way that is flexible to accommodate the needs of both that early talent population and others who might have more life experience in their career.

Brian Lehrer: One more. Martha in Astoria, you're on WNYC. Martha, we got about 30 seconds for your question. Hi.

Martha: Yes, thank you. I understand that Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania removed requirements for state jobs, the bachelor's degree requirement. I was wondering if they could do that in New York State as well.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Ebony, you could answer it in terms of New York, if you have anything, or just nationally, if Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania has set a model there, going through state employee job postings and removing as many college degree requirements as he can.

Ebony Thomas: Absolutely. We've actually done work with New York State, so with the New York Jobs Council. We've also done work in Massachusetts with their math skills program. What we found is that there are over 25 states across the country that have committed to Skills First and are looking to explore how they would be able to remove job or degree requirements across many different states. I think you bring up a great point. I think it is something that is starting to catch on where states are understanding the benefits. We're partnering with workforce forums and different job councils to ensure that they've got the understanding, the knowledge, the tools and the resources to be able to implement that Skills First rollout effectively.

Brian Lehrer: Ebony Thomas, managing partner at Grads of Life, a nonprofit that connects top employers with people in the talent pool those employers might have otherwise missed. Amy Volz, Head of Workforce Innovation at Trane Technologies. Thanks, both, very much for joining us today in our series on alternative paths to having a decent income living in the United States. Thank you very much.

Amy Volz: Thank you so much, Brian.

Ebony Thomas: Thank you.

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