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Music plays
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We’re not just talking about knowledge about these stats that there’s all these jobs out there, we’re talking about stuff like a tradesperson.
00:00:11 Edward Hseih
Who’s an electrician or construction worker. They’re already clean energy worker, but they may not realize it.
00:00:17 Edward Hseih
And they may not realize how to pivot into the clean energy opportunities that would increase their own economic growth.
00:00:26 Michelle Moran
Welcome to BuildingWell, sustainable homes, equitable communities, your new podcast from New Ecology.
00:00:32 Michelle Moran
Join us as we explore real life stories from key players in green building and community development.
00:00:38 Michelle Moran
We’ll examine exciting new innovations, highlighting practical solutions for creating more affordable, healthier, more resilient, equitable communities. We’re BuildingWell together.
00:00:51 Molly Craft
This episode was made possible by the Mass Save Community Education Grant.
00:00:57 Michelle Moran
Hello and welcome to the BuildingWell podcast from New Ecology.
00:01:01 Michelle Moran
I’m Michelle Moran and I’m here today with my co-host, Alina Michelewicz.
00:01:04 Alina Michelewicz
Hello!
00:01:05 Michelle Moran
As well as a very special guest Edward Hsieh from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.
00:01:09 Michelle Moran
We’re going to talk about the workforce and training needs in Massachusetts and how they fit into the larger climate goals here.
00:01:16 Alina Michelewicz
Thank you so much for being here, we’re really excited, could you please introduce yourself and Mass CEC and your work and workplace build?
00:01:23 Edward Hseih
So hi, I’m Edward.
00:01:24 Edward Hseih
I’m the program director for Adult Training and Minority and Women Business Enterprise Support out of the Workforce Team at Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.
00:01:37 Edward Hseih
Mass CEC is a quasi-governmental agency dedicated to increasing the economic impact of the clean energy sector in Massachusetts and making sure that.
00:01:43 Edward Hseih
All individuals in Massachusetts are able to benefit from the growth of the energy sector.
00:01:48 Alina Michelewicz
Sounds great.
00:01:49 Alina Michelewicz
How did you get into this work?
00:01:50 Edward Hseih
So my path has been kind of long.
00:01:52 Edward Hseih
I was in sustainability to start in non profits and then I went through personally some rough times and then due to those rough times I actually period into workforce development because I understood that people needed help to be able to get to where they needed to in terms of.
00:02:06 Edward Hseih
Both work and just their own personal well-being and wealth growth.
00:02:10 Edward Hseih
So Then for a while I was actually a COO
00:02:12 Edward Hseih
Of a non profit running actual job training programs, designing job training programs, and through that organization I actually pivoted into clean energy job training programs where I helped with the design of the Mass Save Clean Energy Pathways Internship Program.
00:02:26 Edward Hseih
I ran and designed a hybrid electric and diesel medium heavy duty fleet vehicle mechanic program and then also a hoisting engineering operators’ program and a building automation systems tech training program. So.
00:02:42 Edward Hseih
Several different clean energy focused training programs.
00:02:46 Alina Michelewicz
That’s great. That’s awesome.
00:02:48 Alina Michelewicz
This has come up a lot. The transition to the clean energy economy in the need for jobs and workforce development to get there.
00:02:54 Alina Michelewicz
It’s come up like several of our episodes, so we’re really excited to be able to dive into it. What does Mass Clean Energy Center do to address workforce needs and how does this lead to stronger clean energy economy in Massachusetts?
00:03:06 Edward Hseih
Sure. The workforce efforts in the state by and large are actually administered by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.
00:03:12 Edward Hseih
Granted, there are some initiatives that are handled, you know, here and there by other government agencies like EFWLD just announced a new revision on the Mass Talent Initiative, which is a website to match job seekers with employers of both employers. And job seekers can jump off that site.
00:03:27 Edward Hseih
And get matched but in terms.
00:03:29 Edward Hseih
Of what we do at Mass CEC, we have the bulk of the state-level funding for clean energy workforce development.
00:03:36 Edward Hseih
You know, we can talk at length about the Equity Workforce Fund, which.
00:03:40 Edward Hseih
Which is driven by legislative dollars and that supports direct career pathway training for individuals, but also supports MWBE growth. Beyond the state level funds which you know we have the Equity Workforce Fund, we have state budget dedicated funds, there are also.
00:03:57 Edward Hseih
Special line items that are coming to bear around like heat pump training and HVAC training. There are also federal funds that Mass CEC administers that they, you know, once they get awarded to the state.
00:04:06 Edward Hseih
The state turns around and asks Mass CEC to pick them up and support them. So for example, we will be launching the EPA Solar For All workforce development initiatives through Mass CEC.
00:04:17 Edward Hseih
We also have DOE what we call TREK its training for residential energy contractors.
00:04:24 Edward Hseih
There’s there’s one that doesn’t have an official name from DOE career and technical education teacher and externship program, which is essentially training the trainer to be able to teach other folks about heat pumps and HVAC.
00:04:35
So those are.
00:04:36 Edward Hseih
The main funding opportunities that we’re administering.
00:04:38 Edward Hseih
Within those we have a lot of.
00:04:40 Edward Hseih
Sub Grants and opportunities for various stakeholders.
00:04:43 Edward Hseih
We also held direct convening and you know, support out of those funding.
00:04:48 Edward Hseih
So we run monthly COPs Committees of Practice to help you know, share best practices.
00:04:54 Edward Hseih
Talk about barriers problems, we have two annual in person convenings.
00:04:59 Edward Hseih
Usually at one of those convenings, we also tighten and implore some.
00:05:02 Edward Hseih
To let the employers match directly with our training programs and our support programs.
00:05:07 Edward Hseih
So we have those you.
00:05:08 Edward Hseih
Know direct service to our grantees, but we also have other initiatives that have been long running. For example, we have several awareness and exploration initiatives like the internship program which has been running I think 11 years now.
00:05:20 Edward Hseih
Yeah. So that program has matched more than 6000 interested young adults with potential employers to do an internship to, like, see if they’re interested in clean energy.
00:05:30 Edward Hseih
As a potential career path.
00:05:31 Edward Hseih
And then more.
00:05:32 Edward Hseih
Recently, through a governor’s mandate, we’ve set up an innovation pathway.
00:05:36 Edward Hseih
And that’s in conjunction with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. DESE. So DESE runs several innovation pathways in these schools K through 12, where they give students a quick glance at potential pathways.
00:05:49 Edward Hseih
In the past, they’ve been geared towards IT.
00:05:51 Edward Hseih
Biomed, the typical high priority occupations in Massachusetts, but lately they just turned over into clean energy, and we’re working on curriculum with DESE.
00:06:00 Edward Hseih
To to roll out in this this year and next year. So that’s coming down the line because obviously you can train adults, you can train young adults, but to get people interested, you have to start early, right, so.
00:06:11 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah, that’s a lot of touch points.
00:06:13 Alina Michelewicz
The employers, like you’re in a lot of areas, that’s awesome.
00:06:15 Edward Hseih
We’re definitely in a lot of areas.
00:06:17 Edward Hseih
And one area.
00:06:17 Edward Hseih
Don’t want to leave off is research because Mass CEC is big on data.
00:06:22 Edward Hseih
We’re known as a quasi to do data-driven efforts.
00:06:25 Edward Hseih
So in the workforce training, we actually have a third branch of this.
00:06:28 Edward Hseih
Research and so we’ve put out a workforce needs assessment which I’ll talk about a lot today as well as they’re regularly involved in a industry report that comes out every year that talks about the status of the workforce, of the clean energy industry.
00:06:41 Edward Hseih
You know, employers and interested participants can know where they can integrate and what the opportunities are.
00:06:46 Alina Michelewicz
It’s great I’m guessing a bit a little bit into that report you just mentioned. When I asked this question.
00:06:52 Alina Michelewicz
What is needed in Massachusetts and energy workforce to climate goals?
00:06:55 Edward Hseih
Sure. So I think the first thing we have to talk about is the sort of opportunity that’s created. So the workforce needs assessment as well as industry report show that there’s there’s.
00:07:05 Edward Hseih
Huge opportunity created by the 2030 and the 2050 goals for decarbonization.
00:07:11 Edward Hseih
There’s one quote that came out of the report that I picked up on that’s pretty telling.
00:07:15 Edward Hseih
We were known, you know, in Massachusetts as a college state.
00:07:18 Edward Hseih
Right that’s a big industry. The report points out that colleges and universities, as well as the restaurant industry in terms of the level of opportunity and direct jobs.
00:07:27 Edward Hseih
Clean energy is right up there with them.
00:07:28 Edward Hseih
But then, even beyond that, clean energy sector offers indirect and induced jobs beyond both of those sectors, as well as a.
00:07:37 Edward Hseih
Bigger impact on the state GSP gross state product.
00:07:40 Edward Hseih
So in terms of overall look, we’re looking at $33 billion in terms of opportunity out there and that’s you know, at the current status, there’s over 200,000 jobs in the clean energy sector right now.
00:07:52 Edward Hseih
It’s it’s already a big industry and so the growth is just going.
00:07:54 Edward Hseih
Make that you.
00:07:55 Edward Hseih
Balloon even more for individuals, obviously the.
00:07:58 Edward Hseih
Opportunity is wealth growth. The average median job right now, the clean energy sector, is about $36.00 an hour starting wage.
00:08:04 Edward Hseih
So if.
00:08:04 Edward Hseih
And in the clean energy sector. It’s not just, you know.
00:08:07 Edward Hseih
Low tier job even though.
00:08:09 Edward Hseih
Most of these are trades jobs.
00:08:10 Edward Hseih
So then most people think trades jobs, there’s been this long running education kind of push of college and desk jobs are the main way.
00:08:17 Edward Hseih
But there are trade shops that pay as well as, if not better than those those jobs that go that other route, so that opportunity’s there.
00:08:25 Edward Hseih
The hard part.
00:08:25 Edward Hseih
Though is the fact that there is a shortage in the labor that’s needed to reach the 2030/2050 goals.
00:08:31 Edward Hseih
The needs assessment basically sets forth that you know 38,000 jobs will need to be filled to reach the 2030 goals alone and at the same time we know we’re in a tight labor market.
00:08:41 Edward Hseih
So I think DOL just reported in October that the unemployment rate is at 4%.
00:08:46 Edward Hseih
So it’s not hit the historic low, but its very close to the historic low.
00:08:51 Edward Hseih
And at the same time, employers in the clean energy sector when we surveyed them for the needs assessment, almost 90% of them said that they’re having a ton of trouble finding employees for their companies.
00:09:00 Edward Hseih
So you have the three factors.
00:09:01 Edward Hseih
There’s a huge need for new labor.
00:09:03 Edward Hseih
There’s a tight labor market and then there’s a mismatch between who’s out there and who’s trying to hire.
00:09:08 Edward Hseih
So we need to address the barriers that are causing that kind of mismatch.
00:09:12 Edward Hseih
You know, some of the barriers that we’ve seen so far, there’s lack of awareness about the opportunities and we’re not just talking about knowledge about the stats that there’s all these jobs out there. We’re talking about stuff like a tradesperson who’s an electrician or construction worker. They’re already a clean energy worker.
00:09:28 Edward Hseih
But they may not realize it, and they may not realize how to pivot into the clean energy opportunities that would.
00:09:33 Edward Hseih
Increase their their own economic growth right.
00:09:36 Edward Hseih
So that’s a little bit of raising the awareness that we already talked a little bit about, you know the student.
00:09:41 Edward Hseih
Young adults.
00:09:42 Edward Hseih
To get them understanding that, yes, there are college pathways into clean energy, like engineering, architectural work, but at the same time there’s a lot of trades jobs.
00:09:50 Edward Hseih
Which actually dominate the need, and those trade jobs can provide.
00:09:54 Edward Hseih
You know a ton of salary.
00:09:55 Edward Hseih
A good example that I know personally because I was running a program in it.
00:09:59 Edward Hseih
Is if you come out and work on fleets in the transportation sector. In many cases, especially if it’s a Union position, you’re coming out at $60 to $80K starting wage.
00:10:09 Edward Hseih
So if you think about that, that’s that’s a pretty good starting wage. And then most of those career pathways have a very clear step up to the next stage where within a year or two, you could be earning 6 figures.
00:10:20 Edward Hseih
So it’s it’s not a, you know, career to scoff at, right?
00:10:25 Edward Hseih
It’s a great wealth growth opportunity for individuals.
00:10:28 Edward Hseih
So there’s that awareness of understanding that opportunity. In addition to that, you know the needs assessment points out that we’re fortunate in Massachusetts to have a very robust workforce and training infrastructure. There is a gap in terms of clean energy training.
00:10:40 Edward Hseih
So we have to address.
00:10:42 Edward Hseih
Those lack of training opportunities, and there’s many variations and flavors of those gaps. I mean, in some cases, it’s lack of curriculum. In some cases, there’s training deserts, like certain parts of Massachusetts.
00:10:53 Edward Hseih
It’s Very difficult.
00:10:54 Edward Hseih
For someone to get to a training site that’s close to them. And when we’re talking about populations that are underserved, that distance could be a huge barrier.
00:11:03 Edward Hseih
Regional considerations also are a big challenge.
00:11:05 Edward Hseih
So again, you know obviously in Greater Boston you have certain needs, you have certain populations.
00:11:11 Edward Hseih
Public transportation is easier and in western mass, where we think in the eastern mass area that driving 30 minutes is a reasonable distance, 30 minutes out West might be a much larger distance.
00:11:23 Edward Hseih
And then when you build in the seasonality of some of the occupations, that becomes an even.
00:11:27 Edward Hseih
Bigger obstacle.
00:11:28 Edward Hseih
The other thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the jobs are focused in several sectors that have higher needs.
00:11:34 Edward Hseih
So while there’s 120 occupations projected to grow, about 65% of the growth is going to be focused in on 20 occupations, of which many of them have known, you know, retention issues. They have known barriers to entry known like technical training gaps, so filling those gaps.
00:11:50 Edward Hseih
And being focused on those barriers would be a key thing for anybody.
00:11:54 Edward Hseih
Trying to get into the clean energy sector and grow their business business.
00:11:59 Edward Hseih
And of course the inclusivity.
00:12:00 Edward Hseih
So we talked a little bit about the unemployment near record rate.
00:12:04 Edward Hseih
So that really should highlight to someone who’s in the workforce world and then to those who aren’t in the workforce world what it should tell them is that.
00:12:10 Edward Hseih
Most of the highly employable individuals who’ve been educated are in the sector.
00:12:15 Edward Hseih
So you’re dealing with populations that have challenges and barriers at the same time. Those populations are the populations have been most negatively impacted by climate change. In most cases. I mean, there’s there’s mappings of like how like.
00:12:27 Edward Hseih
Air pollutants like folks along stranding highways, which also map over to like the low income neighborhoods and you know, minority neighborhoods.
00:12:34 Edward Hseih
So it’s both an opportunity to help those populations grow their wealth and also highlights that there’s going to be other challenges that have to be addressed like socio economic barriers, there’s going to be language barriers in some cases and so.
00:12:48 Edward Hseih
Things that are going to have to be accounted for when you’re designing the training system in the workforce buildout.
00:12:55 Michelle Moran
I have a follow up question to that actually.
00:12:57 Michelle Moran
So those 38,000 new jobs that are required is that by 2030 or 2050 or just?
00:13:04 Michelle Moran
All in all.
00:13:05 Edward Hseih
I believe the stat is 2030, so that’s to meet the 20-30 goal and to be clear to that, 38,000 is a full time equivalent.
00:13:14 Edward Hseih
So in the trades, obviously there’s many positions that won’t be working, you know, full time on the clean.
00:13:21 Edward Hseih
Energy aspect.
00:13:22 Edward Hseih
So you might have a a licensed electrician who is.
00:13:25 Edward Hseih
You know, hypothetically working a quarter.
00:13:27 Edward Hseih
Of the time on clean energy job.
00:13:29 Edward Hseih
But the way that needs assessment calculated it and I’m not a data expert, so I’m riffing here a little.
00:13:35 Edward Hseih
But basically the gist is that there’s going to be enough work for 38,000 full time equivalent individuals, which may mean there’s a lot more people in that 38,000.
00:13:46 Michelle
Wow.
00:13:46 Alina Michelewicz
That’s really a lot in five years, 6 years.
00:13:50 Alina Michelewicz
That’s amazing.
00:13:52 Alina Michelewicz
What type of occupations are expected to have the highest growth?
00:13:54 Edward Hseih
Right now I don’t have the full list of 20 in front me but. I can tell you the top 10.
00:13:59 Edward Hseih
So the top two where a lot of the growth is going to be seen as electricians and construction.
00:14:05 Edward Hseih
And that kind of tracks because if you think about we’re we’re talking the biggest sectors with needs are building electrification and you know anything about buildings require construction labor.
00:14:13 Edward Hseih
Obviously solar is going to see big growth.
00:14:15 Edward Hseih
Offshore wind is going to be big growth, so if you track it over to the projects that are coming down the line in terms of.
00:14:21 Edward Hseih
Big investment. They’re all related. Those two major occupations beyond that, the ones are a little bit more surprising. Might be, you know, like office supervisors or line managers, the folks that are kind of are the middle tier and and making sure that the laborers, you know are going in the.
00:14:36 Edward Hseih
Right direction.
00:14:37 Edward Hseih
Cause a lot of time.
00:14:38 Edward Hseih
Obviously you talk about the trade, you’re talking about entry level and people aren’t thinking.
00:14:42 Edward Hseih
There’s a quick career trajectory where people have opportunities to move up the line and continue their wealth growth, so it’s important to emphasize that beyond the top ten, though, there’s also sort of the.
00:14:53 Edward Hseih
Customer service sales like there are many opportunities to get into the sector beyond the trades and you know the management side of it.
00:15:00 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
00:15:02 Alina Michelewicz
So there’s a lot of opportunity for professional growth and also wealth growth like you mentioned.
00:15:09 Alina Michelewicz
Why is ensuring that the transition to a green economy is equitable so important and how is MA CEC like working towards that equitable outcome?
00:15:19 Edward Hseih
Sure. In terms of the need in many sectors its talked about as something important from like an ethical moral standpoint, right?
00:15:26 Edward Hseih
Even beyond that, from Mass CEC’s standpoint, looking at the unemployment rate.
00:15:31 Edward Hseih
There’s no way to meet the need without working to bring those populations into the labor force.
00:15:38 Edward Hseih
Because there’s also that flip side again that I mentioned earlier that for a long time the youth have been told their only route is the college route and whilst that will lead to certain
00:15:48 Edward Hseih
Of the occupations, it won’t too many of them. And so in many cases, we’re working with populations such as returning citizens, those individuals who have, you know, had court involvement and come back.
00:15:50 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah.
00:15:59 Edward Hseih
You know immigrant populations, you know, that may be working in other lower pay occupations currently, but have the capability of pivoting in with the proper support. Obviously one of the high priorities that we have right now is female workers because.
00:16:14 Edward Hseih
The clean energy sector is very male dominated right now and the trades sector as well, so those populations are there, ready to pivot in if we can reach them and if we can provide them the proper support to do so.
00:16:25 Edward Hseih
And really, that’s the only way to meet our goals and then obviously going back to the idea of clean energy and climate change, you know the most impacted communities are those communities.
00:16:35 Edward Hseih
They’re the ones who have experienced, you know, everything from like the heat islands that are causing harm or like a wind and a particular issues are higher in those areas, right? So.
00:16:46 Edward Hseih
It’s kind of a perfect opportunity to provide them the way to overcome those at the same time as bringing them in and supporting the needs of the Commonwealth. And then I think the second part of the question was how are we doing it at Mass CEC?
00:16:58 Edward Hseih
Right so, right now we do this through several avenues.
00:17:00 Edward Hseih
As I mentioned, we have a large pool of funds.
00:17:03 Edward Hseih
That are dedicated to this and we administer them through 4 RFP opportunities. Currently two of them are targeted at training individuals.
00:17:11 Edward Hseih
One is targeted at planning, so we often find that there are many groups well equipped to do the training or to support the businesses, but they may not know how to pivot into the clean energy sector or they know the clean energy sector, but they don’t have all the right components in place to provide the training and support and then so the 4th one then obviously would be the the small business disadvantaged business support helping them pivot in.
00:17:34 Edward Hseih
And the reason we have that particular suite obviously is the individual training needs.
00:17:38 Edward Hseih
But then the theory of change is that the clean energy sector is very much dominated by Caucasian male owned businesses, and the stats both in our sector and other sectors that are similarly built is that employers tend to hire, you know, individuals who look like themselves.
00:17:54 Edward Hseih
That’s built into hiring bias, whether it’s you know intentional or not.
00:17:57 Edward Hseih
So the theory of change is that we need to support small businesses that are minority and women owned so that they will increase the likelihood of hiring the individuals that we are at the same time training.
00:18:07 Edward Hseih
So it’s a 2 sided coin and I think it’s particularly important to the clean energy sector because the needs assessment found that by and large.
00:18:14 Edward Hseih
I have to look at the stat, but I think it’s a good 60% of the businesses are considered small. So we’re talking like less than 29 employees where.
00:18:22 Edward Hseih
Bigger chunk is actually less than 10 so.
00:18:25 Alina Michelewicz
Wow. Yeah, that’s small.
00:18:26 Edward Hseih
It’s small. Yeah, so it’s not like other sectors where like a workforce group can come in and partner with a big corporation, which then could bring on hundreds and hundreds of people.
00:18:36 Edward Hseih
Instead, we’re having to go out in the field with our grantees and find, you know, many hundreds of small businesses that have the capability to hire one or two people at a time.
00:18:47 Edward Hseih
So it’s it’s a different sort of scale of problem than some of the other sectors.
00:18:52 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah, and tailored.
00:18:53 Edward Hseih
And tailored yes, exactly.
00:18:55 Alina Michelewicz
Wow. Interesting.
00:18:59 Alina Michelewicz
OK, that was really good.
00:19:04 Alina Michelewicz
So once you’ve reached an employer, once you reach an employer, what should that employer consider in regards to finding the right certifications for that employee or helping to retain that employee?
00:19:18 Edward Hseih
In terms of certification, I’m gonna broaden it just slightly.
00:19:21 Edward Hseih
So what we find, and not just our sector but all workforce sectors, is there often is a mismatch between what an employer wants in terms of hireability and what they’re looking for in a candidate.
00:19:31 Edward Hseih
And you know, what’s the actual reasonable like starting point for someone and and one of the big examples of that, you know, like, you know, the governor put out the idea of the mandate for state jobs that we’re not going to look at college degree as a primary indicator right.
00:19:45 Edward Hseih
That we’re going to look at skills.
00:19:46 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah.
00:19:46 Edward Hseih
And so it’s the same sort of concept where if someone comes into a trades job. Why are
you looking for a master’s degree? Or why are you looking for even a post-secondary degree?
00:19:56 Edward Hseih
And so a little bit of that idea of.
00:19:58 Edward Hseih
What is the starting point?
00:20:00 Edward Hseih
What capability does this employer have, especially since a lot of these are small companies where a lot of the training does happen on the job, they can be trained up to a certain point prior to that, but really a lot of the skills are gained as they do it.
00:20:12 Edward Hseih
And so kind of level setting with the employer to get them to that point of understanding and acceptance that you know you can bring in someone who.
00:20:20 Edward Hseih
Mostly has the world with all an intent to do a good job.
00:20:23 Edward Hseih
And has maybe an OSHA certification, maybe has you know, a Hot Work certification if they’re going into HVAC?
00:20:29 Edward Hseih
But maybe.
00:20:30 Edward Hseih
Don’t have the other stuff yet.
00:20:31 Edward Hseih
The fact that they have those starting points and that they’ve, you know, gone through a training program for sometimes 16 weeks, you know, like four months or so, it shows that there’s a will to do a good.
00:20:41 Edward Hseih
Job and be in the sector, right? So employer can meet them where they’re at and take them from there. And then when you translate that to certification, we often see some of.
00:20:49 Edward Hseih
Of the systemic barriers are focused around licenses and certifications. There’s certain licenses and certifications that are only for example, administered once a year in terms of a test and only administered in English. So if you’re dealing in a bilingual population and neighborhood where you want to hire someone.
00:21:06 Edward Hseih
From the neighborhood because that might increase your your customer base.
00:21:10 Edward Hseih
If they can’t pass the test ’cause their their English is weaker on on paper that’s that’s a barrier right there to hiring.
00:21:16 Edward Hseih
Right. And then there’s also this sort of uncertainty, some of the occupations we see that there’s not necessarily a clarity on what the industry standard is. For example, the EV tech training right now the the certifications are fairly new.
00:21:32 Edward Hseih
And for most traditional ICE mechanics, it’s clearly Automotive Service Excellence, ASE tests.
00:21:38 Edward Hseih
And so it’s clarity there of like which tests they take to get to the next step in the job.
00:21:42 Edward Hseih
There’s now, to my knowledge at least two or three different competing certifications for EV techs.
00:21:47 Edward Hseih
ASE has one, there’s another industry group that has one so.
00:21:52 Edward Hseih
So the question to the employers is, what do you accept? And then what does the rest of the industry around you accept? Because kind of going back to the idea of looking at the candidate as a candidate as opposed to like a checklist, part of it also is.
00:22:06 Edward Hseih
Looking at their next step in the career ’cause that’s that’s how you’re gonna retain them.
00:22:11 Edward Hseih
So if you help them keep growing, it’s more likely they’re gonna stay with you or stay in the industry.
00:22:16 Edward Hseih
Then there’s other systemic barriers too, like for example, you may send an employee to become a HERS Rater, which is clearly defined right now in the state by RESNET.
00:22:25 Edward Hseih
But then there’s to get the certification they have to do 5 audits that are supervised. If your company’s already doing HERS Rating. Generally you can provide that supervised audit pathway.
00:22:37 Edward Hseih
But if your company is just pivoting in and you don’t have that. Theoretically you can’t.
00:22:41 Edward Hseih
And then the question is where does an employee go to get that supervised audit requirement taken care of? And there’s a lack of clarity right now in the system.
00:22:49 Edward Hseih
How to do that and do it fairly across the board?
00:22:52 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah, yeah, that’s a great example.
00:22:56 Molly Craft
Hello homeowners and renovators, are you excited about making energy efficient upgrades to your home but concerned about the costs?
00:23:03 Molly Craft
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00:23:11 Molly Craft
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00:23:18 Molly Craft
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00:23:41 Molly Craft
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00:23:53 Molly Craft
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00:23:55 Molly Craft
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00:24:01 Molly Craft
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00:24:07 Molly Craft
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00:24:15 Molly Craft
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00:24:22 Molly Craft
That’s it for today’s Mass Save minute. Thanks for joining us. Remember, don’t let your budget stand in the way of energy efficient upgrades. Until next time, stay informed and energy conscious.
00:24:34 Alina Michelewicz
Once a community member is trained, what are the barriers they face in becoming employed in an occupation in the clean energy economy?
00:24:41 Edward Hseih
So in terms of employability, for a participant, there’s obviously the hiring bias and mismatch issues where.
00:24:49 Edward Hseih
They may come to an employer who has certain expectations and has a checklist, and they may not match that checklist in terms of like degree or other issues. In some cases, for example, we know there are whole occupations where if you have a mark on your CORI, which.
00:25:03 Edward Hseih
You know your criminal record.
00:25:05 Edward Hseih
Sometimes it’s automatic exclusion from even being considered, which in certain cases you understand the liability and safety concerns. In other cases, it’s not as clear as why it would be an automatic exclusion. Right?
00:25:17 Edward Hseih
So the other thing in terms of like that mismatch is cultural differences, which might sound silly, but a story I have is. So in the past when I was doing the building automation system training.
00:25:29 Edward Hseih
We would match the graduates with a lot of hotels, so one of the hotels hired one of the most skilled students who came out of the program and they said to us, oh, he’s he’s such a good worker, but we can’t keep him. And and we were like… why?
00:25:43 Edward Hseih
And their response was every time he talks to us, he’s yelling at us.
00:25:47 Edward Hseih
And then we we sat down with both sides and realized it’s culture like the the culture that gent was from.
00:25:53 Edward Hseih
That’s just the way they communicate. So we talk a lot about career readiness and doing mock interviews as part of training programs to help people overcome that.
00:26:01 Edward Hseih
At the same time, it’s also partially letting employers know that again, that sort of level setting of matching to your your populations, meeting them where they’re at.
00:26:10 Edward Hseih
So it’s not, it’s not a one way track.
00:26:11 Edward Hseih
Both sides have to understand.
00:26:14 Edward Hseih
The differences and find a good point where it works for everyone.
00:26:17 Alina Michelewicz
Absolutely, yeah.
00:26:20 Edward Hseih
And then I mentioned the systemic areas about the licensing, the criminal records. I think the other thing that might be difficult for a participant is level setting about the quality of the job.
00:26:29 Edward Hseih
So sort of a different story. When I was doing the the EV tech training, a lot of the individuals got placed at waste companies because they had big needs for mechanics and a lot of that came down to smell of the trucks.
00:26:43 Edward Hseih
And so making a participant understand if you’re gonna get placed at this sort of company.
00:26:48 Edward Hseih
And you’re going to be attack on a big truck. You gonna have to deal with the smell.
00:26:52 Edward Hseih
Gonna have to deal with the mess, you know? And then that’s something that is not for everyone and we’re seeing that as a case right now, like for example the offshore wind industry.
00:27:01 Edward Hseih
Where a lot of individuals think it’s a great opportunity. They have the right skills to work on the rotors.
00:27:06 Edward Hseih
But they may not have ever climbed that high. So when they go up it’s like…
00:27:11 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah.
00:27:12 Edward Hseih
That’s tough, right? So I mean, we have some interesting groups doing like VR work to like, help them understand that.
00:27:18 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah, all the experience of what that will be like.
00:27:20 Edward Hseih
Yeah. And one of our grantees, one of the unions, is actually refurbishing one of the land-based turbines and they’re going to use it as a climbing training.
00:27:29 Michelle Moran
That’s great.
00:27:30 Edward Hseih
Yeah. So let individuals understand what they’re really getting into.
00:27:33 Edward Hseih
But then the other aspect of that from the long term perspective, there are certain jobs which aren’t great at the start, but there’s a career trajectory so.
00:27:39 Edward Hseih
Helping individuals understand that.
00:27:41 Edward Hseih
That they stick out, that that difficult part and at the same time the employer.
00:27:47 Edward Hseih
Should take on a little bit of that management of level setting understanding and like helping the employee know there is a pathway there.
00:27:55 Edward Hseih
Not just come into this first job and things are not great and then you know then what?
00:28:00 Edward Hseih
We have plans coming down the pathway to focus on.
00:28:04 Edward Hseih
Some of those occupations where the retention is really bad, you know, for example, everyone in the industry knows that weatherization techs, that they tend to have a very difficult time retaining weatherization techs.
00:28:14 Edward Hseih
I mean it’s a messy job.
00:28:15 Edward Hseih
A lot of the training happens in the lab.
00:28:18 Edward Hseih
Were you’re doing, you know, blown in insulation in a mock wall.
00:28:21 Edward Hseih
But then the job itself is in an attic and.
00:28:24 Edward Hseih
If you’ve ever climbed into your attic during the summer you’re talking 100° plus, right?
00:28:28 Edward Hseih
So it’s not fun, but it could be a lucrative pathway as long as they continue advancing in the career. There’re like there are options there and having individuals understand.
00:28:39 Edward Hseih
That pathway will help them navigate that initial, you know, bump of difficult, challenging times.
00:28:44 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah, yeah, it takes their attention.
00:28:47 Alina Michelewicz
That’s great.
00:28:47 Edward Hseih
Yeah. And then the last thing I want to talk about for that is obviously socio economic.
00:28:53 Edward Hseih
So we often seen the workforce world.
00:28:55 Edward Hseih
Both for clean energy and other sectors. You know the training is important, it’s difficult.
00:29:00 Edward Hseih
But the real difficult part during the retention stage is the socio economic issues.
00:29:05 Edward Hseih
So especially in clean energy with trades driven jobs, you have to worry about transportation. Most of the jobs are not within, you know, the 128 circle.
00:29:14 Edward Hseih
You know, in fact, a lot of them are outside the 495 circle, right?
00:29:17 Edward Hseih
So it’s sort of like if you don’t have access to a vehicle or if you’re starting out and due to your economic situation, you can’t afford car insurance, there’s all these barriers to to keeping that job. And then same thing with childcare. Most of the trades jobs start at like 4:00 AM, 6:00 AM.
00:29:33 Edward Hseih
You know daycares aren’t open then.
00:29:36 Edward Hseih
And then housing and food as instability, like the the basic needs of, I think a lot of individuals who come up through traditional, you know, college, other paths, they don’t necessarily think about sort of the overwhelming nature of that of not being certain each day and then still having to navigate the job.
00:29:53 Edward Hseih
And then the psychological aspects behind that, I mean, I have one of my favorite stories of a trainee.
00:29:58 Edward Hseih
So during the EV tech training program, there were two brothers that came to us.
00:30:02 Edward Hseih
And one of them was like the outright star.
00:30:04 Edward Hseih
Like he knew everything about ICE engines already.
00:30:08 Edward Hseih
So him pivoting into hybrid and EV was easy.
00:30:11 Edward Hseih
In fact, he, even though he was the youngest guy in the room, all the other people in the room were leaning on him to tutor them and.
00:30:18 Edward Hseih
He was very, you know, a very good soul. He was out there helping them, you know, on his free time.
00:30:23 Edward Hseih
So one of our best employer partners came in and offered him a position.
00:30:27 Edward Hseih
At the second tier union rate. So they bumped him past the entry level rate.
00:30:31 Edward Hseih
They offered him a year lease on a car a year lease on an apartment because they wanted him that much.
00:30:37 Edward Hseih
He turned it down.
00:30:39 Edward Hseih
And so, me and the program manager at the time we, we freaked out of course, but we had built a report with him.
00:30:44 Edward Hseih
Pulled him in on the weekend and you know that’s how much he wanted a job.
00:30:47 Edward Hseih
It wasn’t about will, cause he wanted a job.
00:30:50 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah.
00:30:51 Edward Hseih
He came in on the weekend and sat with us and, you know, just hung out and talked.
00:30:54 Edward Hseih
So, what we discovered through that was that he and his brother were very housing insecure. They were couch surfing.
00:31:00 Edward Hseih
Together, and because they were couch surfing together, he didn’t want to leave his brother behind.
00:31:06 Edward Hseih
And so there’s that element of like that was the perfect job for him. That would have started him on a huge trajectory, but he.
00:31:13 Edward Hseih
Just couldn’t do it because of the kind of socio economic, psychological aspects of it.
00:31:17 Edward Hseih
So that’s a real challenge in the workforce, especially if you’re dealing with, you know, vulnerable populations.
00:31:22 Edward Hseih
It’s more than just a training. There’s there’s a little bit of magic and empathy involved in it.
00:31:28 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah. It’s the whole person, yeah.
00:31:29 Edward Hseih
Mhm.
00:31:31 Alina Michelewicz
I had a question, you mentioned communities of practice? I was wondering if you could tell us a little more about that?
00:31:37 Edward Hseih
Sure. So Mass CEC’s workforce team, does workforce a little bit different than most grant makers, most workforce grant makers you know are very generous.
00:31:46 Edward Hseih
And they provide support, but we provide high touch technical assistance at this stage. So we recognize that starting up new training programs from scratch is very difficult. And so we have a whole concerted system where we provide individual one-on-one TA on a monthly basis.
00:32:01 Edward Hseih
Where each workforce, staff members match with a portfolio of grantees, and we have meetings where we actually do some level of like program design assistance like we don’t actually do the program design as a grant maker, but we, if we see something going wrong, we provide some opinions.
00:32:15 Edward Hseih
And guidance and matchmaking to make things work better at the same time, we have a a set suite of monthly communities of practice.
00:32:23 Edward Hseih
And those are designed in a very similar mantra where we’re bringing together the grantees to provide TA to each other.
00:32:30 Edward Hseih
So the idea is that they come together, they talk about what they’re doing. They talk a lot about, like what are the barriers they’re facing, you know? And then how do they overcome those barriers?
00:32:38 Edward Hseih
What are the best practices they’re putting in place and what systems they’re putting in place to deal with those barriers?
00:32:45 Alina Michelewicz
That’s amazing. That sounds really valuable.
00:32:50 Alina Michelewicz
What are the challenges in placement and recruiting after an employee is ready to go into the job market?
00:32:56 Edward Hseih
So in terms of placement, I think one of the the biggest issues right now again is that scale.
00:33:02 Edward Hseih
So we’re talking about a lot of smaller companies.
00:33:05 Edward Hseih
And they may have one opening at a time.
00:33:07 Edward Hseih
The cadence may not match with the training cadence, so just because a training program runs, you know until June doesn’t mean there’s going to be an opening in June.
00:33:15 Edward Hseih
So from a training groups perspective, the advice we often give to our grantees. You’re going to have to do a lot more business development then you may be used to.
00:33:24 Edward Hseih
You can’t go to that one big company and be assured that you’re always going to have an opening at a given time.
00:33:29 Edward Hseih
There’s also the seasonality aspect of it and working with both the grantees and the employer partners to figure out how to navigate that.
00:33:36 Edward Hseih
I mean, one of the good examples we have is certain of the jobs, obviously only really happen during the summer or spring, right? When there’s not snow on the ground.
00:33:44 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah.
00:33:46 Edward Hseih
So, what do you do the rest of the?
00:33:47 Edward Hseih
Well, that’s not, you know, Mass CEC’s responsibility to deal with, we obviously need to address it to ensure the quality of the job is good for the participants.
00:33:56 Edward Hseih
And so there’s a there is discussion about that. Like if an employer has a lull, how are they dealing with employees?
00:34:01 Edward Hseih
They at that point, you know, subcontracted 1099 employees that don’t get benefits, which is a different issue, right.
00:34:08 Edward Hseih
Especially if you’re dealing with a vulnerable population.
00:34:11 Edward Hseih
But then what are the creative ways that you’re helping those participants who graduate and get placed with you deal with that gap in time? If that’s the way that things have to operate. One of the great examples I had, one of the hoisting companies I used to work with.
00:34:23 Edward Hseih
They would hoist during summer when all the construction was happening.
00:34:27 Edward Hseih
And then it would throw up a plow on the front of the trucks during the winter and you know, he had worked out that schedule. The owner had worked out that schedule where he could guarantee work year round for his participants. And then in terms of recruitment.
00:34:41 Edward Hseih
Again, it goes back to those differences in culture differences and biases, but also just knowing where the employers and the opportunities are and being realistic too, like for example, going back to the transportation issue, we’ve seen cases where someone comes into a training program.
00:34:56 Edward Hseih
And they really, really want the job.
00:34:58 Edward Hseih
They really do.
00:34:59 Edward Hseih
It’s like it’s game changing for them so that sometimes they don’t think beyond the initial placement like.
00:35:05 Edward Hseih
Oh, I got an offer from this company that’s an hour and a half away. I’m going to do it.
00:35:08 Edward Hseih
I’m going to go there every day.
00:35:10 Edward Hseih
Things come up and it’s hard to keep the job if it’s an hour and half away, right?
00:35:15 Alina Michelewicz
That makes a lot of sense.
00:35:17 Michelle Moran
Follow up to that, so say this was a perfect world.
00:35:20 Michelle Moran
And those issues you just talked about weren’t really issues?
00:35:24 Michelle Moran
Do you think that at the pace that we’re training people and getting people into job placements we’re in a place to meet the goals, you know, either the 38,000 jobs or the 2030 or 2050 goals.
00:35:35 Edward Hseih
So while we’re.
00:35:36 Edward Hseih
Early on in equity Workforce fund in terms of training, I think we’re making great progress in terms of the numbers.
00:35:42 Edward Hseih
Thing that industry report pointed out was that the solar industry grew a lot faster than we predicted.
00:35:47 Edward Hseih
So I think a lot of stakeholders.
00:35:49 Edward Hseih
There recognize the need for the.
00:35:50 Edward Hseih
Growth of the labor force, and so things are happening that are going in the right direction.
00:35:55 Michelle Moran
That’s great.
00:35:56 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah, in the end, it’s a win win, you know.
00:36:00 Alina Michelewicz
What can listeners to connect with training opportunities or if they’re employers, to connect their employees with training opportunities?
00:36:07 Edward Hseih
There’s many opportunities out there.
00:36:08 Edward Hseih
We’ve talked.
00:36:09 Edward Hseih
A lot about kind of new entrant trainees, but we do emphasize incumbent worker trainees too.
00:36:14 Edward Hseih
So again, if you’re an employer that’s working in the clean energy space.
00:36:18 Edward Hseih
Or tangential and want to pivot more into it. There are training programs that are providing training for incumbent workers.
00:36:24 Edward Hseih
We have one grantee that will train preexisting fossil fuel workers with EV skills so that they can pivot into that.
00:36:30 Edward Hseih
You know, we have other groups that are training HVAC workers with a heat pump skill.
00:36:36 Edward Hseih
In addition to that, we emphasize heavily in our grant making process partnerships.
00:36:40 Edward Hseih
In fact, we generally don’t view favorably applications that don’t have any employer partners.
00:36:46 Edward Hseih
So if you’re an employer and you want to get more directly involved in training.
00:36:50 Edward Hseih
You could find, you know whether it’s a CBO, a mass-hire Career Center. In some cases, municipalities apply and in many cases for profits are the lead of the grants.
00:37:00 Edward Hseih
So find a partnership come into the grants. Play a role in that.
00:37:05 Edward Hseih
Across the workforce, sector, many advocates believe that the best practice is to have an employer help dictate the curriculum and help dictate the eligibility criteria for the training programs.
00:37:16 Edward Hseih
Cause then those mismatches we talked about earlier are mitigated.
00:37:19 Edward Hseih
Know you’ve been directly involved and you can see the quality of the work. There’s that element of get involved.
00:37:25 Edward Hseih
This is how you support an investment into human capital. That’s good for everyone. So.
00:37:31 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah, yeah, that’s great.
00:37:34 Alina Michelewicz
What type of grants do you offer?
00:37:36 Edward Hseih
Sure. So we have 4 different RFP’s right now.
00:37:39 Edward Hseih
We have the equity workforce training implementation grants.
00:37:42 Edward Hseih
Those go up to $1.2 million across up to three years.
00:37:46 Edward Hseih
Those are focused on specific target populations.
00:37:50 Edward Hseih
Individuals from EJ neighborhoods, current and former fossil fuel workers.
00:37:53 Edward Hseih
Individuals of federally recognized state acknowledged tribes.
00:37:57 Edward Hseih
And other underrepresented populations in the clean energy secor.
00:37:59 Edward Hseih
So and so those are designed for two possible pathways.
00:38:04 Edward Hseih
One is for individual career training and to be clear, those training programs could be anywhere from.
00:38:09 Edward Hseih
A pre-apprenticeship program to an apprenticeship program or just a non-apprenticeship model where it’s like individual training, but in some cases that could support post-secondary education programs that lead to placement into a trades occupation or engineering, architectural.
00:38:25 Edward Hseih
Those sort of occupations are still supported. The clean energy sector we also have within.
00:38:30 Edward Hseih
That same RFP discrete career exploration strand for those groups that want to do a little bit of navigation.
00:38:37 Edward Hseih
We also have what we call the climate critical training implementation grants and those are funded by state budgets.
00:38:43 Edward Hseih
Unlike the equity training grants, they’re open to any Massachusetts resident.
00:38:49 Edward Hseih
And also we use that particular RFP specifically to do incumbent worker training.
00:38:54 Edward Hseih
The reason we set up that way well, in addition to the fact that there’s two separate parts of funding back from them is it allows a group to come in and do a blended and braided application so often times you’ll see that a training program.
00:39:05 Edward Hseih
Will want to serve equity populations, but the reality is recruiting 100% equity populations in some cases in some areas is not possible.
00:39:13 Edward Hseih
We, for example, had a school in the Cape Cod area who came in for an application and when we talked to them they said basically that yeah, a good chunk of the population of the student body is from an equity population. But there still is like 30-40% that.
00:39:27 Edward Hseih
Qualify under that.
00:39:28 Edward Hseih
So we were able to blend and braid two awards them so that they could run their training program, recruit from both pools and still be successful.
00:39:36 Edward Hseih
So those are the two training ones.
00:39:37 Edward Hseih
There’s the planning and capacity grants which.
00:39:40 Edward Hseih
Are smaller and scale that can go from 20K up to 150K and those are again designed for groups that want to get into training or business support, but they don’t have every element in place. They may have to define a curriculum and build it up.
00:39:53 Edward Hseih
They may have to hire additional staff needed.
00:39:56 Edward Hseih
So that’s what that second the planning capacities are RFPs do. And then the minority women business enterprise support RFPs are focused on.
00:40:05 Edward Hseih
Supporting groups that support networks of MWBEs and DBs disadvantaged business enterprises.
00:40:11 Edward Hseih
So it’s not designed to directly support one-on-one MWBEs because that would the scale of that would be difficult. It says designed to build out a system across the state and will gradually moving towards a hub and spoke model.
00:40:24 Edward Hseih
Where within a region like a small business could come over to one of the hubs and realize I’m going to get a base level of support to pivot into clean energy and then out of those hubs they might be referred to a spoke that has specialty in a specific sector.
00:40:40 Edward Hseih
So those are the four opportunities under the adult training side. We’re in the process of rolling out student and young adult focused RFPs that are coming later this year.
00:40:48 Edward Hseih
So originally they were rolled under those, but we see that the needs the need is out there and also the need of the population is slightly different.
00:40:57 Edward Hseih
So we have that split going on.
00:40:59 Alina Michelewicz
That’s awesome, that sounds great.
00:41:00 Michelle Moran
Yeah, we’ll link to those resources for those of you who are listening.
00:41:04 Alina Michelewicz
Can you tell us a little bit more about the employer summit that you mentioned?
00:41:07 Edward Hseih
The next employer summit would most likely be the March-April period of 2025.
00:41:12 Edward Hseih
We’re eyeing the Northern part of the state. This time we had one last March in Western Mass.
00:41:17 Edward Hseih
We as you can kind of guess from that we move around regionally.
00:41:20 Edward Hseih
Yeah. Going back to the idea that there is some regionality to the needs of employers and the participants, we had many Western Mass employers like subcontractors coming out.
00:41:29 Edward Hseih
You know, Mass Save tends to be involved in our convenings and they come out and talk about their contractor, pathways, which you know are a great opportunity.
00:41:36 Edward Hseih
You know, groups like Springfield Technical Community College, Greenfield Community College, which are also grantees now. They came out, talk about training opportunities at their locations, and it’s just a great way for them to convene businesses out there and then also introduce them to the existing training and MWBE.
00:41:52 Edward Hseih
Support grantees so that it can organically start to grow connections and.
00:41:56 Edward Hseih
Build more partnerships and we often do see additional grant applications coming out of that kind of organic growth.
00:42:02 Alina Michelewicz
Yeah, that sounds great.
00:42:03 Alina Michelewicz
So there’s a lot going on.
00:42:07 Alina Michelewicz
Well link to the… as Michelle mentioned, in the show notes and make sure people stay up to date with what you have going on.
00:42:13 Alina Michelewicz
There anything else you’d like to mention?
00:42:15 Edward Hseih
I’ll just close.
00:42:16 Edward Hseih
It out with the kind of message we said earlier of there’s this great opportunity here and there is at the same time a great need to do this in an equitable and inclusive matter, because it’s not just the right thing to do, is the only way we’re going.
00:42:29 Edward Hseih
Be able to meet the goals.
00:42:31 Michelle Moran
Yeah, definitely.
00:42:33 Alina Michelewicz
That’s great.
00:42:34 Alina Michelewicz
Well, thank you so much.
00:42:35 Alina Michelewicz
We really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us and it was really interesting.
00:42:39 Alina Michelewicz
Hearing more about what you do.
00:42:40 Edward Hseih
Well I appreciate the opportunity.
00:42:42 Michelle Moran
Thank you.
00:42:45 Michelle Moran
Thank you to our guest Edward Hsieh for joining us on today’s episode.
00:42:48 Michelle Moran
For more information on what we spoke about today, the show notes and transcript are available at newecology.org/buildingwell-podcast. To learn more about workforce training and other resources from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, visit masscec.com/workforce, that’s M-A-S-S-C-E-C dot com slash workforce.
00:43:09 Michelle Moran
You can find Mass CEC on LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube at Massachusetts Clean Energy Center or on Instagram and X at Mass CEC. You can find New Ecology on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and X at New Ecology Inc.
00:43:24 Michelle Moran
See you on the next episode.
00:43:26 Molly Craft
This episode was made possible by the Mass Save Community Education Grant.
00:43:33 Michelle Moran
The season 1 BuildingWell Podcast committee at New Ecology is led and organized by Alina Michelewicz and Michelle Moran with Molly Craft and Michael Abdelmessi.
00:43:42
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