ACT Workforce testing challenges,  improves chances

The ACT testing for our workforce that we have been hearing about from the Panola Partnership and from leaders of local government and writing about in this newspaper should give this county an important edge in recruiting business and industry. Evaluating our workforce with standardized testing so that we can provide real numbers about potential employees is the newest frontier in attracting the outside investment that will add value to our local tax base and jobs to our local economy.
Just like any other city, county or state we usually offer incentives for location, for infrastructure and for worker training.
If the ACT testing program is adopted as envisioned, we will also offer incentives to the emerging workforce — young people now in high school, GED programs and community colleges who will be applying for jobs. Scores on the ACT testing will earn emerging workers ranking from bronze to silver, gold and platinum with a reward that is commensurate with the score. A suggestion has been a $25 gift card for a bronze ranking up to a $200 gift card for a platinum ranking (earned by an average of one percent of those who take the ACT Workforce Test).
The idea is to motivate emerging workers to deliver their best performances on the test. Offering tangible rewards has been successful in other counties to fast-track enough emerging workers into testing to give the county a broad base of data about the skills that its workers can offer.
We can argue that a test score that earns a higher ranking should be sufficient reward in itself. It is for workers in transition or the unemployed for whom the better the ACT Workforce test score, the more likely they are to receive a better job offer. But for emerging workers — mostly adolescents — the more tangible reward is the best way to get the most tested with the best results in the shortest time frame possible, leading to Panola becoming certified as an ACT Workready Community, fast becoming the gold standard for evaluation of worker potential.
This whole emphasis on ACT Workforce Testing is an effort to adjust Panola County’s approach to industrial and commercial recruitment to the paradigm shift that has accompanied the worldwide revolution in communications and technology.  Local leaders in economic development, city and county government and schools have bought in to this means of compiling uniform, standardized data that allows prospective business and industry a means to evaluate Panola’s potential as a location site. It will also give emerging and transition workers as well as the unemployed a means to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and opportunity to improve those weaknesses.
On Thursday, representatives of local industry, educators and elected officials are invited to a breakfast at the TVEPA auditorium to learn more about becoming certified as an ACT Work Ready Community. It is a good start toward a worthy goal.