VR headsets could help bring workforce development opportunities to rural Oregon communities

Workforce development initiatives can be difficult to arrange for communities in remote parts of Oregon. It can be expensive to hire outside providers for job training or career exploration opportunities, and time-consuming to send employees to outside training. One way to bridge the gap could be virtual reality headsets. Equipped with training simulations for industries like manufacturing, skilled trades and hospitality and tourism, the portable headsets could provide hands-on opportunities to more people at a lower cost over time.

Patti Hyatt is the school to careers counselor for the Pendleton Chamber of Commerce and Justin Chin is the dean of workforce development at Lane Community College. They join us to talk about how they’re using VR to bring career opportunities to rural areas near them.

Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Workforce development initiatives can be difficult to arrange for communities in remote parts of Oregon. It can be expensive to hire outside providers for career exploration opportunities, and time consuming to send employees to outside trainings. Enter virtual reality. VR headsets equipped with training simulations for various industries could provide hands-on opportunities to more people at a lower cost. That is what workforce development people in different parts of Oregon are banking on right now. Patti Hyatt is the school to careers counselor for the Pendleton Chamber of Commerce. Justin Chin is the dean of workforce development at Lane Community College. They both got funding to buy VR headsets recently, and they both join me now. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.

Patti Hyatt: Thank you for allowing us to be on.

Miller: Patti Hyatt first, I mentioned that you’re the school to careers coordinator for the Pendleton Chamber of Commerce. How common is it for a chamber to have a position like yours?

Hyatt: It’s not common at all. It’s very interesting, it was a position that was considered to go into education prior to COVID. And then they decided to put it into the business realm, and offered it to the chamber. And it was supposed to come over into the chamber in 2020. And we all know what happened then. So that ended up getting shelved, and I ended up being hired here at the Chamber in October of 2021. I’ve been able to bridge the gap between the businesses and the schools.

So I work with Pendleton high school students and Nixya’awii community school out at the tribe.

Miller: What is the hiring landscape like in Umatilla County, or the broader area right now?

Hyatt: Everybody’s hiring. We just had a career fair for the high school students, but we also had a job fair at the same time. We had 410 students show up for the career fair on Thursday, and we had 46 employers here trying to get the interest of the students. Also, the community was invited to come in and have conversation with them. It’s a big thing, it’s a huge concern for people over here. We just don’t have enough workforce going on.

Miller: When you say everyone’s hiring, what do you mean? What are some of the industries you’re talking about?

Hyatt: It was construction, ODOT, military. We had hospitality and tourism, Wild Horse Casino and Resort. A couple of hospitals, manufacturing, Newly Weds foods. We had the Umatilla Electric Co-op, Amazon Web Services, the Local 598 which is the plumbers and the steamfitters. We just had from all different kinds of industries come into this career fair, and they’re all looking for somebody.

Miller: Why do you think it is hard? It’s not like Umatilla County is unique right now in having a lot of employers who are trying to fill positions. But what do you see locally as the biggest reasons for this gap between positions that need to be filled and people who are there and ready to fill them?

Hyatt: Well, it’s not helpful being way out in Eastern Oregon. We don’t have a huge amount of people available for these jobs. Training, people being introduced to what’s available, and I’m gonna throw it out, COVID really helped create an environment where people aren’t going out and finding out what’s out there. Just the whole environment is strange. And I see it not just in our area, but it seems like I’m seeing it on the news and through the nation. It just seems to be this common thread that’s going through, and we are not safe from that thought process over here as far as trying to get people to work. There’s tons of jobs here. We have a lot of jobs. I love Pendleton, so I think it’s a great place to live. I would invite people to come out and look into these opportunities.

Miller: Justin Chin, what are the specific challenges in workforce development in Lane County?

Justin Chin: To echo Patti, very similar pieces here where data that I’m hearing is for every one job, there’s something like eight potential professionals that could fill those positions. Talking with our workforce development board, there are something like 7,000 able bodied professionals out there that are just not engaged in the workforce right now. So there’s that piece of it.

Miller: How do you explain that piece of it? As Patti said, people during the height of COVID . . . were you saying, Patti, that they got out of the habit for looking for work or thinking about working?

Hyatt: Yeah, a lot of people, especially students or people just entering the workforce, they’re not communicating. They don’t know how to communicate. It’s easier to look at a phone and text somebody than it is to just look at somebody in the eye and have a conversation.

Miller: Justin, how do you deal with that?

Chin: This is a really multipronged question here and there’s a lot of layers to it. So yes, there is, I wouldn’t call it a gap or deficiency in technical skills per se. I wouldn’t call it a gap or deficiency in essential workforce skills, some people call them soft skills. I think for Gen Z and Millennial professionals, one of the things that really came up was “am I going into a career that is going to be fulfilling? Is it going to offer me a living wage? Is it gonna offer me the quality of life that I am looking for?” And I think that one of the bonuses out of COVID was really that time to pause and think. And yes, that time to pause and think really put the workforce into a really interesting bind where we’re finding employers scrambling in a wage war as far as recruiting and retaining that talent that they need.

But I also think that in that time, especially for Gen Z students and younger, that was a two year hiatus from that hands-on opportunity for them to explore and experience that tangible world of workforce and career development. I think one of the things that we’ve definitely seen in the last two years plus is this shift towards automation. And that shift towards automation is really putting skills and skill development at the forefront where it won’t be too long before we see- I’ll pick on the banking industry here, it’s really hard to find that 9 to 5 bank teller anymore. Those are all things that are being replaced by AI and automation. And I think that it’s really that shift that way.

But there are other industries that require that person in the office or on the job site doing those pieces that way.

Miller: How does a virtual reality headset fit into everything that you’ve been talking about? Justin, you can take this first, my understanding is that you are a little bit ahead of Patti in ordering some of these sets for your people to use.

Chin: I think literally by hours or days.

Miller: Okay, very barely. But what was your thinking? Why is this part of a solution?

Chin: It really comes down to three pieces for me. Number one, one of the things looking at the community college and K-12 education this way, things that we’re seeing is rural access. There are places in Lane County where access to career training just cannot happen. So I think about our counties to the west of us; Florence, Mapleton, that’s a 90 minute drive on a good day for them to come to campus here at Lane Community College. Lane County is the size of Connecticut. And when we think about travel that way, how can we break down those barriers and extend the classroom for students?

Number two, this is really a technology built for digital natives. I’m a very middle-aged man, putting on a VR headset feels a little bit foreign to me. But I know that that is just my age coming up here, and my generational experience that way.

And then lastly, as we look at this here, this is an opportunity for students to build that skill and build that experience working virtually. In so many ways, access, skill development, and then lastly engaging in a technology that is right there on the verge of becoming the norm.

Miller: Patti Hyatt, can you give us a sense for what the VR headsets actually do? When people put them on, what will they see? What will they experience?

Hyatt: Well I just took them to the school board yesterday, and I had the oldest school board member change his oil. You put them on, see the car coming in, Simon is a digital coach and he’s telling you what to do, and you’re working the whole system to get that oil changed. And then he allows you to change the oil all by yourself, and then ask some questions and does some testing, and then gives you an award at the end. So it’s kind of like playing a game, but it also is teaching you the language that goes along with that automotive industry. That’s the same thing with the other industries that are represented. I was blessed to get this grant from Wild Horse Foundation, and I bought five of these headsets; three of them for career exploration only, and the other ones are called fully accessed, which provides 275 simulations for training on the job so I can take them into my businesses.

I totally agree with everything that Justin says, but I will add to that even more so that this technology is a way for kids to be interested and to engage. I’m getting adults, even though they’re not comfortable with that world, they wanna know that world, so they want to put these things on. And I’m super excited. The whole reason I decided to do this is not only to show these things to my students and to get them engaged in different kinds of opportunities and industries, but to also take them out to business members and have them work on them with their employees or onboarding employees or training their employees.

This company works with the certifications that you need all through on the national level. So you could go in and get all this training done in aviation maintenance, or diesel tech, or electronics, or electrical trades, skilled trades. The list goes on and on. And you’re not taking anybody’s time from the business to do the training, or hiring somebody for that matter. You’re able to bring that training right to that person, put it on their head, and they’re able to learn the language and the understanding of how that industry works. So, if they walk into an interview or have a conversation with that employer, they know what they’re talking about. You’re not talking with somebody that has no idea. They’ve already had an understanding after doing a VR session of what that industry is all about.

Miller: Patti Hyatt and Justin Chin, thanks very much.

Hyatt: Thank you.

Chin: Thank you.

Miller: Patti Hyatt is the school to careers counselor for the Pendleton Chamber of Commerce. Justin Chin is the dean of workforce development at Lane Community College.

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