The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Welcome to another episode of The Broadband Bunch. I am Pete Pizzutillo, and I am joined today by Camilla Formica. She is the chief revenue officer at NCTI. Camilla, nice to have you on the show. Thank you for coming.
Camilla Formica:
Thanks, Pete, for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Pete Pizzutillo:
NCTI provides course-based learning and certification programs for engineers and other folks. So before we get into it too deep, maybe give us a little background about your journey to how you got to this point, and a little bit about NCTI.
Camilla Formica:
I started with MCI as a business-to-business rep and moved on to work for an ILEC and as a carrier sales rep and in fiber. But honestly, my first job out of school was at MCI, and I’m not a technologist. This was not going to be my career. And I fell in love with this industry. I fell in love with the pace. I fell in love with technology, again, not a technologist at all, and the people in the industry. And so fast-forward that to 11 years ago when I went to work for NCTI and it was like that last piece of the puzzle fell in place. It was a combination of technology and the industry and the people, and then this last piece, which was really training and educating and caring for those frontline employees.
And so just a little bit about NCTI. We provide skills-based and competency-based learning for frontline employees. But what we do is it’s like career paths and education and all those so that frontline employees can do their jobs, but we overlay over that industry certifications and college accreditation so that as employees are doing the jobs that they have to do and taking the training and learning so that they can move forward in their career, they’re actually accruing things like industry certs and college credits. So that as they’re going through their journey without even realizing it, they’re accruing these things that not only matter but help them in their career, regardless of where they end up. They can move jobs, they can move states, they can do these things and they travel with them.
So that, for me, was that aha moment where I went, “Man, I not only love what I do in this industry, but we’re really giving back to these people in this community.” I’ve had people come up to me and say, “I’m the first person in my family that ever got a degree. And I’m not college material, right? I am someone that came into this to work with my hand and to work in a trade. And yet you’ve changed my family.” And if I can tell one really quick story.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Sure.
Camilla Formica:
Sitting across the table from an SVP for a really large tier one operator who said, “I started off in this industry as a frontline tech.” “I was taking my courses and through those courses, I was accruing college credits. And I ultimately got an associate’s degree with you, which allowed me to be a supervisor and a manager here. I couldn’t have done it without a degree. And then I went on and got my bachelor’s. And today I sit here across the table from you. Having done what I did 20 years ago, I would not be here today.” It’s that kind of impact that we’re having that not only says to me this is why you and I are talking today on this journey in our podcast, but why I say to people, “It’s so important to be able to clearly articulate what you can do with your employees so they understand like, ‘What’s my journey with you going to be? What can I do? What can I have for a career?'”
Pete Pizzutillo:
I think helping people find alternative or creative ways to a career is fascinating because I know most people just aren’t, in their families, taught to think that way, or in their little communities. So it’s great to have resources and expertise that can help them. Especially now in this field, right?
Pete Pizzutillo:
There’s a lot going on. This is where you and I started our conversation about all the influx of money and attention and demand that’s happening. There are a lot of people that are small, medium, and large companies that are all dealing with the same problem. There are just not enough people. There are not enough skilled and trained people out there. And so you’re dealing with some of these folks on a regular basis. What are some of the challenges you see them facing right now with managing the workforce?
Camilla Formica:
There’s a ton, but there’s a couple that rise to the top to me. Number one, and they’re not in order of importance, but the first one would be that we’re definitely facing an aging workforce. We’re starting to see it in our industry, especially. But I saw an interesting statistic that by 2025, 95% of the workforce was going to be Millennial or Gen Z. Now, I think that we lag behind in our industry there. But if you think about that, in the next few years, we’re saying that we’re going to start to have such an influx of younger employees coming in. Now, that changes drastically what we as an employer need to provide.
Camilla Formica:
Thinking about what matters to those kinds of generational groups, things like the culture of career. When we talk about career progression, “I want you to be able to tell me when I walk in the door…” Especially Gen Z, “When I walk in the door, I want you to be able to tell me six months from now, where can I be? If I do all the right things, what are you going to be able to do for me in six months, in one year, in three years?” Those things really matter to younger generations, certainly that their employer aligns with their beliefs. There are so many things that are really different than traditionally we’ve looked for in an employer. People need to realize if that’s what’s coming in your pipeline, you need to be aware of that. Again, as I said, I do believe we’re slightly behind that because we do have more of an aging population in our industry.
The other piece that I think might even be more important that we’ve got to address and that’s that we have a culture clash between college and trade or what I would consider college versus trade. For 30 years, we’ve been telling kids, “College is where you go to make good money. You got to go to college because otherwise, you won’t get a good job. You won’t have a good income. You won’t have the right job, right? College is the natural progression.” For so many kids, that’s not what they need, or what they want, or where they’re best suited.
I’ve got a son that trade is absolutely where he needed to go to work with his hands. To have that kind of career was what he needed. And for him, I will tell you that when he watched his friends go away to college and he didn’t go, he started to question if he’d made the right decision. Then he was an athlete and he watched those kids continue to play sports and he was missing out on that community as well. So now he’s really starting to guess like, “Oh, gosh, did I do the wrong thing? Maybe this isn’t what I should be doing.” You take a kid like that. Now he’s going to someplace like Target or Starbucks for the first year while he’s trying to figure out what trade he’s going into, and we’re losing out on grabbing those kids and creating really clearly articulated paths for them to say, “Hey, come to us.” Right?
Like me and my journey, I did not know I was going to love this industry so much. We’ve got to take some of these kids who trade is their path and say, “This is a great place. We’re going to grab you and we’re going to show you what you can do with us.” We’ve got to clearly define. And, oh, by the way, these are kids that game for six and eight hours at night. We can’t grab these kids and say, “By the way, your first six or eight weeks are going to be sitting in a room with a person with a PowerPoint on a screen behind you. We’re going to do that to you.” Right?
We’ve got to find ways to align our mission and our excitement and the values of our industry with what we immerse them in when they come in.
Pete Pizzutillo:
I think it’s a massive opportunity because college is so expensive and inaccessible to so many people, right? And so I think that folks have, and those that are preparing to provide an alternative path through a trade route, it is a pregnant audience that’s waiting for another option. And as you said, there’s just not enough visibility or information around, “Hey, here’s how you can get to something that you have purpose-driven, that you can build a career on, you could have a family, you could build a life on.” So aging and then the college versus trade. Are there any other challenges you wanted to mention?
Camilla Formica:
There are some misconceptions. If we can talk about that for a second. I would love to talk about something that is still a challenge that I think people need to think about. We hear all the time, I get, “It’s about the money.” And I will tell you that people will definitely come in, it’s like, “Well, I took this job because it paid three more dollars an hour than my job at Starbucks paid.” And again, that’s how you find the career. That’s how people say, “I didn’t ever leave this job.” But sometimes it’s a money hawk. And so they’ll leave for the Amazon warehouse that may pay three more dollars an hour.
So you absolutely need to be able to clearly define, “I understand the Amazon warehouse may be paying three more dollars an hour, but let me show you what you’re getting here.” That’s when we start to talk about, “Let me clearly define and articulate a path for you. Let me explain to you that you can actually get college credits with some programs. We can show you a way that we’re going to give you something you can’t get other places in training and education. And it goes with you everywhere.” This is how you start to educate them in ways that you’re giving them more than somebody like Target, or Starbucks, or Amazon is going to give them from a career perspective.
But I will tell you, it’s not just about money. There’s this misconception in a lot of the upper management about the fact that “Well, they’re leaving for the dollars.” And we see time and again, people saying, “No, it’s about my skill satisfaction and my job satisfaction.” When you unpack that a little bit, people get very frustrated when they don’t have the skills that they need to do their job every day. And so it can be from a call center perspective with people saying, “You know what? I can’t deescalate. I don’t have the tools I need to be able to deescalate the calls I’m getting,” or, “I don’t have the tools to be able to handle the tech calls every single day. I leave frustrated every day. I can’t handle this and I’m leaving.”
Conversely, it’s troubleshooting in the field and having to call for help constantly every day or having to do truck-rolls constantly every day. So there are these kinds of skills where they’re like, “I can only do it so long before I’ve just sort of lost confidence in myself. And I can’t go to work every single day doing that.” We see people always in the top two or three rankings of why they’re leaving their job, that’s the reason. That’s absolutely a problem that can be so simply solved.
Again, I’ll give you one quick story because I’m a storyteller. So working with a small rural telco, I went in and they said, “Let me tell you a story of what we were doing.” And they’d been working with us. He said, “Our techs were going out after work, were stopping at the grocery store, and they were taking a change of clothes with them because they wouldn’t go into the store in their rented gear.” And they said, “We would get so much grief from customers in our gear that we wouldn’t-”
They wouldn’t go in their branded gear. And it was like, “I had this call with customer care and it was a nightmare,” and they would just start berating them, whether it was a, “Three truck-rolls to my house and it’s still not solved. Why can’t you fix it?” Small town, this stuff happens. And so they actually took the initiative and said, “We’re going to create, have some progressions that basically say if you’re a tech one, you have to know these skills, these competencies, these things.” And everybody in their particular roles had to be trained to a specific level.
And so they spent about 18 months making sure that people were very proficient. Then fast-forward to me being out there at year two, and he said, “Do you know what? The guys wear their gear into the stores.” He said, “The only reason it takes them longer in the store now is people literally come up to them and say, ‘Oh my gosh, I had the best experience. Do you happen to know Susan in customer service? Please tell her to thank you.'” And they said, “It’s just night and day.” And so I would say to anybody listening, which company do you want to work for? Right? Which company do you want to be? It’s that simple.
Pete Pizzutillo:
I think challenging the concept of throwing money in the hourly rate hikes but instead looking at how to build a culture, right, how to help people understand their path, their career toward continuing education for college, and just that pride of ownership. I mean, even if you’re not hiring and recruiting people, that’s stuff that you want to do to keep your employees there today, right?
I mean, so I think it’s an interesting way to frame it up. So, what are you seeing? How are people thinking outside the box or getting creative? If I’m a general manager at a municipality and I have to figure out how to solve this problem, and I don’t have a ton of money, what are some ways that people are starting to take this problem down?
Camilla Formica:
Well, the first thing I would say is it does not take a ton of money. So the things that we are talking about right now are low investment things. It takes creativity, it takes working with your network. You and I just recently saw each other at a regional event and people are collaborating. I’m seeing creativity happening locally, right? So the kind of training things that we’re talking about, those are a low investment. They just take creativity, right? You’ve got to start thinking and that’s what people need to do. Right? You can’t put it off anymore, and that’s a big deal.
But when it comes to thinking outside the box, it’s that collaborative thing that I’m seeing locally. Collaboration, not to diss anybody that is bigger, because I do see some great things happening in large companies, but I’m really seeing collaboration happening at that local level and that smaller organizational level. People being willing to just reach out to the people that they know within networks, the kind of stuff where you and I saw each other recently, people saying, “Hey, who do you know? Who can I tap into? What are you doing that’s creative?”
We just had someone reach out to us that said, “I want to do something and it’s pretty outside the box. Are you working with anyone that’s doing something like this?” And we were. We said, “We are.” “Would they be willing to talk to us?” So we reached out and we brokered a conversation. There was nothing in it for anyone except to say, “I’m willing to be vulnerable enough to reach out to another company and say, ‘Would you share best practices? Because we’re trying to do something different.'” That doesn’t happen at tier-one at all. That doesn’t happen to the tier one level. But at the small rural level, they’re like, “Who else is doing this? Tell me how you’re doing. And tell me, is it worth my time to do this? And tell me, what pitfalls should I avoid?” That’s what I’m seeing. Think outside the box, be creative, use your network of people to reach out, and say, “Who should I be talking to? Who’s going to share?”
Pete Pizzutillo:
Yeah, I 100% agree. I mean, the collaboration and the peer-to-peer sharing and learning and the kind of events that we’re going to and that you’re attending is just unprecedented. I think there are people that have been there, done that. They haven’t figured out 100%, but they’re happy to mentor somebody who’s new. And there’s a lot of new people that are maybe not new in terms of running a town, but in terms of the broadband portion of the services that they’re providing. So I think thinking outside of not trying to reinvent the wheel, right?
Camilla Formica:
Yeah.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Looking around some of the marquee examples that we see within your industry segment, I think, and the accessibility of people is just great. I mean, you know where they are since they’re all remote. I mean, they’re at the computer. And the few live events to get to, people are starting to get out there. So that’s great feedback.
Camilla Formica:
I agree.
Pete Pizzutillo:
We’re talking to Camilla Formica from NCTI. She’s helping us understand some of the broadband workforce challenges, best practices, misconceptions. Camilla, to continue the conversation, right, not only is there a lot going on with broadband, but the consequence of that is, what we’re seeing is kind of like the digital migration, right? So remote workers are moving out of big cities or NFL cities and brick and mortar locations. Baby boomers are aging out of the workforce and moving out of cities for many reasons to retire. So how do municipalities or smaller communities think about that in terms of an opportunity or threat to some of the issues that you’ve already outlined?
Camilla Formica:
So, what I see when I go out to a lot of the rural, whether it’s the telcos or the municipalities, prior to COVID, and really the shift that COVID has allowed happening, was, “Man, one of our top three things is always attracting and keeping talent. No one wants to move out to where it’s rural. They just don’t. We can’t get people out here.” And I use air quotes for good people, but, “It’s very hard to attract and keep talent in rural areas.” Now it’s the opposite. We’ve got this intellectual vibrancy that’s coming from large cities, to your point, NFL cities, coming from Silicon Valley, that’s like, “Yeah, we want to raise our family someplace better than a big city. And now I can work remotely. Now I’ve got great telehealth, remote work, remote learning, all these things that I can do. And, oh, by the way, I can live in this great rural community and take advantage of price.” We won’t even talk about that.
And so what I would say too, so number one, I think that’s fantastic. I live in a rural area, not the greatest network. We won’t deal with that. I will say that sometimes rural communities struggle with change and bringing in some of the thought processes of when we talk about some of the city, the intellectual vibrancy that comes with the Silicon Valley, those kinds of people, there is a struggle there. That change. That’s a struggle for people, and I see that every day where I live.
But I will tell you that when it comes to attracting and keeping talent, now you’ve got the things that we’ve talked about. If you put in place really clearly defined and articulated messaging to why you can attract Millennials and Gen Z, why I have a clearly defined career path, why are we a place that aligns with the things that you’re passionate about as an employee? “Well, here are the things that really matter to you. They matter to us too. And, oh, by the way, all while you can raise your kids out here and you can live in a rural environment that’s great for your family. And you know what? You still have a spouse that works for Silicon Valley company remotely.”
And so all of a sudden it’s the best, to me, of both worlds. But you do have to up the level of your playing to align with some of the things now that we’re saying, “You can play the same way somebody in those big cities does.” And you have those talents now. I’m not saying you’re going to potentially go to be pulling people from the big cities, but now there are families moving in. You’ve got spouses, you’ve got people like that, that are the available talent pool that you didn’t have before.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Adding to that, you mentioned that the Millennials and their portion of the workforce by 2025, right, they’re at that multiple kid stage, they’re looking to the yard. I have siblings and relatives that are in that stage where they’re just buying their first houses and moving out of the cool little city where they couldn’t even walk their dogs.
Camilla Formica:
The hip city. Yeah.
Pete Pizzutillo:
So, good luck to all of those guys moving out of the city. But anyway, I mean, there’s an opportunity there. But the other thing in terms of going back to the point about thinking outside the boxes, you don’t need to have all your call center people, or maybe some of all your network people in the city that you operate in or the municipality you operate in. So you can have remote workers supporting it. And folks that may have experienced working at other locations, instead of saying, “Okay, you got to relo,” maybe there are opportunities to bring them in. So that’s a double-sided coin that is an opportunity, I think.
Camilla Formica:
I completely agree with you and never then is it more important to clearly define, what are their paths? How do you train them? What do you expect from people? Because really now, if everybody is dispersed in a lot of different places, which I think is wonderful for the workforce, personally, I love it, but now I think it’s even more important to clearly define the boundaries of what’s expected of everybody, right?
If everybody needs to have the same set of rules and understand if you’re a call center person and you’re a level two call center person, what do I need to know so that I know the same thing in rural Elbert County, Colorado, where I live, as someone does where you live on the East Coast?
Pete Pizzutillo:
And I think shifting the money you would spend on brick and mortar supporting an office and reducing that, and putting that money back into building the emotional, psychological connections that people need to really work well remotely in terms of culture and interaction, I think that is where you’re going to have an opportunity to fund those things that people haven’t done before.
Camilla Formica:
I agree with you.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Speaking of funding, right, there’s a lot of talk in the Infrastructure Bill. I think it’s still hanging out there. At this point in time, I feel like we’ve been talking about it for way longer. I mean, do you see any opportunity for that money to help solve this problem?
Camilla Formica:
So interestingly enough, there is a small chunk, well, relative to the amount of money. Okay? It’s not a small chunk. There are a couple of billion dollars that’s earmarked as training. But it’s earmarked as training for what they consider basically like equity and inclusion training. So it’s for training for people who have little to no experience with computers, right? So I don’t particularly think of it as training that we would see dollars for. However, that being said, I recently started working with a really large tier one operator who’s doing computer-based training for frontline employees and who’s having, this is not a wrong number, so don’t double-check this, a 10% rate of their folks doing computer-based training who are having digital literacy issues with like, “Press the start button on your computer.”
Camilla Formica:
“Press forward arrow, screen, scroll forward. Where’s your mouse?” kind of stuff. 10% of people are not passing those really rudimentary digital literacy things, which was just the most shocking number to me. So that being said, when you’re looking at equity and inclusion for really basic digital literacy, I think for those kinds of campaigns and those kinds of training, those dollars may fit in there. It doesn’t clearly say that, but the way that it’s laid out, I think that that may work there. But those numbers surprise me. And so we’re working with those folks to put together some really basic training for people who, truly, they don’t know where the start button is on the computer, like the power button and things like that.
Pete Pizzutillo:
What I would add to that is this injection of money is actually forcing people to provide resources and training trying to get ahead of this problem, right? And there are a couple of different industry groups that are trying to solve this problem. I know you guys have been solving this problem. So I just feel like there’s an influx of good information that’s getting reused or resurfaced to try to get ahead of this problem. So money always drives and attracts people in the right direction. I do think it’s going to be helpful at the end of the day.
Pete Pizzutillo:
We covered in terms of background and how you got here, some of the misconceptions, how people are trying to be creative and building up a community. But the problem is right in front of us, right? I mean, so what’re the 30 days, 60-day advice that folks need to be thinking about to try to tackle this problem?
Camilla Formica:
Well, I know I keep beating a dead horse here, but first of all, you need to know, what are you solving? Right? For people, if someone comes to me, the very first thing they say when they ask how to work with you, like, “Where’s the first place we start?” I say to them, “If you’re trying to figure out a career path, or if you need to figure out what is the way that we’re going to articulate something to our employees and make it clear? Let’s take a look at, what are your job descriptions?” So I would say to people right now, sit down and look at what’s a job description for every role that you have? And when you sit down and lay those out, can you say that you can train to every single one of those? Do you have the training for every single one of those?
If you don’t, if you can’t take a new hire by the hand and sit them down and put them in something really engaging, and if someone can’t come to you and say, “I would like to be an X,” fill in the box, “in two years. How do I get there?” and you can’t tell them how to get there, you aren’t doing a good job. So I would say to you sit down, clearly layout every job description, every path you have, and do you have training there? If you don’t, find somebody to help you say, “Here’s our internal stuff that we have. Here are the gaps we don’t have. We need to create something or find someone who can backfill it.” Put these pieces together. Find partnerships, whoever it is, whether it’s us, whether it’s the fiber broadband. I mean, there are so many people out there that do things but find partnerships.
But really, it’s getting down to the basics of defining what it is that you need to create. Do you have something that you’re proud of, that when people come to you, you say, “You know what? We’ve got a great program. I’m super excited for you to come to work for us. Let me show you what you can become if you have a career with us,” and showing them those skills. If you can’t do that now, sit down and start working that plan out and reach out to people who can help you.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Yeah. Putting yourself in the perspective of the people that you want to attract is, I think, a good way to think about it. The other thing I would just add to that is right now is trade show season, right? So there are at least a dozen events coming up nationally. And so I’m sure there’s some in the region that to go to your earlier point about collaboration, get out there in the ecosystem and start leaning out folks. Because if you don’t have those job descriptions, somebody else might have them, right?
And there’s really no reason for them not to share it, right? I mean, there’s no competitive issue, right? It’s really if you can find somebody who forklifts some of the foundational stuff that you need to do, right, there are people willing to do that.
Camilla Formica:
I’ll tell you right now, I’m glad that you said that because not only are there people willing to do that but if you come to somebody like us, people come to us all the time and they’re like, “Do you have a basic, just like a technician level one?” Absolutely, we do. There are people who will help you through this stuff. If you don’t have it and you need it, reach out to other companies, reach out to networks. Come to people like us and just say, “Hey, can you help us with this lift?” Of course, we can. I mean, that’s what we do. And it’s not like we won’t do it if you just ask us for it. Of course, we’ll do it. Even if you just ask us for it without anything else, we will help. But there are so many people out there who have done the heavy lifting already who are happy to help you get there.
Pete Pizzutillo:
And not to be a fearmonger, but something to think about for everybody is there’s a lot of momentum, right? There’s a lot of excitement about this money coming in. People feel like they’re going to get enhancements, they’re going to have access. They never had it before. The opportunity is there for that to happen, but there’s also the great opportunity for that not to succeed, right?
And as you know, customer satisfaction is the biggest driver in dissatisfaction. So not having enough people, not having well-trained people, right, not having a culture that’s customer service-centric down the road is going to be a very expensive proposition and a failure in a lot of places. And so I think you’ve really got to double down on trying to establish it now because every new person you bring in is an opportunity and a risk for you to help your customer.
Camilla Formica:
That’s so true. I think you and I spoke about this the last time we talked about the fact that for the first time for a lot of these companies, they’re going to be competing. They haven’t been in the competition before, and that’s a huge risk for a lot of people. That’s just a new environment. And so you really do need to be thinking about what we talked about earlier. This is outside the box for a lot of people. So training is going to be incredibly important, and not just the technical side, but the soft skills side to understand what’s it going to be like to be in a competitive environment?
Pete Pizzutillo:
Looking down the road 24 months from now, what do you think we’ve done right and what do you think we still have work to do as an industry?
Camilla Formica:
As many years as I’ve been in this industry and as many years as I’ve been doing this, I will always be saying to people, “No, you really do need to train people.” You will be absolutely flabbergasted at how many people try to do this without training their people. So I will definitely say that there will still be a lot of people trying to bootstrap their way through this, and that will be shocking and you’ll see it in results. So for sure that, and I’ll just be really curious 24 months from now where the money is. We may still be talking about those funds in just that tense, like, “Oh yeah, those funds.”
Pete Pizzutillo:
Yeah. I think the funding will be an issue, just to tack onto that, there’s the difference between funding and appropriations, right? And getting the money into people’s hands. So my hope is we’re making a lot more progress in this area than we have in the past. I do think it’s the opportunity, right? The cable industry, the internet industry is the number one worst customer service industry out there. I don’t know how else to say that. The bottom.
The bar’s low. And so I think just doing small things, like you said, in terms of attracting the right people, stat, making sure you have the right resources, having well-trained resources, that’s going to be a competitive advantage for people. Hopefully, these newcomers start taking advantage of that. So any other comments before we wrap it up?
Camilla Formica:
I just want to thank you. Thanks for bringing awareness to this. It’s so important, and it often falls to the very back because it’s one of those things where training your people, yeah, it’s a little extra money, and can it really make that big of a difference? But you just said it, it’s one of those things that can make all the difference in the world. And I think the stories about the community pride and the stories about people staying with your company for a really long time, and, boy, does that make a difference when you get that knowledge base that stays instead of leaving because of dissatisfaction. You want your people to stay and you don’t want your people to stay with no knowledge, right?
You want your people to stay and be trained and skillful. So I think it’s just incredibly important for people to realize that this is a very important piece of the success puzzle. So, yeah, thank you for bringing some awareness to this and this issue.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Yeah. No. Thank you for framing up this conversation. We’re in the middle of launching out the whole program around workforce management in this space. So we were speaking with Camilla Formica from NCTI. If you want to learn more, you can go to ncti.com. They have a lot of information and resources for you guys if you go on there. So, Camilla, thank you again for joining us.
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