Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
It's time now for our community connection right here on K one, the
one you trust and portray ray all. We've had him on hold forever.
How you doing there, You haven't fun today yet? Yes, no worry.
Thanks for having hey. It's always great to have you in here.
He's from the Oklahoma Employment Securities Commission and lots going on, of course in
the workforce and also going on what I call day to day living. Parts
of our state have been affected by some pretty bad storms, and especially Bartlesfield
Barnstall area here locally, but just all over the state. Things have kind
of been doing it like they do in the springtime of Oklahoma. Things get
interrupted. What are we doing as far as some of the services offered during
this period of time here while we're trying to get things cleaned up and cleared
away. Yeah, yeah, good question. So the Employment Security Commission administers
employment and reemployment services across the state. That's most of what we do.
We have a veteran services and we also have some work that we do directly
with employers of the state. Typically, when storms go through areas and disrupt
businesses, it's either going to impact employers or the staff of those employers or
both. And so if someone has to shut down temporarily or you know they've
got their buildings hit and they've got a close fully, sometimes people are laid
off. We encourage people to go through the normal unemployment process and where they
do not qualify for unemployment, there is sometimes opportunities for disaster unemployment assistance which
they can go through the process with our staff to get if they do not
meet qualifications for unemployment. So it's just emergency things that get sit up when
storms, when storms ravage areas. So we're working on getting that stood up
hopefully have it ready for probably by next week for people. But we just
encourage people to go through the normal employment process that they've been impacted by storms,
and then we'll kind of husher them through that if if they need to
be going through something else understood. So make it real simple, folks,
just like you would for normal unemployment. And once again they'll take your information
once you have that information, trying to find what help they can for you.
And yes, sir, they can. They can call theyn go on
mine, they can go to any of our American job centers. We have
a we have an office there in Bartlesville, and so they can go in
there. Uh and anyone should be able to help them, whether their employers
or their employees. Now I understand these these centers are very handy if folks
there are very very calm collect it because not all of us folks who are
in the workforce are computers savvy. So they thank you by the hand of
calm you down, and they'll take you through the process. They've been to
it a million times and they can't understand where you are. They're going to
meet you where you are, so sure, Yeah, I appreciate you saying
that. They The people that work in our offices are are they're gods hands.
They're taking care of people. They get up every day they go to
work, you know, solely to serve people, serve others. So they're
doing hiring fairs, they're helping people pres you know, resumes, they're doing
mock interviews, they're connecting people and sourcing you know, these candidates to these
jobs. If they're working with the employers, they're looking for specific people.
We have employers and employees under case management, so we usually can connect them
and we don't do everything for workforce. We have a lot of partners,
and so sometimes you know, we're doing a warmhand off and connecting people to
one of our partners, if it's the Department of Rehabilitation Services or the Career
Tech center across the center in that in that part of the state, or
across the state if they're going somewhere else. So, yeah, any kind
of training or employment need. Usually though if we don't have the right answer,
we at least know it or know who will. This is really cool
now. I was aware of the mock interview thing, but the resume and
trying to put that together that you know, if you're a young person just
getting into the workforce and I'm talking to the recent high school grads who are
not going to go off to a trade school or to college, this is
a great place to make an appointment and kind of go through these steps,
you know. And also, yea's been a while since you had a job
change, and you know a lot of it has changed. You might want
to do this too. Sure, Yeah, you know, people, it's
very rare that someone decides what they want to be and then they just go
be that and there's never any disruption or change. You know, usually someone
has an idea of what they want to do and they'll do it, and
they may change their mind, or they'll go to school and get a degree,
or go to a career tech and get a certification and at some point
maybe want to change jobs. So whatever situation someone finds themselves in, whether
they're young or you know, they've been in the workforce for a while.
The people at our offices and our partners too, they work with employers and
employees in every industry across the state, so usually they're going to be pretty
well versed in saying, if this is what you want to do, these
are the types of things that would probably help you on your resume or in
an interview setting. So it's because we work so closely with employers that we
can give people good guidance. You know, we have to understand what employers
need so that way we can help to kind of facilitate that. So certainly
kind of a connector matchmaker role, and that's what I think the people are
most passionate about is just seeing people, you know, get on their feet
and not need help. And they like to be the they want to be
the last help someone need. Well, that's really pretty cool. I like
that. I really like that a lot. And this is a this is
going to make your life a little easier here, folks. Yeah, I'll
want your goal to take the village. Sometimes. I know we're doing the
best we can to take care of people, and we've always got things to
learn. We can always do a better job of working with employers. We
can all. You know, there's there's tons of things that we can keep
moving forward on. But we're learning as much as we can and we're trying
to immediately put it into help for somebody. Well, Trey, I got
to tell you, the work environment changes so rapidly. Whatever was in vogue
about a year ago might have a st change or a drastic change. And
I really had so off to you folks to keep up with the with the
times, as they say, because there's one thing for certain in the world,
and that is changed. Yes, sir, you got it. Now.
Your website is pretty easy to access and very easy to navigate. Can
you tell people where to go on the website? Yeah, So I'll talk
about two websites. We have our oe SC website o s C dot God.
That website is where you'd find things specific to our agency. So employers
looking for how to navigate, you know, resources that will help them navigate
their employer tax SOUDA, the state unemployment tax wanting information on that what what
impacts their tax rates, how to respond to claims if someone has filed a
claim against their business for individuals, you know, it could be claimants that
have applied for assistance, it could be someone who's looking for a job it
doesn't have an active claim. Those people are able to find resources on there
about being connected with employers and what types of services they can get in our
in our offices, we have a lot of programming in CET our agency around
veteran services, and so we have we employee vets across the state and their
sole purpose is to get out there and help disable disabled vets and help bets
that are not disabled just find their way through through the workforce system. You
know, there are some organizations that are really really military and veteran friendly,
and so sometimes gus don't know that, and they may not know what industries
their skill sets when they were in the service will transfer to and make them
successful at And I feel like we do that a lot, not just in
the veteran space, but a lot of the resources people find the website or
the information they get from staff is about, hey, did you know because
you're good at this, you would also be probably really good at this.
And it's kind of helping people understand where there are opportunities because those things aren't
always common knowledge. So the website ours is osc dot gov, but the
website that holds more of our partnership potential is Oklahoma dot gov slash workforce,
and that is where we're actually we just launched that website. We're still developing
it and so we're still putting more functionality and there. We're going to upload
a map soon that someone can can see on that homepage. They could click
on what county they're in, and it'll be able to take them to a
different page that tells them all of the workforce related services and entities available to
them. So what hot jobs list kind of things that the employers in their
area really need to be hiring for, what career techs or community colleges or
higher ed institutions of any kind, what's nearby? Where can I get training?
What what jobs exist? Are there workforce boards in that area? Resources
that can help connect me, whether it's resumes or interviews or whatever. So
a lot of things you know that someone can kind of self select or self
navigate, and if they ever do that question, they just go to one
of these American job centers. The Oklahoma works is what's on signs and they're
all of the state and that's where they can go. And if it's not
an OEESD thing, they be easily connected with one of the other partners.
But is an OSC thing, that's where we sit. So people can go
online. They can call one of those websites if anyone ever asked questions or
like you mentioned the computer literacy piece someone. You know, a lot of
these towns they don't have internet providers that are stable in their areas. True
people made me get on the computer. Sometimes they go into the offices.
We've got computer lab setups in each office and staff will kind of walk them
through the processes. So, yeah, we try to be in this workforce
space, you know, connectors and whatever someone might come to need, whether
it's you know, with us or partners. But but yeah, they can
kind of come to us anyway. But those are the two websites that is
really cool. You know, Unemployment for some folks is so very foreign.
There are people who've never been unemployed in their life, and there are folks
who have been unemployed when they at least expected it simply because maybe they're jop
moved or something like that, or something in the market shift, and this
is a whole new world for them. And I just this really makes it
easy for those who are trying to go through this period of adjustment to get
reoriented and to kind of take the kind of take all the anxiety away.
I really like that, yes, sir, Yeah, And you know,
things happen. Life happens, like you're saying, businesses, whether it's storms
or something else, they can get disrupted and it's completely out of their control.
Sure, sometimes it's just a matter of the unemployment rates really low,
and that means people looking for jobs have a lot of options, and so
it's hard to find staff sometimes when the unemployment rates low because they have multiple,
you know, alternatives to the job that you may be offering them.
And so you've got to be competitive, and you've got to think about all
the things people want, flexibility in their work and all of these things.
So I think, as we you know, if we're trying to make the
biggest impact we can on businesses. We are best off drawing more people into
the labor force. You know, people that are you know, retired,
but maybe would go back to work and kind of sitting around and maybe entertaining
the idea of going back to work. If people are in limbo, I
don't know if I want to go to school, I don't know if I
want to go get a certification. They're just kind of taking a job and
making decisions for a while. You know, those people anyone kind of that
isn't in the workforce. If we can get them engaged in the workforce,
then the unemployment rate being low isn't such a challenge for businesses because there's other
people drawn in and training and putting in these positions. So it's great to
have low unemployment, but does put that kind of strain on and that makes
it harder on people and on businesses. So we're trying to do whatever we
can to make sure that the state's economy is strong, that businesses can grow
and that they can have the staff that they need. And a lot of
times that's connecting people to businesses that we work with. A lot of times
it's educating people on Did you you know again that that transferable skill set.
Did you know because you're good at this, that you could also stuff like
this, So yeah, kind of whatever people come to need, we're usually
in there with them trying to figure it out. And yeah, we hope
that that alleviates stress and get them back to work fast. No one wants
to be on unemployment, and we don't want people on unemployment, so we'd
like to be cycling back in the workforce and something that's good for them and
good for the business as fast as possible. Trey, thank you very much
for being here with us today. Really appreciate great information to pass along in
a very timely manner. I really appreciate the time you spent with us here
and thank her. I'm happy to do it anytime. And I love Bartlesville.
I'm actually I've come there quite a bit to either visit our office or
see friends. And I'll be up there in your town next month for the
fill Blast Golf tournament. There you go, there you go. We'll look
for you then, all right,