ACT – The Ultimate Gatekeeper
Any good business person knows the importance of risk management. A lot of risk management involves shifting liability, for high risk things that must be done, to someone else. A simplistic example is skyscraper window cleaning. The windows must be cleaned, but as building management you don’t want to put your regular cleaning crew out there. Too much risk and not enough training. So naturally you outsource that kind of job to a company that specializes in taking on the risk of hanging off buildings multiple stories in the air to clean windows. Their people are typically faster, specifically trained in the task, do a better job and are highly insured for injury. Businesses look for opportunities to shift that liability where ever they can, including in the human resources department. And lucky for businesses there is someone out there to take on the risk of new hires.Check out the state Certified Work Ready Communities (CWRC) initiative powered by the ACT® National Career Readiness Certificate (NCRC TM). The initiative was launched in December 2011. Missouri, Oregon and South Carolina were in the first round of participating states. Participants are “leveraging the NCRC to measure and close the skills gap — and building common frameworks that link, align and match their workforce development efforts.”
ACT knows that “making a bad hire can be incredibly expensive, costing you training time and expense, not to mention lost productivity.” They are ready to step in and take on that risk with their special certification program. ACT does this by offering “a suite of assessments and certifications that measure an individual’s foundational workplace skills such as math, reading and locating – skills required for a majority of today’s jobs.”
Makes sense. We all know ACT’s prowess at assessments with its college entrance exams. Those exams, interestingly started out in 1959 as a competitor to the SAT reasoning test and ACT – The Ultimate Gatekeeper | Missouri Education Watchdog: