I was so excited to travel to Asheville, N.C., earlier this week to visit the NTCA Benefits Operations. In addition to Asheville being an absolutely amazing place, this was my first trip in my new role as CEO, and I couldn’t wait to dive into full-blown learning mode to understand all that our team does to support our members.
And, boy, did the Benefits team deliver (as they always do)!
Having been with NTCA for almost 16 years, I “knew” what the team did at a high level. But this deeper dive was eye-opening. Spending hours with various parts of the team, reviewing everything from claims processing to how member inquiries are handled to the interplay of the systems that make this all work, I had many questions and filled pages of notes. It was exciting to see the pride, commitment to service and attention to detail that back up this work.
But on the plane back home, I also had time to put those conversations into a broader perspective. Many people in the broadband sector across the country and in Washington, D.C., are rightly concerned about attracting and retaining a skilled workforce to deploy and operate these complex networks. As I think about it, along with permitting and supply chain management, workforce availability is part of a trifecta of the “mechanical aspects” of building and operating broadband networks. (Of course, even if you solve for these “mechanical aspects,” you still have to grapple with the threshold business case in many rural areas to build and sustain networks and keep services affordable – but that’s an entirely separate series of blogs…)
So, it really clicked for me on the flight back to Washington D.C., that what our team in Asheville does — what the NTCA Benefits enable — plugs directly into that bigger picture. If you want to address workforce challenges, you need tools as an employer to attract and retain the best talent. And as a small business based in a rural area, the degree of difficulty is even higher. But if you can offer quality, reliable benefits that attract skilled people to work in rural markets, that’s a powerful tool for addressing this workforce challenge. Just as we say when it comes to universal service — it’s about “getting and keeping people connected” — a comprehensive solution for workforce issues in the broadband space needs to focus not only on the essential step of training a skilled workforce, but also on helping providers figure out how to get and keep them in rural areas where connectivity is so critical. I’m so proud of our NTCA Benefits team for being a big part of that.