| Coming Up | |
We are celebrating our 20th year of reimagining work and learning for the prosperity of people, firms, and communities. We're planning to spend this year reflecting on what we have learned and exploring what is possible in the future. We look forward to sharing our insights in the months to come.
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Recent Publications
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Partnering Effectively to Better Serve Dislocated Workers
CSW developed this Learning History which illustrates lessons learned and strategic choices made throughout planning, start-up, and implementation of the Mid Michigan Partnership for Training in Healthcare (M-PaTH). The M-PaTH Learning History is intended to help other communities, both in Michigan and beyond, prepare to address the complex and pressing needs of dislocated workers through strategic partnerships.
Achieving Financial Stability Through Regional Workforce Funder Collaboratives
This report by CSW, United Way Worldwide, and the National Fund for Workforce Solutions provides an overview of sector-based workforce partnerships and their value to a community, and makes suggestions for growing and sustaining these partnerships. For this report, CSW conducted a series of interviews with staff, funders, and community partners from 10 United Ways, all of which participated in the seven month readiness process and are involved in regional funder collaboratives with the National Fund for Workforce Solutions.
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Big Ideas for Job Creation
CSW authored a paper that offers policy guidelines for growing community-based job creation partnerships to address unmet market needs left by traditional approaches to economic development. These ideas were developed over years of working with industry sector partnerships across the nation, and from experiences in our work in Detroit, Michigan.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country could be created based on sustainability-driven innovations in targeted sectors. Partnerships would address local community needs, waste, and inefficiencies to support the pillars of a strong community economy, such as food, buildings, energy, transportation, and manufacturing.
We developed this paper as part of a call for ideas on job creation from the University of California Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor & Employment. Berkeley sought proven policies that cities and states could implement fairly quickly to provide job opportunities for low-skilled workers.
Berkeley released this set of papers written by some of the country's leading national economic and employment policy strategists under the banner, "Big Ideas for Job Creation."
Other strategy ideas range from tax breaks for the self-employed to infrastructure projects financed with private investment. They include turning waste into jobs, attracting new industries to deserted plants, and trimming hours for all workers rather than laying off some. A D.C.-based researcher suggests tapping federal welfare funds to subsidize jobs, while a California professor recommends tax credits for employers who add jobs during a recession.
Individually, each of the ideas may be insufficient to address the growing concern of a jobless recovery, but combined, they show a path for states and cities to take control of their economic future.
For more information on our work on job creation, please contact Michael DiRamio at mdiramio@skilledwork.org.
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Detroit Area Wins
Jobs & Innovation Accelerator Challenge Grant |
Working with Next Energy and several partners in Southeast Michigan, CSW developed a winning proposal in response to the federal Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge to create new jobs and technologies related to the rapidly emerging advanced energy storage system (AESS) industry cluster.
Advanced energy systems are critical to the future of the automotive industry, which is innovating rapidly around vehicle electrification and hybridization. The alternative energy economy also relies heavily on energy storage systems, like batteries and powertrains, to prolong the life of energy generated by solar and wind systems.
CSW will coordinate the $2.1 million dollar initiative over the next two years to ensure strong alignment of economic, business, and workforce development activities and outcomes with partners who include:
Funding will help the Michigan AESS industry grow the supply chain around advanced energy storage systems, with a focus on diversifying existing firms and helping grow new ones to meet the needs of the rapidly shifting automotive industry. It also will help train engineers and technicians who must be prepared to help drive innovation, development, and production in this critical field.
The grant places special emphasis on inclusion of traditionally underrepresented or underserved populations in all funded efforts.
For more information on this initiative, contact Sandy Marshall at smarshall@skilledwork.org.
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| Building a Framework for Credentials Based on Competency |
Workers today often acquire high quality education and training through the performance of their jobs and participating in both formal and non-formal workforce programs for non-credit. But if they later decide to pursue a degree or credential, they may have to pay for college credit and take time away from work and family just to repeat some of the learning they've already acquired.
Our education system needs a new approach for measuring learning and determining the value of non credit workforce education and training that takes place both inside and outside of colleges.
A national competency-based framework built upon knowledge, skills, and abilities validated by both educators and business and industry would standardize credentials so that they are more commonly accepted by employers, across industries and across state lines. We also need to build the capacity of state and local education and training systems to be able to create and confer competency-based, market-relevant credentials.
Together with our partners, we're tackling this problem from two directions.
We're building momentum for a national competency-based framework. CSW and some of our colleagues are working towards agreement on how to assess specific learning outcomes and assure the quality of credentials that demonstrate graduates have the competencies they need for work and to advance in their careers.
By bringing together employers, workers, and education and training systems at the federal, state, and local levels to align curricula and ensure market relevant credentials, students can receive credit for demonstrated learning.
CSW undertook research about the scale of non-credit learning in partnership with the Center for Law and Social Policy, which resulted in the paper Giving Credit Where Credit is Due: Creating a Competency-Based Qualifications Framework for Postsecondary Education and Training . This report has accelerated an important conversation about how to move the postsecondary and employment and training fields toward adoption of a workforce competency based qualifications framework that can be used to document skills and result in credentials that are understandable and widely used in labor markets.
According to Keith Bird, CSW Senior Policy Fellow for Workforce and Postsecondary Education, "a system based on assessing competency to measure learning regardless of where and how it is acquired would help ensure employers that their workers possess needed skills and provide learners with widely understood credentials that increase their mobility in the labor market."
We are currently working with a number of local partners to build capacity on the recommendations in the report to move toward national adoption of a competency-based framework, building upon a number of local, regional and education and business sector partnerships that have developed effective models for more wide-scale adoption.
With support from the Surdna Foundation, we are currently convening a "Network for Business Engagement in Credentialing Processes" to build the capacity of 8 to 12 local industry sector partnerships to build and test the use of credentialing within their partnerships. We're excited about the potential to integrate credentialing with sector partnerships and accelerate the success of both efforts. We look forward to sharing more promising practices as our research and the Network proceed.
For more information on this work, please contact Keith Bird at kbird@skilledwork.org.
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| Preparing Community Colleges To Strategically Work With Employers |
CSW is offering a new set of sector academies to prepare community colleges to work effectively with local employers so that their students get the right skills for good jobs in their communities.
Many community colleges struggle to engage employers effectively. Colleges often convene employer advisory committees or conduct one-on-one outreach to businesses. Some community colleges have not yet conceived of any structure in which employers play a role. In these cases, employers end up offering tangential input or only providing insight and approval after decisions have been made about course offerings. Students then pay for an education that they'll never actually use at work.
We'd like to see more community colleges engage employers through industry sector strategies.
Industry sector strategies are regional, employer-driven partnerships of industry, education and training, and other stakeholders that focus on the workforce education and training needs of a single key industry in a regional labor market. The partnerships rely on a convener to engage employers and to coordinate information and resources across partners to develop and implement effective, coordinated responses to shared workforce challenges. This approach has demonstrated increased productivity for employers, as well as higher wages, better placement and advancement rates for workers.
Through participation in sector strategies, colleges can achieve deepened, ongoing relationships with employers in key local industries. This approach increases the ability of colleges to develop and offer real, market-relevant career pathways that prepare workers for good jobs in their community.
To build this capacity, we offer sector academies to community colleges. Workforce deans and directors, college staff currently interacting with employers, instructors, and advisors will learn to work with employers from key industry sectors, the public workforce system, economic development leaders, and other key partners crucial to the local labor market context.
Together, they engage employers more strategically in decision-making about programs, courses, curriculum, and credentials and develop education and training opportunities that result in good, local jobs for workers.
To learn more about how community colleges in your state can build a sector approach, contact Ed Strong at estrong@skilledwork.org.
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| 4 Ways To Ensure Implementation Success |
We recently partnered with Complete College America to assist colleges in their Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (C3T) grant application efforts, and we gained a great appreciation for the work that lies ahead for these colleges.
We also have substantial experience with United States Department of Labor (DOL) resources and programs, as well as many partnerships and projects that worked on the integration of DOL and United States Department of Education (ED) programs.
Here are four key things we've learned from our work that may help these college consortia succeed:
- Implement and deepen employer engagement. The sector model for community colleges is a critical way to change behaviors around employer engagement and to meet the clear intent of the C3T grants to fully engage employers in the design and operation of your new programs and strategies.
- Strengthen learning and collaboration among partners from the beginning of the projects. The basis of these grants was a careful intersection of ED and DOL interests, and there is much that stakeholders in these two areas need to continue to learn from each other in order to operate in sync. Intentionally creating opportunities for partners to come together and discuss challenges, share promising practices, and coordinate their efforts will lead to improved outcomes.
- Develop an implementation toolkit, including issue-specific resources to help your partnership successfully implement new delivery approaches and structures. Build and share a library of promising practices in connecting adult workers to new skills and good jobs. Learn to effectively use data to drive decision-making and inform the development and implementation of initiatives.
- Effectively document and learn from the successes, challenges, and experiences of participants and partners. During the process of implementation, you'll have many opportunities to identify, articulate, and intentionally capture the critical learning that occurs within and across partnerships. Deliberately naming and planning for learning documentation supports implementation efforts.
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| About CSW |
Corporation for a Skilled Workforce is a national nonprofit organization that partners with government, business, and community leaders to develop good jobs and the highly skilled workers to fill them. We help communities innovate so that they can compete. We help businesses cultivate talent so that they can grow. We help people learn so that they can find good jobs - or create their own.
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