Over the past weeks, we have been reviewing the outcomes of the efforts at the Governor's Economic Summit in preparation for the Upper Great Lakes Talent Summit, a follow on to the Governor's event.  This week we will share information on the third actionable outcome from the summit:

Connecting Employers to the Workforce Development and 

Education Communities

Policy makers, workforce development professionals, and educators often note the potential for "market failure" in responding to talent demand due to poor demand-side information. That is, those involved in shaping the talent "supply" have an incomplete understanding of the specific skills and knowledge that employers will need in the future.

In order to address the market intelligence gap, summit participants explored how to tighten the information loop between a region's employers and its workforce development and education communities. Additionally, participants identified opportunities for employers to engage in talent development directly.

Each group of seven to 10 participants identified as many ways for employers to connect into the talent development system as they could. Subsequently, key business leaders and facilitators helped each region assess the most promising opportunities across all of the groups in a region.

The most promising ways for employers to connect with their region's workforce development and education communities included:

• Developing training agreements with universities and community colleges
• Responding to surveys from the workforce development community on talent need
• Collaborating with K-12 education on skilled trade careers
• Establishing internships, co-ops and apprenticeships
• Supporting existing workforce intelligence efforts
• Engaging regularly via industry associations
• Collaborating on joint talent attraction marketing

There was broad agreement among summit participants that progress on talent development with talent demand will require the development of regional relationships. Individual business executives will need to engage with individual community college administrators and individual leaders of local economic and workforce development organizations.

To that end, the summit was designed to foster open dialogue and opportunities for making connections, rather than to educate through a series of programmed lectures. Ninety-six percent of summit participants felt that the breakout sessions were beneficial. In particular, over half of the attendees made commitments at the summit to engage with their region's talent system to improve connectivity with employers.

For example, a business executive committed to work with a community college in designing a curriculum that the college and business professional anticipate demand for.  A group of business executives, workforce development professionals and educators committed to hosting a "mini-summit" in their region to push deeper on action items surfaced at the summit. Another business executive discovered existing support services for veterans and pledged to coordinate a hiring strategy for veterans in collaborations with the service providers.

The stakeholders and organizers of the summit have recognized the need to develop a follow-up action plan.  Their hope is that important guidance on that plan will come out of the education summit. The Workforce Development Agency, Michigan Economic Development Corporation and other stakeholders will review the suggestions and comments from the summits and integrate feedback into the design of statewide initiatives, or enable new regional initiatives if they are best implemented locally. To date, key stakeholders and organizers have agreed to the need for tracking regional follow-up efforts at integrating their business, workforce development, education, and planning communities; understanding the efforts underway, and learned lessons, will allow for the sharing of best practices, and for identifying the cumulative needs for support to execute new initiatives. Both, the governor's Regional Prosperity Initiative and the Strategic Training Fund, each proposed in the fiscal year 2014 budget, can serve as sources of support for collaborative planning and talent matching efforts.

The summit raised awareness within the business community around the challenges faced by the education and workforce development communities in delivering talent development services. Thirty-nine percent of summit attendees indicated that they were now planning on attending the education summit. Organizers of the education summit anticipate the largest participation from the business community in the 18-year history of the summit.

Moreover, 77 percent of summit attendees are "very likely" or "exceptionally likely" to attend next year's economic summit and share progress on building regional talent networks, and recommitting to the critical mission of preparing job seekers for the opportunities of the future.