Leverage Partner Expertise and Resources
Organizational
Description
Employers do not need to develop and maintain expertise in all aspects of workforce development to effectively support their frontline workers. Drawing on the strengths of partners, like community-based organizations, education and training providers, and workforce investment boards, is an effective use of resources and demonstrates collaboration and a desire for collective impact. In these strategic partnerships, healthcare systems can concentrate on what they do best, and outside organizations can serve their community in support of their missions. Strong industry partnerships can facilitate relationship building among partners and leverage resources to address shared challenges and goals.
Process
When selecting partners, develop an assessment process to determine which organizations have the capacity, expertise, and ability to deliver quality service. Build relationships with potential partner organizations to determine if that organization is a good fit for your system. Clearly define roles, responsibilities, and expectations in a memorandum of understanding or contract. Explicitly articulate how programs and services will be funded.
External partnerships can be particularly helpful to provide the following services:
- Outreach to job candidates in specific communities or populations.
- Pre-screening assessments to ensure candidates meet minimum requirements.
- Connections to other services that promote work readiness, such as smoking cessation, basic literacy, or GED attainment programs.
- Pre-employment training, both for soft skills and for job-related competencies.
- Wrap-around supports, including transportation assistance, access to child care, mental health services, elder care, etc.
- Other services and support, like continuing education and training, onsite job coaching, financial literacy, and basic computer and technology training.
CareerSTAT Members Implementing This Practice
Trinity Health Michigan Region (Mercy Health and Saint Joesph Mercy Health)
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Staten Island Performing Provider System
Rush University Medical Center
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health System
The Christ Hospital Health Network
Resources
A Playbook for Fostering Hospital-Community Partnerships to Build a Culture of Health, Health Research & Educational Trust, 2017.
A playbook that provides strategies to create new partnerships and advance and sustain existing, effective partnerships.
Engaging Your Community: A Toolkit for Partnership, Collaboration, and Action, Office of Adolescent Health and John Snow, Inc, 2012.
A toolkit to assist organizations cultivate strategic partnerships, implement innovative outreach strategies, and develop robust communications that target the diverse organizations and populations in their communities.
ETA Sector Strategies Technical Assistance Initiative: Industry Champions, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor.
A brief to help workforce practitioners build a range of skills needed to launch and advance sector strategy approaches and connect readers to existing resources, best practices, and tools.
Collaboration Factors Inventory, 3rd Edition, Wilder Research, 2018.
A tool to assess how a collaboration is doing on research-tested success factors.
Partnership Assessment Tool for Health, Partnership for healthy Outcomes, 2017.
An assessment tool to help partnering organizations work together more effectively to maximize the impact of the partnership
Using Medicaid Levers to Support Health Care Partnerships with Community-Based Organizations, Partnership for Healthy Outcomes, 2017.
A fact sheet that shares key learnings about the benefits of these partnership between healthcare organizations and community-based organizations and offers strategies Medicaid can consider to better support these efforts.
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