Workshops Session I
Wednesday 9:45 AM – 11:00 AM
Accelerating Change in Healthcare to Benefit Frontline Workers
Healthcare
Change is hard, but peer learning makes it easier and faster! Healthcare employers engaged in CareerSTAT’s Healthcare Workforce Development Academy accelerated changes to their business practices and rolled out new frontline worker programs with the support of an engaged peer learning network. Employer engagement is fundamental to creating sustainable systems change and peer-to-peer exchange presents an opportunity to strengthen employer engagement from a learning perspective. This panel discussion will explore how participants in the Academy leveraged the peer learning experience to create an accountability structure to accelerate the adoption of best practices for frontline worker investment.
Achieving Economic Mobility Through Innovative Approaches in Adult Education
Workforce
Research shows that as the economy evolves, the demand for education, skills, and credentials also increases. High-performing adult education providers are critical if individuals are to succeed in occupational training. Unfortunately, adult education and training programs are often siloed and may not be equipped to address the various barriers underserved populations face. Learn how two regional funders collaboratives are leveraging community-based partnerships to build capacity, close foundational and occupational skill gaps, and mitigate common barriers to adult education and employment.
Advocating for Skills: The Business Case
Policy
Join Business Leaders United (BLU) in an employer-led discussion sharing their efforts to advocate for federal policies that support their businesses by expanding access to skills for their current and future workforce. The discussion will include BLU’s efforts around work-based learning, Pell eligibility for short-term credentials, investments in career and technical education, and system-wide support for sector partnerships.
Building a Prosperous Community for All
Health & Wealth
Creating the conditions in which people can all thrive, live, work, and age is dependent on many factors: your zip code, your education and job, and your health and access to quality healthcare. Together these factors comprise the social determinants of health. Employers and workforce intermediaries increasingly recognize the role they play in building prosperous communities, from both a health and wealth perspective. Come learn more about the social determinants and why you should care about them. Learn how employer-based strategies and new partnerships can enable more individuals to fully participate in an inclusive economy.
Building a Worker-Centered, Racial Justice-Oriented Local Jobs Policy
Job Quality
Approximately 12% of all jobs in the East San Francisco Bay Area’s economy are in the rapidly growing Transportation, Distribution and Logistics sector, but the jobs often do not pay a living wage or go to local residents. Learn how a community/public/private collaboration in West Oakland successfully negotiated a landmark Good Jobs Agreement for redevelopment work at the former Oakland Army Base. They are now developing an apprenticeship-based training pathway to create a robust pipeline of workers, establishing a High Road Staffing Agency to coordinate hiring and planning to build on their success with other large local development projects.
Can Work-Based Learning Ease Talent Issues?
Work-Based Learning
To attract new talent, advanced manufacturing employers are creating work-based training programs that ensure new employees learn exactly what they need to do the job. When combined with intentional recruiting strategies, customized “earn and learn” on-the-job training enables under-represented populations to gain skills while being placed in full time, permanent positions with benefits and a livable wage. Learn about the innovative strategies that employers and their partners are using to make OJT successful.
Does Making All These Changes Make a Difference? Benchmark Your Business
Job Quality, Evaluation & Impact
The Aspen Institute has partnered with Working Metrics to develop an easy to use tool that provides an instantaneous scorecard of your job growth, wage growth, and job retention results vs. the national industry average. Hear from employers how they got new insights into their performance and the results of their suppliers or bidders. Make more holistic sourcing decisions and identify ways to improve your internal practices. Attract new business and investors because companies with superior human capital results deliver superior products and services and long-term financial results.
Getting and Using Data to Drive System Changes
Systems Change, Evaluation & Impact
Workforce problems are often complex, interrelated, and multi-factor. A system thinking approach helps practitioners learn more about how their workforce system operates, the underlying factors that drive behavior, and ways to influence system patterns. In this track, panelists share systems change strategies that move beyond programmatic interventions and seek to make the system perform better as a whole.
Reframing the Narrative on Race: Lessons from Awareness Building in Northeast Ohio and Philadelphia
Racial Equity
Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, the Fund for Our Economic Future, and other partners recently funded a journey to increase understanding of racial inequality in Northeast Ohio and foster productive dialogue among stakeholders. Through intensive training events, more than 5,000 participants heard a history of racism in America that challenges assumptions and reveals the devastating impacts of persistent racial inequality; resulting in a community equipped with a common lexicon and increased capacity to sustain racial awareness and support change. The goal of this session is to share lessons from this effort and relay the important role of a common narrative in reducing racial disparities.
Toolkit for Crafting Inclusive Employer Practices and Policies
Job Quality
Over the past two years, The Women’s Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation has researched how the cliff effect, self-sufficiency, and approximately 40 employer policies impact recruiting and retention of all workers. Also, Partners for a Competitive Workforce and the Women’s Fund have been conducting research on the prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and its connection to job training and employment. This led to the creation of a toolkit employers can use as they rethink and redesign their policies for their workforce. Learn about the toolkit and how one hospital has applied it to their retention efforts and what employers can do to create an environment that allows women experiencing IPV to continue and advance in the workplace.
Workshops Session II
Wednesday 3:00 PM – 4:15 PM
A Life Sentence: Understanding and Breaking Down the Barrier of a Criminal Background to Work
Racial Equity, Healthcare
Across the country, systemic barriers disproportionally affect people of color thus narrowing employment possibilities for individuals and talent pools for businesses. Understanding the economic cost of legal restrictions that block access to jobs long after a sentence is served, and awareness of what changes can be made to improve equity and competitiveness without compromising public safety is imperative. This session will explore research from Northeast Ohio quantifying the economic cost of excluding workers with a criminal background and lift up two examples of health care employers in Greater Chicago that are working to expand access to health care careers to those who are typically excluded.
A New League of Best Places to Work: Opportunity Employers
Workforce
FSG’s Talent Rewire initiative and Grads of Life facilitate and support Opportunity Employers: employers interested in innovative approaches to recruitment, retention, and advancement of untapped, high-potential talent. Through interventions such as the Opportunity Navigator, Innovation Labs, 7-second resumes, and manager training, Talent Rewire and Grads of Life are helping employers to address pain points when building inclusive talent pipelines. Come learn how they are working in partnership with innovative companies and industry associations to implement best practices.
Distracted Employees? Workplace Financial Wellness Can Help
Job Quality
Low- and moderate-income employees’ financial lives can be complicated and the challenge of making ends meet may distract them at work. Employers can offer evidence-informed workplace financial products and services targeted towards LMI employees to improve stability and increase wealth. This workshop will draw on the workplace financial tools developed by the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis and Prosperity Now, and one employer’s experience in incorporating a payroll loan program. Come learn how to get started and to select the strategies that best meet the needs of LMI employees.
Exploring Intersections Between Racial Equity and Workforce Development
Racial Equity
Through this interactive workshop, we will explore the role that workforce stakeholders can play in advancing racial equity in workforce development. We will hear findings from a historical analysis of the San Francisco Bay Area’s public workforce system through a race and gender equity lens and learn about Baltimore’s Workforce and Racial Equity Community of Practice. Speakers will share their unique perspectives on applications of REI informed strategies from emerging lessons to what is holding us back. Participants will engage in small group work, utilizing the Associated Black Charities’ 10 Essential Questions for Workforce Development as a framework for exploring action steps.
Healthcare Industry Partnership Use of Job Quality to Improve Frontline Worker Retention
Healthcare, Job Quality
The North Texas Health Employers Learning Consortium was formed in April 2017 to address industry-wide challenges of hiring and retaining frontline workers. With philanthropic support, three participating employers implemented job quality strategies to reduce turnover of Patient Care Technicians. Hear how these hospitals are using the job quality framework to retain and grow entry-level talent.
Information Technology Partnerships and Programs
Workforce
Information technology partnerships are being organized to address the various needs of technology companies as well as technology functions and occupations in other industry sectors. In each community, the partnerships are organized differently and operate programs to address the needs of the partnerships. Apprenticeship models in this non-traditional sector are promoting the growth of talent in the industry. Learn from employers and workforce development practitioners how these partnerships and programs are being implemented.
Investing in America’s Workforce: How CDFIs Promote Job Quality and Reduce Income Inequality
Job Quality
Since the Great Recession of 2007–2009, income inequality has emerged as one of the leading economic development issues in the United States. Community development financial institutions (CDFIs) that support job creation can help bridge this income gap by working with businesses to create quality jobs that offer fair wages, good benefits, meaningful advancement, and wealth-building opportunities. CDFIs are private financial institutions with a mission to serve low-income, low-wealth, and other disadvantaged communities and populations. This session will explore the role that CDFIs can play in supporting quality job creation and opportunities for partnership.
Making Work-Based Learning Work for Business
Work-Based Learning, Policy
Work-based learning strategies – including apprenticeship – bring structured learning into the workplace, helping new employees raise their skills over time while meeting the immediate workforce need of businesses. To expand these opportunities, businesses need public policies that bring together the right industry partners, address the risk firms take by hiring workers who are still in training, ensure that employees bring value to the company, and – hopefully – become long-term employees. Hear from Business Leaders United (BLU) about state and federal solutions to expand apprenticeship.
Nothing About Me Without Me
Workforce
Employers know that they SHOULD ask their workers what they want or what would help them, but they often do not. Sometimes employers are hesitant for fear of raising unrealistic expectations. What should employers do? Learn new ways to tap into the ideas and wisdom of frontline workers and engage them in identifying and implementing changes the benefit workers and the business.
Seizing the Opportunity for Systems Change
Systems Change
Change – political, bureaucratic, social – sometimes presents the opportunity to transform public policy, employer practices, and workforce investment. As this panel shows, interest in cross-sector collaboration can jumpstart buy-in to embark on major changes to workforce systems. Learn how funders and employers in Atlanta are collaborating with workforce boards on human-centered design and how funders in Syracuse are collaborating with a new mayor, businesses, and a college to diversify the construction and tech industries.
The Journey of Good Job Strategies
Job Quality
With the economy growing and record low levels of unemployment, filling open positions and retaining good employees is an even bigger challenge for employers. Learn about the journey of three employers – two manufacturing, one long-term care – and the technical assistance provided to help them, that improved their bottom line by developing and retaining their employees. The employers will discuss how their good job strategies address challenges of low wages, employee communication, and development. They will share lessons learned, results, and anticipated lasting benefits for the companies and their employees.
Workshops Session III
Thursday 10:45 AM – 12:00 PM
Driving Systems Change in Three Cities: Collaboration, Advocacy, and the Role of Philanthropy
Policy, Systems Change
The New York City Workforce Funders have supported an array of advocacy efforts—from investment in nonprofit advocacy organizations to engagement with City officials—throughout its decade-and-a-half history, garnering successes, failures, and lessons along the way. Join this session to explore past and current investments in New York City and State workforce policy, along with reactions and reflections on similar efforts taking shape in Chicago and Philadelphia.
Ending Distance Discrimination: Innovative Models for Improving Worker Mobility
Systems Change
In communities across the U.S., the distance between where people live and where jobs are has been increasing. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Cleveland MSA, where the number of jobs near the average resident declined the most out of 96 metro areas from 2000-2012. Lack of job access manifests as a workforce challenge: it directly impacts the ability for a worker to reliably arrive at work on time. The spatial mismatch is inefficient, ineffective, and, because of historical development patterns and policies, amounts to distance discrimination. Job seekers, particularly those in low-income communities, are faced with a false choice between a car and traditional public transportation. Meanwhile, new transportation models are emerging, and urban, suburban and rural mobility is on the cusp of radical change. This session will explore how innovations in worker mobility in Cleveland and other communities can improve economic opportunity.
Numbers Tell a Story: Measuring and Communicating Success and Impact
Evaluation & Impact
Measuring the effectiveness and impact of our work is not easy, but we owe it to the communities we serve to do it well. However, measuring is just the first part. It is the responsibility of the National Fund and its collaboratives to weave together data and storytelling to communicate impact to major stakeholders. In this workshop we learn how a national nonprofit, YearUp, and the CareerEdge collaborative in Sarasota, Florida, approach the measurement and communication of scale and impact to stakeholders.
Organizing for State Policy Changes
Policy
This workshop will provide examples of three state workforce policy campaigns that united local advocates to push for new funding and/or policy changes that could lead to critical improvements in successful employment outcomes for low wage workers.
Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeships
Work-Based Learning
The Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA) is a multi-year, collaborative initiative that will support the success of efforts in states and cities to expand access to high-quality apprenticeships for high school-age youth. Expanding youth apprenticeship is a strategy for building a more inclusive economy by connecting the learning needs of students with the talent needs of industry. This workshop will also feature the North Carolina Justice Center and Guilford Apprenticeship Partners who will share their success in increasing racial equity in youth apprenticeships.
Taking a Trauma-Informed Approach to Workplace Success
Health & Wealth
Many disconnected youth and adults suffer from toxic stress, trauma and in some cases, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Adverse childhood experiences (ACES) can have lasting impacts well into adulthood. As a result, stable employment can be challenging. In this workshop, learn about research focused on understanding the impact of trauma on African American men in Milwaukee and the challenges it presents for workplace success. Practice examples from Chicago will offer new strategies to creating trauma-informed workforce development programs for opportunity youth in collaboration with clinically-trained professionals.
The Retail Imperative: Engaging with and Responding to the Retail Sector
Workforce
While the retail and service sectors employ over 48 million Americans, they rarely collaborate with workforce development stakeholders. These jobs have been dismissed as low-wage, low-skilled, dead-end jobs. Missing from this narrative are the unique opportunities for entry-level employment with rapid advancement, often without the requirement of an advanced degree and the various career trajectories that spring from this sector. There exists a unique opportunity for workforce development professionals to engage with retail employers to the benefit of workers and business. Join us for an interactive session highlighting three initiatives across the country that are working with retail employers and stakeholders and learn about the best practices that have been developed along the way.
Using Data, Hunches, and Engagement for More Equitable Outcomes
Racial Equity, Evaluation & Impact
Learn about an innovative partnership that strengthens workforce providers’ use of data to improve impact while integrating a strong racial/social equity lens. Job Opportunity Investment Network (JOIN) is collaborating with Corporation for a Skilled Workforce’s Workforce Benchmarking Network (WBN) and Race Forward (a national organization advancing racial justice) on the Regional Workforce Development Learning Community. Through coaching and technical assistance, peer learning events and the national Benchmarking survey, United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey grantees are improving their use of disaggregated data and constituent input in a continuous improvement process for more equitable outcomes. Also, hear how this work builds on WBN activities in other NFWS collaborative cities.
Thank You to Our Partners & Sponsors
