WSI – Policy & Systems Change

Employee ownership can promote equity, improve job quality, and boost business performance.

This playbook presents the work of seven regional partnerships engaged in the Communities that Work Partnership.

Work is changing in many ways. What does this mean for leaders in philanthropy seeking to expand economic opportunities for low- and moderate-income workers?

Immigrant workers are a key segment of our workforce, and expanding opportunities for this group benefits our economy as a whole. How can immigrant-serving organizations and community colleges unite to achieve this?

Complying with a federal mandate to clean up the Chesapeake Bay is expected to spur $10 billion in public investment across the DC metro area over the next decade. Leaders in Prince George’s County, Maryland, are determined to make sure that this investment will not only achieve its environmental goals, but also spur local business development and create jobs for county residents. To strengthen this effort, representatives from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors applied to the CTWP to learn from and share with peers nationally, and to further develop their strategies to maximize the social benefits of this large public investment.

The Northwest Georgia Regional Workforce Partnership is developing a new talent pipeline for employment in local advanced manufacturing industries, with an initial focus on the floor covering industry. The new education and training pipeline builds on the local public school system’s college and career academy infrastructure and will connect high school students and graduates to advanced manufacturing jobs that business leaders indicate are difficult to fill.

A “New Buffalo” is emerging, and civic optimism is riding high in western New York. In 2014, the city and region marked the reversal of a 50-year decline in population amidst a burst of economic revitalization, including the creation of new jobs in health care, academia, research, and clean energy. Looking to harness this momentum is the Buffalo Niagara Regional Workforce Coalition, a multiyear, multisector collective effort that has brought together key regional leaders from business, philanthropy, government, and education.

Greater Houston is the nation’s fourth largest metro economy and has enjoyed four years of extraordinary growth, creating more than 480,000 jobs since the bottom of the recession—three jobs for every one lost. But this growth has also intensified employers’ struggle to fill key occupations, particularly in middle-skill careers and professions. UpSkill Houston, and the local leaders involved in the Communities that Work Partnership (CTWP), have adopted a series of innovative prototypes to speed workforce innovation and to scale what works to meet the demand for these middle-skill jobs.

Despite a positive growth outlook for IT in Arizona, there is local concern that the state lacks qualified workers to support the future of IT and that talent is leaving the area for professional opportunities elsewhere. As a result, in 2014 the IT Sector Partnership was launched with the intention of engaging a wide range of stakeholders to address the state’s workforce gap. The partnership aimed to define the challenges facing employers—both within the IT industry and in other sectors employing IT workers—and then develop and implement strategies to meet those needs.

The “on-demand” or “1099” economy is reengineering how millions of Americans work, and California’s San Francisco Bay Area is at the forefront of these changes. Four members of the Bay Area team participating in the Communities that Work Partnership (CTWP) set out to understand this challenge and explore how the public workforce development system—the one-stop job centers, community colleges, and publicly funded community-based training programs—could meet the skills needs of freelancers, and the businesses that hire them, in the region’s 1099 economy.