Decisions to Make

Strategic Planning Task Force

October to December 2015

Framing our strategic planning—things to think about as we make decisions:

  1. What vision for the region would we like to implement? What would success look like?
  2. How would we know we were successful?
  3. How well is our vision/mission (priorities/goals, resources, measures) aligned with external trends (market, competition, economic/social, political factors)?
  4. Does our vision allow for innovation?Is our plan adaptable over time?
  • Topics we do not have included here:
  • (Chris) Linkages with the Adult Basic Education system
  • (Chris) Community college involvement/postsecondary education
  • (Paul) AIM rep - represents private sector – Rick Lord and/or MOBD rep
  • (Valerie) Metrics and performance – how do you measure what is success – are we looking at revenue generation?
  • Linda reached out to someone from Department of Transitional Assistance to identify a local DTA director to assist with Strategic Planning, but no one responded
  • Paul Sutliff, DTA Central, as opposed to local director, could possibly participate on this committee
  • What vision for the region would we like to implement? What would success look like?
  • Get the message directly from big and small businesses what kind of jobs people should be looking for and what kind of jobs are out there. Small companies are hard to engage
  • Provide labor market information as a primary REB role?
  • Employers would recognize REB as go to person/vital resource
  • Better understanding byjob seekers of what services career centers offer
  • People find jobs with livingwages and to see career center as go to place especially for people at all levels of education and language proficiency
  • Jobs vs. better jobs (higher wages)
  • We need career pathway systems built so that career centers can move people at different points on continuum especially for English Language Learners (ELL)
  • Better support for incumbent workers (e.g. mentoring and Workforce Training FundProgram (WTFP) – designed for training incumbent workers)
  • Partnering with community colleges to help with incumbent workers
  • Some percentage of employers see career centers as resource for hiring and that we put some sort of metric behind that
  • Employers have to be part of the process for helping job seekers acquire skills – part of profits has to go back into investing in new workers
  • Youth pipeline strategies
  • Involve hiring services (e.g. temp services)
  • WIOA talks about people “exiting” the ABE system – how do we support the rest of adults who are not exiting yet – how can we best serve people at all levels of ABE system, who may need jobs now?
  • 75% of students at Community Learning Center found jobs through family/friends network
  • Employers find it difficult todevelop pipeline models – community service opportunity?
  • Jobs are becoming so technical that education and workforce systems struggle to prepare people for new jobs
  • How do we get people without degrees into technical positions?
  • Even if we could target a segment of population, resources might not meet everyone’s needs
  • What skills are actually in demand?
  • We need to be able to adapt our plans over time

Strategic Planning – Decisions to Make

Priority Industries:

  1. Same ones (Advanced Manufacturing, Healthcare, Info Technology, Life Sciences, STEM Occupations)?Add Hospitality? Education? Finance? Retail?
  2. Gaming and construction/hospitality related to it? How does this fit in?
  3. Or should we focus on in-demand occupations instead of industries?Or in-demand occupations within industries?
  4. Should STEM Occupations be addressed separately or only in the context of our priority industries? How can we more intentionally link STEM occupations to our industry partnership activities?
  5. Should we place greater focus on youth pipeline activities (especially for IT/life sciences)? How can we generate additional resources to support STEM/youth pipeline activities in middle schools/secondary schools?

Notes:

  • Manufacturing is moving work back here.
  • Technology has changed a lot so there might be fewerpeople, but a need to develop more highly skilled workers.
  • We all feel comfortable keeping Advanced Manufacturing on the list.
  • These industries tend to be very high tech but do we need another industry to allow more folks who are less skilled to fit into those?
  • Are there core skills needed across sectors?
  • Another industry? Hospitality, retail, transportation, property management
  • What is actually happening out there – which companies are actually coming to job fairs?
  • Do we develop same industry partnerships? Do we put money into training?
  • Managing a complex building is a skill as well (property management)
  • What if we cluster industries as opportunity clusters? (Services Cluster)
  • Trade Association partnerships with REB? Bridge to build a consortium.
  • Vocational school involvement – career pathway creation process – what does it look like?
  • High tech equipmentbecomesoutdated fast and updates areexpensive
  • Construction becoming slightly bigger industry
  • Construction Career Day has changed

Strategic Planning Goals:

  1. Continue with current ones?
  2. Partnership Development
  3. Career Pathways and Curriculum Alignment
  4. Training, Skill-Building
  5. Job Placement
  6. Knowledge-Sharing and Info Dissemination
  7. Resource Development

Notes:

  • Some planning goals may or may not apply to new occupations
  • Should we tier strategic planning goals?
  • Needs assessment can help target need
  • Combining soft and hard skills – how do we imbed these into career pathway
  • Analyze job descriptionsand qualifications
  • Get reports from associations and platforms like linkedin
  1. Add pipeline activities explicitly? Youth, ABE, individuals with disabilities, etc.
  • Not deemed necessary—already implicit in previous goals

Potential Objectives re Enhancing Service to People with Barriers to Employment:

  1. Better plan, align, and enhanceservices to ensure successful progress of these populations along career pathways:
  2. People with lower levels of literacy or limited English
  3. People with disabilities
  4. Youth (in-school, out-of-school)
  • Above is a statement of commitment
  1. Define and implement priority for WIOA Adult career and training services to:
  2. Low income
  3. Public assistance recipients
  4. Basic skills deficient
  5. Implement priority of service to veterans for all programs
  • Items #2 and #3 to be addressed in Policy, Funding, and Oversight (PFO) Committee meeting

Potential Objectives re Service Strategies:

  1. Increase job placements
  2. Increase job retention/long-term employment outcomes
  3. Increase training-related outcomes

Notes:

  • Focus more on job retention - we sometime lag other regions
  • When we teach someone to fish they go anywhere…
  • Increase wages

Potential Objectives re Partnership Strategies:

  1. Increase collaboration among ABE programs, community-based organizations, and career centers to optimize services for people with barriers to employment
  2. Integrate training providers into partnership activities (although often community colleges are the presumed training providers)
  3. Expand youth activities and partnerships with business to increase career exposure and work experience opportunities
  4. Develop a private sector jobs program
  5. IncreaseConnecting Activities participation

Notes:

  • Community colleges are doing this the right way, but some for-profit providers present concerns
  • Some concern expressed about capacity to develop a full-blown private sector jobs program without targeted funding for this; discussed whether companies might either or both fund this effort (sponsorships/donations) and/or provide paid work experiences.

***End of Meeting One Here

Next Steps:

  • Next meeting will be on Wednesday, November 18, 9:30 – 11:30
  • Touch base with participants who did not attend today

Start of Meeting Two Here

  • Review of materials:
  1. Overview of MA Economic and Labor Review 2014(Linda will share link) shows economic data by workforce region;
  2. Occupational Employment 2014 Report (NECTA Division), in response to Mina’s request, shows employment for a larger area than Metro North, corresponding to an area where Metro North residents might be expected to work
  3. Excerpts from career center business plans that describe potential changes to career center service models from the career center perspective

WIOA Funding and Training Decisions:

  1. Should we transfer funds between Adults and Dislocated Workers?

Governor Baker has been talking about new flexibility about how to operate workforce development in regions.

  1. One new change with WIOA: we can transfer 100% of funds between Adult and Dislocated Worker programs (although accounting nightmare)
  2. “Dislocated worker” – includes returning to work homemaker; individual that has been laid off; permanent separation from workforce through no fault of their own
  3. No sense that this is necessary at this time; there were some comments that we didn’t want to reduce our commitment to low income Adults, and that perhaps we should leave the split as it is now.We do have the option of shifting during the course of the year, if we wish, but it would entail a plan modification.

What is balance between Policy, Funding, and Oversight (PFO) Committee decision-making vs. the Task Force? Task Force recommendations will be at a broader, guiding level, and will be fleshed out more technically in the appropriate Committee. Recommendations from this group will go to full board for approval.

  1. Should we set aside funds (up to 20%) for incumbent worker training, even though there is Workforce Training Fund Program (WTFP) is available for this purpose?
  2. Do we want to be spending limited funds on incumbent workers or on low-income individuals?
  3. There is already $22M per year in WTFP for incumbent workers, although this depends upon the employer requesting training funds for their workers, versus being driven by the individual worker who desires training.
  4. There is a small WTFP pilot project where individual workers can access training from a list of providers.
  5. Not all companies/organizations are eligible for WTFP (self-insured, those that don’t pay into DUA)
  6. 20 percent seems too high (Sue Walsh) – if it’s tool to engage businesses--but if we are just setting it aside then I don’t think we should
  7. (Valerie) If we want industries to be hiring low-income workers, this would be good opportunity to incentivize that to happen, i.e., the funds for incumbent workers could be contingent upon and/or potentially dedicated to these new hires
  8. (Chris) If we want to invest money we should be strict and explicit with what we’re going to do with it, e.g., wage and job title upgrade requirements.
  9. (Linda) Why can’t businesses invest in their own staff for staff development purposes?
  10. (Dick) A lot of this can be employer generated – do we want to be in this position or should we haveother priorities?
  11. (Chris) Could have employers contribute to the wages, put some skin in the game.
  12. (Cheryl) Employers need to have skin in the game but it also hasto be driven by willing employees – more powerful engagement strategy would be to upskill their current employees. The PFO committee already struggles to decide the use of a small amount of training dollars, and 20 percent is not enough to leverage in meaningful way to engage with businesses. Seems like there will be more funds available through WTFP.
  13. (Chris) We might want to be marketing WTFP more aggressively. But are we missing lower wage workers whose employers don’t support incumbent worker training—this might be a population we might want to consider
  14. (Linda) If there were a lot of companies not contributing to the pool, maybe it would make sense to target those companies; (Cheryl) but for most part, most businesses (healthcare is an exception) pay into insurance pool
  15. (Mina) There are also DESE grants that gear toward entry-level workers and workforce learning, however, there are not a lot of submissions
  16. REB could create a best practice database of incumbent worker training
  17. (Linda) We’ll explore all of thisa little more.
  1. Should funds be set aside for specific industries (ITAs) or industry partnerships?
  2. Should we segment our training pool by priority industries? Using ITAs, we do see a reasonable level of training in healthcare and professional, technical, and scientific occupations without establishing pools. Maybe don’t set aside pools, but establish targets (as we do in our benchmark chart now). We don’t want to reduce our flexibility by establishing pools. Job placements generally follow our priority industries, too.
  3. Could occasionally do group training under WIOA for a particular industry; integrated education/occupational training also is easier with a cohort model; more integrated programs developed under a group training approach; could do a pool for group training each year and decide what we wanted to do with it; could also use group training for preparation for training, e.g., math, other prevocational skills; but they have access to Career Ready 101 for remediation at the career centers. Plus, not everyone has on-line access at home for Career Ready 101
  4. ABE system already provides math and reading. Group training in this area might conflict with ABE services. Policy implications around who conducts basic skills development
  5. ABETCC has looked at transition program; hasn’t looked specifically at integrated programs, but does provide a good opportunity for customers
  6. We need to track more effectively between the ABE and workforce development system; State is working on this now—portal through Job Quest for partner organizations—DTA, MRC, MCB, DESE, and DCS. Proposal to do long-term tracking across secretariats, which would be very challenging. There are MOUs among partner organizations to share wage match data to use for benchmarking performance across partners.
  7. Should work on systems also in our strategic plans, but systems need to be led by State, and then rolled out locally.
  8. We decided we didn’t need to set aside money for specific industries.
  1. Should we place more emphasis on the more expensive OJT model? Should we serve fewer customers more intensively/more effectively (e.g., with OJT, apprenticeship) or more customers with some training?
  2. We were reluctant in the past to participate in OJT model, because it was very expensive and administratively intense
  3. Generic on-the-job training vs. technical term in workforce development; hired by employer; requires a training plan and skills gap analysis; 4 wks to 6 mos in length, 50% to 90% of wagessubsidized under National Workforce Development Grants, depending upon employer size; employer has to justify need for the length of training; should be someone employer wouldn’t hire normally
  4. Positive results for workers from OJT (Karen); use at MRC, at least two weeks for OJTs, with multiple OJTs per employer, certain industries—security, retail. Very effective. Maybe we could do shorter OJTs, resulting in a more reasonable expense
  5. Under WIOA, reimbursement rate is 50% (and at least 4 weeks) but we (Cheryl) is trying to get it up to 90%; (Pete) but for all the paperwork, if we reduce the length to the minimum, employers might not think it is worth it.
  6. We could maybe learn from MRC systems, if they are simpler than ours; Pete could meet with Karen to compare forms, and see if could learn ways to simplify
  7. What about pairing shorter length OJT after occupational skills training
  8. Look at hiring demands to determine if OJT is way to go
  9. If it’s targeted group then it could be good investment but we have limited resources for this.
  10. Should we designate OJT for certain type of populations? Or certain industries/occupations?
  11. What about leveraging other resources for internships/OJT models, e.g., through Mass Life Science Center, but primarily college students, not generally our population
  12. Sounds like we want to have option to do OJT,and if there’s a gap in our system then we can use it for that, but we want to maintain as much flexibility as possible; good for people who might not otherwise be hired.
  13. Works well with manufacturing; IT.
  14. (Reed) People from other countries, skilled/educated, but working in entry-level jobs, because they don’t know how things work in this country; need a program to acculturate them; OJT might be an answer for this population; could look into New Roots at Asian American Civic Association
  15. Want option to do OJT; may use to fill gap—particular population, but we want to maintain flexibility, but we might target a certain number of ITAs per year for job seekers that meet certain criteria.
  16. How could we get a sense of the number of skilled immigrants in low-end jobs? World Education, International Institute, other organizations probably could provide data.
  17. People with disabilities are another population that might benefit from OJT.
  18. Apprenticeship model also may be an effective model; NAMC has an apprenticeship grant, which may be cheaper than OJT.
  19. We might establish a target goal for OJT.
  20. We might explore hybrid models so that we can bring cost down, e.g., pre-training with shorter OJT, if we can work out the paperwork issue (too complex for a short period of time)
  1. Should we train people who have college degrees, but who are having trouble finding jobs?

Some regions don’t train people with college degrees.