New report shares ways “next-gen” workforce organizations can work to close the skills gap, improve outcomes for workers and employers

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Boston – Greater Boston’s strong economy and tight labor market are creating a unique opportunity for workforce development organizations, and a new generation of them are creating market-driven partnerships that benefit workers and employers, according to a new report.

Catapult Forward: Accelerating a Next-Generation Workforce Ecosystem in Greater Boston, highlights fourteen leading practices that “next-gen” workforce development organizations identified in the report and employers are using to connect to today’s pool of workers, and provides both examples of these practices in action and places where the system must improve to be able to close skills gaps. The Boston Foundation’s Project Catapult and SkillWorks collaborated with Monitor Institute by Deloitte, Deloitte LLP, to create the report.

“For Boston’s success to continue in the long term, we must take advantage of tight labor markets like we have now to build stronger partnerships between workforce development organizations and employers,” said Paul S. Grogan, President and CEO of the Boston Foundation. “In an economy like ours, one that rewards well-prepared workers but often leaves behind those without training and skills, it is heartening to see what this report captures: a growing number of responsive, innovative programs that collaborate with employers to broaden the pipeline of opportunity for jobseekers and create higher-quality jobs and career paths.”

Fourteen leading practices help connect workers, employers and next-gen workforce development organizations

The fourteen practices highlighted by Monitor Institute by Deloitte fit into four critical competency areas:

• Being Market Responsive
• Focusing on “Good Jobs”
• Lifting Untapped Talent
• Investing in Organizational Capacity

Note: The full framework of practices by competency area is attached at the end of this release.

“By looking at both the supply and demand sides of the workforce development equation, these ‘next-gen’ workforce development organizations are laying the groundwork to have a stronger alignment between what employers demand in next-gen workers and the skills they are building in that workforce,” said Kevin McGovern, New England Managing Partner for Deloitte & Touche LLP.  “The leading practices and observations captured here by the Monitor Institute by Deloitte team can provide those with a stake in Greater Boston’s workforce development system with ideas that can ultimately help reduce economic inequality in our region, fill critical position at employers, and continue the current trajectory of economic growth.”

In addition to the framework of practices, the Catapult Forward report identifies 13 “next-gen” workforce development organizations throughout Greater Boston, with examples from each that illustrate a number of the suggested practices. The roster of featured organizations include some of the state and region’s most-recognized and effective workforce development organizations, among them: the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology, BEST Hospitality Training, CONNECT, the International Institute of New England, Just-A-Start, JVS Boston, More Than Words, NECAT, Operation ABLE, Per Scholas, Resilient Coders, UTEC and Year Up.

Highlighting challenges in the current system

While researchers found a number of powerful success stories in Greater Boston’s workforce development system, jobseekers, employers and workforce development organizations all noted that gaps and opportunities remain, among them:

Opportunities for Workforce Providers: In addition to adopting the relevant “next-gen” practices in the report, workforce providers could improve their abilities to demonstrate the quality of impact these practices can have to both employers and jobseekers, and improve their collaboration with other workforce providers.

Opportunities for Employers: Employers could help reduce talent “leakage” by updating their hiring, retention and advancement practices to better align with current workforce conditions. They could also deepen their relationships with workforce providers and build their own collaborations with other employers to share best practices and needs, and coordinate with the workforce system.

Opportunities across the System: All sides in the workforce development system should also work to address some of what Monitor Institute by Deloitte has referred to as the “social determinants of work,” systemic barriers or obstacles that limit the effectiveness of workforce solutions—among them, the high costs of housing, child care and transportation, or “cliff effects” that in effect punish jobseekers who find work by abruptly reducing or eliminating needed benefits or hindering paths to self-sufficiency.

The report also calls for addressing the systemic barriers that create inequity of access to opportunity, by improving diversity of leadership at employers and workforce providers, building stronger participant feedback loops, and improving communication across cultures at employers through implicit bias training and other opportunities.

Both employers and workforce providers also highlighted the need for expanded investments in adult basic education in areas such as English language, financial literacy and basic computer skills. Lastly, they called for better coordinated funding and aligned incentives, and better connections and understanding of needs throughout the system. 

The report, Catapult Forward: Accelerating a Next-Generation Workforce Ecosystem in Greater Boston, is now available at https://tbf.org/catapultforward.

Table 1: Summary of Leading Practices
*Chart appears on p. 7 of Catapult Forward: Accelerating a Next-Generation Workforce Ecosystem in Greater Boston