Demand Driven Systems

Demand Driven Leadership: Six Steps to Demand Driven Systems

How is your organization responding to the need for competitive workforce development in changing economy? Have you: (1) Defined targeted industry clusters and key human resource challenges? (2) Identified the most important occupations and skills needed? (3) Figured out the career pathways and talent pipelines that help workers get ahead and businesses find qualified workers? (4) Gathered "workforce intelligence" to give businesses wise advice, provide meaningful career guidance, and act as the drive for program and service design? (5) Communicated these key transformation drivers to all levels of your organization and set the expectation for responsiveness? (6) Developed a short-term and long-term action plan with success measures? This leadership workshop discusses each of these six important transformation steps and gives recommendations to initiate or continue your alignment with a demand driven culture.

Partnering for Economic Development: Creating the Workforce Advantage

Workforce development is one increasingly important element of a comprehensive community economic development strategy. Increasingly, the communities that have workers with the right skills and work ethic have a competitive advantage in attracting new businesses. Workforce Boards have a critical role in developing the needed skills of employed, unemployed, and emerging workers to attract new businesses and to retain and expand their existing businesses. This workshop will show you how to build meaningful partnerships for economic development; help you decide which industry clusters you should target for maximum economic impact; and provide benchmarks and examples of how to convert your program operations into a demand-driven system for economic growth.

Partnering for Economic Development in Rural Areas

All workforce systems are striving to become even more demand-driven and partnering to make "workforce development for economic development" a reality. This is a challenge for all workforce areas, but particularly challenging for rural areas: the rural labor market is different, the rural economy is different, and the resources are more limited. This workshop will examine these differences and discuss what you, your Board, and your partners can do to support economic development in your community.

Ten Human Resource Challenges and What Your Workforce System Can Do to Make a Difference

The workforce and workplace is changing, and how local communities respond to these changes is key to local economic growth and opportunity. Workforce Investment Boards, systems, partners, and programs can play a critical role in helping job seekers, workers and businesses survive and thrive in this new environment. After exploring the top ten changes and challenges in the workforce and workplace (i.e., globalization, impact of technology, aging workforce, and more), specific recommendations will be made for how your Workforce Board and One-Stop System can respond and be important part of the needed solutions.

Workplace Literacy: What It Is and How to Provide It

As local Workforce Investment Boards produce strategic plans to address workforce issues, workplace literacy is often identified as a major problem for businesses. Businesses identify "basic skill deficiencies" as a challenge with both the applicant pool and incumbent workers as new technologies, processes, and expectations are introduced in the workplace. The definition of basic skills is evolving and expanding, and the system must move beyond contextual learning to industry-, occupational-, and job-specific literacy. This session will explore offering workplace literacy as both a pre-employment and post-employment service; discuss the potential for program and system solutions to the skills crisis; identify the opportunities for partnering with businesses in service delivery; encourage vocational ESL; and, brainstorm alternative methods for services delivery (beyond the traditional classroom).