Business U defines business engagement in three ways—as a customer of government-funded services, as a funder, and as a partner in sector strategies, career pathways and work-based learning (WBL). The latter is a focus in the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) that has an expanded role with respect to business engagement for workforce development boards and its staff including: 1) regional coordination including sector strategies, sector initiatives, delivery of workforce services based on data (i.e., LMI); 2) a greater alignment with economic development and education to drive a collective response to labor market challenges; 3) prioritization of an employer-centric system: employer engagement strategies to strengthen business services; and 4) a soon to be announced business engagement metric(s).
Effective career pathways include WBL opportunities through structured experiences which can be credit based work experience, internships, or service learning. How did Business U’s Community of Practice participants define WBL in our latest live webinar event? According to our polls, more than 95% said internships, while 80% indicated apprenticeships and job shadows as the types of WBL in which their organizations are engaged.
Are we rising to the challenge in WBL? Business U CEO/Co-founder, Dr. Christine Bosworth shared a Gallup and Lumina Study on Post-Secondary Education, the study reveals a major disconnect in that 96% of chief academic officers said that they are “extremely” or “somewhat confident” their institutions are preparing graduates for success in the workplace, while only 11% of employers indicated that they believe graduates have the skills and competencies needed for their business.
The Community of Practice attendees said that it’s not always easy to engage businesses in WBL. Results from the webinar poll highlighted three main challenges: 1) Employers do not understand the process to participate (85%); 2) Employers object to WBL taking too much of their time (70%); and 3) Employers do not see the value of participation (55%).
Two panelists shared their strategies for overcoming these core challenges.
Oakland Unified School District’s Manager College and Career Readiness, Susan Benz, has 18 defined process steps for ensuring that students, teachers, and WBL liaisons understand how to communicate with business and industry to engage them and to establish timeframes and expectations across eleven different industry sectors in the Bay Area. When asked what’s in her secret sauce for success, Susan replied, “It’s all about building the relationship first with the business. It’s sort of like dating; we start with a cup of coffee meaning we have very small asks such as just providing input on a lesson plan; then we build the relationship to a full partnership.”
Becky Currier, Manager of Goodwill Industries of Middle Tennessee, Inc., has had great success in her region with building health care partnerships. Becky said that using a transformational approach with business is a successful strategy which was used to engage one of her key partners NHC Healthcare (NHC). Becky explains, “Goodwill regularly refers clients to NHC's CNA training program because it’s free training and all who complete the training will be considered for full time positions with NHC. Goodwill hosts the training and NHC brings hospital beds and dummy patients with training materials.” Becky and her team have used this model to scale up efforts with other NHC locations.
Want to learn more about cutting edge business engagement practices? The B2B Engage Community of Practice meets formally once a month via a live webinar that tackles thought-provoking topics in business engagement coupled with hands-on training in using the B2B EngageTM CRM platform to build long-term business relationships.
Check out our schedule and contact us if you want an invitation to our next live event.
Nice blog
Posted by: Hawi Moore | 06/13/2017 at 01:39 AM
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Posted by: William Hook | 08/27/2018 at 01:22 AM
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Posted by: Tim Bosque | 05/13/2019 at 03:06 AM