Workforce Partnership Guidance Tool

“The National Fund for Workforce Solutions believes that high quality workforce partnerships are among the most fundamentally sound strategies for helping low-wage workers succeed in today’s competitive economy while at the same time improving the competitiveness of a group of employers from a particular industry sector. Successful partnerships combine an entrepreneurial approach to convening and organizing key stakeholders, disciplined organizational development, and persistent attention to the needs of their two main customers: employers and workers. This tool was designed to assist both regional funding collaboratives and the workforce partnerships they support. When a collaborative understands what constitutes a productive and well-functioning workforce partnership, it can communicate clearly to the partnerships what it expects of them. When a workforce partnership understands the collaborative’s expectations, it has a better idea how to organize and support all of the necessary components of its work.

No single tool could possibly answer all the questions that arise from trying to describe this creative and complicated process. This tool was a start, and additional papers on specific topics will follow" (p. 3). (Abstractor: Author)

“The tool is organized in three parts: Part 1: Organizing a workforce partnership is intended primarily for funding collaboratives, but a consultant or the organizer of the partnership identified by the collaborative will also find it useful. This section covers: • Choosing a sector; • Identifying an organizer and developing sectoral expertise; and • Engaging employers and workers. Part 2: Convening, operating and sustaining the partnership focuses on the functions and roles of the organizer. These are: • Convening the full partnership; • Ensuring employer and worker leadership; • Accessing and aligning resources and brokering relationships; and • Providing career services to workers. Part 3: Achieving the goals of the partnership describes what an effective workforce partnership must do to meet its twin goals: • Creating value for employers and workers; and • Creating systems impact” (p. 6). (Abstractor: Author)

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2010
• Author(s): No individual author identified.
• Organizational Author(s): National Fund for Workforce Solutions
• Funding Source: Funding source not identified
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies