Engaging Employers to Connect Young Adults to Good Fit Employment

This report provides information about workforce development practice based on responses to a survey conducted in fall 2019 and winter 2020 in three Generation Work communities: Cleveland, Indianapolis and Philadelphia. Responses from 210 professionals, who shared information about the questions they ask business representatives, helped the researchers understand the types of conversations about job opportunities and workforce management practices that are taking place.

The survey queried workforce development professionals in Cleveland, Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was designed to help local leaders learn about the state of current practice related to staff conversations with employers.

The survey objectives were as follows:

• Learning about the types of conversations workforce professionals have with business representatives.
• Seeding interest among survey respondents to have more learning-focused conversations with business representatives.
• Exploring contextual factors that may shape or drive workforce professionals’ conversations with employers (e.g., previous work experience, performance targets that guide their work, etc.).
• Informing strategies and the types of resources needed to support and build capacity for effective employer-facing work.

(This report is 30 pages long.)

Selected findings and recommendations follow:

• Learning-focused conversations. These can be mutually beneficial for both workforce professionals and employers. For workforce professionals, conversations help them gain a better understanding of a business, its workplace environment, and whether a particular job opportunity would be a good fit for a young adult participant. For employers, conversations may help them reflect upon and identify ways their workplace practices and environment affect retention, business operations, and equity and inclusion in the workplace.
• Assessing the Fit of a Job Opportunity. Individual jobs, even when they’re in the same occupation and sector, can vary a lot from business to business. The majority (more than 80%) of survey respondents report regularly asking for basic information about a job opening, such as the starting wage, benefits, and schedule. However, fewer respondents noted that they engage employers around questions that would help them understand a company’s employment practices and how new employees are supported at work.
• Encouraging Employer Reflection. Engaging employers in conversations about their workplace environment, practices, and employees’ experiences may give them an opportunity to reflect on how and why these affect their ability to build and retain a diverse, inclusive, and engaged workforce.
• Providing Problem-Solving Support to Employers. By having more learning-focused conversations with employers, there may be opportunities for workforce providers to lend their expertise, provide problem-solving support, and, in turn, help shape good-fit job opportunities.
•  Capacity Building Strategies. Generation Work partners are using employer engagement survey results to inform capacity-building strategies to help workforce professionals, especially those who are new to the field, develop an understanding of how and why having learning-focused engagement with employers is important. Specifically, this involves two strategies: 1) providing race equity and inclusion trainings across all the Generation Work partners and developing tools based on survey results to guide conversations with employers and 2) facilitating information-sharing among organizations in relation to their strategic efforts to work with employers to hire, retain and advance young adults, especially young adults of color.

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2021
• Author(s): Blair, A.; Vazquez, V.; Jain, R.
• Funding Source: Annie E. Casey Foundation
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Alexander Fones
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies