Best Practices for Building and Maintaining Work-Based Learning Partnerships

According to the National Governors Association (NGA), work-based learning (WBL) provides students with authentic work experiences where they apply and develop employability and technical skills that support success in careers and postsecondary education. WBL activities culminate in an assessment and recognition of acquired knowledge and skills. WBL programs include a continuum of activities that comprise everything from career exploration to registered apprenticeship.

Highly successful statewide WBL initiatives include and engage a variety of partners beyond just education and business. There are numerous reasons to do so, such as increasing the ability to reach more potential students from a variety of backgrounds or more opportunity and capability to combine funding sources, which ultimately boils down to increasing their impact and scale. Governors have the unique ability to convene and support diverse partnerships in WBL. They should consider the full breadth of potential partnerships in their WBL strategy and how those partnerships can help them achieve their education and workforce goals.

This report provides strategies that states should consider and examples of best practices involved in WBL.

For additional WBL strategies see: Adult and Dislocated Worker Key Resources - Work-Based Learning

(This report is 6 pages long).

Governors and other state policymakers can encourage strong partnerships between education and business through several avenues:

• Convening education and business entities to discuss their needs and seek areas of collaboration.
• Incentivizing partnerships by offering funding or other resources, such as technical assistance or additional capacity, for projects involving partnerships.
• Creating resources, toolkits, or guides to help education and business form strong partnerships and programs.
• Growing capacity to oversee and convene WBL partnerships through local or regional WBL coordinators.

Governors often can uniquely support or encourage these partnerships by:

• Issuing executive orders that direct state agencies to examine or adopt new hiring practices that utilize WBL models such as apprenticeship and paid internships or that encourage increasing representation of certain populations in their workforce through WBL.
• Launching studies, committees, or other task forces that include voices from diverse stakeholders and examining ways to increase WBL opportunities and partnerships throughout the state.
• Issuing proclamations that draw attention to a state WBL initiative.

States surfaced several best practices that are useful to consider when partnering with stakeholders:

• Use asset mapping and gap analysis to identify target stakeholders that can help fill existing gaps in student participation or industry representation.
• Engage stakeholders as early in the partnership as possible to build trust and create buy-in.
• Encourage existing partners to suggest potential new partnerships or bring other partners to the table.
• Confirm you are aligned on definitions, goals, desired outcomes, and accountability. Reconfirm consensus at various stages as necessary.
• Be a good listener.
• Co-create programs, policies, and resources whenever possible. Consider co-branding when appropriate to increase buy-in and ownership.
• Seek ways to leverage each other’s unique funding opportunities and/or apply to funding opportunities as a partnership.
• Build in a feedback loop to make necessary adjustments as soon as possible.

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2022
• Author(s): Hirsch, R.
• Funding Source: National Governors Association (NGA), Center for Best Practices
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Damon Jones
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies