Services

21st Century Workforce Studies

Knowledge Creates Power

A 21st Century Workforce study by Workforce Associates, Inc. is not just a comprehensive and insightful analysis of your community’s economy, workforce, and educational systems. It’s a critical catalyst for strategic action. Even the best study is barely better than no study at all if it simply sits on a shelf. WFA can help your community take our findings off the shelf and into the hands of the leaders who can create progressive change. That’s why we like to call the 21st Century Workforce study a “Community Audit plus.”

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Thorough Research with a Personal Touch

Workforce Associates, Inc. comes to the table armed with the latest, most accurate information available about your community’s economy and labor force. Our preparation comes from sources as varied as the US Census, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, state and local Labor Market Information systems, private databases, as well as previous studies on the economy and workforce in your area.

But this information is only one part of the story. To get the inside view from the ground level, Workforce Associates, Inc. works closely with workforce boards to communicate directly with a complete cross-section of everyone in your community who contributes to or is affected by your workforce and economic development efforts. We understand that it is crucial to know your people as well as your numbers, so we’ll use every method at our disposal to get to know you and your community, including:

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Surveys
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Industry Summits (for specific industry clusters or sectors)
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Focus Groups and Roundtable discussions
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Personal Interviews

Expert Analysis, Clearly Presented

Anyone who has looked at a Monet landscape or Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling knows that the “Big Picture” depends upon a wealth of painstaking detail. A full-fledged 21st Century Workforce Report from Workforce Associates, Inc. brings a rigorous and detailed regimen of analytical tools to bear on the research we conduct to generate a comprehensive “big picture” for your community. That big picture breaks down into several clear-cut facets, combining elements from:

A wide-ranging environmental scan, including:
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Global and local forces affecting the community’s economy.
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The area’s economy: past, present, and models for possible futures.
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Complete demographics, reflecting employment, educational attainment, mobility, ethnicity and age of the workforce, and other relevant factors.
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Aspects of industry cluster analysis to identify area industries and businesses most vital to economic growth and sustainable employment.
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Survey and interview data from employers on workforce quality and skills and occupations in critical shortage.

An in-depth workforce readiness evaluation, comprised of:
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K-12 school system analysis, including:

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Standardized test performance

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Graduation, dropout, and mobility rates
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Community college and vocational education resource summary

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Capacity and accessibility

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Responsiveness to business needs

A detailed needs analysis, focusing on:
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A complete review of the workforce system in terms of:

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Board membership, including private sector representation, leadership, community awareness, activity, etc.

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One-Stop Center system implementation, accessibility, and service delivery to job seekers and employers alike.
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Analysis of regional infrastructure, including transportation, child care, and other factors affecting access to the workforce system.

Finally, a blueprint for strategic planning, starting with:

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A summary SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of the community’s workforce and economic development systems.

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A set of targeted challenges for strategic action, keyed to the SWOT analysis.

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A summary of best and promising practices for addressing the major workforce, economic, and educational development challenges of the community.

All these facets come together to form the core of the 21st Century Workforce Report, presented as a concise, engaging narrative, rich with informative graphics and supported by our exhaustive research. We won’t claim that it’s a page-turner you can’t put down, but we are confident that a 21st Century Workforce Report will provide plenty of interesting and edifying reading for anyone with a serious stake in your community’s workforce system.

We Love it When a Plan Comes Together

By itself, the 21st Century Workforce Report is like an intelligence report – it provides informative reading for the generals, but it is most effective when it can be harnessed and used by the troops on the ground.

Communications and Community Engagement is the most important part of the 21st Century Workforce study process. Workforce Associates, Inc. will help your community plan and execute a public “roll-out” of the 21st Century Workforce Report to generate community support and to help put the workforce system in the public eye.

We can help set you on the road to a viable strategic plan by encouraging the creation of “challenge teams” to address each of the targeted challenges presented in the 21st Century Workforce Report. In communities we’ve worked with before, these teams have enjoyed wide-ranging support from public and private sector members and community leaders.

Once the challenges are in the hands of these prominent community members, the 21st Century Workforce Report achieves its maximum power and utility as a tool for real workforce change.