Systematic Employer Engagement

A structured, data-driven approach to working with employer partners from Kentucky’s 16 community colleges. Also, the University of Phoenix moves into workforce development with a skills intelligence tool, and an essay on how to make skills-based hiring work. (If this newsletter was forwarded to you, subscribe here.)

Tracking Ties Between Colleges and Employers

For community colleges to forge more meaningful ties with employers, they first have to have a handle on how they currently interact with business partners. That’s trickier than it sounds, as the many points of contact colleges typically have with employers makes the right-hand, left-hand problem a common one.

To improve its communication and coordination with companies, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System in 2021 began a process of systematically tracking employer partnerships across its 16 colleges.

“Knowing how a company is working with various departments and colleges prior to engaging in meetings allows KCTCS to strategically deepen existing relationships and identify gaps,” says Jessie Schook, the system’s vice president of workforce and economic development.

The project to create an employer “asset map” has been a substantial lift, revealing complex, multifaceted relationships. For example, a major healthcare system recently shared that it has nearly 300 different touch points with nine of the system’s colleges.

The system spent a year finding those types of contacts, with each college conducting a survey on employer partnerships. Getting buy-in wasn’t easy, as some viewed the mapping effort as more compliance red tape. But the data-collection process begun in 2022 sparked needed operational changes, Schook says, and the campuses soon began seeing results—like one college that found 20 new leads for employers seeking customized training.

“Some colleges are setting goals for all members of their engagement teams to support one connection per month with a new company,” says Schook, “increasing the scope of their partnership portfolio and holding each other accountable.”

The system uploaded what it learned into a Salesforce database. And just having that information in one place has made a difference.

For example, faculty and staff members across the system now can see the roughly 560 companies that support students with tuition-assistance programs, and they can reach out to those firms to join the system’s Education First Employers program.

As the project unfolded, its leaders tapped research from the Strada Education Foundation to develop a framework for categorizing relationships with employers. Part of the goal was to define partnerships that are truly transformational, as well as ones that could be developed further. The system now updates that data set each quarter.

The effort isn’t just about storytelling with data, says Schook.

“While it’s great to understand who you are working with and how,” she says, “ultimately this process lays a framework for actionable data that can advance departmental and faculty goals.”

The effort has identified roughly 110 employer relationships that cross colleges, with likely many more emerging in the future. That information helps the system determine how many companies have regional or statewide footprints and identify opportunities for stronger multicollege-employer collaborations.

Schook says that as the employer-asset map moves out of its first design phase, the system hopes to start using standardized measurements: “If we can articulate anticipated outcomes up front, we are creating an employer-friendly partnership model that expands opportunities for our students.”

For community colleges that are interested in creating a similar data system, Schook suggests starting by getting to know relationship managers on campus and their needs. And she says access and ease should be key factors in any tech-enabled approach to tracking employer partnerships.

The Kicker: “If it becomes too cumbersome to submit and view data, no one will use it,” says Schook.

UoP Reaches Into the Workforce

The rise and fall of the fortunes of the University of Phoenix over the last half century are well documented. After stabilizing several years ago as a much smaller and more focused university, Phoenix had been pursuing a sale to a flagship public institution. But the university’s holding company went public last week.

Even in its modest current iteration, the university is probably worth watching. After pioneering how to reach working learners decades ago, Phoenix has gone all in on skills mapping and now in many ways looks like a workforce development organization.

Raghu Krishnaiah, the university’s COO, doesn’t quibble with that characterization, saying he thinks of Phoenix as being more than a teaching institution: “Our whole premise is to help individuals succeed in the workforce.”

The university’s multiyear skills-mapping effort created a foundational capability, says Krishnaiah. The learning outcomes for each course are tied to skills, proven through assessments, which are aligned to accreditation requirements and validated by industry councils.

What’s potentially novel, however, is how Phoenix has gone beyond that capacity to develop an AI-powered skills-intelligence tool to reach into the workforce. Dubbed Skillmore, the affiliated platform is for employers, who use it to evaluate job skills—to assess a worker’s capabilities on an ongoing basis.

The tool analyzes job descriptions and employee skills to identify gaps across the business. Companies use that information for internal upskilling and reskilling—with targeted learning and support. That, in turn, can drive employee productivity and reduce turnover.

It’s up to the employer to decide what sort of education and training work best to close skills gaps. That could be courses from Phoenix, which are mapped to the platform. Or it could be skills development from Udemy or LinkedIn, or even an apprenticeship program. Skillmore is agnostic on the training provider.

“We took the philosophy that this tool is going to be employer-centric, not university-centric,” Krishnaiah says.

Phoenix has partnered with Jobs for the Future to evaluate Skillmore in collaboration with employers. The goal is to analyze how this sort of skills-focused tool can improve worker development, retention, and mobility, while also addressing algorithmic transparency and data accountability.

It’s challenging work for companies to be skills-forward, particularly at scale, says Alison Lands, JFF’s VP of employer and workforce solutions. “The decision to use this technology is really the easiest part of it,” she says.

The project with Phoenix gives JFF a chance to inform HR tech by helping to shape technology that meets a workforce need. The nonprofit group will conduct a landscape scan and do benchmarking through the partnership, Lands says, with an eye toward what it takes to get large numbers of employers on the platform.

Phoenix collaborates with 2K+ employers through its workforce assessments and Skillmore, an affiliate where the for-profit is a majority owner along with a venture firm. While the tool is aimed at skills assessment and training for an incumbent workforce, Phoenix also has been testing a skills-based hiring platform with companies in industries ranging from healthcare to retail and banking.

The company takes a long-term view with its skills tools, Krishnaiah says, and will continue to invest in working with both sides of the education-to-work marketplace.

“How do you help anyone who’s trying to get into these types of jobs and to advance in these jobs?” he says. “How do you help the employers make it easier for that to happen?”

Open Tabs

Pay It Forward
The County of San Diego is investing $75M over five years to develop the local behavioral health workforce. The new workforce fund—co-designed by the Policy & Innovation Center, Social Finance, and Trailhead Strategies—will support zero-interest loans, apprenticeships, peer support training, paid internships, and nurse practitioner expansion programs. The project’s goal is to bring 3K new professionals into behavioral health careers.

Performance Funding
Tennessee’s pioneering outcomes-based higher education funding formula lacks a clear focus on credentials that unlock opportunities for students to enter high-demand, high-wage jobs, according to Tennessee SCORE. Just three of the formula’s 24 components relate to career and workforce results. The group calls for streamlining the formula to give institutions a clearer set of outcomes tied to state priorities around education-to-workforce opportunity.

Improving ROI
Among recent U.S. graduates who earn an associate degree, 60% can expect to experience a positive ROI within 10 years of graduation, according to the latest annual State Opportunity Index from the Strada Education Foundation. The index charts ROI ranges for associate and bachelor’s degree holders across the 50 states and D.C. It also features 10 states that are using innovative strategies to improve education-to-employment outcomes across five key areas.

Dual Enrollment
High school students who combine dual enrollment with other accelerated coursework—Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses—have higher college graduation rates and earn more at age 24 than students with AP/IB coursework alone, finds the Community College Research Center. Students who combine a CTE focus with dual enrollment have significantly stronger college enrollment and success rates.

Job Quality
Just four in 10 U.S. workers are in jobs that meet basic elements of job quality, including fair pay, predictable schedules, and opportunities to advance, according to a national survey conducted by Gallup and commissioned by Jobs for the Future, the Families & Workers Fund, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. About half of respondents participated in on-the-job training or education programs in the last year.

First Job Focus
The immediate transition to the job market explains two-thirds of the earnings gap five years after graduation for four-year college graduates from low-income families compared to their high-income peers, finds a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The researchers conclude that experimenting with innovations to support early-career transitions for low-income graduates may be a fruitful direction for policy and research.

It’s been a busy stretch of travel for me, with more to come. I was in Brazil recently for a fascinating event on tech training and am headed to Chicago, Boston, and Atlanta soon to meet with distance education, community college and workforce leaders. To support our work, please donate here, and subscribe here. —PF