Inclusive Change in Practice for Workforce Development Boards

Table of Contents

• Avoiding Equity Gaps with Women, Minority, and Disabled Business Partners in Federally-Funded Workforce Development Programs
• Voluntary Equity in Workforce Development Boards
• Sporadic Equity in Workforce Development Boards
• Serendipitous Equity in Workforce Development Boards
• Accountable Equity for Workforce Development Boards
• References

Avoiding Equity Gaps with Women, Minority, and Disabled Business Partners in Federally-Funded Workforce Development Programs

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS), and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) have allocated federal funds to state governments that, in part, facilitate local and regional employment opportunities. These opportunities include job training and career pipelines, which are established through public-private, sectoral, and interagency partnerships.

These federal funding mechanisms–including their descriptions and accompanying guidance letters–highlight the significance of equity and encourage state governments to approach grant management in new ways. While these efforts have increased economic growth in some instances, funding for workforce training is not keeping up with the need. Further, as it pertains to state resources, workforce development boards (WDBs) have at times been viewed as optional partners.

There is a transactional relationship in this positionality, defined by sparse, quantifiable data. Therefore, quarterly and annual compliance reports typically comprise numbers and tables that relate to demographic trends and geographic areas more often than insights into the strategic partnerships of WDBs. When narrative content is attached to compliance reports, it often offers minimal information about the representation of women, minority, and disabled business partners. While some WDBs are independently pursuing federal funding, a voluntary national effort to increase their narrative partnership content is lacking. 

If an increase is not required by federal donors, the partnership content WDBs submit in compliance reports will remain inconsistent and minimal. Moreover, the confines of restricted, temporary, and competitive federal awards further hamper the potential leadership by and investment from underrepresented business partners. These conditionalities often lead to short-term strategic planning and programs that produce unsustainable results. Thus, the guidance provided by federal government donors has left equity gaps, and WDBs either fail to report representative partnerships or fail to form, track, and maintain them. As a result, equity in workforce partnerships appears voluntary, sporadic, and serendipitous.

Voluntary Equity in Workforce Development Boards

Federal government donors have issued guidance for workforce partners to promote greater access to employment opportunities for underrepresented groups. In addition, donors have asked partners to gather and deliver more comprehensive data. They have not, however, provided WDBs with a framework for effective implementation that simultaneously operationalizes equity preconditions, equity and inclusion performance measures, reporting requirements for partnership equity, and performance incentives.

In some instances, guidance is also issued after cooperative agreements with WDBs have been negotiated and expenditures for grant awards have been determined, without mitigating how it will impact programs already underway or approving further resources to make it actionable. Indeed, federal guidance does not necessarily accompany an increase in funding or talent.

WDBs with less funding and limited evaluation capacity would have to therefore fundraise or divert resources from other program areas to comply. As a result, federal guidance about access and inclusion could be viewed as vague, subjective, or voluntary. This view has two major consequences: 1) it makes equity discretionary, and 2) it can steer workforce leaders to a minimalist form of equity, where they deemphasize, limit, or delay partnerships with minority employers, suppliers, and service providers until required.

Sporadic Equity in Workforce Development Boards

WDBs have organized equity and inclusion activities that have not been embedded, sustained, replicated, or scaled. Rather, they have often been accomplished sporadically or as experiments, in isolation from other organizations or key stakeholder groups. Moreover, data collection has been narrow and incomplete. Consequently, it is difficult to track or compare the outreach methods, partnerships, and internal change solutions that impact underrepresented persons enrolled in workforce programs. Best practices and lessons learned are shared less often than they could or should be in this environment, and success models in high-performing WDBs are less likely to be leveraged to reduce risks and resolve challenges elsewhere. 

Workforce leaders should disallow this minimalist form of equity as they have been left without a coherent, detailed, and future-ready partnership structure. Not only is this structure necessary, but it also requires resources to help implement federal guidance and an external review to track progress and measure results in real-time. Without these efforts, equity in workforce partnerships will remain an activity to which many WDBs have been the least intentional. 

Serendipitous Equity in Workforce Development Boards

Business partnerships with employers, suppliers, and service providers from historically marginalized communities are promoted through federal funding notices and, subsequently, showcased by WDBs in grant applications. Indeed, these applications often comprise details about the representation of women and minority partners, the added value they provide, and how this value will lead to positive program results.

Conversely, data in compliance reports is often accessible in aggregate form and through tables that define the number of participants who completed training, demonstrated a measurable skill gain, obtained an industry-recognized credential, received wage increases, and remained employed after program exit. Narrative content is limited, as quarterly and annual compliance reports are produced to validate achievements relative to the percentages required by federal government donors. The limitations in this data are alarming in part because completion rates do not describe the degree to which programs were suited to the accommodations trainees requested or their learning styles, abilities, and career aspirations. 

The connection between their aspirations and workforce training is obscured in favor of showcasing the development of in-demand skills as well as the progress made to meet employers’ demand for talent. The data is also mostly quantitative, and the contributions from women, disabled people, and historically marginalized business partners are typically described elsewhere—in success stories, videos, and social media content that is dispersed online. Thus, the information about partners from historically marginalized communities is more robust and accessible pre-award.

As a result, federal donors miss opportunities for comparative analysis between pre-award and post-award content. This scarcity of information post-award is concerning because it suggests equity and inclusion in workforce partnerships have been left to chance. It also ties providers from historically marginalized groups to a non-remunerated pre-award position, rather than a long-term strategic partnership with WDBs. In fact, the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA) released a report that noted establishing and sustaining strategic partnerships is a main challenge facing WDBs. 

The report also revealed that workforce programs were developed for mid-size and large employers. Workforce stakeholders have recognized this tendency as ill-suited to the workforce environment, because more employment opportunities in the targeted geographic areas have been created by small businesses. There is greater minority representation among owners and executives in small businesses. Thus, when WDBs engage large employers more often, they likely establish and sustain fewer partnerships with minority employers, suppliers and service providers.

In this context, minority partners seem tangential to the broader function and operation of public-private, sectoral, and interagency partnerships. Their positionality appears irregular and transactional, like the optional partnerships between state governments and WDBs. For this reason, equity and representation in workforce partnerships are not goals that should be left to chance or made vulnerable to serendipity.

Accountable Equity for Workforce Development Boards

Federal funding should be released after performance measures for equity and inclusion in workforce partnerships are documented in cooperative agreements and required by federal and state donors in compliance reports. Performance measures and compliance data should incorporate the number, type, frequency, and location of direct outreach activities enacted to establish partnerships with employers, suppliers, and service providers.

They should also include descriptions of business partners that distinguish between small, mid-size, and large businesses and, where applicable, identify businesses owned or managed by a woman, minority, or disabled executive. 

The type, frequency, and results of their feedback and recommendations should also be reported to identify the extent to which WDBs implement participatory programs. Further, workforce partners should support events with minority industry associations, coaches, faith leaders, program alumni, and social and professional networks.

The type, location and frequency of these events should be reported in compliance data. Where applicable, WDBs should also report the connections initiated between and among these attendees and the impact of their connections, such as an increase in retention and completion rates in workforce training or economic resilience.

Arguably, WDBs and federal donors should also be concerned with the type, location and frequency of customized, differentiated learning opportunities. These opportunities reflect interest in how trainees learn, progress, and succeed, areas that reveal the service providers in sector partnerships and the functions and operations in which they are involved.

If more narrative reporting in these areas was required post-award, WDBs would be accountable for sustaining partnerships with women, minority and disabled employers, suppliers and service providers. In addition, partnership content from WDBs would be more prevalent with equity preconditions, resources to accompany post-award federal guidance and performance incentives. Indeed, the more donors view partnership equity as an attainable objective, the more they can avoid equity gaps in federally funded workforce development programs.

References

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