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Do the adult learners in your program need jobs? Better jobs? Are some or all of them learning English or improving their literacy in order to be able to find a job or earn more money? Employment is increasingly the main reason for adult learners' participation in ABE programs. But not all ABE programs know how to make their programs relevant to their students' job needs. The SABES Workforce Development Initiative is here to help.
What is workforce development?
Workforce development is a relatively new field designed to address the needs of both workers/potential workers, and employers. Workforce development helps by supplying high-quality programs and services that train, educate, support and assist workers in entering and advancing in the workplace. Workforce development utilizes a "dual customer model" that tries to address the current "skills shortage" in which large segments of the population and the workforce lack some of the skills needed to succeed in today's economy. Workforce development utilizes several strategies in order to address this skills shortage. By addressing both the "supply side"—the skills of the current and potential workforce—and the "demand side," that is, employers' need for workers with certain levels and kinds of skill, there is an attempt to create a "win-win" strategy. Many organizations, public and private, have sprung up in recent years to try to connect these two parts of the equation. Labor market intermediaries try to connect workers with various skills and needs, with employers and jobs. Workforce development really embraces two main components: "labor exchange" and "workforce development." (By the way, many of us who don't really like the term "workforce development" as it sounds so impersonal and economy-driven, prefer "worker development" or "workplace pathways" or "career development," making it more worker- or learner-focused.)
Workforce development overlaps with adult literacy programs in several ways. ABE tries to assist learners in acquiring many of the skills needed in the workplace—not only literacy, but also the "soft skills" and interpersonal skills needed. It is increasingly recognized that a variety of "wrap-around" services are needed in order for workers with low skills, low literacy, little work experience, low income, and/or entry-level jobs to be able to move towards "family economic self-sufficiency." Along with child care, transportation, a variety of counseling and advocacy services, and support while transitioning into jobs and for quite some time afterwards, adult literacy and ongoing learning are frequently needed in order not only to enter a job, but to stay there, succeed, and even advance up the employment ladder. Otherwise, workers frequently get "stuck" in a cycle of entry-level, low-paid jobs, rotating through a series of entry-level positions but unable to advance or to move towards family-sustaining wages.
ABE is, among other things, in the words of a Massachusetts Representative Grant from Beverly, "the backbone of the workforce development system". Without programs to help adults become more literate and to develop basic skills, employers would have even greater difficulty finding skilled workers, and workers would have even greater difficulty finding and keeping good jobs.
ABE programs can help a lot with that process, but only if they know how to do it: how to incorporate workforce development into their programs, assist learners in working with the official workforce development system, and frequently by partnering with employers, workforce development agencies, and local job training organizations in the community. In some cases, ABE programs form partnerships with some of these organizations—they don't have to know everything or do all the work themselves. They mainly need to know what is out there, and how to go about using it.
This is where SABES can help. SABES has a new initiative, the Workforce Development Initiative.
In 2004, SABES started a new statewide initiative to assist ABE programs in building their capacity for involvement in workforce development. Massachusetts DOE's ACLS, which funds SABES, created a new statewide Workforce Development Coordinator position, based at World Education in Boston, the SABES Central Resource Center, in Boston. In September, 2004, World Education hired Laurie Sheridan, the former Executive Director of the Boston Workforce Development Coalition and a long-time adult educator and labor activist, to fill this new position. Her job is to provide leadership and vision to the workforce development efforts and staff in each of the five SABES regions across the state, and coordinate SABES' workforce development work.
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SABES now has a Workforce Development Coordinator in each of the five SABES regions of Massachusetts, plus a statewide Workforce Development Coordinator based in Boston, to support adult literacy programs in their efforts to become more involved in workforce development. They also work to educate workforce development agencies and programs about ABE and how to utilize their expertise in developing sound educational programs and practices, and in designing workplace education programs, hiring students from ABE programs, and improving the literacy of the current and future workforce.
Over the past year, the SABES Workforce Development Initiative has begun:
- developing good relationships with the public and community-based workforce development system statewide, locally and regionally;
- putting on workshops to train ABE programs and practitioners about how to integrate employability, job readiness, and occupational skills into ABE programs, and
- connecting ABE providers with the workforce development system in their areas, including the Workforce Investment Boards, the One-Stop Career Centers, and job skills training providers in their communities.
In addition, we have been collecting "promising practices" based on some of the excellent work and model programs that have been developing across the state. Many of these include initiatives to integrate workforce development into ABE programs, partnerships that connect ABE and employment/ employability, and collaborations with local businesses and employers that help low-income and LEP workers connect with jobs and/or advance on the career ladder. This is exciting stuff, on the cutting edge of our work in ABE. Over the next year, we will be doing even more, and hope that you will feel free to connect with SABES in order to grown your own or your program's ability to help ABE students connect with employment.
What is SABES doing to help support the field in its efforts to build capacity for workforce development?
A number of new things, including:
- Holding joint orientations for Career Centers and ABE programs to learn about each others' activities, and help develop agreements between them to help them collaborate to meet clients'/learners' needs.
- Holding workshops to support ABE program staff in developing partnerships with employers, workforce investment boards, develop contextualized curriculum and workplace education programs, and form career ladder projects that help workers advance up the employment ladder.
- Providing customized technical assistance to ABE programs that want to incorporate job readiness and/or occupation-, industry- or sector-specific content into their ABE curriculum.
- Supporting ABE programs learning how to identify and approach potential employer partners, how to market ABE programs and services to businesses for their current or future workers, and how to know how to get good information about where openings for good jobs are in their area.
- Educating the business sector about the value and benefits they and their employees derive from existing ABE programs and involving businesses in becoming "champions" for adult literacy.
- Sharing and disseminating "promising practices" of ABE/workforce development collaboration: curricula, program models, model partnerships, and ways of developing sound educational programs with an employment focus.
- Participating in statewide advocacy, policy and programmatic groupings that help promote resources, education, and support for the integration of ABE and workforce development.
- Supporting ABE programs in learning where to find, how to identify, and how to partner with employer sin order to secure additional funding for their programs through incorporating a workforce development perspective, and utilizing new funding, public and private, that prioritizes workforce development.
The SABES Workforce Development Coordinators are:
- SABES Boston: John Zhang, 617-287-4076, john.zhang (at) umb.edu
- SABES Central: [open]
- SABES Northeast: Patricia Pelletier, 978-465-0732, ppell3453 (at) aol.com
- SABES Southeast: Kathleen Howell, 508-678-2811, x2385, kathleen.howell (at) bristol.mass.edu
- SABES West: Dori McCormack, 413-552-2393, dmccormack (at) hcc.mass.edu
- SABES CRC: Laurie Sheridan, 617-482-9485, lsheridan (at) worlded.org
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Send comments to: Laurie Sheridan
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