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Focus on Skills for Early Workforce Development

The first step is to identify the skills you need today and in the future. Then identify the skills gaps.
Chief Executive Officer

Liz Eversoll

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Workforce development has typically been focused on continuing development of your existing workforce. But the competition for talent and insufficient skills in the workforce require a workforce development strategy that starts earlier and is more holistic.

The 10 steps to your Future Workforce program are outlined here.

Let’s dive in to the first step, Skills Focus.

Skills Focus

The first step is to identify the skills you need today and in the future. Then identify the skills gaps. This requires a more detailed approach to defining the skills required for your positions and career paths. Build your competency model. With a predefined set of standard skills you use across all of your positions and career paths, you can then apply analytics and analysis to determine your gaps and needs.

Once you know the skills you need to develop, you can build a program which helps develop these skills from middle to high school and onto college and then within your organization. This program can combine development for middle and high schools, internships, apprenticeships, trade options, certifications and secondary education. Understanding the skills you require and your skills gaps will help you identify the ecosystem of partners you need to implement a Develop-to-Hire workforce strategy starting in K-12.

The basis of this program is skills and starts with this skills requirements and analysis. A skills-based approach also removes bias from your hiring process and improves equity.

In this series, we will dive in to each step and discuss how to implement this strategy and create a qualified workforce.

 

View the full series outline here.