In Spring 2022, The Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development (CNHED) solicited input from local community-based workforce development training organizations. The goals of this study were two-fold. We wanted to; one, understand the key challenges these organizations were facing in establishing and building connections with employers; and two, identify ways to streamline collaboration efforts between these two groups.
Community-based workforce development organizations (CBOs) play a contributing role in strengthening the District’s labor force through job training, readiness, and placement. However, as a collective body, CBOs lack coordination in their relationships with employers. This lack of coordination results in duplicative work surrounding the establishment of new relationships between CBOs and employers, among other issues, making the CBO-to-employer coordination pipeline inefficient.
To dig deeper into the nuances, barriers, and context of this issue, CNHED engaged workforce development organizations (hereinafter referred to as “job developers”) that are active throughout our network and monthly working group meetings. Many of these organizations and their programs can be found in CNHED’s Workforce Training and Services Guide, published in December 2021.
This snapshot presents highlights of the key findings gleaned from the online survey that we conducted of local job developers.