Skilling the future workforce: 8 recommendations for corporate leaders

While private sector engagement with skills-based hiring is increasing, in-demand skills do not always exist in adequate supply, nor are they equitably distributed. A growing number of employers are taking active measures to develop the skills-based talent pipeline that will power their organizations, industries, and the broader market into the future.?

To better understand how companies are investing in skills-based training and credentialing, NationSwell’s Insights team dug deep with nine organizations on the cutting edge of workforce development. Through our conversations with leaders and practitioners, we uncovered a range of contributions to changing and scaling the learning systems that are preparing workers for quality jobs.

Our latest report contains 8 recommendations, borne from these conversations, for private sector employers who are committed to skilling the future workforce and ultimately contributing meaningfully to a more just and equitable workplace.

We’ve summarized these recommendations below. For more learnings, download the full report .

1. Decide if you aim to be influential at a systems, sector, or company level

While it is plausible for a single company to fulfill multiple roles and advance a range of interests, the majority of businesses we interviewed adhere to a theory of change that is heavily weighted toward one of three primary ambitions: systems change, sector benefit, or direct company benefit. The rationales behind these approaches vary across companies, but a common thread is that strategies are strongest and most sustainable when aligned with both a business priority and a social impact goal.

2. Position your strategy correctly within your company’s infrastructure

To ensure that your strategy is well-positioned for success, you should allow your primary goals to inform the best place(s) to locate your initiatives internally, and point you toward additional departments to prioritize for collaboration, whether they’re centered in Social Impact, a corporate foundation, Government Affairs, or Human Resources.?

3. Lean into (and use) your company’s strengths

Companies vary in the assets they can provide to skills-based training programs and partnerships. Understanding and harnessing existing company assets can help scale and optimize for impact with credibility and efficacy. Collaborating with interdisciplinary departments and teams will help you locate these assets, but your strategy will also benefit from identifying assets that transcend teams – like philanthropy, data, technology, or expertise.?

4. Build a well-balanced partner portfolio

Regardless of your company’s assets and capabilities, partners can help fill in gaps, reach larger target audiences, and scale work more quickly and effectively than any one organization working alone. However, selecting partners that align with your goals and resources can be challenging, especially when balancing risks and aiming to maximize potential impact. In particular, the companies that we interviewed expressed the importance of achieving the right mix of partners based on two dimensions: scale vs. depth, and traditional vs. nontraditional characteristics.

5. Design for replicability and scalability

In seeking scale, companies do not necessarily need to trade off their audience size against personalization and location-based adaptation. Three foundational design approaches provide the basis for scalability and replicability while preserving ample room for human-centric customization and implementation: demonstration projects, mass-customizable offerings, and “teaching the teacher” approaches.

6. Mind the non-skills gap between learner and earner

The ideal partnership between an employer and implementation partner is one that includes a mix of curriculum support, exposure, direct employment opportunities (via internships, for example), and holistic career readiness support (writing cover letters, interviewing, preparing for an office environment, etc.).

7. Engage in pre-competitive transparency and collaboration

At a moment when so many actors are engaging in good-faith investments to build skills in the future workforce and design alternative pathways to employment, there is little benefit to be found in provinciality and opacity. To the contrary, creative unlocks, alignment opportunities, and systems level change all depend on willing and active collaboration among companies, NGOs, and other participants in the skilling ecosystem. Leaders should consider building communities of practices, exchanging partner intelligence, and making joint commitments on alternative hiring pathways.

8. Bring rigor and patience to impact measurement

To satisfy near and medium-term stakeholder interests, gather real-time learnings to improve your programs, and monitor progress against longer-term objectives, we recommend developing an impact measurement framework that combines leading and lagging indicators.

Thank you to our individual contributors from Guttman Community College CUNY , IBM , 摩根大通 , LinkedIn , 微软 , Opportunity@Work , Salesforce , 沃尔玛 , and Workday for their insights into this fast-growing area.?

View the full report: