The passage of Workforce Pell is a shared win for workers and local businesses. Workers and students will get new support to access high-quality, short-term training programs that lead to in-demand careers, and employers will gain access to a pipeline of trained talent with industry-recognized skills, helping them stay competitive and support growth. However, how it’s implemented will determine whether it truly delivers, and success, among many other factors, will depend on how states engage employers in the implementation decisions they make – and whether they put that input to work.
Small and medium businesses have a lot of valuable insight into emerging skill needs, but many of them are stretched thin by requests to participate in workforce development plans. With Workforce Pell implementation, states have an opportunity to take a much more coordinated approach to engaging employers – one that draws on their expertise and ensures their input really shapes which programs qualify for Workforce Pell.
Jeff Connor‑Naylor of Business Leaders United sat down with Ingrid Stegemoeller, Industry Engagement Director at Partnership for Learning and The Washington Roundtable, to discuss a recent collaboration with the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, to develop state recommendations for Workforce Pell implementation in Washington.
They discussed what states can learn from that effort about gathering meaningful employer input and using it to make better implementation decisions.
For more information about how businesses can support successful implementation of Workforce Pell, check out BLU’s new brief.
#1: The Washington Roundtable decided to work with the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, to develop a series of recommendations for Workforce Pell implementation in the state. Why was that important for both businesses and workers in Washington?
This collaboration was the brainchild of our organizations’ leaders, who believe that if Workforce Pell is going to benefit Washington workers and employers, it needs both business and labor at the table. Employers know their hiring needs, and labor leaders know what workers need to build a career. The Roundtable and Labor Council worked together to convene our stakeholders in a robust process in the spring that culminated in one set of joint recommendations for the Governor’s office.
We found a lot of common ground: business and labor both want program quality, relevance to real hiring needs, and a talent pipeline that holds up over time. Recommendations that both groups stand behind give the state a clearer signal, and they give workers and employers good reason to trust the programs that result.
#2: To be successful, states will need a clear picture of both current and emerging skill demands. Based on your recommendations, how should states gather employer input to achieve this goal?
Define demand first, before program design (or redesign), and define it once for a whole sector rather than program by program. Today, systems are structured so that colleges often must prove demand through individual letters of support and advisory boards. That is real effort from colleges and employers alike, and it does not add up to a clear picture of demand for learners, training providers, or employers who need talent. Forward-looking job and skills demand information can help workforce systems orient around what’s coming, and it can enable training providers to do what they do best: design and deliver great instruction.
Our recommendations point to a structured, repeatable process led by employers and sector organizations, with state labor market data as one source, overlaid with sector-based information directly from businesses.
Employers named four factors they’d like to see considered in the process to define Workforce Pell-eligible programs: hiring experience, such as time to fill and vacancy rates; replacement demand from retirements and turnover; validation at the sector level; and shortages in the training pipeline. Our process points to sector organizations as conveners of employers to pool their expertise and help public workforce stakeholders get a forward-looking, sector-wide signal instead of information from a small handful of individual employers who were able to participate. The process can revalidate and update information every one to three years, and it should build in regional nuance, since statewide averages can hide rural and regional demand.
We see this as a focus for year two of implementation and beyond; year one in our state leans on federal standards and existing state data, so nothing stalls. We are in conversation with state agencies about how to get there.
#3: Even though creating meaningful opportunities for business leaders to shape Workforce Pell implementation is essential, we know employers are constantly asked to weigh in on workforce and community issues. The Washington Roundtable has mapped business engagement across the state. What insights emerged from that work, and how might they inform Workforce Pell?
In partnership with Pathfinder Strategies, we mapped how Washington’s education and workforce system engages employers. We cataloged more than 75 types of requests, from advisory committees to work-based learning to surveys. We estimate about 2,900 standing committees and groups that convene roughly 9,000 meetings a year. For context, we’re treating companies with 100 or more employees as the ones best able to sustain ongoing workforce-development activity, and Washington has about 5,000 of those. So that works out to about one standing committee for every two such employers. These are directional estimates since no central source tracks the count. It’s clear from these figures that Washington employers show up.
Two findings matter most for Workforce Pell. First, employer participation is often raise-your-hand rather than representative, so individual employers end up speaking for a whole sector. Second, Washington’s employer engagement structures have been built up over decades through policies and funding requirements and are most often designed for compliance rather than for generating forward-looking workforce strategy. What employers say in one room rarely travels beyond the table that collects it. Each ask makes sense on its own, but no one system sees the full picture of what an employer is already being asked to do. Workforce Pell should not add another program-by-program request to that pile. Ask for information once, through sector organizations that already hold employer relationships, and use that aggregated information to shape programs.
You can explore the full map at bit.ly/WA-Employer-Touchpoints.
#4: Leaders in small and mid‑sized companies often have limited bandwidth for anything beyond day-to-day operations. What strategies would you use to bring them into Workforce Pell discussions in a way that feels worthwhile and aligned with their needs?
Start by showing up where employers are. Most small and mid-sized employers already belong to a trade association, chamber, or industry group they trust. Those sector organizations could convene employers, pool their expertise, and bring sector-wide information, challenges, and needs to public partners. Working through an employer-led group like this relieves some of the administrative burden from small and mid-sized companies and helps make sure their needs are reflected in decisions.
Then close the loop: work with employers to update programs, so new hires arrive with the right skills.
#5: What is the most important thing a state can do to ensure that they get (and use) meaningful employer input?
Enable partnership with businesses to change outcomes. Employers will keep showing up if they can see their expertise at work: which occupations count as in demand, how programs are designed, which programs get approved, and how often eligibility designations are revisited. That takes a structured, repeatable process with clear roles and accountability. It also takes coordination: employers told us that fragmented data collection can degrade participation.
We also recommend a standing way for business and labor to review how Workforce Pell is going and help correct course as collaborators, because a program this new will need adjustments. Washington’s process is still taking shape, and business and labor are ready to partner with the state. My advice to any state: engage employer-led organizations, use what they share, and tell them how it shaped your decisions.
