Engaging employers is critical to informing the work of building effective pathways, providing opportunities for our youth to build career awareness and develop skills, and easing access to good-paying jobs for qualified workers.
We benefit from the employer relationships already in place with Collaborative members such as the region’s workforce investment board (Capital Workforce Partners), the City’s chamber of commerce (Metro Hartford Alliance) and National Fund for Workforce Solutions’ regional collaborative (Workforce Solutions Collaborative of Metro Hartford).
Recognizing that employers need to prioritize their business needs, we are focused on developing qualified, skilled workers and use the following principles to guide us:
- Leverage existing employer relationships: We work with our partners to engage and build strategic, on-going relationships with employers. These relationships are key drivers for success and highly inform our career pathway system especially in the Enriched Preparation and Career Bridging phases of our Career Pathway System.
- Ensure employer value: We work to ensure employers experience positive benefits best demonstrated by providing an increased number of qualified, skilled candidates for current and projected job openings. We help to build stronger relationships with training providers, community-based organizations, and the public workforce system. Also, we work to promote employer-centric policy and practice recommendations in education and workforce development.
- Reduce employer fatigue: We encourage appropriate and effective engagement of employers. In order to not overly tax employers (especially smaller employers that do not have the capacity to attend multiple meetings), we work with our partners to streamline employer engagement and promote best and promising practices. Also, we make connections to our partners’ initiatives and other efforts such that we can align efforts and ensure employer voice and priorities in all of our work.
