Navigating Colorado's workforce landscape: Insights from the frontlines
The Colorado Workforce Development Council (CWDC), a SkillsFWD grantee, looks forward to defining the roles of state and local workforce boards within the skills-based hiring ecosystem. CWDC is dedicated to ensuring equitable employment opportunities for all Colorado residents and ensuring employers have access to skilled talent. Through SkillsFWD, CWDC is working to address healthcare talent shortages and reshaping overall workforce practices after the pandemic.
We recently sat down with Renise Walker, Assistant Director of Systems Innovation at CWDC, along with Traci Marques of Pikes Peak Workforce Center and Erin Jones with Workforce Boulder County. Each candidly provided valuable perspectives on the role of workforce boards in addressing critical issues and opportunities at the intersection of economic mobility, skills-based hiring and workforce development in Colorado.
In this conversation, we unearthed the importance of facilitating broader connections and understanding across industries, the critical need to address talent shortages in fields like behavioral healthcare in Colorado, and collaboration's key role in accelerating economic mobility.
What are CWDC’s current priorities around skills-based hiring and ensuring that every resident has a chance to economically contribute to the state through equitable employment?
RENISE — Many things are key to skills-based hiring and economic mobility – quality jobs and training, equity, accessibility, and activating employers to share in talent development. Skills-based hiring is a key component of that strategy, not just hiring, but also advancement. Learning and Employment Records (LERs) are an important companion to skills-based hiring because they allow individuals to reflect and share a robust story about the skills, credentials, and experiences they have acquired over time.
When hearing about LERs, employers consider this an exciting element and an opportunity to reduce hire time. They stress the need to use skills-based practices and LERs for internal advancement. Their concern is how to retain valuable employees by providing them with opportunities for growth.
As a SkillsFWD grantee, your primary agenda is to address healthcare talent shortages. In your view, what’s led to challenges in that industry and why is the area so vital to focus on right now?
RENISE —There are many contributing factors, including an increasing demand for behavioral healthcare. Colorado's population growth and continuously tight labor market have strained state services. Our systems' ability to provide services and ensure we have the workforce to deliver is slow-moving. A couple of years ago, the governor started a new behavioral health administration to better meet behavioral healthcare demands. From a workforce perspective, efforts are underway to provide a more culturally responsive workforce by incrementally credentialing and accelerating career entry and mobility for qualified individuals.
We’re excited to dig in with SkillsFWD and see how we might accelerate this work.
Traci, Erin, how do you engage with other workforce boards to share what you’re learning about implementing skills-based practices at a local level?
TRACI — Skills-based practice and competency-based hiring are important for employers to fill workforce gaps. With the pandemic, we experienced larger skills gaps statewide. Before the pandemic, there were gaps between open jobs and those searching. With skills-based and competency-based hiring and resumes, we can reframe the gap and have employers view talent differently.
ERIN — We’re a part of the Colorado Urban Workforce Alliance which includes Denver metro area workforce directors and staff. We also have an operators group that supports concepts and implements new projects. That structure is important to our state and me because it helps us put vision into practice.
What are some of the biggest hurdles you anticipate navigating as this progresses this year and in the coming years?
TRACI — Getting businesses to understand what this is, along with educating on how to view talent in a different capacity. It’ll be an interesting challenge. Also, K-12 education and higher education must produce products that businesses want to buy. And if they don't know what businesses want, there’s a disconnect. I consider us to be like Match.com. We help job seekers find employers and help employers find job seekers.
RENISE — We’ll likely continue experiencing hurdles at the state level while determining appropriate messaging and language to discuss the work. In many cases, education is and has been working on skills and competency-based work, but the words they use to describe it look very different from how it is described to employers. The other hurdle is moving learning and employment records (LERs) forward. It will take investment to see benefits.
Renise, how do you think states have fallen short when it comes to promoting and advancing economic mobility? How can states build systems to better address these issues?
RENISE — States face many challenges with clearly articulating issues related to promoting economic mobility, we’ve grappled with that for sure. Education often focuses on addressing the attainment or achievement gap to get more people credentials but more focused efforts are needed to ensure those credentials result in quality jobs. In work settings, it's about getting jobs and expanding job creation. Economic mobility is truly all of those things combined. It’s hard to articulate a single contributing factor, which is why it will require new types of partnerships working together for improvement.
The state and federal government could also do more to define the role of the workforce and government in increasing the number of quality jobs. We must clarify how to use the limited tools and resources available to advance economic mobility.
What type of funding would be most helpful towards your work of building a skills-based system?
RENISE — My answer to funding is almost always the same – flexible funding. If we’re going to accelerate economic mobility it will require collaboration, and very few dollars fund collaboration.
We’re excited about SkillsFWD because we can use money for things we couldn't otherwise accomplish, especially with technology and other innovations. We’re also bringing together different partners.
Let’s talk about partnerships — what are you hoping to learn or gain from the broader SkillsFWD community?
RENISE — We don’t yet have solid, scalable examples of integrating LERs to help people get jobs or pursue more advanced training. I hope that, together as a cohort of six different projects, we can surface new models to learn from. For example, if a wallet is developed in Montana and a person relocates to Colorado, is it usable with what we’ve developed here? I am also interested in understanding the most appropriate role of the state in advancing this work.
What’s also really important are the challenges with our system. How can we enhance recognition for existing skills and help individuals effectively showcase them for career advancement? I look forward to demonstrating and learning from the cohort about what it takes to get there.
