Over the past few decades, increasing attention has been paid to workforce development strategy, and for good reason. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, approximately six million jobs went unfilled in 2019.1 Skills mismatch between job positions and applicants, rapid technological changes, and policies that tend to be reactive rather than proactive further hamper meaningful employment. The federal government spends billions of dollars annually to operate more than three dozen disparate jobs training programs. On top of that, states and localities have created localized training programs themselves. Despite these many efforts, there is no concrete ‘what works’ strategy for workforce development.
Recognizing this void, in 2014 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation (Chamber Foundation) introduced Talent Pipeline Management® (TPM), an innovative approach to closing the skills gap by applying lessons from supply chain management to workforce partnerships. The crux of the program relies on employers working together, using internal, proprietary data, to identify shared pain points. Following that analysis, employers work with the necessary stakeholders, such as education and training providers, to develop sustainable talent pipelines and apply solutions to employers’ most pressing pain points while improving outcomes for learners and workers. Throughout the past six years, close to 400 people have participated in a TPM Academy®, where workforce leaders learn about the TPM approach and return to their local communities to take the methodology from theory to practice.
With collaboratives now established in more than 30 industries across 36 states, the Chamber Foundation has learned a lot about best practices and common challenges associated with launching and managing TPM employer collaboratives. This report captures what the Chamber Foundation and its partners have learned to date to benefit current practitioners as they develop and enhance their own TPM projects. It can also be useful for future practitioners who are still learning about TPM and how it can add value to their workforce partnerships.
The report is broken into three sections. First, there will be an overview of the TPM approach and how it differs from existing workforce development strategies. Second, findings from a national survey of TPM participants facilitated in conjunction with the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC) will be presented. And lastly, there is a detailed comparative analysis of survey results and focus group takeaways from two states that have been engaged in TPM implementation: Michigan and Kentucky. The analysis highlights progress made with TPM in each state, and discusses the key challenges and success factors that have influenced their work to date.
