Designing a Future-Focused Strategy

Local and regional workforce systems are under immense pressure to adapt and respond to market shifts brought on by the pandemic and the anticipated fallout of global inflation and supply chain shortages. Across JFF, initiatives focused on America’s workforce boards and American Job Centers are growing rapidly. In close partnership with Allies of Innovation across the country, JFF has developed an intentional vision and priorities to ensure we are engaging with one another around a clear set of goals and a cohesive strategy to accelerate and enable self-determined changes within the public workforce system. 

To date, we have collaborated with workforce innovators in 29 cities/towns across 22 states. Explore Allies of Innovation to view how workforce boards partner with us to respond to job market fluctuations, develop more human-centered approaches to support job quality, and leverage data to unearth powerful insights about program and policy effectiveness and equity.

Allies of Innovation

JFF’s public workforce system transformation strategy builds on a two-year research initiative that identified four future-focused behaviors found to be most common among allies of innovation leading the field. These behaviors enable workforce boards to anticipate and adapt to changing markets more effectively and make a meaningful impact on their communities.

In response to unprecedented shifts in service and training delivery models, significant federal investments are being made into workforce development. There is an opportunity for future-focused workforce boards and partners to design, scale, influence, and invest in workforce transformation initiatives that align to a comprehensive strategy and maximize public and private investments we anticipate will continue well into the future.

What Transformation Looks Like

True transformation of the public workforce system requires a complete reimagining of workforce boards' roles in their communities and how they collaborate with regional partners to respond to and anticipate market changes.

JFF’s vision for the future state of this dynamic and diffuse system includes positioning workforce boards as economic engines within their communities. These organizations should have a pulse on worker, learner, and industry needs while taking calculated risks that bring innovative service delivery and training models into the region to address evolving labor market needs.

How We'll Know We've Made A Difference

With support from our partners, we’ll know we’ve made a difference when the narrative about regional workforce systems reflects the present to future state shifts outlined below:

How We'll Get There

Workforce Transformation Foundational Principles:

The critical lenses through which JFF views our efforts to transform the public workforce system.

JFF's work to modernize and transform the public workforce system is designed and applied through three foundational principles. These principles represent pivotal vantage points that help ensure our efforts promote and enable lasting systemic change that prioritizes equity, community dynamics and ecosystems, and high-quality jobs.

Workforce Transformation Strategic Priorities

Key areas of focus that guide local action and promote scalable, national progress.

Systems change requires a road map. Our eight priorities, divided between locally and nationally focused themes, were determined based on current and recent public workforce system investments across JFF, conversations with internal and external workforce experts, and key issue areas that are emerging as critical to enabling the public workforce system to meet the evolving needs of their communities. 

Localized Strategic Priorities

JFF’s workforce transformation strategy emphasizes four priorities for driving impact at the local level. Elevating full-spectrum support for individual workers, creating avenues for measuring organizational success, promoting more mature data structures and capacity, and enabling change management through more robust professional development opportunities will help us achieve our vision of modernized local workforce ecosystems. 

National Strategic Priorities

On a macro level, JFF will act as a catalyst to bring about opportunities for transforming the workforce system into a more responsive, equitable, and impactful driver of economic growth. To do this, we will identify, test, and scale new technologies, service delivery models, and funding mechanisms. We will promote greater transparency and knowledge sharing across the system, influence the way the public and policymakers view the workforce system, and advocate for long overdue changes to outdated policy mandates.