Ensuring the customers receive the highest quality services
The Tulare County Workforce Investment Board has a long history of incorporating human-centered design (HCD) principles in their services in the San Joaquin Valley of Central California. For Tulare County, being human-centered means always keeping real people in focus in the complex public workforce system. “With our participation…we were able to learn and implement human-centered design into our service delivery at the one-stop centers in Tulare County,” shares Jennie Bautista, who serves as deputy director at Tulare County Workforce Investment Board.
Tom Price Fellow
Jennie Bautista Friend
Tulare’s work eventually led them to the services of Middlestate, a local consulting firm focused on customer-centered approaches for local businesses. The collaborative work inspired Middlestate founder, Tom Price, to take a sabbatical from his full-time job in order to serve as Tulare County’s Workforce Transformation Corps (WTC) fellow. “When I founded my company…my pledge to myself and those on our team was that we will do work that makes real impact on our community and/or the world,” Price says.
Price hopes to make progress through collaboration with the other fellows to ensure workforce systems are equitably addressing the needs of those they serve. “HCD gives these end users (customers) a voice in the decision-making process,” he observes. “The [Jobs for the Future (JFF) HCD] maturity model allows us to not focus on traditional measures of performance, but lets us plot our path on a model designed to measure how well the organization responds to its community’s needs.”
Bautista feels Tulare County identifies most with the development of policies in the maturity model and hopes to make a significant impact through the evaluation of their contracts, policies, and procurement process. She also hopes to further expand their knowledge and understanding of HCD through the fellowship, which will lead to more equitable outcomes for Tulare County, noting, “Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative data, we have to understand the people and businesses we’re serving, their needs, and who is being left out.”
