A Guide to Leveraging High-Quality Work-Based Learning to Build Local, Diverse Talent Pipelines
Mayor Bowser’s Comeback Plan emphasizes the inextricable link between the success of DC’s residents and the success of our economy. Simply put: our city benefits when our residents are prepared for, hired into, and succeeding in our economy’s good jobs.
DC has always been a great place to work, and its labor force is poised for rapid growth. But many young adults who graduate from local K-12 and postsecondary programs continue to face a local job market that leaves DC residents out, particularly our Black and Hispanic residents. The DC Policy Center estimates that alumni of DC’s public education system who stay in the city as young adults earn about half the income of their peers who moved to the city. The rise of work-based learning programs are a crucial way that local employers can help address that disparity, while building a local, diverse talent pipeline that keeps recruiting costs low, retention rates high, and employees who are attuned to local markets.
A major problem? Many local businesses don’t know where to start: they’re often inundated with requests from schools, nonprofits, and government agencies to offer opportunities to residents, but it can be unclear how these opportunities align to their business and talent pipeline goals. The Federal City Council’s Hire Local DC Coalition collaborated with CityWorks DC to assemble a helpful guide to help businesses find good-fit partners to build company talent pools through work-based learning.
To our knowledge, this is the first resource of its kind in our region that frames work-based learning opportunities with employers as the primary audience. The guide proactively notes how much time, money, and staffing each type of work-based learning requires of employers, and gives candid insights into the return on investment employers can realistically expect from each experience. If employers feel equipped and energized to engage, the guide offers a list of good-fit partners ready to support in building their company’s talent pool through youth work-based learning. And if employers still have questions about best fit or next steps, there’s a way for them to reach out to Hire Local DC leadership for that help.
What’s perhaps most exciting is that this guide is much more than a resource. It’s a call to action for employers to incorporate work-based options into their talent strategy. If you’re a business, we challenge you to think about how work-based learning programs meet your current needs. What other information do you need to pursue work-based learning as a talent pipeline strategy? Building a thriving, diverse talent pipeline in DC means rethinking the relationship among business, education, and community, and envisioning new ways that they can all grow together.
We’re so proud of this resource, and can’t wait to hear what you think of it.