Building Industry-Led Sector Partnerships in DC
In my last blog, I talked about the most important Enabling Conditions that must be in place to achieve a strong, diverse, local talent pipeline here in DC and the steps we and our partners are taking to put them in place. In this blog, I hone in on the steps we’re taking to implement one of the most important Enabling Conditions: “Employers are engaged and leading talent pipeline efforts through Sector Partnerships.”
When you’re trying to solve a problem, how you go about doing it matters. In the period leading up to the creation of CityWorks DC, we repeatedly heard our stakeholders share two critical, interrelated problems:
The graduates of our city’s education and training programs are not reliably and seamlessly progressing into good jobs.
DC employers struggle to hire and retain job-ready candidates from our local talent pool.
While there were lots of efforts aimed at addressing these challenges, they weren’t producing the desired outcome: local talent filling the needs of local employers . We realized we needed to try a different approach in which employers played the leading role.
Building Sector Partnerships Through Hire Local DC
In 2021, in partnership with the Federal City Council and the DC Chamber of Commerce, we announced the creation of Hire Local DC, a coalition of employers and strategic partners focused on ensuring that DC’s residents are hired and retained in DC’s good jobs. Under the umbrella of Hire Local DC, the construction industry has launched DC Builds DC - an employer-led, 30+ construction sector partnership. In addition, we’ve collaborated with the hospitality industry on a series of pilots focused on addressing the sector’s recruitment and hiring needs and are poised to formally launch a Next Gen hospitality sector partnership this summer. The overarching goals of these sector partnerships are twofold:
DC residents are successfully hired into and retained in jobs in the hospitality and construction sectors in the DC area
DC area hospitality and construction sector employers have the local talent they need to grow
What Makes Next Gen Sector Partnerships Different
In DC and many other jurisdictions, government, nonprofit, or education/training organizations (strategic partners) engage employers as part of their efforts to build local talent pipelines. There are many efforts to ask employers for input, advice, and participation. As an educator, in my past professional life, I took this approach. And in doing so, I created partnerships that were much more one-sided than I ever realized. Because while employers are usually happy to respond, they also don’t often see a direct return on investment for their involvement. Their engagement often falls under the community engagement, government relations, or corporate social responsibility buckets; as a result, engagement is time-limited and transactional.
In a Next Gen Sector Partnership, the agenda and priorities are based on employers’ talent pipeline needs. It is a fundamental flipping of the script. The model gives employers the space to grow their understanding of the landscape, to pressure test ideas, and to propose paths forward that align with their business priorities. This model also gives strategic partners unprecedented insights into what employers value. Those insights and the creation of critical feedback loops between employers and strategic partners enable Next Gen sector partnerships to be successful where other public/private efforts have fallen short.
CityWorks DC and the Federal City Council share the role of Convener. In this capacity, we keep the partnership work moving forward on a day-to-day basis, serve as the first line of response to employer needs and questions, and serve as intermediary between employers and strategic partners to ensure continuous improvement through feedback loops and learning.
Why Construction and Hospitality?
Colleagues have asked us why we started with the construction and hospitality sectors first, and the answer is simple: C-suite leaders from those sectors were most hungry to pursue a new approach to meet their local talent needs. Both sectors have acutely felt the pain of needing a reliable stream of local talent to meet their workforce needs. The demand for talent is much higher than the local supply of hospitality and construction employees, and the costs of recruiting and retaining talent from other locales are expensive. So each sector’s employers decided to collaborate rather than compete with one another - definitely a new approach to meet their local talent needs - and identified where they wanted to start on the talent pipeline value chain. (See Value Chain below.) All to say, now these two sectors are all in on hiring locally in DC.
Talent Pipeline Value Chain
Successes to Date:
Construction
DC Builds DC is led by 48 C-Suite leaders of the area’s top construction and development firms and supported by 30+ strategic partners. In addition to meeting quarterly, they set up three Action Teams to tackle their top priorities. In its first year, DC Builds DC employers identified the first two steps in the value chain - Career Awareness & Guidance and Career Exploration - as their top two priorities with the goal of dramatically increasing the number of DC youth and young adults interested in construction careers. Last fall, DC Builds DC employers created a shared calendar of events with Phelps High School and YouthBuild Public Charter School. DC Builds DC employers connected with over 200 students and family members at over 15 school-based career-focused activities and events.
DC Builds DC also created several resources for education and training providers as well as employers, including a Construction Sector Job Readiness Rubric, in response to education and training provider requests.
Hospitality
Our nascent Hospitality effort now has 29 active employers and 30+ strategic partners who have been part of three hiring events. The employers have identified Recruiting, Selection, and Hiring as their primary initial priority. To date, the hospitality sector has hired 110 DC residents.
The hospitality employers also created a Hospitality Sector Job Readiness rubric, which local education and training providers have used to prepare their candidates for hiring events and interviews.
Looking Ahead
In its second year, DC Builds DC employers have identified Recruiting, Selection, and Hiring as its top priority. As of today, their first Hiring Event on April 30th will have 19 DC Builds DC companies interviewing DC residents for 70 full-time roles - and the numbers continue to grow.
For Hospitality, employers continue to focus on Recruiting, Selection, and Hiring and plan to hold more hiring events; they are also interested in developing retention strategies that will allow them to keep their new hires employed and advancing within the field more effectively. We’ll also gear up to formally launch the Partnership later in 2024.
In my next blog, I’ll unpack some of the resources we’ve developed as a result of these Sector Partnerships. Let me know what else you want to hear about!