LEARNING PRODUCTIVITY
Wingspread Journal, Summer 1997

THE EMERGING WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT MARKETPLACE

by Becky Klein-Collins and Richard Heydinger

Becky Klein-Collins is a policy analyst at the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL). Rick Heydinger is a senior partner at The Public Strategies Group, Inc., the parent company of the Reinventing Government Network.

Our country's education and training systems stand at a watershed point in their history. Consider the following confluence of powerful forces.

In an era when workers can anticipate having many employers and multiple careers, the responsibility for skill and knowledge development is gravitating from the employer to the individual. Working adults are coming to understand that lifelong learning is essential if they are to gain the skills and credentials needed to maintain their employability.

Coupled with this realization is the emergence of a new marketplace for education and training. Increasingly adult learners are faced with a bewildering array of options. There are courses, modules, and seminars offered through every conceivable delivery system, ranging from weekend colleges to the Internet, from hotel seminars to satellite downlinks.

The impact of this change is being felt among colleges and universities. They are now in a competitive environment where customer-focus and consumer-demand are becoming powerful forces. Some of higher education's new competitors are veterans at sales and marketing; these companies are now packaging their employee education and training programs for the same market that community colleges and vocational education programs used to dominate.

This marketplace is emerging at a time when foresighted leaders in industry, labor, and government recognize that their organizations will need to invest more in education and training. Increasingly, the more future-oriented leaders view expenditures on training with the same strategic significance as investments in capital equipment.

At the same time a profound change in the federal role is underway. Block grants, vouchers, and major cutbacks in funding presage a new era in which states and communities will be asked to bear a greater degree of responsibility for managing shrinking resources while facing greater demands for services. And communities are beginning to recognize that as technology and capital have become global, a region's competitive advantage, and hence its quality of life, is increasingly determined by the quality of its workforce.

When these developments are then coupled with welfare reform, it is not an overstatement to say that we are witnessing the emergence of a new era for education, training, and workforce development.

To fully explore these issues The Johnson Foundation, with additional support from the Lilly Endowment and IBM, sponsored an action-planning design lab hosted and facilitated by three organizations: the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW), the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), and the Reinventing Government Network (RGN). These organizations have formed a strategic alliance to bring their complementary skills to bear on workforce development issues.

Conference participants represented a broad cross-section of organizations including employers, unions, traditional and non-traditional education providers, state and federal policy makers, and foundations.

Two fundamental points of view, with seemingly unanimous support, guided the deliberations of the participants:

• The current workforce development system is not a system at all, but a provider-driven set of services aimed primarily at disadvantaged job seekers. The primary training provider, the government, also regulates the process and controls the demand. The current system does little to meet the critical demands of incumbent workers, career changers, and employers. The system is failing on its own terms, placing our country and its workers at a competitive disadvantage.
• A consumer-driven market place is preferred over the current, highly rigid system. A consumer-driven market places power in the hands of both employees and employers. Such a marketplace, if properly regulated to ensure justice and equity, will do a better job of matching supply and demand of education and training for all workers.

In a consumer-driven marketplace, financial incentives are provided by those demanding the services. As a result, products and services are developed to meet the needs of the customers of the system.

To some, the development of a consumer-oriented marketplace might sound like the worst of a free-market system in which individuals are left to their own devices and only the fittest survive. This was most certainly not the spirit of participants at the Wingspread conference. A workforce development marketplace for the next century is marked by the following important attributes:

Universal

• Equitable distribution of resources
• Equal access to all services in the marketplace
• Special services to the disadvantaged

Driven by the Individual Customer

• There are two discrete customers: employers and individuals
• Customer choice of providers (no presumptive providers or brokers)
• Customer access to high-quality, up-to-date information on providers and options
• Customer access to support services such as guidance, assessment and counseling
• Portable skill portfolios
• Strategic redeployment of existing resources so that customers have more control over the funds invested in their own training and education

Performance-Driven, Outcome-Based Measures

• Clear and unambiguous measures of success
• Easily available to consumers
• Use of rates of return on marketplace investments to measure efficiency

Responsive

• Provides education, training, and support services
• Organized and reported customer feedback is an important information component
• Involves accountability systems

Sufficiently Funded

• Reform of tax policy to encourage individual and corporate investment
• Reform of accounting practices to support employer investment in workforce development
• Enhanced awareness of the importance of workforce development

Under such a system, the role of government shifts from that of provider, overseer, and customer to one of investor, regulator, and monitor of fairness and equity. David Osborne, author of Reinventing Government and, most recently, Banishing Bureaucracy, captures this distinction when he says, "government should separate steering from rowing."

Following the meeting at Wingspread, CSW, CAEL, and RGN have continued to work in support of the workforce development marketplace. Focus groups, conferences, and consultations have all been held in pursuit of these ideas. Specifically, work is ongoing to:

Establish a system of intermediaries or brokers that work on behalf of the learners to:

• Place funding in the hands of learners;
• Develop a portable employability credential;
• Design systems with multiple entry points; and
• Foster continuous improvement through choice and competition.

For More Information Contact:

Rick Heydinger, Senior Partner
Reinventing Government Network
275 East Fourth Street
St. Paul, Minn. 55101
tel.: 612-227-9774
rick@psgrp.com