It's never too late to upgrade your skills, and those of your team! Sign up for WPTI's self-paced e-courses today.
For bulk purchase discounts, please contact Yanni Deconescu, Director of Project Management, at ydeconescu@wpti.org.
Register for WPTI's upcoming no-cost live, virtual trainings, open to all practitioners! Sign up for our October 16 training on AI and Its Impact,
and our January 23 training on AI Tools for Workforce Development. Don't miss out!

Systems Building

Uniting the workforce development community to create systemic change

img-compromised-system-r1

THE CHALLENGE

New York City's workforce development system is large and complex serving multiple constituencies and job seekers with diverse obstacles to gaining successful employment. Imbalanced service areas lead to redundant and insufficient resources across the City and the lack of standardized funding requirements creates considerable competition among nonprofit providers for limited dollars. Lack of information and knowledge sharing also makes it difficult to obtain consistent industry metrics and outcome measurements. The lack of professional certification or an accrediting body across the industry has led to depressed wages in the industry, uneven core competencies of practitioners and considerable turnover. The lack of alignment and collaboration among government funders, foundations and providers has additionally contributed to a fragmented industry lacking a cohesive and integrated strategy for preparing tomorrow's workforce to meet the needs of NYC employers and the NYC business community at large.

img-workforce-development-community-r1-v2

IDENTIFYING COMMON ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS TO STRENGTHEN THE WORKFORCE ECOSYSTEM

WPTI brings together providers, funders, organized labor, policy makers and the business community to promote collaboration, identify necessary policy changes and implement system reforms to strengthen the workforce development industry. Our systems building work leverages WPTI's extensive experience in the areas of field learning, advisory services, workshops and independent research to inform and influence key industry leaders and government entities around policy issues, emerging trends and systemic changes required to impact outcomes for consumers of the workforce development system.

Systems building in action

Our initiatives build a better system with broad and deep collaboration

Along with leadership forums, listening tours, and policy roundtables, some of our initiatives include:
  • The Workforce Field Building Hub – centralizing and streamlining expertise, data, and other resources to unite and strengthen local and national workforce system leaders and practitioners to more effectively solve workforce problems
  • Workforce Agenda for New York City – a comprehensive system-wide assessment and set of actionable recommendations for NYC policymakers, funders and practitioners
  • The NYC Benchmarking Network – draws upon 15 years of research on workforce programs nationwide to identify meaningful performance benchmarks and actionable insights on best practices
  • WPTI Publications – our reports, white papers, and practice guides distill the latest research findings and best practices so you can enhance your skills, programs, and results
  • Executive Forums and Academies – these networking and information sharing sessions enable leaders to make connections and acquire insightful data that can be translated into policy improvements