Skill Up Rhode Island

Providence

, Rhode Island

Skill Up Rhode Island, a community impact initiative led by the United Way of Rhode Island, invests in the development and enhancement of workforce partnerships to meet the needs of low-skilled, adult Rhode Islanders and the employers who hire them. Skill Up supports the development of highly networked public and community partnerships among employers, education, training, and support services providers to facilitate the creation of career opportunities and a stable workforce. Skill Up is supporting four workforce partnerships in health care, construction, marine trades, and logistics.

Funding Collaborative

Skill Up Rhode Island is led and administered by the United Way of Rhode Island, in conjunction with a steering committee comprised of employers, community leaders, and state agencies interested in building adult and neighborhood independence. The project aligns funding with the Rhode Island Department of Education, Governor’s Workforce Board Industry Partnerships, Rhode Island Department of Workforce Development, and Making Connections Providence to support workforce partnerships through multiple sources of integrated funds. Funders meet as a separate committee to coordinate their joint investments in workforce partnerships and collaborate on strategic outcomes expected through their mutual investments in workforce partnerships.

Key Strategies and Proposed Interventions

Skill Up Rhode Island emphasizes a sectoral and dual-customer approach in long-term interventions that meet the hiring, retention, and advancement needs of employers and job and skill seekers. Skill Up Rhode Island has developed a set of outcome targets based on its own strategic analysis of workforce needs of low-income residents of the state. The initiative pursues a strategy to produce both programmatic outcomes and improve the effectiveness of Rhode Island workforce development systems. In addition to direct grants to workforce partnerships, Skill Up Rhode Island works on public policy advocacy to strengthen the workforce development pipelines, and in capacity building to develop the skills of professional staff working in the education and training system.

Workforce Partnerships serve both employers and low-skilled adults by working within industry sectors or with occupational clusters in regional labor markets to develop structured education and training pathways that are linked to career advancement for low-income adult residents of Rhode Island. Each partnership identifies a strategy, skill development/employment focus, and goals relative to its sector and identified needs.

Skill Up Rhode Island supports Workforce Partnerships that commit to achieving the following key measurable outcomes from 2007 to 2009:

Job readiness: As a result of this initiative, low-income, unemployed or underemployed Rhode Island residents will receive pre-employment services that address such areas as reading, writing, and verbal skills; math literacy; English language proficiency; problem-solving skills; and support service needs (e.g., child care, transportation). Such services should prepare program participants to understand general workplace culture and expectations, as well as to possess the attitudes and behavior integral to competing successfully in the labor market.

Employment with family supporting wages: As a result of this initiative, low-income Rhode Island residents will be employed in good jobs. An acceptable job is defined as one with the following characteristics: income that is at least 150 percent of the state minimum wage; employment for a minimum of 30 hours per week; fringe benefits (e.g., health insurance and paid vacation); and retention for at least six months and that insures employee success.

Career opportunities: Program participants will have access to job retention services; career opportunities/tools (e.g., education and training to upgrade employees’ current skills or to teach them new skills); and career coaching services. These opportunities will provide participants with access to jobs with a career that offers higher wages linked to increased education, experience, and skills.

Workforce stabilization: Skill Up Rhode Island aims to foster workforce stabilization for employers by increasing worker quality and productivity and reducing employee turnover. It also aims to support the development of expert knowledge of the workplace culture of specific employers to better bridge the gap between their needs and employee competence. Retention services will be offered to every employer.

Effective workforce development systems: Workforce partnerships will create workforce development systems that are more cohesive, better aligned with employer and worker needs, and more proactive in ameliorating the gaps between the labor market and its stakeholders.

Skill Up Rhode Island provides three-year grants to workforce partnerships to provide a continuum of workforce development services that enable low-skilled adults to access the level and intensity of services they need to progress toward economic self-sufficiency. Workforce partnerships help employers meet their needs for a productive workforce and help low-income individuals obtain the skills and credentials to acquire a job with career potential and obtain the supports they need to participate in training and succeed at work. Workforce partnerships are also expected to develop practices that enhance the capacity of the workforce development system to meet the needs of employers and low-income workers.

United Way of Rhode Island provides approximately $500,000 total per year for three years (2007, 2008, 2009) for Skill Up Rhode Island funding. The Skill Up partnerships supplement their United Way grants with contracts and grants from other public, philanthropic, and employer sources to achieve their goals, including at least a 50 percent cash match for full implementation.

Skill Up Rhode Island is supporting four workforce partnerships:

Building Futures: A construction trades partnership that recruits, assesses, and places low-income residents of Providence neighborhoods in apprenticeship programs in building trades;

Stepping Up: A health care partnership in Providence that focuses on defining career and educational pathways for incumbent and new employees in Providence hospitals;

Rhode Island Marine Trades Partnership: A partnership in marine trades and boat repair that recruits and trains lower-income residents of Aquidneck Island for jobs and careers in pleasure boat repair and maintenance; and

Woonsocket Employment Network: A partnership between community organizations and a major distribution center to define employer skill expectations and recruit and train low-skilled adults to work in the logistics and distribution industry.

Moving Forward

The United Way is fostering a collaborative relationship with the initiative’s grantees to support them in redesigning workforce development services in Rhode Island. In addition, Skill Up staff are assisting multiple funding sources—public and private—that are engaged in the partnerships to share a strategic vision of the partnerships and support programmatic activities through coordination ranging from data collection to the strategic use of different funding sources to achieve a comprehensive workforce development impact. Throughout the initiative, grantees will meet regularly with Jobs for the Future, Abt Associates, technical assistance consultants to the initiative, and United Way of Rhode Island staff and volunteers to receive feedback and technical assistance on their program designs.

Labor Market Analysis

The following powerpoint provides an analysis of the Rhode Island regional labor market. The analysis is intended to provide a picture into overall employment conditions and structural changes in this local economy, focusing on the period from 2001-2007. Though this data does not capture changes associated with the recent 2008 recession, it should still provide useful insights into medium-term demographic and employment changes.

The data analyzed here comes from two major sources: The American Community Survey 2007 (and 1990 & 2000 Decennial Census for some charts) from the U.S. Census Bureau; and the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For a full guide to the data content, structure, and how it might be used, please listen to the June 16, 2009, recorded webinar available here.