Kristin Wolff

Thanks to Cristóbal Cobo Romaní in Flickr.

NOTE: This is the third in our recent “let’s share the findings from all those OECD reports with each other (and the world)” series. Again, the content is not likely scintillating, but it’s important to us, and we’re happy to let you in on it.

The OECD Designing Local Skills Strategies Report (2009) focuses largely on questions of balance in locally designed workforce strategies: balance between short- and long-terms needs, balance between training and placement, balance between meeting the needs of people, firms, and communities, and balance between workforce players – private, non-profit, and a diverse collection of government agencies at different levels.

Authors Francesca Froy, Sylvain Giguère, and Andrea Hofer offer case studies of the following communities:

• Shanghai (China)
• Michigan (U.S.)
• Choctaw Tribe (Mississippi, U.S.)
• Mackay (Australia)
• Malmö (Sweden)
• New York City (New York, U.S.)

While, other communities are also cited in the narrative, these communities’ launched initiatives representing what the report calls balanced strategies, the authors’ recommended approach. Balanced strategies focus simultaneously on:

• Attracting and retaining talent
• Integrating disadvantaged groups
• Upskilling those in employment – though in most cases, this was the most difficult strategy because of its complexity (designing opportunities for working adults, often with families).

The report concludes by recommending that local workforce actors seeking to implement effective (and balanced) approaches focus on five key strategic issues:

• Access to relevant data and information. Local actors need to understand their “skills ecology” and its impact on the wider economy to be able to design appropriate policy and program interventions.
• Balanced and long term strategies. It is tempting for local actors to focus on only one or two strategic objectives. Focusing on all three areas is more difficult, but also promises to deliver more substantive impact over time.
• Batter mapping of skills provision, for example through “career clusters” or “career ladders.” This provide a focus for otherwise disjointed systems and creates opportunities for individuals to advance in meaningful ways. However, careers advice is a key (and often lacking) component of this approach.
• Building strong relationships with employers. While necessary to ensure effective connecting of supply and demand, public-sector and non-profit entities can play an important role in emphasizing long term needs and suggesting changes in workplace practices in ways that round out employer’s tendency to focus on short-term needs.
• Look to the future and anticipate change. Skills strategies should be subject to regular review and change, and should build toward local areas of “flexible specialization” (sometimes called workforce or talent competencies, or clusters of talent) that encourage the development of local talents and skills that are specific enough to make the community distinctive, but broad enough to avoid dependency on narrow industries or occupations.

Not rocket science, but it does take determination – people who do this work rely on persuasion and trust, not hierarchy.

Leadership and Governance Really Matter

While the report does not emphasize leadership and governance as a theme, the frequency with which the difficulty of this work is noted in the narrative is striking.  Meeting many diverse public and private needs, balancing the short and longterm, collaborating with large and changing networks of partners absent a structure, meeting shared national policy needs and in a local (and sometime divergent) context, developing and allocating resources fairly and in ways that deliver results – this is complex work all over the world, and speaks to the level of management expertise and leadership talent it takes to do well.

What’s our strategy for developing the workforce workforce?

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