Since 2015, Hope Street Group has collaborated in the education, retail, healthcare and manufacturing sectors to realize shifts in how individuals are prepared and trained; how employers source, select and advance their talent; and, collectively, how regional stakeholders can work together to build their workforce. This 2018 Sync Our Signals Impact Report discusses our work in addressing the skills gaps in multiple industries, highlights proven models for career navigation, and reiterates our vision to ensure every individual reaches their full potential with unencumbered access to economic mobility.
45%
45% of Jobs in America Require a Middle-Skills Level
25%
...Yet Only 25% of American Workers Are at That Level
The Challenge
Employers are not effectively signaling the skills they need for the jobs they need to fill.
As a result, educators and training providers are unable to develop effective training to prepare workers to meet those needs.
And, workers are not in a position to attain nor communicate their ability to meet those needs.
But we believe this is a challenge we can overcome.
Hope Street Group believes that the gap we see across the country between the skills needed and the competencies of our workforce is a “signaling” problem between employers, trainers and workers. With that in mind, our “Sync Our Signals” initiative was based on a network approach – one where we engaged the critical partners needed to address workforce and skills issues in a community.
Across the healthcare, manufacturing and retail sectors, our networks include employers, training providers, community colleges and universities, workforce boards, government and economic development organizations. Hope Street Group helps each partner maximize their role and contribution to meet their community’s workforce needs by serving as a neutral third party that coordinates existing efforts, identifies gaps and works to fill those gaps. The strategies we have helped these networks adopt include apprenticeship programs, occupational validated competency models, reliable measurement tools and, evidence-based career navigation.
This innovative network-based approach is transforming how our nation hires and advances talent. In doing so we are creating career paths for workers that offer economic opportunity for them and their families across some of the most important industry sectors to our nation’s economy and improve the quality of life in our communities. To increase the impact of this approach Hope Street Group has applied the learnings from this work to our Skilling America initiative, which is built to professionalize and build new skills with workforce professionals who serve as trusted agents to individuals in communities across the country.
Read the Sync Our Signals Summary Report 2016: Reengineering the Jobs Marketplace