Leading Practices

A competitive Ohio-based training center leverages income share agreements as a mechanism to help participants pay for diesel mechanic training in the transportation industry. This program is part of Social Finance’s American Diesel Training Center’s Career Impact Bond.

Since 2014, the California Workforce Development Board’s High Road Construction Careers project has allocated more than $20,000,000 to labor union and workforce development board partnerships to diversify and expand building and construction trade union membership. The project is expanding union approved pre-apprenticeships that use the Multi-Core Craft Curriculum (MC3) and includes a statewide database of the union validated programs. The initiative is funded by revenues through California Senate Bill 1: The Road Repair and Accountability Act, the Clean Energy Jobs Act Program and carbon market cap and trade revenues administered by the California Air Resources Board. Funds have been used to support local partnerships among workforce boards, unions, community colleges and other partners in East San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles and Orange County and the Central Valley.

Founded in 1997, the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) operates in 31 cities across 12 states. It has placed more than 34,000 individuals who were formerly incarcerated in full-time employment. The center is one of the only evidence-based employment programs dedicated to working with individuals who have recently returned home from incarceration. A randomized control trial by MDRC found that CEO reduced rates of recidivism by 22% and created $3.30 in social benefit for every $1 spent on the program. This case study in Philadelphia outlines how CEO partners with local government to make an impact on the ground.

Chipotle has partnered with Guild Education since 2018 to provide its employees the opportunity to earn an advanced degree such as an online bachelor’s degree in 18 months. Classes fit into workers’ schedules and are designed to help them grow in their careers. The program is part of Chipotle’s educational assistance program, which provides up to $5,250 a year in tuition assistance and a Guild Education personal success coach who helps students enroll in classes and apply for financial aid.

Cupcakin' Bake Shop is a Northern-California-based business with multiple locations. The company is committed to maintaining job quality as it grows. The owner offers her workers a living wage, career-building opportunities, wealth-building opportunities and a fair and engaging workplace. Cupcakin’ partnered with Pacific Community Ventures and their Good Jobs, Good Business program to implement job quality practices, including tracking and measuring changes over time, as well as to receive access to capital to scale operations efficiently and prepare the business for the future while supporting quality jobs.

In 2022, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) provided a comprehensive overview with detailed examples of how local governments are protecting workers’ rights by establishing local labor standards offices to enforce workers’ rights laws, establishing worker boards and councils, passing local worker protections laws, setting job quality standards for contractors and internal employers and championing workers issues through local public leadership.

Supported by inaugural training providers Merit America and Year Up, learners upskill and earn Google Career Certificates—industry-recognized credentials that equip people with the skills needed to enter in-demand fields such as data analytics, information technology support, project management and user experience design. The program focuses on helping people from underserved communities access well-paying high-growth jobs.

In 2021, Harris County established an Essential Workers Board to advise the county on programs and policies that support essential workers. All members must be “low-income essential workers,” with at least one worker representative from the airport or transportation, construction, domestic work or home care, education or child care, grocery, convenience or drug store, health care or public health, janitorial, food services, hospitality or leisure services, and retail industries. In addition to advising the county on its overall approach to protecting essential workers’ rights and providing a public forum, the board is also tasked with providing feedback on the county’s purchasing and contracting policies; workforce development programs; tax abatement and incentive policies; community benefits agreements; distribution of federal COVID-19 relief and recovery funds; disaster preparedness and recovery programs; OSHA trainings; independent monitoring of local, state, and federal public health and labor laws and inclusive economic development planning.

Since 2017, the Hilton Apprenticeship Academy has taught hospitality through hands-on exposure to a range of industry disciplines. Hilton apprentices complete a six-week rotation through all hotel departments, including security, food and beverage, engineering, accounting, human resources and front office. Once they complete the rotation, apprentices choose a specific department to focus on for an additional 16 weeks. Upon the conclusion of those 16 weeks, apprentices complete a final project that includes a presentation to Hilton’s executive committee.

Founded in 1938, JVS has demonstrated new ways to diversify revenue for and through their job training programs, including charging employers for placement services. In 2018, the organization had $16M in revenue from a mix of private and public funding sources.

A 2013 Kentucky law established the Center for Education and Workforce Statistics, which collects and links high-quality actionable data from five state agencies in order to improve education and workforce programs in the state. By providing data sets, publishing reports and fulfilling research requests, the center provides state-specific insights with appropriate data privacy and data access measures.

In 2021, Pacific Gateway, the local workforce development board, partnered in the development and implementation of a project labor agreement with the city of Long Beach (CA), local unions and private developers to fill local hire and other project labor agreements for public works projects. Pacific Gateway recruits and trains diverse applicants and refers them to the Los Angeles and Orange County Building and Construction Trades Council Multi-Core Craft Curriculum (MC3) pre-apprenticeship program at Long Beach City College.

Through a partnership between the city and county workforce agencies and employment social enterprises, the Los Angeles Regional Initiative for Social Enterprise (LA RISE) began in 2015  to help people overcoming major employment barriers get jobs, stay employed and take initial steps toward living wages and higher quality jobs. Now in its seventh year, LA RISE has nearly 50 partners and has enrolled more than 4,100 individuals in Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act programs through its Client Referral Form, Client Flier, Program Model and Participant Flow Chart. The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund provides backbone management services to manage the network, track outcomes and build capacity for service provider partners.

The Maricopa Workforce Development Board partners with building and construction trade registered apprenticeship programs, including the Phoenix Painters and Allied Trades, the Southwest Carpenters Training Fund and the Laborers Training School. The workforce board provides $4,000 through Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) adult funds for related instruction and offers case management and supportive services to apprentices, generally in the first year of the apprenticeship program. In 2019, the US Department of Labor did a case study on Maricopa’s apprenticeship programs and found that WIOA Adult Program Apprenticeship participants had a 94% employment rate during the second quarter after program exit, 22 points higher than the statewide rate for the WIOA Adult Program.

First signed into law in 1937, this legislation outlines minimum national program standards for registered apprenticeship programs (RAPs). The systems, structures and policies outlined in this legislation provide the framework for local workforce agencies to fund union registered apprenticeship programs (as well as non-union programs) through other federal funds, including the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and SNAP employment and training to subsidize wages and classroom instruction related to RAP on-the-job learning and related instruction.

This 1935 law protects workplace democracy by providing employees at private-sector workplaces the fundamental right to seek better working conditions and designation of representation without fear of retaliation.

In 2020, New Jersey launched a $10,000,000 Pay it Forward fund that mixes philanthropy and state funds for programs in health care and information technology through Career Impact Bonds that bring together wraparound support services and student-friendly financing to help individuals upskill with high-quality training providers and achieve economic mobility.

Worksystems Inc., serves as the workforce development board for the City of Portland and Multnomah and Washington Counties. The FY2021 budget projected $27,000,000 in revenue, $12,5000,000 from federal sources like the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and federal grants, $5,000,000 from state contracts including SNAP employment and training, and $9,500,000 in local government and philanthropic funds.

In 2020, the mayor’s office of Providence, Rhode Island, issued an executive order to set the stage for gathering and analyzing the necessary data to understand the current state of inequities in the community.

Since 1997, REDF has worked with a national network of employment social enterprises that have helped more than 84,000 people secure transitional employment after experiencing homelessness, leaving incarceration and/or experiencing other significant barriers to employment. In 2015, Mathematica evaluated the impact of social enterprises in their network and found increased employment, earnings, housing and other economic stability indicators compared to a comparison group.