Locally Grown: Key Strategies for Expanding Workforce Services
by Sheila Maguire

This report profiles three workforce organizations across the country—in Colorado, Georgia and New York—and explores the strategies they used to grow their programs locally. The report examines the dilemmas workforce organizations frequently face in meeting not only the needs of their dual customers—job seekers and employers—but also the needs of a third customer, the public funding agency that is often paying the bill. Along with a look at how these organizations created environments that supported staff in their work, the report also considers the ways a vision and commitment to the workforce field—beyond the interests of the organization—contributed to their success.

Published: November 2006
Price: $ 10.00
To order this new publication: go to www.ppv.org

Good Stories Aren't Enough: Becoming Outcomes-Driven in Workforce Development
by Martha A. Miles

Workforce development organizations are more and more focused on achieving and documenting performance outcomes; yet managers frequently face a challenge getting buy-in from frontline staff about collecting and using data—not only to satisfy funders’ needs but to improve services. Good Stories Aren’t Enough looks at the experience and learnings of six organizations as they focused on becoming more outcomes-driven. It identifies practical, hands-on strategies to increase staff involvement and communication around data, so that what at first seems like "impersonal" information becomes a useful tool to better meet job seekers' and employers' needs.

Published: August 2006
Price: $ 10.00
To order this new publication: go to www.ppv.org

Skills to Live By: Participant Reflections on the Value of their Sectoral Training Experience
by Maureen Conway & Amy Blair

This publication shares the observations of a group of past sectoral training program participants -- four years post-training -- about how that experience changed them and their families and what they see as barriers to their future success.

Published: 2006 by the Aspen Institute
Free download at www.aspenwsi.org