Collaboration to Improve Workforce Development in Massachusetts

Sieberg: 92% of jobs today require digital skills. However, research shows one-third of US workers do not have the foundational digital skills to enter and thrive in the workplace. Hello. I'm Daniel Sieberg and you're watching "Getting Connected," powered by Comcast Newsmakers. We're on location at the 2024 Skills Summit in Washington, D.C. And joining me now is Andre Green. He is the Executive Director of SkillWorks, an organization that works to strengthen the workforce development sector in Greater Boston in order to reduce poverty and narrow racial income and wealth gaps. Andre, thank you so much for being here.

Green: Thank you for having me.

Sieberg: So SkillWorks is a model for other workforce collaboratives across the country. How would you describe the role of a workforce collaborative?

Green: Sure. So, in Greater Boston and other communities across the country, you tend to have job training organizations. You tend to have jobseekers. You tend to have policymakers and you tend to have funders, either public or private, trying to figure out how to make sense of it all. And the independent agencies work individually. And so everybody's just doing their own thing and people, work fall through the cracks. So, in Greater Boston, the then-mayor of Boston and the then-president of the Boston Foundation came together, brought other funders to the table, and said we're going to do this together so we can coordinate our efforts. That's where SkillWorks was founded, with really the idea that we could be the thing that brought people together, really through joint funding, capacity building, convening, policy research, advocacy, all these things, with a thrust towards work improvement.

Sieberg: Now, what are the challenges you're seeing in the Boston area? And maybe how is that a microcosm of what's happening across the country?

Green: Sure. So, you know, it's not surprising when, as a country, we're seeing so many inflection points, right? We have a housing crisis. As you mentioned, there's this growing digital gap. We're seeing child care needs. All these things are things that prevent workers, no matter how much they want to work hard, from getting good jobs, good jobs that lead to the middle class. And none of them are things that any one program can solve. So we think the funding collaborative works because we get to bring people together. We get to bridge those gaps and we get to really solve the deep root-cause issues that are preventing people from advancing.

Sieberg: Now, plenty of inherent challenges, what are some success stories? What do you find that's working well?

Green: As you mentioned, a third of workers either don't have the skills, and we've found even in Massachusetts, which is small and, you know, thought of as urbanized, a quarter of the state didn't have access to high-speed internet on a regular basis at the beginning of the pandemic. So we worked with the state government on how to expand that digital access. But that's only a third of the problem, right? Because even if you have high-speed internet, if you can't access that internet, you can't get anywhere. So it was working with groups to make sure that either it's providing laptops or making sure that there's access to public facilities. But making sure people could actually access the internet. And then there's a third piece, which is working with organizations. We've worked with organizations, everyone from, there's a group called Tech Goes Home, which helps immigrants learn basic computing, to groups like Hack.Diversity. And there's then coders which help turn people into coders and help them develop tech careers. There is high-speed internet. There is access. And now you can actually have the skills to use it to thrive.

Sieberg: So many ways to come at this, what's next on the horizon for you and SkillWorks?

Green: I think when we see, you know, what's happening next, where the country is going, we see there's going to be, you know, we're already seeing billions of dollars in infrastructure dollars. We think that's just the tip of the iceberg. Whether it's going to be because of resiliency, whether it's going to be because of, you know, just aging infrastructure, we're going to have to basically rebuild Greater Boston and the country. And we think that is an amazing opportunity to make sure that people get into skills trade jobs, which we know are how people get into the middle class. That's how it was done last century.

Sieberg: Well, continued success to you, Andre Green, the Executive Director of SkillWorks. Thank you so much for joining us.

Green: Thank you for having me.

Sieberg: And thanks to you as well for watching. For more conversations about digital equity and broadband expansion, visit gettingconnected.com. I'm Daniel Sieberg.

Sieberg: 92% of jobs today require digital skills. However, research shows one-third of US workers do not have the foundational digital skills to enter and thrive in the workplace. Hello. I'm Daniel Sieberg and you're watching "Getting Connected," powered by Comcast Newsmakers. We're on location at the 2024 Skills Summit in Washington, D.C. And joining me now is Andre Green. He is the Executive Director of SkillWorks, an organization that works to strengthen the workforce development sector in Greater Boston in order to reduce poverty and narrow racial income and wealth gaps. Andre, thank you so much for being here.

Green: Thank you for having me.

Sieberg: So SkillWorks is a model for other workforce collaboratives across the country. How would you describe the role of a workforce collaborative?

Green: Sure. So, in Greater Boston and other communities across the country, you tend to have job training organizations. You tend to have jobseekers. You tend to have policymakers and you tend to have funders, either public or private, trying to figure out how to make sense of it all. And the independent agencies work individually. And so everybody's just doing their own thing and people, work fall through the cracks. So, in Greater Boston, the then-mayor of Boston and the then-president of the Boston Foundation came together, brought other funders to the table, and said we're going to do this together so we can coordinate our efforts. That's where SkillWorks was founded, with really the idea that we could be the thing that brought people together, really through joint funding, capacity building, convening, policy research, advocacy, all these things, with a thrust towards work improvement.

Sieberg: Now, what are the challenges you're seeing in the Boston area? And maybe how is that a microcosm of what's happening across the country?

Green: Sure. So, you know, it's not surprising when, as a country, we're seeing so many inflection points, right? We have a housing crisis. As you mentioned, there's this growing digital gap. We're seeing child care needs. All these things are things that prevent workers, no matter how much they want to work hard, from getting good jobs, good jobs that lead to the middle class. And none of them are things that any one program can solve. So we think the funding collaborative works because we get to bring people together. We get to bridge those gaps and we get to really solve the deep root-cause issues that are preventing people from advancing.

Sieberg: Now, plenty of inherent challenges, what are some success stories? What do you find that's working well?

Green: As you mentioned, a third of workers either don't have the skills, and we've found even in Massachusetts, which is small and, you know, thought of as urbanized, a quarter of the state didn't have access to high-speed internet on a regular basis at the beginning of the pandemic. So we worked with the state government on how to expand that digital access. But that's only a third of the problem, right? Because even if you have high-speed internet, if you can't access that internet, you can't get anywhere. So it was working with groups to make sure that either it's providing laptops or making sure that there's access to public facilities. But making sure people could actually access the internet. And then there's a third piece, which is working with organizations. We've worked with organizations, everyone from, there's a group called Tech Goes Home, which helps immigrants learn basic computing, to groups like Hack.Diversity. And there's then coders which help turn people into coders and help them develop tech careers. There is high-speed internet. There is access. And now you can actually have the skills to use it to thrive.

Sieberg: So many ways to come at this, what's next on the horizon for you and SkillWorks?

Green: I think when we see, you know, what's happening next, where the country is going, we see there's going to be, you know, we're already seeing billions of dollars in infrastructure dollars. We think that's just the tip of the iceberg. Whether it's going to be because of resiliency, whether it's going to be because of, you know, just aging infrastructure, we're going to have to basically rebuild Greater Boston and the country. And we think that is an amazing opportunity to make sure that people get into skills trade jobs, which we know are how people get into the middle class. That's how it was done last century.

Sieberg: Well, continued success to you, Andre Green, the Executive Director of SkillWorks. Thank you so much for joining us.

Green: Thank you for having me.

Sieberg: And thanks to you as well for watching. For more conversations about digital equity and broadband expansion, visit gettingconnected.com. I'm Daniel Sieberg.