Effective workforce collaborations are built together, not apart.
When regional partners embrace collaborative practices, they strengthen the career pathways available so job seekers thrive as employers’ needs are met. Research shows effective regional collaborations frequently engage all relevant stakeholders to improve accessibility to essential resources, relevant work experiences, and diverse career pathways.
Seeking to increase regional collaboration among secondary, post-secondary career and technical education programs, and business and industry across New York state, the Career and Technical Education Technical Assistance Center (CTE TAC) of New York tasked Alla Breve Consulting in 2022 to identify key indicators established in research and form an evaluative rubric to assess regional collaborations across the state. Between 2022 and 2024, Alla Breve developed and piloted an evaluative rubric that was deployed for all workforce regions in New York state, excluding New York City. The final rubric, which informs the companion Regional Collaboration Self-Assessment Guide, centers on five research-based elements of effective regional collaborations. The final report on Developing Effective Regional Collaborations can be found here.
Five elements of effective Regional Collaboration:
Collaboration is essential for any effective partnership. For regional education and workforce partners, it starts with communication and engagement of all relevant stakeholders to ensure all workforce needs, priorities, and opportunities are commonly understood and kept up to date. Regional partnerships begin to flourish when resources are collectively harnessed to strengthen education-to-workforce pathways. By enhancing work-based learning opportunities, providing state-of-the-art technology, and streamlining articulation agreements for dual-enrollment opportunities, career education and training becomes more accessible for learners and job seekers. Additionally, collaborations between education and workforce partners present more learning opportunities for educators to gain firsthand experience and relevant career and technical education content so they can encourage career pathways among learners. As evidenced in research, regional collaborations are about more than providing career programs and services. They’re about improving education-to-workforce opportunities and building career pathways so people can thrive while enjoying the work they do with confidence. In doing so, job seekers fulfill pivotal roles that meet the workforce needs of their community.
Next steps -> Assess Your Region
Effectively assessing your region’s collaboration extends beyond listing cooperative agreements and joint-funding arrangements. It involves examining how those collaborative relationships formed, and the efforts involved to manifest cooperative programming in your region. To dive deeper means connecting with educators, industry, and community partners involved in regional efforts to learn their perspectives, either as a group or individually. Doing so enhances the shared pool of understanding and perspective among stakeholders, while also creating opportunities to celebrate areas of success and more deeply explore opportunities for improvement.
Jump to -> Regional Assessments
Nine New York Regions were assessed on their regional collaboration using insights from publicly available local and regional workforce plans, input from focus groups and surveys, and data from other publicly available sources, using the rubric-based assessment tool which focuses on the five elements above.