The Road to the High Performance Workforce – Get Employed

Previously posted on Unleash The Monster
By Lee Ramsayer

In our previous posts we’ve introduced the concept of the high-performance workforce and the steps states and regions need to take to get their workforce prepared to meet new employment demands. Specifically, we’ve discussed how real-time labor intelligence can help to diagnose deficits and surpluses in the skills of a workforce and the steps that can be taken to address these imbalances.

But now that your workforce is educated and prepared to fill the available jobs of both today and tomorrow, you need to connect available employees with applicable jobs where they can use their skills.

One of the best ways to accomplish this is a basic tenet of the High-Performance Workforce methodology – to foster relationships among stakeholders, including the education systems, workforce and economic development teams, and the private sector. These relationships help to create well-qualified employees for positions at every level in the targeted sectors and high-growth industries where they can make an immediate impact.

Using social networking, career and job search tools, and targeted job boards can be an effective approach in bringing employees and employers together. Custom career and job sites can be constructed to drive employees to high growth industries. Also, establishing social networks dedicated to regions and sectors, using internet-based media, and participating in online events can all be useful in helping high-growth sectors attract top talent.

An example of this can be seen right here at Monster. The company’s new “Technology Center of Excellence & Innovation” in Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA was in need of approximately 80 new technical employees. To staff these positions, the company hosted a career fair within its EducationXpo online event and reached out to colleges and universities with strong reputations for producing top-level technical talent. These types of targeted career fairs can be instrumental in placing potential employees in jobs in high growth industries.

Of course once the available talent is employed in positions where they can truly use their skills and abilities to succeed, employee retention becomes very important. On-boarding, the ability to integrate and assimilate new employees into an organization, and retention remain big question marks for employers, especially government agencies, but that’s a blog post for another time.