Brent Orrell, Senior Fellow at The American Enterprise Institute: The Rare Gem in Workforce Development

“The evidence is very sparse when it comes to effective practice in the workforce development field,” says Brent Orrell of The American Enterprise Institute. This concerning conclusion comes from the Workforce Futures Initiative, a collaborative project between AEI, the Brookings Institution and the Harvard Kennedy School Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. But it’s not all bad news. The strong exception is sector-based training. “That is one of the rare gems where we can say with relative certainty that if workforce development practitioners do this approach in the right way, they can get good results.” As Orrell explains to Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, the strength of this model derives from integrating technical skills training with instruction in so-called “soft skills” which are essential to being able to succeed in the workplace. The result is dramatic and continued increases in wages that lead to family-sustaining incomes. Orrell also credits these programs with doing a better job at keeping trainees engaged through to completion than is typically the case at community colleges which, he says, badly need a boost in the number of educational and career advising staff. Be sure to check out this thoughtful discussion on what works in workforce development, the extra responsibility Americans have to put their skills to work at the highest level, and why we shouldn’t be afraid of generative AI.

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Sandra Hernandez, CEO of California Health Care Foundation: Improving Access to Care Through Smart Workforce Strategies

What’s the value of having health insurance if you can’t access care? That’s an increasingly pertinent question for states which have successfully expanded insurance eligibility in recent years but are struggling to meet the increasing demand for healthcare. Our guest today on WorkforceRx, Dr. Sandra Hernandez, is a key player in developing solutions to this problem in her role as president and CEO of the California Health Care Foundation. One approach is to use the current workforce strategically. “We’re very focused on looking at the primary care model and the composition of the primary care team so we can use every drop of workforce that we have to its fullest capabilities.” In part, that means reserving physician time for complex cases while expanding the scope for practice for nurses and mid-level providers. Another strategy is beefing up the ranks of community health workers drawn from underserved communities. As Hernandez tells Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, they have proven to be valuable public health advocates due to the trusting relationships they can build. “They can share information that is scientifically-based, and at the same time they are able to encourage people to get enrolled in the programs that they’re eligible for and get them into earlier care.” Don’t miss this veteran perspective on vexing issues facing many areas of the US — including how to care for growing numbers of immigrants and the unsheltered — and stay tuned for a dose of optimism rooted in lessons learned from the pandemic.

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Allen Blue, Co-Founder of LinkedIn: Leveraging 900M Career Profiles for Employment Insights

It’s safe to say that nearly everyone reading this has a profile on LinkedIn or, if not, has visited it to learn about someone else’s career history. The social media giant has 900 million registered members worldwide and has become an essential tool for employers, job seekers and entrepreneurs. On this episode of WorkforceRx we’ll hear from one of LinkedIn’s founders, Allen Blue, who has stayed with the company for its entire twenty-year history and is now serving as vice president of Product Management. His areas of focus include LinkedIn’s Economic Graph, which involves sharing economic data with governments and institutions to improve education and workforce policy. “We derive insights about how skills are emerging and changing, about the landscape of education, about new technologies…and we aggregate all that data and go talk to policymakers so that governments can act.” In this thoughtful conversation with Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, Blue highlights ways people can use LinkedIn to visualize a career path, how technology can be deployed to connect employers to potential workers, and the growing opportunities online to deliver education and training. “That’s something which basically didn’t exist, not in a serious way, even ten years ago. So, it’s a huge opportunity.” Whether you are an employer, job seeker, educator or looking for career advancement, there is much to learn from this social media pioneer.

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