New plan outlines bold strategies to transform workforce development for an equitable economic recovery
Announcement
The Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County (WDC) is excited to release Recover Better: A Regional Plan for Equitable Economic Recovery, which presents critical strategies to building equitable economic recovery with a regional partnership approach to workforce development.
The WDC has worked for more than 3 years to become a best-in-class, innovative, regional workforce development backbone organization that is a catalyst for leveraging and aligning resources to increase equity and maximize outcomes. The WDC’s board and regional partners have taken several major steps in this process—from engaging Boston Consulting Group in 2018 to design a new operating model; to choosing Marie Kurose, a tenured and well-respected leader in the economic and workforce development field, to lead this effort as CEO in 2019.
COVID-19 accelerated the urgency of this work and the need for an equitable economic recovery plan to address stark income inequality and racial disparities in job loss, and the disproportionate representation of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), and immigrant and refugee communities in low-wage jobs.
Recover Better: A Regional Plan for Equitable Economic Recovery is a 3-5 year blueprint to align shared priorities between regional partners in the local workforce development system. It analyzes the economic impacts from COVID-19, the recovery outlook for sectors and workers, and presents two north stars: equitable economic recovery and job quality.
The plan was developed in partnership with Jill Nishi, a trusted expert with decades of experience in philanthropic strategic planning, program and grantmaking portfolio development, and organizational design with a focus on producing more equitable outcomes. Working closely with CEO Marie Kurose and WDC staff, a team of experts sought diverse perspectives from industry, labor, government, and community, and synthesized those perspectives with economic projections and analysis of promising practices in the workforce development field.
The plan details a range of high-level strategic recommendations, many of which challenge traditional assumptions about the role of the WDC and the workforce development field more broadly. Implementation of these strategies will require extensive collaboration from regional partners to transform the workforce development system to one that is equity centered, outcome focused, and industry driven, all towards the overarching goal of building an equitable economic recovery.
