Modernization of Workforce Development to Deliver Greater Outcomes INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE
INTRODUCTION
When it comes to checking the pulse of our economic health, there is little argument that employment and the well-being of our workforce is a visible, reliable gauge recognized by our leaders and community. In a competitive national and global workforce market, people are the ultimate commodity in driving our communities’ economy, and their employment is the highest priority for state, regional and local government leaders. At all levels, a community that has a well-employed population contributing to thriving businesses is, by many standards, a healthy one. When a state or city has satisfied employed residents supported by reliable resources to accommodate workforce needs, quality of life, productivity and revenue go up across the board. Clearly, employment for our citizens remains steadfast as a top goal for government. Instrumental in addressing this issue are many key, if not all, government agencies, and with increasing legislative and leadership expectations, the accountability for outcomes has heightened. With that, carrying out critical services efficiently and effectively for all engaged audiences in the cycle, such as job seekers, employing businesses, service providers and partner agency stakeholders, is critical to the success of the workforce development mission. In their job-driven responsibility, government agencies are charged with anticipating the current and projected needs of employers, preparing and producing the supply of workers with appropriate job-ready skills, and collaborating with partners in delivering services and educational training programs.
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Industry Perspective
It’s a lofty, but important national goal. Yet as public-sector staff work toward delivering the necessary services and support, they are finding that existing processes and systems are unnecessarily constraining the delivery of a job-ready workforce. Government legacy systems are not enabling agencies to keep pace in managing the evolving needs of citizens and businesses as a customer – and that needs to change. To help the public sector understand how it can modernize its workforce management, Salesforce, a leading customer success cloud platform company, partnered with GovLoop for this industry perspective. In the following pages, we will: • Discuss the challenges governments face in modernizing their workforce systems. • Acknowledge the trends that are making this modernization a must-do for government. • Solicit insights from Art Taguding, National Director, Workforce and Economic Development, State and Local Government, Salesforce, (whose professional career includes serving in state workforce and economic development, public and for-profit higher education and career and professional development) on what a modern workforce development system looks like. • Help state and local governments understand how a truly modern workforce management system can advance their mission-critical deliverables into the 21st century.
INDUSTRY CHALLENGES To begin, it’s important to affirm the business of workforce development. Simply, it’s a matter of supply and demand. Government agencies work to accommodate the workforce demand of their regional industries by preparing and producing a supply of job-ready workers to sustain their regional economy. Job creation and matching for job seekers have become top priorities for all. Many agencies contribute to this, with workforce and employment development agencies being the lynchpin hinged with other public partners such as economic development, education, colleges and universities, vocational rehabilitation, corrections, health and human services, training services organizations and more. It’s a simple formula and goal, but one that’s snarled by an increasingly complicated need for process and content management. “There are increasing pressures on the workforce development system to assure a healthy workforce pipeline to accommodate employers’ critical hiring needs,” said Art Taguding, National Director, Workforce and Economic Development, State and Local Government, Salesforce. “Securing the right and necessary workforce sustains the life of our businesses and endures our economies. And, it’s no secret that unemployment, job growth, business losses and the overall health of the economy, are visibly prominent in our headlines and social media and have been generally accepted as the litmus test of how well we are doing as a community on the local, state and national levels.” This makes it more impelling than ever for state and local workforce development stakeholder agencies to feel confident in their business operations and processes. But today, legacy systems and processes are making that harder. “Aging systems and operational workflow processes are hampering government’s ability to be productive and are no longer providing value when it comes to efficiently managing towards job-driven outcomes,” said Taguding. There are three prevalent challenges limiting workforce development professionals from truly meeting increasing workforce development mission expectations.
Given the resources that are in place or inherited, it’s no fault of their own that workforce and economic development staff are hampered in their efforts to productively deliver desired outcomes in services to regional citizens and business customers. FIRST, MANY WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES HAVE BEEN LIMITED WITH TOO FEW TECHNOLOGY OPTIONS. Either they must choose an off-the-shelf solution that lacks customizability, doesn’t scale efficiently, is not fully mobile or able to adapt to the department’s changing needs, or they invest heavily trying to develop and support an in-house solution, requiring major upfront and ongoing investments in hardware, software, updates and development resources.
SECOND, DATA IS NOT EFFECTIVELY MANAGED. There are countless methodologies on how data is managed by agencies but as the exploding volume of data has emerged as a significant part of our interventions, aging systems have not been able to nimbly leverage it into a timely responsive smart decision making process.
FINALLY, THE THIRD CHALLENGE IS COWORKERS OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO PROFESSIONAL COLLABORATION. Partners and their information are siloed, making it difficult to share data and relevant information between agencies. Agencies must share and report data in aligned efforts to ensure common state and regional workforce goals. How can meaningful data be effectively leveraged to help leaders, individually and collectively, make more insightful, smarter decisions to better serve citizens? But now, industry forces require a call to action that can no longer be ignored.
Modernization of Workforce Development to Deliver Greater Outcomes
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WIOA: AN INDUSTRY GAME-CHANGER With the President’s signing of the Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) into law on July 22, 2014, the national bar for workforce development outcomes for every state was set in place. WIOA is designed to: • Help job-seekers access employment, education, training and support services to succeed in the labor market. • Match employers with the skilled workers they need to compete in the global economy. • Better align the workforce system with education and economic development. • Shift performance metrics to focus on strategic alignment, collaboration, accountability of deliverables, improvement in the structure and delivery of services, and overcoming barriers of employment and business needs. With these WIOA mandates, stakeholders are searching for ways to tear down communication barriers in order to streamline service delivery and improve performance. WIOA’s intent is transformative in increasing the prosperity of workers and employers in the United States. It calls for the workforce industry to modernize with technology, raising the bar for all. According to Taguding, “There are three undeniable forces that have transformed our levels of expectations as a consumer society and present a solid case for modernization of workforce management for government.”
“To realize this (WIOA) vision, workforce system leaders are asked to step back and re-envision how they conduct business and restructure activities accordingly.“ United States Department of Labor https://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL_19-14_Acc.pdf
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Industry Perspective
TREND 1: THE PROMINENCE AND APPLICATION OF TECHNOLOGY IN SOCIETY The speed of technology in the lives of citizens is unparalleled in history. Our everyday life – how we live and work – is clearly driven and supported by technological advancements. By 2020, 6 billion smartphones will be used, and by 2020, mobile workers will account for nearly 72.3 percent of the U.S. workforce. In short, technology is changing where and how the workforce operates.
TREND 2: THE RISE OF THE AGE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE “With the advancement of technology, there is a level of expectation for citizens and businesses on how they experience service and the level of responsiveness,” Taguding said. “Quality customer service and high satisfaction of a customer’s journey have been high on the priority list of successful businesses and now for government.” A Pew Institute study indicated that 72% of citizens are dissatisfied with government services. The citizen communities expect better and have already called out their elected officials on it.
TREND 3: INCREASING ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THE PUBLIC SECTOR Government agencies are being held accountable with a number of checkpoints including governors’ priorities, legislative compliance, citizens’ satisfaction with quality of services, and performance progress on accountability dashboards more than ever. “Diminishing services and unfavorable employment bears public disgruntlement and bad reviews,” Taguding said. “Ultimately, with this, you lose businesses and their revenue production for the state economy.”
Government’s legacy technology systems and processes are not enabling agencies to keep pace with these citizen expectations and trends. The demand for a solution that can help deliver a complete system that will give governments, their partners and their citizens the ability to be engaged in their success is undeniable.
A MODERN WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM SOLUTION FOR YOUR SUCCESS A modern workforce development system must be able to provide a variety of components: • Precise workflow automation to support staff efficiency, effectiveness and productivity. • Ease for customization and access to track and monitor workforce programs.
Salesforce has changed the existing model and will keep your department modernized. A recent study of leading organizations using Salesforce, conducted by MIT, found that close to 80% of them believe that Salesforce is adding more value today than a year ago, and even more, five years ago. This is attributed to speed and ease in which Salesforce can support changes in these organizations. Independent studies conducted by leading industry analysts, such as Gartner, Forrester and IDC, show how cost effective the Salesforce Platform is.
• Ability to be mobile and accessible on any device. • Enablement for regional economic collaboration.
APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT ENVIROMENT COMPARISON
Salesforce’s workforce CRM, a workflow and reporting solution, empowers job seekers, employers, staff and all other stakeholders to succeed. “The Salesforce Workforce Development Solution is a collaborative platform to connect people, jobs, programs and data to advance the workforce mission of every agency and its community,” said Taguding.
Source: IDC
Accelerated time to market
+70%
“As a company, you need to get to the future first, ahead of your customers, and be ready to greet them when they arrive.”
More applications launch per year
+80%
Marc Benioff
Reduction in infrastructure costs
Chairman and CEO, Salesforce
Traditional on-premise Salesforce
Increase in application development capacity while reducing IT costs
+44%
–75% to 85% Modernization of Workforce Development to Deliver Greater Outcomes
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The Salesforce Platform allows government departments to execute on some of the most important needs and priorities to modernize. With the solution, government employees are empowered to effectively and efficiently serve external customer audiences and internal partner stakeholders by: • Leveraging a comprehensive system to support job seekers and serve industry with more efficient, responsive and integrated processes. • Enabling interagency alignment, collaboration and communication responsive to regional economies. • Providing access to real-time data anywhere, any time and with any device. • Empowering leaders and staff to share and report realtime data and utilizing executive dashboards for smart decisions and responsiveness at speed. • Serving customers with quick and easy 24/7 access to services with mobile devices. • Positioning your team to be trained and ready to serve customers in weeks or even days. • Customizing to track and deliver your meaningful business goals.
Continuous modernization is accomplished as Salesforce offers these primary benefits: • 360 VIEW. One platform that can provide a single view of its external citizen users and their experiences. • SCALABLE. A cloud-based, software architecture that provides the ability to scale quickly. Any application is automatically architected to seamlessly scale from 1 user to 1,000 to 10,000 users without having to do anything differently. • MANAGES ALL DATABASE ADMINISTRATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE. An on-demand service that does not require installation of an on-site database. You will not need to maintain any hardware or software. Salesforce manages all database administration including upgrades, patching, tuning, backup, etc. Every application gets the full benefits of backup, failover, disaster recovery, and other infrastructure services. • GOVERNMENT TRUSTED SECURITY & RELIABILITY. Solutions are FedRAMP certified to provide solid assurance that your data is secure. Focusing on a government cloudbased application platform allows you to minimize internal administration. • CONTINUOUS INNOVATION AND NO COST FOR UPGRADES. You receive three complimentary, seamless, and automatic major release upgrades per year with no impact to workflow, integrations, reporting or customizations. • BUILT-IN REPORTING AND ANALYTICS. Powerful analytics tools and dashboards give the ability to stay on top of response times and service quality. Track service interactions, performance, progress towards outcome deliverables and customer issues. Reports and dashboards can be developed without IT help and are viewable on any mobile device. • APPEXCHANGE. A community of over 2,900 pre-built enterprise cloud computing apps that are integrated and developed on the Platform by third parties. You can extend your initial solution investment and easily install hundreds of pre-integrated apps. • DECLARATIVE CONFIGURATION AND DEVELOPMENT. A simple, yet powerful set of declarative, point-and-click tools that anyone can use to help IT deliver apps faster.
“We’ve shifted the burden to Salesforce.” Voice of the Customer. Salesforce1 Platform: Accelerate App Dev with Huge ROI, International Data Corporation http://www.idgconnect.com/view_abstract/18457/idc-whitepaper
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Industry Perspective
• SEAMLESS INTEGRATION WITH OPEN APIS. The Platform uses open APIs based on industry standards such as REST and SOAP to make it easy to build apps that integrate with legacy systems. • MOBILE FIRST, MOBILE EVERYTHING. Packaged apps are mobile-enabled out of the box and can be accessed from any mobile device, anywhere at any time.
CONCLUSION In today’s technology, social and accountability-driven environment, it’s essential that workforce development agencies and their partners respond with modernization that supports strategic alignment, interagency collaboration, and purposeful processes that support the success of expected program deliverables. A modern system that empowers all stakeholders to perform confidently with efficiency and effectiveness in delivering services and programs that support regional employment is necessary. “Productively employing citizens in meaningful jobs and fulfilling business needs will help assure economic viability of communities,” Taguding said. “A modern workforce platform can locally connect people and jobs, enabling a stronger workforce development system and advancing the productivity and competitiveness of the nation.”
ABOUT SALESFORCE Salesforce is the cloud computing leader dedicated to helping government agencies transform into connected organizations through social and mobile technologies. Since launching its first service in 2000, Salesforce’s list of over 150,000 customers span nearly every industry worldwide. The company’s trusted cloud platform is creating a connected government experience for over 1000 government agencies including all federal cabinet government agencies and every state in the United States. With the world’s leading cloud platform, Salesforce is freeing government data from legacy systems, empowering citizens and connecting agencies to administer government in powerful new ways. In addition to workforce and economic development, government agencies are using Salesforce solutions for a multitude of government functions including case management, licensing, permitting and inspections, call/contact center management, grants management, constituent communications and correspondence management, incident and case management, outreach programs, learning management, volunteer management, project management, and even donor management, among numerous others.
ABOUT GOVLOOP GovLoop’s mission is to “connect government to improve government.” We aim to inspire publicsector professionals by serving as the knowledge network for government. GovLoop connects more than 250,000 members, fostering crossgovernment collaboration, solving common problems and advancing government careers. GovLoop is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with a team of dedicated professionals who share a commitment to connect and improve government. For more information about this report, please reach out to info@govloop.com.
Modernization of Workforce Development to Deliver Greater Outcomes
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1152 15th Street NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20005 Phone: (202) 407-7421 | Fax: (202) 407-7501 www.govloop.com @GovLoop