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In 2020, The Century Foundation (TCF) and the Urban Manufacturing Alliance (UMA) collaborated to create a national program to examine educational strategies and community-driven workforce models that connect diverse communities to opportunities in manufacturing, and to identify the policy change needed to scale those efforts. The Inclusion and Industry 4.0 (I&I) Project brought together leading practitioner organizations to understand and lift up best practices and challenges, and extract lessons for policymakers to expand support for community-based manufacturing training. I&I represents a critical component of TCF and UMA’s goal to promote the development of effective workforce and education strategies targeting an inclusive future in manufacturing.

The innovative leaders of the eight I&I cohort members prove that with the right program models in place, a variety of un- and under-employed adults of all ages are able obtain the necessary skills to gain employment into a rewarding career in manufacturing, with further opportunities for skills advancement and wage progression. Through 2020, cohort members, TCF, and UMA worked collaboratively through virtual roundtable discussions, seminars, and interviews to explore policies and programs, questions of scale and sustainability, and promising practices. From this work many takeaway lessons about education, training models, employer engagement, and supportive service strategies were organized, documented, and shared. Moreover, this collective research will position these organizations as national leaders who can spark replication in other communities, and provide policymakers with a road map of how to make such replication and expansion possible.

This piece was released in tandem with The Century Foundation’s Blueprint for Action and was funded by Lumina Foundation.

As part of the Industry & Inclusion 4.0 Project, UMA interviewed cohort members and their partners to gather background information and details about how they create and deliver programs. From these discussions UMA generated Organizational Profiles for each of the eight cohort members. These Organizational Profiles are divided into two parts:

  • Technical Descriptions: snapshots of each workforce development organization which include a brief description of their history, an overview of how their signature programs operate, self-identified keys to success, recent outcomes, and their future plans for scaling the impact of their programs.
  • Personal Profiles: stakeholder interviews to gain a deeper understanding of the relationships that exist between the workforce development organization and the communities and employers they serve. These include trainees, industry employers, and partners in education.

Each Organizational Profile is meant to shed light on how each cohort member successfully navigated the process of designing and implementing an innovative workforce development solution for their region and for people they support. As a collection, these eight Organizational Profiles highlight the importance of: building partnerships and ecosystems, navigating stakeholder engagement, remaining open to ongoing improvements and learning, and understanding both employers’ needs and the needs of the current and future workforce.

In the Personal Profiles you will find individual meaningful experiences of: how people’s lives were changed by the training programs, how after graduating trainees return to give back to the next generation, and mentorships between intergenerational workers that share a culture and background. And like the Technical Descriptions, the collection of Personal Profiles highlight important themes. For example, the need for: committing to ongoing dialogue with the community to understand their needs, cultural awareness within manufacturing companies, and a broader definition and understanding of impact and outcomes.

The Organizational Profiles provide a glimpse into the inherent complexity of preparing a new workforce for an ever-changing industry. What UMA found compelling through these discussions is that each cohort member has become an expert in discrete topics like recruiting the right people, building an ecosystem, and supporting the transition of workers. Even though no two organizations operate in the same way, they have all come to understand key important principles: leverage what makes one’s region unique; bring partners of all kinds to the table to develop ideas and get feedback; create a culture of learning and education as a lifelong process, within their own organizations and within the manufacturing businesses they work with; and new programs require social innovation — a change in behavior — on the part of trainers, trainees, employers, and funders.