4 min read July 2023 — Patrick Clancy, president and CEO of Philadelphia Works, spoke to Invest: about the grants the organization was awarded and how those funds will help to bridge gaps to help more people in Philadelphia find employment. He also mentioned what he believes are the most important challenges to workforce development in Philadelphia and how the organization is working to navigate economic uncertainty.
What were some key milestones that Philadelphia Works reached in the past year?
It has been a banner year for us. We have grown the organization by around $30 million and received two major awards. We received a Good Jobs Challenge award, which included a $23 million grant from the Economic Development Administration. This grant has enabled us to service three key industries: infrastructure and construction, healthcare and life sciences, and energy. We are one of three workforce boards that received this award. We also received an Apprenticeship Building America grant from the U.S. Department of Labor worth $4.5 million. This grant has helped us increase our capacity to help employers develop more Registered Apprenticeships in trades like IT, healthcare and life sciences.
These two grants have brought us an extra $28 million that we have leveraged with additional foundation funding, which gives us a unique opportunity to create lasting impactful in our communities. Philadelphia Works has a strong working relationship with the city’s infrastructure, which gives us a chance to weave in this additional funding to create jobs. The city of Philadelphia faces the challenge of many young people lacking career paths, which can sometimes lead to making poor decisions, such as committing crimes. However, we hope that these grants will enable us to better engage these people and help them get started with opportunities to build career pathways for long-term employment.
How do you work with employers to identify workforce needs and address them?
We have a team of 25 to 30 people on our staff who are tasked with meeting with employers to find out what they need specifically. From there, we go back to our systems and see who is available and ready to take that job. Otherwise, we check if an employer is interested in taking a good candidate with our on-the-job training program. Through this program, we subsidize 50% of the candidate’s wage for some time while the employer trains the candidate until they meet the requirements. On the other hand, if we know that there is a specific industry need, we create a classroom, together with employers, to train several candidates until they are ready to perform.
How is Philadelphia Works helping its customers navigate economic uncertainty?
We keep our finger on the pulse of employers and make sure that we can move our resources quickly so that people do not have to deal with gaps in employment. We have industry partners in critical sectors, such as advanced manufacturing, transportation, education, life sciences and hospitality and entertainment. These partnerships keep us informed of what is really happening on the ground. We also focus on getting feedback from employers to see whether jobs require college degrees or are skill-based so that we know how to get individuals prepared for those opportunities.
On the labor front, one of our partners goes into our city’s most impoverished communities, organizes community events and knocks on doors to find out what we can provide. This engagement helps us support those individuals who are looking for jobs. At the same time, we are working with our employer partners to see how we can be helpful to these individuals. For instance, when transitions happen and people are laid off, we operate on-site to help them get services right away so that individuals can file for unemployment and receive help to get back on track and back to work.
What are the most important challenges to workforce development in Philadelphia?
We struggle with adult literacy, both digital and in terms of basic math and reading. We have intertwined a lot of literacy programs within our technical training programs to address that. Additionally, we work with city government to help individuals who want to do intensive literacy development. Another challenge is that individuals who have been adversely affected during the pandemic still face barriers to accessing childcare and transportation issues. We have identified that there are issues with the reliability of the transportation systems they need to get back to work. Childcare is a major issue, particularly for single parents. It’s a costly benefit, which means people who are collecting public benefits can quickly lose their childcare benefit if they go back to work. At that point, they have to decide whether it is worth working if they have to pay for childcare on their own and whether they can afford it.
Is there any important legislation that might impact workforce development?
Every five years the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act is reevaluated. What we would like to see happen with this federal law is the elimination of some of the bureaucracy for eligibility. For instance, we know that some individuals are impoverished, but we must gather documents to validate how poor they are and ask them for documents that they may not have. We are trying to help individuals with barriers and very often one of those barriers is the lack of documentation.
Secondly, we want to give the local workforce more flexibility around youth funding. This means finding ways to help students stay in school before they drop out. Finally, there is a need for dedicated funding for people coming home from incarceration. We are struggling to serve them because the money that is awarded to us does not have a specificity for them. Justice-involved individuals are a vital subset to the workforce of the future and we need to find ways to help them rehabilitate, develop skills, and participate in the job market.
What are the priorities for Philadelphia Works for the next two to three years?
We are looking at an opportunity to collaborate with the city government in career-connected learning for young people. We want to help our school district engage businesses in a better way and find ways to be more impactful among high-school students. We also want to make sure that job opportunities are aligned with what the economy looks like. For instance, we have identified a shortage of nurses, teachers, mental health and customer-facing service professionals, which is a long-term challenge. We need to create talent pipelines to serve that need and get people engaged in those sectors. We want young people to have the opportunity to make good decisions, so we are working on making sure that career-connective learning rolls out citywide.
For more information, visit:
