Skills Strategies for Innovation and Good Jobs

Many firms across advanced economies have opportunities to innovate and grow, but often struggle to find the workers with the right skills and knowledge they need. Many workers who could fill those gaps lack the right skills, and face barriers to  the training that would help them participate in the economy  – barriers that are especially acute for some demographic groups.

Traditional skills training programs often fail to address this dual challenge – with many suffering from low completion and low employment rates. In response, jurisdictions around the world have created workforce “intermediaries” as an alternative to skills training programs to address the dual challenge. Intermediaries are locally embedded organizations with dedicated staff who work with firms, educational institutions, labour organizations, social service organizations and people to understand concrete skills needs of local employers and ensure trainees have substantial support to complete training. They facilitate innovative skills training programs to support regional innovation and growth, and ensure local workers can participate in and benefit from regional prosperity.

In 2022, Shift Insights in partnership with the Future Skills Centre, explored three skills development initiatives that aim to improve opportunities for workers and support innovation and growth in regional economic sectors. For more information on the workforce intermediaries and their impact, please read our full report here.

The following playbook provides seven key lessons we gleaned from these case studies -- as well as other work we’ve been involved with -- to help improve the design of any workforce training initiative.