Workforce Wednesday: Are We Asking Every Workforce Program to Do the Same Thing?

Looking back, I can point to a handful of conversations that quietly changed the way I think about workforce development. None of them happened on a conference stage or during a keynote. Most happened after meetings had ended, when the formal agenda was over and people simply started talking. Sometimes it was an employer trying to explain why they still struggled to find talent. Other times it was a participant trying to understand what came next after earning a credential. I’ve had similar conversations with community organizations, workforce boards, educators, contractors, and funders. At first, they felt like unrelated observations. Over time, though, I realized they all shared something in common. Everyone cared deeply about the work, but they were often describing success as though they were talking about entirely different programs. 

I don’t think I appreciated that early in my career. Like many people, I assumed most workforce programs were ultimately trying to accomplish the same thing. Someone completed training, earned a credential, found employment, and the work was considered successful. There is nothing inherently wrong with that way of thinking. In fact, many programs are designed to produce exactly those outcomes. What has changed for me is the realization that not every workforce effort begins with the same purpose, and because of that, not every effort should be judged by the same definition of success. 

That realization has caused me to listen differently. When someone tells me a program “worked,” I find myself asking what they mean by that. Did it introduce someone to an industry they had never considered? Did it help an incumbent worker build a new technical skill? Was it intended to prepare someone for employment, strengthen a contractor’s business, or simply create awareness of opportunities that previously felt invisible? The more I ask those questions, the more I realize how often we use the word training as though it has one universally understood meaning, when in reality it describes an entire spectrum of experiences that serve very different purposes. 

I think that is where our field occasionally creates unnecessary frustration. A participant may believe a program leads directly to employment because that is what they hoped the opportunity represented. An employer may expect job-ready candidates from a model that was actually designed to provide foundational exposure. A funder may be looking for long-term economic mobility while the organization delivering the work has been resourced primarily to increase awareness or provide an entry point into an industry. None of those expectations are unreasonable, but they are not always aligned. When that happens, people can walk away feeling disappointed even when the program delivered exactly what it was originally designed to do. 

The longer I have worked in workforce development, the more I have come to believe that clarity is one of the most overlooked forms of respect we can offer the people we serve. Participants deserve to understand what an opportunity is intended to provide. Employers deserve to know what level of preparation they should reasonably expect. Community partners deserve to understand where a program begins and where its responsibility ends. Program teams deserve the freedom to build around a clearly defined purpose instead of trying to satisfy every expectation placed upon them. When those expectations become blurred, the work itself often gets judged unfairly. 

What makes this especially challenging is that workforce development rarely operates in isolation. Most programs exist within larger systems that include education, workforce agencies, employers, community organizations, philanthropy, government, and industry. Each of those partners naturally views success through a slightly different lens, and none of those perspectives are necessarily wrong. The challenge is that those perspectives can quietly shape expectations long before the first participant ever walks through the door. By the time confusion becomes visible, it is usually showing up as frustration, disappointment, or questions about why the outcomes did not match what someone believed the program was supposed to accomplish. 

As I have reflected on this over the years, I have become less interested in asking whether a workforce program worked and much more interested in asking whether everyone involved understood what the program was designed to accomplish before it ever began. That may sound like a subtle distinction, but I have come to think it changes almost everything. Purpose shapes design. Design shapes expectations. Expectations shape how people experience the work, and ultimately those experiences influence how success is judged long after the final report has been submitted. 

Interestingly, some of the strongest evaluation frameworks begin from that same premise. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Logic Model Development Guide emphasizes creating a shared understanding of intended outcomes before measuring results.¹ I used to think of logic models primarily as planning documents. Today, I see them differently. Their greatest value may not be helping organizations organize activities on paper, but helping everyone involved develop a common understanding of what the work is actually trying to change. 

Research on sector-based workforce initiatives points in a similar direction. MDRC has consistently found that stronger employment outcomes emerge when training is intentionally aligned with employer demand, coaching, placement support, and advancement opportunities rather than assuming that training alone will naturally produce long-term success.² That distinction matters because it reminds us that outcomes are rarely accidental. They are usually the result of thoughtful design built around a clearly defined problem. 

I sometimes wonder whether our field unintentionally places too much responsibility on individual programs. We ask one initiative to introduce people to an industry, eliminate barriers, build technical skills, satisfy employer demand, create economic mobility, strengthen communities, and demonstrate measurable impact—all within the same funding cycle. Those are worthwhile ambitions, but they are not always realistic expectations for a single model. Sometimes the strongest workforce strategy is not trying to solve every problem. Sometimes it is solving one problem exceptionally well while fitting intentionally into a larger ecosystem of support. 

That thought has stayed with me because it changes how I think about accountability. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has called for stronger workforce evaluation and more transparent outcome reporting to better understand who programs are reaching and how effectively they are improving opportunity.³ I agree with that direction. At the same time, I believe meaningful evaluation begins long before the first performance report is written. It begins when we are honest about the promise a program is making and disciplined enough to measure whether that specific promise was fulfilled. 

The more I reflect on these conversations, the less convinced I become that every workforce program should be trying to solve the same problem. Perhaps one of the strengths of a healthy workforce ecosystem is that different programs are designed to accomplish different things, each contributing to a larger pathway that no single organization could build alone. If that is true, then our responsibility is not simply to deliver good programs. It is to communicate their purpose clearly enough that participants, employers, partners, and communities understand exactly where each effort fits within the broader journey. 

Maybe that is one of the quiet lessons this profession has been teaching me all along. Before we ask whether a workforce program worked, perhaps we should first ask whether we were clear about what it was built to do. 

Market Signals & References 

¹ W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Logic Model Development Guide.
https://www.naccho.org/uploads/downloadable-resources/Programs/Public-Health-Infrastructure/KelloggLogicModelGuide_161122_162808.pdf 

² MDRC. MDRC’s Portfolio on Sectoral Training Programs.
https://www.mdrc.org/work/projects/mdrcs-portfolio-sectoral-training-programs 

³ Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Improving Training Evaluation Data to Brighten the Future of Black Workers.
https://jointcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Improving_Training_Evaluation_Data_Report_v07.pdf