Human Capital Initiatives

The CSW Human Capital Initiatives (HCI) Team is focused on developing policies and cultivating practices to foster the lifelong attainment of needed skills and knowledge.

A high school degree is no longer sufficient to compete in an evolving labor market. Workers must learn to look for opportunities to advance their skills as they navigate the workplace. Business and industry cannot afford a workforce which lacks basic skills, and so they must help support and provide the opportunities to enhance workers’ skills. Regions and states cannot afford systems which accept anything less than an absolute commitment to lifelong learning.

The CSW HCI Team specializes in strategies which support economic expansion and individual achievement by connecting adults, especially those with low incomes and skills, with pathways to education, training, and meaningful employment.
 

The CSW HCI Team Objectives

CSW supports building critical assets and pathways towards self-sufficiency by collaborating with relevant organizations and government entities, conducting related research, and developing policy recommendations.

Many workers are not academically prepared for post-secondary level work, and many institutions are not positioned to deliver educational and support services to people who have barriers to a traditional educational path. For many, multiple interwoven solutions are necessary to take advantage of post-secondary education and training opportunities. Developing these critical solutions is the crux of CSW’s human capital work.

CSW believes three critical issues must be addressed in order to foster economic vitality through the development of a talented workforce:

1. Align and integrate human and social service, education, workforce and economic development systems to foster success in lifelong learning.

CSW works to bridge the gap between existing systems, specifically by providing promising practices research; benchmarking; policy audits; facilitation of goal setting and strategic planning; and technical assistance.  Our partners and clients in these endeavors include state agencies, educational and training associations and institutions, and community-based organizations.

• Our role in the national initiative 21st Century Model to Address Poverty significantly contributed to a landmark effort to demonstrate how the integration and leveraging of public, private, not-for-profit, community- and faith-based human service resources can strengthen efforts to address the issues of poverty and self-sufficiency.
   
• CSW’s Community Innovation & Learning Networks™ is intended for senior-level professionals in government, education, human services, industry, and business.  The networks promote dot-connecting, systems-thinking scenario-building, and active learning and lesson sharing across the public and private sectors.

2. Improve support services to enable low income individuals to overcome their barriers, attain new skills and take advantage of better opportunities.

CSW conducts research into awareness, access, and attitudes toward services sought by low-income individuals; promising practices research; identification of potential funding streams for enhanced support services; facilitation of goal setting and strategic planning; technical assistance in barrier removal; and evaluation of programmatic challenges and impacts.

• In Michigan, CSW facilitated development of  a state-wide, low-wage worker advancement strategy, including helping to launch a new approach – Jobs, Education and Training (JET) – that fundamentally changes the way families are moved off welfare and toward self-sufficiency.
   
• CSW is working with the Washington, D.C. Department of Human Resources to help the agency revamp its entire delivery system with special emphasis on case management.

3. Foster a widespread, cultural orientation towards lifelong learning.

CSW’s work towards this objective includes research into attitudes held by workers, business, institutions and/or regions; identification of the range of options available to communities to impact attitudes and behaviors; campaign and/or program design; experimental design to test the impact of campaigns and programs on attitudes and behaviors of defined populations; and post-campaign research and evaluation to document impacts.

• CSW is working in Maryland and Michigan to help re-shape how adult learning takes place using our organizing themes.

Meet Our Human Captial Initiatives Team

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