Improving Practices & Outcomes

Strengthening the capacity of workforce professionals & improving outcomes for job seekers.

What We Do

The Improving Practices & Outcomes Team works with workforce organizations and professionals across the country to strengthen their capacity to improve outcomes for both job seekers and employers–and ensure their participants have the skills and tools needed to achieve economic mobility. This matters more than ever as communities are working to increase opportunity for all workers and address the impact of systemic racism in a dramatically changing environment. Our work ensures workforce professionals and community-based organizations have regular access to knowledge about effective strategies and practices from both peers and experts in the field.

Who We Work With

The Improving Practices and Outcomes team works in collaboration with workforce providers, funders, workforce intermediaries, and other key ecosystem partners to offer opportunities that build the field’s capacity to deliver more effective services, produce better results, and more deeply center the needs of those most impacted by our work.

How We Do It

Workforce Benchmarking Network
Program Data Collection & Analysis
Learning Communities & Cohort Facilitation
Technical Assistance & Coaching
Strategy Development & Advising
Research & Field-building

Join us in making change:

How We’re Making Change

Workforce Benchmarking Network

Led by CSW, the Workforce Benchmarking Network (WBN) connects community-based organizations, public and private funders, and other intermediaries providing workforce development services around the country to support better and more equitable results for job seekers, employers, and communities. The Network helps ensure that quality data and information about programs and practices are available. It also builds the field’s capacity to use that evidence to develop more effective services and policies. Click here to learn more about the WBN Network & National Survey and how you can participate.

Program Data Collection & Analysis

We help organizations advance equity, drive program improvement, and articulate their impact through the use of their program data through the WBN National Survey. The WBN National Survey provides confidential information on CBO program services and results, disaggregated by race/ethnicity and gender, with interactive comparison reports that provide needed field-wide performance benchmarking.

Learning Communities & Cohort Facilitation

We bring service providers and workforce practitioners together and connect them with peers, public and private funders, and other resources for learning and collaboration. Our learning cohorts are targeted on improvement, with tools and technical assistance for using data and feedback to improve program results, and positioning practitioners and organizations to be adaptive and valued players in the workforce system. We design peer exchange events, expert workshops, learning academies, and communities of practice on key workforce topics.

Get to know some of our cohorts:

Workforce Leadership Academy Workforce Benchmarking Network Cohorts Worker-Centered Benchmarking Project

Technical Assistance & Coaching

We provide 1:1 coaching and technical assistance to organizations looking to expand their services and deepen impact. Our work strengthens the capacity of workforce organizations and their staff to improve outcomes for both job seekers through peer-learning sessions, individual coaching calls, webinars and resource exchanges.

Strategy Development & Advising

We partner with funders, workforce intermediaries and community organizations to research and identify strategies to advance local, regional, and statewide systems change. Central to this work includes devising systems, practices, and policy that meaningfully centers learner and worker expertise and experience in the recommendations.

Research & Field-Building

We create tools and resources to share continuous improvement expertise, as well as other relevant resources and implementation lessons, to assist organizations with planning, operationalizing, and monitoring effective practices. Our team elevates lessons and tools for the field to assist organizations with planning, operationalizing, and monitoring effective practices.

Since 2017, we have worked with over 110 organizations

Join these organizations making impactful change by participating in the Workforce Benchmarking Network survey:

Learn More About WBN

Featured Case Study: Equity Learning Lab

In partnership with Leung Consulting LLC, the Improving Practices & Outcomes team convened the Equity Learning Lab (ELL) for six grantees of the Siemens Foundation, all national workforce intermediaries. It was structured to provide the Siemens Foundation’s 2022 workforce grantees a space to explore the application of a racial equity lens in workforce policy and program design. The 2022 Lab cohort specifically focused on the challenges and opportunities of centering learner voice and lived experiences and the relationship between centering learner voices and advancing equity.

The lab consisted of a series of large group and small group meetings designed to facilitate the learning and exchange of ideas and resources among grantees. We also provided individual coaching and support to help each grantee explore questions specific to their work.

Over the course of the lab, participating organizations grappled with:

How to ensure diverse representation in learner voices, beyond the high achievers or “usual suspects”;
How to build and institutionalize practices of centering learner voice both at the intermediary level and at the network/program level;
How to authentically engage learners beyond information gathering or feedback to developing learner leadership; and
How to measure the impact of centering learner voices in the work.

Recent Clients & Selected Work

Detroit Workforce Leadership Academy
Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation
Early Childhood Education Career Pathways Mapping & Wage Scale Strategy
Hope Starts Here
Equity Learning Lab
Siemens Foundation
Examining Use of Systemic Change Metrics for Improved Program Outcomes
Greater Twin Cities United Way
Michigan Landscape Analysis of Workforce Programs for Directly Impacted Adults & Strategy Recommendations
Michigan Justice Fund
RespectAbility Disability Employment Services
Network of Jewish Human Services Agencies (NJHSA)
WBN Cohort, Dallas
United Way of Greater Dallas & Communities Foundation of Northern Texas
WBN Cohort, Detroit
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Worker/Learner Focused Workforce Benchmarking
Annie E. Casey Foundation