Our Work

Tools for Business Leaders

The following tools and resources are for business leaders to utilize when looking to cultivate and maintain relationships with community organizations and to develop a comprehensive strategic community engagement strategy.

 

Opportunities in the Workforce Readiness Pipeline: A Community Engagement Toolkit for Business

Released: September 22, 2011

Corporate Voices for Working Families, United Way Worldwide and Workforce Strategy Center, with the support of the Ready by 21 National Partnership, have combined their business and community engagement experience on education and workforce readiness issues and created two toolkits that assist business and community leaders in developing long-term, sustainable partnerships to ensure all youth are ready for college, work and life. The first toolkit, Supporting the Education Pipeline: A Business Engagement Toolkit for Community-Based Organizations, gave community leaders lessons and action strategies on how to identify potential partners, to set realistic goals and how to set up partnerships for long-term success. This toolkit, a companion to the first, will assist business leaders in cultivating relationships with community leaders, building the foundations for successful innovative community partnerships and strategically aligning a business’ community initiatives to increase their return on investment.

 

Building the Business Case for Investing in Tomorrow's Workforce: Employers See Positive Returns from Community Partnerships

Released: September 22, 2011

The economic prosperity of the United States depends on having a skilled and experienced workforce—one from which employers can tap into a diverse and talented labor pool, and one in which all individuals have opportunities to earn wages that support their families. Yet too many young people today — the workforce of tomorrow — are not prepared with the skills needed to succeed at work. As our nation faces an evolving economy that demands highly skilled and credentialed workers, an inadequate supply of appropriately skilled graduates and demographic changes that will continue to exacerbate the problem, America’s current talent pipeline is simply not producing the exceptional workforce we need to compete in the 21st century.

 

Call to Action, Ready by 21 Business Engagement Menu: Increasing Communications Between Business and Community Leaders

Released: September 14, 2010

Business leaders play a crucial role in community efforts to ensure that all youth are ready for college, work and life. Nonprofit leaders have the opportunity to recognize the needs of youth in their community and recommend how business may be able to best use their assets to meet those needs. The dual purpose Business Engagement Menu provides business leaders with the various ways they can be involved in communities. Nonprofit leaders can also use the menu to learn the array of options that exist to get business active in effectively meeting a community's goals for youth.

 

Common Goals, Unique Strengths: Education and Business Partnerships

Released: September 7, 2010

Educators and business leaders must create meaningful, successful and long lasting partnerships to ensure that all youth are ready for college, work and life. Collaboration between business and education can ensure that students graduate high school equipped with the skills necessary to thrive in the workplace, post-secondary education and life. In this publication, the American Association of School Administrators and Corporate Voices for Working Families highlight the benefit of these partnerships, tips for engaging educators and business leaders, and a case study illustrating these partnerships in action.

 

What are Business Leaders Saying About Workforce Readiness?

Released: December 15, 2010

Based on surveys of more than 150 business leaders, Corporate Voices found that 97% agree that their organization considers workforce readiness a critical business imperative. The findings also state that the majority of business leaders are already engaged in community partnerships focused on preparing youth for work, but they report a number of frequent challenges and frustrations in building and sustaining these partnerships.