Jobs to Careers: Promoting Work-Based Learning for Quality Care is an initiative that seeks to advance and reward the skill and career development of low-wage incumbent workers providing care and services on the front lines of our health and health care systems. The project is a $15.8 million national initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in collaboration with The Hitachi Foundation and the Department of Labor. It supports partnerships of employers, educational institutions, and other organizations to expand and redesign systems to create lasting improvements in the way that institutions train and advance their frontline workers and test new models of education and training that incorporate work-based learning. JFF serves as the national program office for Jobs to Careers: Promoting Work-Based Learning for Quality Care.

Rationale

A capable and diverse health care workforce is necessary to improve the health and health care of all Americans. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation makes investments to build specific fields within health and health care to help ensure that our nation has a well-trained workforce providing high-quality care and services. As the nation’s population ages and grows more diverse, as demand for public health services increases and as new technologies require new skills, stronger systems of human resource development and innovative approaches to learning are needed.

The frontline workforce occupations represent a diverse set of skills, training, and workplace settings, however collectively they represent a workforce with occupations that are all experiencing increases in demand, and also facing challenges to building a sustainable worker population. This growing workforce is experiencing high turnover rates, lower wages and access to benefits, and limited training and job advancement opportunities.

These workers—4.7 million of them in the United States—earn less than $40,000 per year on average, have less than a Bachelor’s level education, and lack credentials that allow independent practice. (For further description of frontline workforce occupations, see Defining the Frontline Workforce and Workers Who Care: A Graphical Profile of the Frontline Health and Health Care Workforce.)

Frontline workers often receive limited formal training and learn from peers and through “trial and error” experience, which may compromise service and care delivery. Jobs also lack clear standards and competencies, with limited focus by supervisors on employee skill development and advancement. These factors, combined with workers’ perceptions of being unrecognized for their contributions to the workplace, are associated with high turnover, increased costs, and compromised quality.

Supported by research that shows a connection between reduced turnover and increased quality of care and service delivery, employers seeking to train and retain workers more effectively have begun to implement strategies to:

• Improve supervision, mentoring, wages and benefits;

• Support training and career ladders; and

• Bolster human resource policies that support skill and career development.

Jobs to Careers seeks to learn from, advance and build on these approaches.

Approach

Projects supported through the Jobs to Careers program include activities that:

• Target low-wage, frontline health and health care workers in job categories least likely to have educational and advancement opportunities;

• Involve frontline worker and supervisor representatives in project decision-making;

• Develop and test a work-based learning model and remove barriers that separate teaching and learning from the workplace;

• Are accessible to frontline workers and reward workers for successful participation (e.g., through higher wages, improved earning potential, academic credit or certification opportunities); and

• Advance and reward the career development of frontline workers

The grantees participate in a national learning collaborative, coordinated by the Jobs to Careers national program office, to share challenges, successes, and lessons learned. This national learning collaborative includes peer learning conferences, periodic Web-based discussion groups and small group teleconferences. and individualized technical assistance from the national program office to help refine and implement their projects.
 
Outcomes

By the end of their grant periods, successful projects will have:

• Adopted policies within all partner organizations that support and institutionalize skill and career development opportunities for frontline workers;

• Created and implemented work-based learning models that lead to worker rewards;

• Trained an initial cohort of the employer’s or employers’ frontline workforce;

• Mapped career progression opportunities and established clear access methods for frontline workers; and

• Developed—with assistance from the Jobs to Careers evaluators and national program office staff—metrics to measure the success of the project, including metrics to determine the return on investment for the partnership’s employer(s) and others.

Funders

The Jobs to Careers initiative is sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in collaboration with the Hitachi Foundation and the U.S. Department of Labor.

Partners

Jobs to Careers Web site