Better Care, Better Careers: The Jobs to Careers Strategy for Growing a Skilled Health Care Workforce

This report brings together the experience and lessons of this six-year, $15.8 million initiative Jobs to Careers, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in collaboration with the Hitachi Foundation and the U.S. Department of Labor. The report addresses four key questions:

•  Why did Jobs to Careers focus on the frontline workforce?
•  How did Jobs to Careers grow a skilled workforce?
•  What was the impact of Jobs to Careers?
•  What are the lessons of Jobs to Careers?

Jobs to Careers provides ample evidence and practical, replicable strategies that demonstrate that health care providers can bolster the quality and coordination of care and reduce staffing costs when they expand career opportunities for low-skilled, low-wage employees on the front lines of care and service delivery.

Research by Jobs for the Future and the University of North Carolina Institute on Aging (the evaluators of Jobs to Careers) points to lessons that health care employers, education institutions, and other community organizations should consider when engaging frontline workers in work-based learning:

• Partnerships with education institutions are key to work-based learning.
• Accommodate nontraditional learning and learners in college programs.
• Improve the basic skills of workers.
• Cultivate buy-in from top-level administrators.
• Transform the workplace, not just the workers.