Hampton Roads Talent Alignment Strategy

About the Talent Alignment Strategy

The purpose of the Hampton Roads Talent Alignment Strategy is to ensure education and workforce development efforts are aligned with the needs of employers and to coordinate existing education and workforce development initiatives currently underway throughout the region. Ultimately, the project aims to create the next generation workforce that the Hampton Roads region will need to propel its economy forward.

The Hampton Roads Community Foundation, ReInvent Hampton Roads, Hampton Roads Workforce Council, and the Greater Peninsula Workforce Board have engaged the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) and Avalanche Consulting to complete the Talent Alignment Strategy.

The strategic planning process will include the following steps:

• Engage a regionally diverse Steering Committee consisting of public, private, education, and nonprofit leaders from the region with the role of building the framework and facilitating the effort of the strategic plan.

• Develop a Workforce Snapshot to understand the condition of the current workforce, examine regional characteristics such as population trends and age composition, employment trends and industry growth, educational attainment, and educational performance.

• Conduct a Demand Analysis to identify the existing and emerging drivers of job creation within the Hampton Roads region. We will examine the current size and concentration of each industry and occupation cluster and determine past growth and future growth for each industry and occupation cluster to identify which clusters  are growing the fastest.

• Conduct a Talent Supply Analysis to determine if students in the region’s colleges and universities are pursuing degrees that will benefit the Hampton Roads’ economy and its growing industry and occupation clusters. Our analysis will examine growth trends of degree clusters, their overall size of output, growth comparisons to the US, and “concentration quotients” to show the relative density of the degree group in the Hampton Roads.

• Create a Gap Analysis to identify occupations with potential for current and future shortages. Each occupation group will be described in terms of being in balance with graduate output, over-supplying the market, or under-supplying the market.

• Develop an Inventory of Education and Workforce Programs for Target Sectors in the region, including specific degrees and credentials within the major disciplines of the target industries and competencies, and to identify areas that might be developed to better support the target sectors moving forward. 

• Develop a Talent Alignment Strategy to help the Hampton Roads region align its workforce and education initiatives with the needs of top employers and industries in the region. The Strategy will include the identification of future workforce skills needed for each target sub-cluster and a plan for bridging gaps in the current regional education and training pipeline to deliver a steady stream of qualified workers.

The Hampton Roads Talent Alignment Strategy began in December 2018 and is scheduled for completion in June 2019. 

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