Adult Career Pathways Resources
Employer Engagement
What are the various ways that employers can and should be involved in design and delivery of adult career pathway (ACP) programs? How do we invite employers to be involved in initial design phases, serve as resource to instructors and students in ACP courses, provide work-based learning opportunities and finally employment options for our learners? What are the interests and motivations of employers to play a role in ACP programs? What are common challenges in education-employer collaborations? These tools and reference materials will help answer many of these questions and guide you in setting the foundation for best practices in adult career pathway programming.
Building Partnerships: A Growing Role for Program Leaders
In this webinar recording, several ABE leaders in the field share their strategies, successes and challenges in building employer relationships and other partnerships to design and delivery quality adult career pathway programming. (1 hour and 10 minutes)
Career and Technical Education (CTE) Career Program Advisory Committee Handbook
This handbook was developed to guide CTE career programs in how to build and sustain a strong and active advisory committee. It can be a helpful resource for ABE in two ways – for use in your own collaboration with employers, and for tapping into your CTE partner's existing advisory committee employer relationships.
Career Pathways Toolkit: Element Two – Identify Industry Sectors and Engage Employers
Element Two of the Toolkit provides useful guidance and tools to identify industry sectors; conduct labor market analysis; clarify role of employers in program development and operations; and sustain and expand business partnerships.
Employer Engagement Toolkit: From Placement to Partners
Use the entire toolkit as a package or select individual exercises, checklists, planning guides, or resources that are most relevant to you. Includes an assessment of current employer relationships; provides strategies for new employer outreach; and provides tools that connect employers directly to your ACP program.
Engaging Employers – Setting SMART Goals and Action Steps
This template, useful in any adult career pathways (ACP) program development work, guides a step-by-step process to define a goal appropriate for one’s own context for engaging employers in an ACP in new ways.
Engaging Employers in Adult Career Pathways – Making It Happen
This activity, used in an ACP Program Development cohort of program managers, guides a process of identifying potential roles for employers in adult career pathway (ACP) programs; assessing employer partnerships currently in place; seeing opportunities for expanding employer partnerships; and communicating effectively with employers.
Engaging Employers in Adult Career Pathways – Webinar
Third in a series of five 2019-20 Minnesota ABE webinars on adult career pathways. MN Dept. of Education staff and ABE professionals from across the state share best practices, successful models, lessons learned, plus tools and resources for your use locally. (1.5 hours)
Engaging Employers in Adult Career Pathways – Webinar Recording
Hear from Minnesota ABE professionals and their employer partners about ways they collaborate, their challenges and successes. Understand the role of Career and Technical Education advisory committees and how ABE can get involved and connect with those employers. Gain strategies for effective employer outreach in your own context.
Engaging Employers in Adult Career Pathways Online Course
This 2-hour, self-paced course helps adult education instructors and program administrators understand how to identify, engage, and sustain engagement of appropriate employers in the development of career pathways programs.
Engaging Employers to Support Adult Career Pathways Programs
This 10-page issue brief offers practical strategies on engaging employers and building business-education partnerships to support ACP programs, and highlights promising examples from adult education providers in three states.
Foundational Skills in the Service Sector
Across the US, millions of workers with limited reading, math, or digital problem-solving skills hold jobs across the service sector. This report offers a fresh analysis of rigorous data, painting a picture of the approximately 20 million American workers employed in key service-sector industries who lack foundational skills. It highlights promising practices and interventions used by U.S. employers to help their workers to upskill, and details key policy levers that can foster economic mobility for these workers.
School Districts as Employer Partners
Hear from a school district recruitment and retention manager about the value of partnering with ABE to fill positions like school bus driver and nutrition service workers in this 7-minute video.
Work-Based Learning Toolkit
This online tool kit provides state and local program administrators with information regarding the key components of work-based learning (WBL), an instructional strategy that enhances classroom learning by connecting it to the workplace. It offers guidelines and resources related to creating a state WBL strategy, engaging employers, collecting data, and scaling effective programs.
Adult Career Pathways Glossary
Confused about Adult Career Pathways and transitions terminology? You’re not alone! See this handy ACP glossary.