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International Network for Better Local GovernmentLast Modified on 06/12/2001 14:01:28
Next Cycle of Work 1998 - 2000
Lead City: Phoenix
Partner Cities: Delft, Farum, Hannover, QuébecPrepared for The Bertelsmann Foundation and the Cities of the Employment Cluster by City of Phoenix Community and Economic Development Department
Steven T. Branca, Principal Author
Proposed Project Concept
Return to Bertelsmann Foundation Employment Cluster Project
Proposed Project Concept
Implementing innovative local projects that address labor issues in cities that have widely varying economic conditions. Projects will provide services designed to increase employment opportunities at the community level. An emphasis will be placed on using Strategic Management approaches to foster shared-learning among cities and individuals involved in project implementation.Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
Summary of Employment Cluster Project
This project involves the coordination of community-level projects in five cities in the United States, Europe and Canada that explore innovative ways to provide services and to manage programs that are designed to increase employment opportunities. The project will involve stakeholders in each city at all levels of decision-making, program implementation and evaluation through regional networks. Results of each project will be shared with other cluster cities on an ongoing basis to allow changes, fine-tuning, and increased efficiency. At the same time, the projects will be analyzed as a group to determine common lessons and management themes. These themes will be condensed into conclusions that lead to methods of Strategic Management that are transferrable to other services and functions of a city and to other cities. The end results are to design better employment programs, and to foster better local government management.Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
Employment Cluster Project Cluster
IntroductionThe cities of Farum, Delft, Hannover, Phoenix and Québec represent a broad range of economic conditions. Some are struggling with high unemployment rates and a surplus of underemployed people; these cities are in need of more jobs at all skill levels. Others have a strong economy and are even facing labor shortages but have segments of their population who are not adequately prepared for full participation in the labor force. Local economic policies and programs to be implemented in this project will address a variety of issues such as integrating immigrant populations into the labor force, increasing jobs, involving the nonprofit sector or even recognizing global concerns like reducing CO2 emissions.
Economic conditions in our five cities change by the day. Phoenix may have a strong economy today, but it was not always so and the future is uncertain. Similarly, those cities that have experienced the loss of jobs due to industry restructuring will recover as their economic bases and policies change. Therefore, each city in the cluster will be able to provide lessons for any of the others on the topic of employment. In short, we are all experiencing change in our conditions and in our responses. The key challenge for local government in this project will be to evaluate whether Strategic Management methods can assist in managing change, and how to apply them.
The overall goal of the Bertelsmann Foundation in this project is to develop and test the principles of Strategic Management, which seeks to coordinate decision-making with service delivery and evaluation. Each city's local project will focus on the challenge of increasing employment in its community while providing input to a larger concept. The Foundation is hoping to find common management themes or practices that are transferrable to other cities or to other functions within a city. The cities of the Employment Cluster, with their widely varying local conditions, provide a rich laboratory of cases. This diverse laboratory will yield richer results and better data on which to evaluate the principles of Strategic Management.
Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
Project Framework
The Employment Cluster will conduct its studies within a framework that addresses local conditions and develops Strategic Management approaches to other issues. A key concern of cluster cities is not only addressing current problems but anticipating future labor force needs to avoid problems of displacement in the future. If a method to project labor force needs, industry restructuring, or skill requirements is applied strategically, then programs and services can be implemented to address these needs before the situation becomes critical. One part of this process is to establish a network of stakeholders in a city or region to share information, work cooperatively and design responses to developing trends. Pooling of resources in this way not only brings better data to bear on the problem, but assures buy-in by all stakeholders in the community. This process will produce the best insight into Strategic Management principles in every day practice and could influence policy-making function and more effective delivery of services to the community. As each member of the cluster designs a local program to address obstacles to employment that it feels are most critical, projects will be expected to address certain common criteria. However, each project will be implemented solely at the discretion of the city which can apply additional criteria as local conditions or policies require.The components of the overall cluster project may, therefore, be summarized as follows.
As described at our meeting in Wiesbaden, the structure can be likened to a human being. The policy component is the "head," or the conceptual guiding force, networking represents the "body" of the work and connects policy makers to service providers, and the local projects are the "hands" that do the work. It is a unified process, with each component relying on the others.
- Create a future-oriented strategy/policy for employment creation.
- Create a process of local/regional networking which allows stakeholders to sign on to new strategies for employment growth.
- Operate individual (local) projects or programs in this framework to enhance employment opportunities according to local need.
Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
Local Projects as a Case Bank
Each city will operate a project that will explore responses to one or more employment conditions, depending on the needs of each city. In Wiesbaden the participants in the Employment Cluster identified the range of conditions in which these projects will be operating. These have been defined based on local characteristics of the labor force. In most cases, cities face a combination of these conditions. However, their local projects can address one or more of these at their discretion.
The major constituencies for these programs are citizens who need jobs or advanced training, and businesses seeking qualified workers. Cluster cities have proposed a variety of programs to address aspects of their labor force conditions. These are as follows:
- Unemployment - There are not enough jobs for the population. The goal is to create jobs in quantity as well as quality.
- Underemployment - There are a large number of workers who are overqualified for the positions they hold, or are working part-time but need full-time work. Underemployment often accompanies high unemployment rates. One goal is to attract higher quality jobs to match skill levels.
- Unemployability - There are many people in the labor force who do not have the basic skills to get or hold a job. Many of these have actually dropped out of the labor force entirely and are a burden on the social service system. The goal is to provide remedial services, and ultimately to address the root causes of unemployability.
- Employment and Social Integration - A situation in which people are kept out of the labor force due to social or institutional barriers, but in conditions where their skills are needed by a growing economy or new industries. Affected people include minority, disabled, or immigrant populations. The goal is to identify, then remove, barriers.
Delft: The Delft OPERA model will be developed as a benchmarking process to compare the performance of Delft's economy with peer cities. Application of the model will also allow prediction of the effects of alternative economic strategies on the local economy, thus providing a future-oriented resource. Long term monitoring will compare actual effects with those predicted by OPERA.
Farum: This project will create a network to explore means of integrating second-generation immigrants into the labor force to enable them to find employment as easily as native Danish youngsters. The project will address social issues as well as addressing the foreseeable lack of qualified workers.
Hannover: Hannover's project will explore policies that will enhance their city as a location for high technology industry and start-ups. It will seek collaboration between the public sector and environmental protection enterprises to promote employment in environmental protection trades. Ultimately, the result will be resilient employment structures that maximize the economic potential of Hannover.
Phoenix: This project will develop a programmatic approach to linking employers with neighborhood residents who are unemployed due to skills deficiencies. Community involvement in the project will be essential to identifying those in need and providing effective services. City management and elected officials will be involved in monitoring and evaluating program results and transferring lessons to other programs.
Québec: The Québec project will implement the goals of the newly-formed Local Development Center to provide front-line services to existing and potential entrepreneurs. Québec's major issue is employment creation, and it will utilize regional networks in combination with local economic development techniques.
Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
Project Evaluation Criteria
Economic distress is fraught with universal themes. To capture these common elements, the following criteria are suggested for evaluating each local project for inclusion in the cluster and for evaluating its process and outcomes in relation to Strategic Management. The first four of these criteria are derived from the principles of Strategic Management (Arnkil) and serve to evaluate particular projects as they affect the larger organization in which they operate. These criteria enable an outward focus, to explore projects' relevance to larger policy and administrative decision-making. An additional six criteria are suggested that evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the local project itself. They deal with the inner workings of the project, its effectiveness in serving the community and particular lessons that can be transferred to other projects or services.Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
Four Core Competencies of Strategic Management:
Criteria for Assessing Administrative/Policy Implications
- Coordination - Will the project enhance interaction between and among relevant parties, from the client base to elected policy-makers, to what degree and how will this interaction be coordinated?
- Culture Change - What are the "cultures" that will most "benefit" from change (or be asked to change the most) in the implementation of the project, and how will this project affect this change? How will acceptance of culture change be measured?
- Organizational Change - Will the project affect change in the larger governmental/administrative structure? (Alternatively, is change in the larger structure a necessary antecedent for successful implementation of the project?)
- Monitoring and Evaluation - How have structures been built in to the project process to allow evaluation of service quality and short- and long-term results? How are project results reported to management and elected officials?
Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
Criteria for Evaluating Project-Level Variables
- Measurable difference - How will the Local Project make a measurable difference in improved delivery of a service designed to enhance employment opportunities?
- Creative and innovative - Is something new being attempted in the design, administration or outcomes of the project?
- Transferability - Will lessons learned from the project be transferable to other similar projects or services, even those not related to employment-enhancing services?
- Smart networking - What partnerships will be established that will continue to effectively assist the employment-enhancement function of the community?
- Cost-effective, added value - Will the project be designed to provide cost-effective employment-enhancing services, while adding value to the community as a whole?
- Stakeholder involvement - How is direct involvement of stakeholders incorporated into project design and evaluation?
A single project does not have to perfectly address all of these criteria. However, to be a valid test of Strategic Management principles, each project should be designed to provide data for the four core competencies at a minimum. The six project-related criteria are fairly conventional and serve as guidelines for project evaluation. It is expected that most of them will be addressed as part of on-going project evaluation. Each local project may also apply criteria unique to its own situation, and which will further inform Strategic Management approaches.
Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
Potential Themes for the Case Bank
Understanding the needs and abilities of the labor force or of business is only part of the problem. Cities must also deliver a needed service that improves a life or makes a business operate more efficiently. The fact is, many issues facing our cluster cities can be "solved" only in the long term, whereas the need for better job development is a pressing need today.Addressing the jobs issue can take many approaches, few of which are necessarily new. Most communities utilize several approaches in combination, though often lacking in strategic deployment. Cluster city projects will test new approaches as well as using familiar ones in new, innovative ways. Some themes which are within the usual purview of local economic development (not federal-level macro policies), and which may be explored in local projects, might include:
Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
- Transport -
Developing public infrastructure or transit to connect areas of labor surplus with business locations.- Training -
Offering training that is industry-specific based on local needs, providing training via the Internet, supporting on-the-job training, apprenticeships, offering continuing education in technical skills, etc.- Day care -
Child or elder care services on-site or located near employers.- Financing -
Providing below market interest financing, direct investment, loan forgiveness, tax abatement, and many other techniques designed to reduce costs of development, modernization or ongoing operation.- Industry Targeting -
Attracting or assisting industry which require skills that match those available in the community, which support existing industry, or increase skill levels.- Entrepreneurship -
Promoting individual investment, innovation and risk-taking by providing technical services or a supportive tax and regulatory environment.- Export/Cross-Border Trade -
Developing new markets for goods in response to more open trade environments (EU, NAFTA).- Brownfield Reuse -
Providing incentives for the reuse of redundant central city sites or sites that are otherwise convenient to areas of labor surplus.- Public/Private Partnerships -
Real estate development projects or innovative programs that team public and private sector resources with specific public-purpose objectives.- Public Jobs Programs -
Employment programs to provide short or long-term employment for the chronically unemployed, paid for with public funds or by non-profit corporations.
Addressing Challenges Through Strategic Management
Many other potential themes can be added to this list. But changing the way a program or service is delivered faces serious challenges. The following challenges are the type of issues encountered in an environment of change and that Strategic Management should help overcome.
At the conclusion of this international network project in Tilburg, November 2000, the Employment Cluster will have created a case bank of local projects that have tried many new approaches to creating employment opportunities. Many key learning points about these projects will have been derived from the experience both inward-looking toward the effectiveness of the project, and outward-looking to improve Strategic Management for local government.
- Service integration
- A key challenge is coordinating services among providers. Regional networking and application of Strategic Management principles will be crucial to increasing service efficiencies across organizational lines.- Local responsibility
- Essential services must be delivered, or at least coordinated, by a single entity, usually local government, to maximize responsiveness, efficient utilization of resources, and quality control. Smart networking and coordination can address inefficiencies if jurisdictional responsibilities cannot be merged.- Consolidation of service providers
- Often there is more than one entity providing a given service. While each has a legitimate role, overlap and redundancy can result. Evaluation and monitoring of services will help achieve the greatest effectiveness in providing services to the unemployed or underemployed. This requires an openness to organizational change in the way services are delivered.- Maintaining flexibility
- The ability to provide very specifically targeted services such as training for a particular technical skill or assistance for a small demographic group should not be lost in an effort to integrate, coordinate or consolidate. Flexibility must be built in to the monitoring process to avoid the "falling through the cracks" syndrome.- Information flow
- Good services or good jobs are not worth much if the intended user/client base are unaware of them. Critical to any effort to create new jobs and place qualified workers is accurate real-time data of opportunities, readily accessible and easily understood. Coordination among service providers and users is crucial to providing the best quality service.Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
Schedule
The Bertelsmann Foundation has established the overall schedule for The Next Cycle of Work which concludes in November 2000 with a closing symposium in Tilburg. Key milestones for the Employment Cluster are:
1998 Identify cases from local projects, evaluate and refine June 1 Response from cluster cities to lead city on this concept paper. August 1 Revised final draft concept paper distributed to cluster cities. September Cluster meeting in Delft to prepare for Phoenix meeting and review local project experiences to date. 1999 Continue project management, evaluation and monitoring
continuous feedback among cluster citiesJanuary 11-13 Phoenix Meeting. First reporting session for interim results and case studies, identify common lessons of each project and lessons learned. September 27-29 Québec Meeting. Presentation and discussion of interim results. 2000 Derive lessons and experiences as they pertain to Strategic Management
continuous feedback among cluster citiesMay Hämeenlinna Meeting. Preparation for Tilburg Symposium November Tilburg Symposium Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
Cluster Communications Plan
In order to meet the schedule and provide for sharing of ideas and experiences, it is expected that the cluster cities will communicate freely and regularly. Of course, certain set procedures will be implemented as well. Phoenix will issue a regular fax newsletter to all cluster cities and lead cities of the other clusters with progress of each city, and other relevant or interesting information. This will be sent to cluster cities, other lead cities, and The Bertelsmann Foundation. Phoenix welcomes contributions to the newsletter from any quarter. Phoenix will establish a page on its Web site dedicated to this project to serve all network cities as well as the Phoenix community. This Web site will include all copies of the newsletter and information on the City's local project. E-mail will be used for day-to-day correspondence and document transmittal. Correspondence by mail will be minimized to save time, except when appropriate. Meetings of the cluster will be scheduled to coordinate projects and prepare for meetings of the network. These will be scheduled as needed.Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
Coordination with Other Clusters
Phoenix will coordinate with the Children/Youth Cluster and the Senior Citizens Cluster through regular contact with Christchurch and Hämeenlinna. Since the work of one cluster may provide insight into the work of another, products will be shared among lead cities. As an example, Farum, in The Employment Cluster, is proposing a project aimed at improving employability of second-generation immigrants. This project may have relevance for projects within the Children/Youth Cluster. Furthermore, a project that seeks to provide senior citizens with a more active role in society may be of interest to either Children/Youth or Employment.Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
Local Projects
Each member of the Employment Cluster has prepared a brief description of its local project that they will implement as their contribution to the Employment Cluster. These project descriptions are available on this Web site, along with direct links to each of these cities' Web site, if they have been established.Return to top of Employment Cluster Concept
