Employer leadership in practice

In 2019, Alabama faced a severe nursing shortage in a tight labor market — and, at the same time, was turning away capable adults who wanted in. The traditional path into nursing required long stretches of unpaid clinical work, which effectively barred anyone who couldn’t afford to stop earning a paycheck. The state’s apprenticeship agency and community colleges tried to build an earn-and-learn nursing apprenticeship to fix that, but the effort stalled. The reason was revealing: the Board of Nursing was hearing about the idea almost entirely from public partners — agencies and training providers — not from the employers who would actually hire and train the nurses.

The breakthrough came when employers stepped to the front. The Alabama Hospital Association and the Alabama Nursing Home Association organized hospitals, nursing homes, and long-term care providers into a single, unified voice. With employers leading, the associations worked with the Board of Nursing to design a new nurse apprentice permit — and worked with the legislature to grant the Board the authority to create it. Employers then served as the subject-matter experts who defined the training model and the scope of practice that would make apprenticeships workable in real clinical settings. They also committed to the part that matters most: hiring the apprentices and covering last-dollar training costs.

What changed wasn’t the idea — it was who was asking for it. The Board and legislators moved once employers, not agencies or schools, were the ones requesting the change. And because the two associations already credibly represented employers statewide, they could turn a patchwork of individual needs into a clear demand signal policymakers could act on.

Phoenix-area hospitals were running into a hard constraint: not enough specialty nurses to staff the units they needed to expand. There were few accessible ways for working registered nurses to gain specialty skills without leaving their jobs, and while the hospitals talked regularly about the problem, the missing link was turning conversation into coordinated action with an education partner and real public investment.

The Greater Phoenix Chamber Foundation supplied that link. It convened nine hospitals into a structured, employer-led collaborative — built on the Talent Pipeline Management model — and had them align around shared priorities. Using their own hiring projections, the hospitals sharpened a vague “we need nurses” into something far more useful: the real shortage was in specialty nursing, and they named six specialty areas as most urgent. That precision is what made the demand actionable.

With the hospitals aligned, the Chamber Foundation connected them to the Maricopa County Community College District. When the college lacked the facilities and resources to launch the new specialty programs, the hospitals and the college co-developed the program requirements together and made a joint, data-backed case to policymakers for the capacity to deliver them. Because the ask came from a coordinated coalition speaking with one voice — not nine separate hospitals making nine separate requests — it carried real weight.

Quantum information technology is one of the fastest-emerging industries in the country, and it arrived faster than any talent pipeline built for it. Across Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, the companies commercializing quantum — from established players like IBM and Lockheed Martin to a wave of startups — faced a shortage of workers with the specialized skills the field requires, alongside an education ecosystem that didn’t yet fully understand what those skills were. In a sector this new, no university department, K-12 pathway, or workforce agency could define the need on its own.

So the employers defined it. A coalition of quantum companies organized as Elevate Quantum and set out a clear, shared vision for the talent and economy the region could build — and that clarity is what let them win a federal Tech Hub designation from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, drawing roughly $41 million in federal funding plus state matching dollars. Elevate Quantum became the front door for quantum talent in the Mountain West: the place where employers, universities, schools, and state agencies come together, and where the industry sets the agenda rather than reacting to programs designed without it.

The employers lead by convening and setting direction, not just advising. They organize the sessions that bring the education and workforce ecosystem to the table and align it to what the industry actually needs — down to how quantum talent is trained and deployed — while holding the big-picture vision themselves and working through specialized partners to execute across K-12 awareness, higher education, and the rural communities the industry is determined not to leave behind. When university programs needed sharpening, employers pushed for it and offered concrete help, including access to the quantum hardware students had rarely touched.

Colorado’s construction sector faces one of the state’s most acute talent shortages: more than 30,000 unfilled positions, with trades employment projected to grow as much as 32% by 2030. The routes into the field were part of the problem — K-12 programs, registered apprenticeships, and college credentials operated as disconnected tracks, leaving too many workers stuck in entry-level jobs, and students heard little directly from the industry about where a construction career could actually lead.

A state grant program created the opening. When Colorado’s legislature created Opportunity Now Colorado — a $91 million fund for industry-driven education and training partnerships — construction employers organized to answer it collectively rather than program by program. Colorado Succeeds convened more than a hundred employers, education providers, and public partners in May 2022, and from that gathering the industry formed a steering committee — anchored by AGC Colorado and fellow contractor associations, with the Colorado Community College System and education partners at the table — that spent two years designing Project SCALE (Scaling Construction Access for Learners & Earners), funded by a $2.8 million Opportunity Now grant.

A core Talent Acquisition Task Force of twenty employers met eighteen times over two years, with more than a hundred engaged across the effort, running the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Talent Pipeline Management process. That employer-led analysis corrected an assumption the system had been building against: the shortage was in craft workers — plumbers, pipefitters, electricians — not the project managers and superintendents everyone had assumed.

The design principle is what makes it distinctive: rather than building new programs, Project SCALE connects the tracks Colorado already has into one cumulative pathway — high school construction courses, registered apprenticeship, and college credentials that stack toward degrees, with credit for prior learning carrying workers forward instead of starting them over. AGC Colorado organizes the employer side statewide, serving members and non-members alike, and extended the pathway upward: an apprenticeship-to-degree leadership pathway, launched with Emily Griffith Technical College, embeds registered apprenticeship training as 45 college credits toward an associate degree, so skilled tradespeople can advance into project leadership. The coalition’s targets are concrete: 1,600 additional students into the construction pipeline and 2,600 job and apprenticeship connections, against the industry’s 30,000-job gap.

Read more: How Colorado’s construction industry built its own workforce system (Work Shift) →

Manufacturers across Ohio face persistent shortages in operator and technician roles – and for years, every institution defined the skills for those jobs on its own. Employers repeated themselves at advisory table after advisory table, and no shared statement existed of what the sector’s jobs actually require.

The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association (OMA) brought more than 40 manufacturers together to build a shared competency model – more than 400 rated knowledge, skill, and ability statements for operator and technician roles, tiered from sector-wide to industry-specific. Ohio’s career and technical education office adopted it as the standard for what the state’s schools teach, and several of Ohio’s post-secondary institutions have adopted it as well. Where the state cannot direct programs – at the college level, where faculty control their own curriculum – OMA offers an assessment a program can run against the model and bring to its own employer advisory committee, producing alignment without a mandate. OMA also publishes a statewide manufacturing workforce strategy, sponsors registered apprenticeship on behalf of its members, and endorses about fourteen regional industry sector partnerships – each endorsement runs two years, renewed only if the partnership can show its employers are still actively engaged.

Manufacturers across the country face persistent shortages in maintenance and technician roles — jobs that require years of intentional development to fill well. Most community college programs aren’t designed or resourced to deliver the integrated technical, lean-manufacturing, and professional preparation those roles actually need. Individual employers can train their own workers, but the patchwork is expensive, inconsistent, and doesn’t build a portable workforce. This is where a program operated by the Manufacturing Institute — the workforce development partner of the National Association of Manufacturers — steps in.

FAME USA solves this by treating the Advanced Manufacturing Technician (AMT) training program as something employers own and run rather than a curriculum they advise on. It supports a federation of 45 local chapters, each made up of employers and a community or technical college partner. FAME USA supplies the proven framework, the playbook for forming new chapters, and a national peer-learning network. At the chapter level, employers tailor the AMT curriculum to regional needs and lead the program in their area.

The structure works because employer voice is concentrated in chapter-level coalitions, not in advisory roles after programs are designed. The 15-year-tested model removes ambiguity for new employers: there is a defined investment, a clear progression, and a documented expected value — rather than a vague ask to “help shape” a program. To make the workforce portable across employers, FAME requires that students earn an Associate’s Degree, not just an employer-specific certificate.

Orange County’s healthcare employers had been dealing with persistent shortages for years — in Radiologic Technology, Surgical Technology, RNs, physicians, MA-to-LVN-to-RN career ladders, and behavioral health. Workforce decisions, though, were fragmented. Programs were typically designed first, then employers were asked to advise after the fact. Hospital systems competed for the same constrained clinical placement slots and the same limited faculty. Nothing about the regional architecture pushed in the direction of coordination.

The CEO Leadership Alliance Orange County (CLAOC) Healthcare Coalition changed that by changing who was at the table. CEOs and senior executives — not just workforce or HR leads — convene quarterly to identify priority workforce shortages, define scaling strategies tied to projected hiring demand, surface clinical placement and faculty bottlenecks, commit operational resources like clinical training space and leadership time, and inform funding priorities before investment decisions are finalized. CLAOC plays the role of neutral convener — credible across competing health systems.

The combination of executive credibility and an employer-led model that listens to employer needs before designing solutions has shifted what would otherwise be fragmented pilots into a coordinated, CEO-governed regional strategy. Co-investment by the employers — operational resources, not just commentary — moves them beyond advisory roles into shared accountability for outcomes.

California’s registered apprenticeship system has long allowed employers to register their own programs, but most don’t — because the administrative burden is heavy and the benefits aren’t clear. Even when employers do register, programs often don’t plug into broader talent pipelines, leaving employers with a program on paper but too few prepared candidates coming through it.

The LAUNCH Apprenticeship Network is building a different model: employer-led, regional committees that give employers a clear place to set apprenticeship priorities and send a shared signal to education and workforce partners. This approach reduces the burden on any one employer and makes employer leadership durable — not one-off or advisory.

The goal is to reverse the usual sequence: instead of schools approaching employers with “we have funding — here’s what we want to do,” employers can collectively say: “We know you have funding — here’s what needs to be true for us to participate.” LAUNCH’s premise is that apprenticeship scales when the system does more of the enabling work — pipeline alignment, navigation, coordination — while employers hold clearer leadership over standards and design.

NYC’s healthcare employers were facing a familiar but persistent problem: candidates were arriving with credentials, but without the skills needed for entry-level success. Education partners — NYC Public Schools, CUNY, and others — wanted to respond, but couldn’t, because the feedback they were getting from employers was inconsistent and fragmented. When employers spoke individually about what graduates needed, no one had the credibility to drive coordinated change across K-12, higher education, and work-based learning.

Six major NYC health systems are now organizing as a unified cohort to fix this. Working with NYCPS, higher education partners, and funders — and with CareerWise playing a connector role — the employers are aligning first on priority occupations and readiness expectations, then using that alignment to drive coordinated changes across the systems that prepare candidates. The long-term goal is a shared-ownership ecosystem that isn’t dependent on a single intermediary; the near-term win is a coherent employer voice that the system can finally act on.

The most striking signal is that NYCPS explicitly named the problem of inconsistent employer messaging — and asked employers to align. That kind of system-side ask is rare, and it underscores how much value a unified employer voice can create when the system is genuinely ready to receive it.

As Washington expanded its investment in career-connected learning, employer participation didn’t keep pace — and funding decisions were largely disconnected from what employers actually needed. The result was predictable: lower employer uptake and a weaker return on public dollars.

Rather than ask employers to engage more with the existing system, Washington rebuilt part of the system around them. Through Career Connect Washington, a public-private partnership, the state selected and funded ten trusted sector intermediaries — “Sector Leaders” — to convene employers, translate their hiring needs into concrete strategies, and coordinate employer-aligned growth across K-12, higher education, and registered apprenticeship. The state provided the connective tissue — funding, agency access, and technical assistance — while the intermediaries did the work of organizing employers and turning demand into system-ready strategy. The Sector Leader role was written into state statute, giving it legitimacy and staying power, and intermediaries were chosen through a formal selection process.

The defining feature is that employer input wasn’t advisory — it shaped where public money went. Washington’s Employment Security Department revised its grant-making criteria and processes to align with Sector Leader strategies, so the demand employers defined carried through to the state’s funding decisions.

Indiana is building a statewide career apprenticeship system – INCAP, the Indiana Career Apprenticeship Pathway – and faced the question every such effort faces: who speaks for each industry about which occupations to build programs for, and what those programs should teach?

The answer is a network of Industry Talent Associations (ITAs) – statewide employer groups, one per industry, that serve as INCAP’s employer engagement body. Each ITA engages its industry’s employers to choose the occupations INCAP builds programs for, define the knowledge and skills those programs teach, and work with educators on the training materials. Existing industry-led groups lead the role, the effort is coordinated by CEMETS iLab Indiana – a coalition of more than 300 leaders from industry, education, government, and philanthropy – and the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation has committed nearly $13 million. Six industries have taken the role on since 2024: advanced manufacturing and logistics, banking, healthcare, life sciences, construction, and IT.

South Carolina’s CTE credential list had historically treated every credential as equivalent on the state’s school accountability report card. The result was predictable: students could meet the “career ready” threshold by earning credentials that bore little relationship to actual hiring. Schools were rewarded for credential volume; employers were left with graduates whose credentials told them very little about whether the holder was actually job-ready.

Beginning in 2023, the state Department of Education collaborated with SREB and the state’s Education Oversight Committee (EOC) to establish Technical Advisory Committees (TACs) in every career cluster — each required to have at least 51% employer membership, which keeps employers in the majority and the committee's judgment anchored in hiring reality. The TACs review credentials, validate which ones reflect real workforce value, and tier them by employer judgment: Introductory, Intermediate, or Career Ready.

What makes the design powerful is that employer validation is connected directly to the accountability metric schools are scored on. As EOC Executive Director Dana Yow put it: “They are ultimately the users of these credentials. If something doesn’t have credential currency in the business community, they need to be telling that to the education system. We have a process in place to move that forward.” That process replaces what had been informal consultation with a documented, accountable approval chain.

Utah’s public colleges and universities were building career programs largely on their own timelines, with employer input arriving informally and unevenly — some programs had deep employer relationships, most didn’t, and there was no statewide mechanism ensuring employer demand actually reached the people designing curricula.

The Utah Legislature created Talent Ready Utah in 2018 as an industry-facing office to convene employers, education, and state agencies around a shared goal: align workforce solutions to what employers actually need. In July 2022, the legislature moved Talent Ready Utah into the Utah System of Higher Education, reporting directly to the Commissioner of Higher Education — placing employer leadership over program priorities inside the same office that approves those programs. Statute (originally Title 53B, Chapter 34; recodified to Utah Code Title 53H, Chapter 13, Part 3) created a Talent, Education, and Industry Alignment Board with a formal quorum and voting process, and assigned it clear duties: coordinate new education programs aligned to employer demand, promote the inclusion of employer partners in education, and map which programs are actually producing high-paying jobs. On March 12, 2024, the legislature passed HB 346 to further define and clarify the program’s statutory terms.

One of Talent Ready Utah’s clearest levers is the Talent Ready Apprenticeship Connection (TRAC), a youth apprenticeship model co-designed with employers — Stadler Rail, Doppelmayr, Mondi, and Utah Paper Box among them — that lets high school students split time between classroom and paid, employer-run worksites. TRAC runs through Salt Lake School District and Salt Lake Community College, coordinated with the state’s apprenticeship office.