Start by choosing the hiring challenge that best matches what the companies you represent are facing. Then identify the type of training people typically complete to enter the roles you are trying to fill. Different public education, training, and workforce systems govern different types of training, so this shows which of them hold the most direct authority over the programs that prepare your candidates. For each system, you'll find specific asks your coalition can make, along with examples of employer coalitions across the country that have made those asks and secured the changes they needed.
These are the two hiring problems that public education, training, and workforce systems can often help solve – and many coalitions face both. Start with the one that is most pressing for the companies you represent.
The data we recommend gathering below serves three purposes. It moves you from symptoms to causes – why you cannot fill these roles, not just that you cannot. It gives your members one specific, shared definition of the problem before you take it to anyone. And it makes your ask to schools, colleges, and agencies concrete, backed by numbers, and hard to dismiss. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation's Talent Pipeline Management (TPM) process is a proven methodology for capturing much of this data through structured employer collaboratives.
Now that you understand the need, decide how your coalition wants to help meet it – you don't have to choose just one role, and the strongest coalitions take on more roles over time. Some of these roles you lead directly, drawing on your own relationships and resources. Others you pursue in partnership with the public education and training systems, and those are the roles the following sections map out, system by system. The two reinforce each other: the roles you lead directly – hiring from programs, providing work-based learning – are often what give your asks of the system real weight, turning a request into a partnership.
For the roles you'll pursue in partnership with the public system, where you start depends on how people enter the jobs you are filling. Different systems control different parts of the education and training landscape – a K-12 CTE program, a community college, a registered apprenticeship, and a state licensing board each play a distinct role, and not all are equally relevant to your occupations. Select the training type that fits below, and the systems with the most direct authority over your challenge will move to the top of the next section. You can select more than one training type, and every system remains visible regardless of your selection.
This is where you put your partnership roles into practice, one system at a time. Each system below controls decisions relevant to your challenge – and for each, you will find the concrete asks your coalition can make, and the commitments you can bring to turn those asks into partnerships. In each of these partnerships, employers bring the demand signal and the standard for job-readiness; educators and agencies continue to lead how programs are taught and run. Start with the systems highlighted as priorities for your training type, but review others as well; meaningful change often requires coordinated asks across more than one system.
Alabama · Nursing
Current as of August 2026Two employer associations turned scattered hospital needs into a signal the state could act on.
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.
Learn more: Alabama Board of Nursing – student nurse apprentice permit →
Phoenix · Healthcare
Current as of August 2026A chamber-backed coalition specified exactly what it needed – and the public investment followed.
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.
Multi-state · Advanced Manufacturing
Current as of August 2026For 15 years, a federation of local employer-college chapters has aligned curricula to employer-identified skills.
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.
California · Apprenticeship
Current as of August 2026Regional employer committees are flipping the script – employers define what programs should exist, and education partners build them.
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.
Orange County · Healthcare
Current as of August 2026Quarterly CEO-led meetings turned fragmented hospital systems into a regional sector strategy.
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.
Learn more: CEO Leadership Alliance of Orange County – Healthcare Coalition →
Washington · Statewide infrastructure
Current as of August 2026Washington funded sector intermediaries in statute – and aligned grants to sector workforce priorities.
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.
Learn more: Career Connect Washington – Sector Leaders →
Colorado · Construction
Current as of August 2026An employer coalition linked K-12, apprenticeship, and college programs so credentials stack toward a career.
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) →
Ohio · Manufacturing
Current as of September 2026More than 45 Ohio manufacturers defined the skills their jobs require – and Ohio’s Department of Education and Workforce adopted it.
For years, the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association (OMA) heard the same answer whenever it asked its members about their biggest challenge: workforce. Knowing its members had limited capacity to navigate public workforce programs themselves, the association decided to take the problem on for them – work that has now spanned about a decade.
Backed by member dues, OMA started by building relationships and a regional infrastructure, replicating an industry sector partnership model it had seen work elsewhere in the state and helping manufacturers, educators, and community partners stand up partnerships of their own. The state began funding those partnerships early on through Industry Sector Partnership grants OMA advocated for. Over time, OMA began formally endorsing the industry sector partnerships: each partnership applies for endorsement every two years, showing that its work is driven by manufacturer demand and aligned with OMA’s statewide strategy, and gains access in return to OMA’s technical assistance, resources, and funding opportunities. Roughly twenty partnerships now make up the network.
As the network grew, OMA took on the sector’s shared needs directly. Responding to shortages in operator and technician roles, it brought more than 45 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 Department of Education and Workforce adopted OMA’s Competency Model framework – developed by more than 45 Ohio manufacturers. By putting industry voices at the table, the framework ensures students are developing the real-world skills employers need to build Ohio’s manufacturing workforce. Where the state cannot direct programs – at the college level, where faculty control their own curriculum – OMA offers a curriculum assessment that a program can run against the model and bring to its own employer advisory committee, producing alignment without a mandate. One industry now maintains a single, current statement of its skill needs that classrooms across the state teach to. OMA also sponsors registered apprenticeship programs on behalf of its members, and in 2025 it published Ohio’s Manufacturing Workforce Blueprint, a statewide strategy with five priorities, developed with the governor’s office and the state’s workforce and education agencies, that the partnerships align their work to.
Learn more: Ohio Manufacturers’ Association – workforce services →
Indiana · Multi-sector
Current as of August 2026Industry Talent Associations give each Indiana industry one voice in the state’s apprenticeship initiative.
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.
Learn more: Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation – iLab Indiana and INCAP →