Rethinking
Employer Engagement.
A signal-based framework for organizing workforce systems around the problems employers are actually trying to solve.
Sector strategies assume employers in the same industry share the same problems.
Employers show up less. The ones who do are the same ones every time. The conversations circle the same topics. The model isn't broken. It's just not enough anymore.
Sector strategies still matter for credentialing, regulation, and industry-specific pipelines. But the engagement layer needs a different organizing principle. The two work in tandem.
Leaders don't give you time unless you're solving their problem.
In the corporate space, we found out quickly. Every time we were in front of a leader, we had to be clear about the problems we were helping them solve. But first, we had to understand what those problems actually were and which ones mattered.
We did this through data and conversations, but we also had to read between the lines. The stated problem and the actual problem are rarely the same thing.
We saw the system from the employer's point of view too. And we saw it making the same mistakes we did early on: not solving the leader's problems. Or at least not the right ones.
Organize around signals, not sectors.
A signal is a pattern of workforce pain that shows up across multiple employers, often in different industries, with enough frequency and urgency to warrant a coordinated response.
When employers are listened to systematically, patterns emerge across industries.
Each bubble is a signal cluster. Size reflects the scale of impact. Click any bubble to explore.
Signals come from both sides of the table.
Employers signal what's breaking. But the supply side is signaling too. Job seekers are signaling where they go for services, what they're interested in learning, and how they want to learn it. Training providers are signaling through completion rates, program-to-hire conversion gaps, and curriculum that's drifting from actual demand.
The real insight is in matching the two. Where demand-side pain and supply-side capacity meet is where the system can move with precision. Where they don't match is where the gaps live.
Workforce practitioners acting like journalists.
A journalist doesn't call a press conference to find out what's happening. They cultivate sources. People embedded in places where things actually happen, who trust the journalist enough to share what they're observing.
That's the model. The workforce practitioner is the journalist. Their embedded contacts are the sources. The signal map is the story they're building. The Signal Threshold is the editorial decision: is there enough here to act?
Two phases. Six stages.
Read first, then Respond. Click any stage to expand.
Five criteria determine whether a signal warrants action.
The Employer Engagement Maturity Model.
Most workforce systems can describe their employer engagement activities. Very few can assess whether those activities are producing the kind of deep, strategic partnerships that actually move the needle on talent outcomes. The EEMM provides a structured, repeatable way to make that assessment.
It doesn't measure compliance, employer satisfaction scores, or contact volume. It measures whether the relationship is transactional or strategic. Two survey instruments capture both sides: how the system perceives its own engagement, and how employers actually experience it. The gap between those two perspectives is where the most actionable insight lives.
How this maps to what funders are asking for.
Employers co-design solutions, not just advise.
Signal Strategies builds co-design into the Respond phase. The EEMM measures whether it's real.
Evidence-based labor market alignment.
The Read phase is signal collection and pattern recognition. The Threshold provides structured criteria.
Partnerships spanning industry, education, community.
Signal-based engagement naturally crosses sector lines. The organizing principle is the shared problem.
Progress tracking and sustainability beyond the grant.
EEMM provides pre/post measurement. The Commit stage produces investment that outlasts any funding cycle.
This is not yet a proven model. It's a well-built one, grounded in years of experience on both sides of the table. We're looking for partners to test it, enhance it, and adapt it together.
Signal Strategies is more complex than sector strategies. The future of work demands that.
Things are changing quickly and the system needs to remain agile. Signal Strategies isn't a one-size-fits-all playbook. But the process gets faster over time. What takes a year the first time may take six months the second, then three months, then one, as the infrastructure matures and the signal-reading muscle develops.
AI is already doing many of the things traditional career and business service representatives have done for years. That's not a threat to this model. It's the reason this model matters. Signal Strategies encourages practitioners to do the more human work that AI can't replicate: reading between the lines, building stronger interpersonal relationships, having the hallway conversations, and casting a vision that matches those inputs to real action.
A few ways to get moving together.
Each of these produces tangible outputs that strengthen the work, build the case for larger investment, and lay the foundation for greater impact.
Let's figure out what this looks like together.
A pilot with a willing member. A joint grant application. A new model neither of us could build alone.