NWI Works opportunity hubs designed to upskill workers, meet employer demand
Aiming to bridge a skills gap that leaves positions unfilled and people unemployed, the partnership NWI Works has a new idea.
Their solution is an opportunity hub, and the new nonprofit is in the early stages of operating two of them — one in Gary and one in Michigan City.
Opportunity hubs are designed to combine workforce training and the support services necessary for potential workers to fully participate all in one place. Without this coordination, NWI Works leaders say it’s tough for anyone facing unemployment to find the education, transportation, childcare, income support and other assistance needed to secure a job.
“The existing public workforce system … is very fragmented and very difficult to navigate,” said Lisa Daugherty, president of the board of NWI Works, and president and CEO of the Center of Workforce Innovations. “Workforce development has to happen from within communities, and that’s been missing.”
Opportunity hubs, however, are placed strategically within the communities proven by census data to need it the most. NWI Works, a new group organized in collaboration with the Center of Workforce Innovations, Goodwill Industries of Michiana and the United Way of Northwest Indiana, selected “the most distressed areas where the most people are going to benefit from the resources” before launching the hubs, Daugherty said.
The Gary hub is the smaller of the two and has been piloting a workforce training program with the city of Gary for more than a year. Plans call for this hub to prepare workers for in-demand careers in manufacturing, construction, trades, healthcare, logistics and green energy.
Michael Suggs, chief operating officer for the City of Gary, said the city began collaborating with NWI Works to help meet its needs as a large municipal employer.
“We realized that the city was woefully short in several areas of employees, and the workforce was needing some support,” Suggs said. “We wanted to make sure the community was prepared for the opportunities.”
Suggs said the program piloted so far combines two days of employability training each week with three days of field work in Gary’s general services department, tackling tasks such as traffic management, waste collection, park maintenance and blight removal — “the bare necessities of creating a clean, safe community.”
Fifty participants are finishing the 16-week course now, and the city has hired more than 15 previous participants as permanent employees.
“The commitment they have to the community is simply amazing,” Suggs said about the workers brought on board through the program. “It is, by all measures, a success.”
Daugherty calls the framework used in Gary a “highly intensive, tough-love boot camp” that helps meet “what we have found to be the greatest need — just very basic job readiness.”
Employers are constantly calling for personnel with a will to work, a commitment to showing up and a strong work ethic, she said. So that’s what the program teaches.
“The employer has to be part of the design,” Daugherty said. “Everything we do begins and ends with the employer.”
Early results from the program in Gary are informing how training is conducted at the second opportunity hub at the former Elston High School in Michigan City.
The first students began training at Elston on June 1 and are receiving a stipend to help meet their basic needs during their time in the program. Childcare and other wraparound services are available within the 300,000-square-foot space, which also is home to a Boys and Girls Club, two commercial kitchens, a theater and other community programming spaces.
NWI Works estimates the buildout of Gary and Elston hubs will cost about $30 million total, with support provided by grants and partnerships with Michigan City Area Schools, the cities of Michigan City and Gary, and other partners.
Daugherty said the Elston Opportunity Hub also has space to provide instruction on specialized equipment for use with popular jobs in the Region, including hospitality, culinary, tourism, construction, healthcare, manufacturing, IT and administrative roles.
“As we’re doing the planning for the programming around the hubs, it’s giving us the opportunity to work with partners and reimagine what a unified process would look like,” Daugherty said, a process for connecting the needs of both jobseekers and employers. “We’re streamlining the experience … and making it easier to navigate.” •
Read more stories from the current issue of Northwest Indiana Business Magazine.
Common sense beats process
Great ownership transfer
Passion project
Curiosity at heart
Quality trade show strategy
Employee wealth plans
Inside mid-career learning
Betting on Northwest Indiana
Digital infrastructure
Professional advancement
