All comments must be submitted in writing. The draft plan will be finalized at the end of the comment period and after any comments have been resolved.
Questions or Comments may be submitted to:
Sarah Wilson
Executive Director
sarahwilson@masshirefhwb.org
The MassHire Franklin Hampshire Workforce Board Strategic Plan outlines our goals and related actions over a six-year plan (2020-2025). Check out our PowerPoint for some highlights of the 2020-2025 Strategic Plan.
June 2020
Dear Community Member:
The Franklin Hampshire Workforce Board is a community board appointed by chief elected officials in Greenfield and Northampton. Our charge is to oversee public funding for workforce development in the Franklin, Hampshire, and North Quabbin regions. Our mandate is to keep abreast of economic development, worker training, and education needs. Our goal in this document is to share useful information about our community with other planners in the region—city, town, and county officials; people wishing to live or work here; and those seeking to start or relocate businesses in our region.
We see this as a region of great potential: one where entrepreneurship and innovation thrive, where quality of life issues remain at the forefront of planning, and where many businesses are committed to the advancement of workers and their families, not just to their own profitability. We are proud of our accomplishments in relation to our last strategic plan, summarized in this document, and we came together with great enthusiasm to identify strategic initiatives for the next five years.
Then in Spring 2020, a global pandemic—Covid-19-- rocked our country and the world. Our unemployment rate went from 3% to 15.7% in the space of a few weeks. Employment in the bustling Food Service, Accommodation, and Retail sectors plummeted. We experienced terrible losses, faced business and 2 workforce challenges we never imagined, and have gradually realized that life may never be quite the same.
At first, we assumed we would have to re-build our plan from the ground up. Interestingly, we find that is not the case. Our Strategic Initiatives seem still, more than ever, appropriately focused on preparing jobs seekers for a rapidly-changing world; drawing on business partners to elucidate the demands of the evolving workplace; ensuring the Board and Career Center are recognized as thought leaders and change partners in that world; and putting issues of quality jobs, diversity, and inclusion front and center so that we all benefit from the economic recovery sure to come.
Our priority industries also seem more important and relevant than ever. Manufacturing and – obviously – healthcare sectors remain strong and vibrant. Gratitude for our strong, responsive agricultural sector has broadened and deepened as we have come to recognize just how essential a safe and healthy regional food system is. The Educational Service sector is struggling, but never have we been more in need of what it has to offer – the tools to learn, change, and adapt to a new world.
Our Initiatives are unchanged, but our strategies will have to adapt. This plan maps out Year I Strategic Activities, which have already flexed to include very different ways of operating and providing services than foreseen. Years II-V will doubtless bring new and different challenges. We present this plan as an invitation to all in the community to join us in our mission: to shape, nurture and sustain a regional workforce system that promotes the economic well-being of a diverse workforce and employer base. That mission too is the 3 same, but it is newly-informed with a sense of urgency and hope.
Sincerely,
Susan Surner
Chair MassHire Franklin Hampshire Workforce Board
The Franklin Hampshire Workforce Board began updating its Strategic Plan In September 2019. First, the Board reviewed its accomplishments in relation to the prior Strategic Plan. A few highlights include:
The Board acknowledged that major goals in the area of Business, Community, Visibility, and Youth Services were attained: a more detailed report appears in the Appendix. However, the Board also noted some missing elements and areas where much remains to be done. Opinions elicited from Board members included the following:
Next, the Board reflected on economic and demographic changes in the region in the seven years since the last plan was developed: some of those are reflected in Table I.
| 2010-2012 | 2019 | ||
| Unemployment Insurance Rate | 5.5 | 2.9 | DOWN |
| Size of Labor Force | 133,148 | 143,631 | UP 7.9% |
| Number of Businesses | 7,391 | 7,695 | UP 4.1% |
| Employers over 100 | Roughly the same at 124 | ||
| Number of Jobs | 88,350 | 98,284 | UP 11.2% |
| Business Size Expansion: | |||
| 5 to 9 employees | 1,183 | 1,216 | UP 2% |
| 10-19 | 802 | 822 | UP 2% |
| 20-49 | 488 | 525 | UP 7.5% |
| 50-99 | 140 | 188 | UP 12.8% |
| Demographics | 87.7% white between 2 counties | ||
| Overall funding for WD | $5,241,021 | $3,148,981 | DOWN 40% |
| Average Wage Across Industries vs. Statewide | 65% of Statewide Average of $1,112 | 67% of Statewide Average of $1322 | |
| Median Annual Wage - Across Occupations | $42,822 | 86.4% of Statewide Average of $48,680 |
The Franklin/Hampshire workforce area covers all of Franklin and Hampshire counties and four towns in northwestern Worcester County. The Franklin Hampshire Workforce Board serves forty-seven towns and three cities (Easthampton, Greenfield, and Northampton). The region is predominately rural (27 of the towns in the area have populations of less than 2,000). It is the largest of 16 Workforce areas in the state in the geographical area, but the 5th smallest in labor force size. However, the labor force grew by 5% in the past four years. The estimated population in 2019 is approximately 245,000, which is about 3.5% of the State’s total population. The total land area of the region is approximately 1,400 square miles, 17% of the State.
Although the Franklin/Hampshire area has a much lower percentage of minorities than the state (9.2% versus 21.1%), the minority population is growing. The region also has a higher than average educational attainment level. Among the population 25 years and over, the population with no high school diploma or equivalent was just 6.5 % and those with a Bachelor or advanced degree were 41.2 %. For Massachusetts as a whole, the respective percentages were 9.7% and 42.1 %. Although the Franklin/Hampshire area has a relatively low percentage of school dropouts in the population, it is this group that faces many difficulties in achieving labor market success, especially those who are between the ages of 16 and 19. Data from the 2000 Census shows that these young school dropouts had an unemployment rate of over 25% and an additional 28% of this population was not participating at all in the labor market. For that reason, there is a heavy emphasis on youth services in our region, with WIOA Youth Year-Round and Connecting Activities programs working hand-in-hand out of our Career Centers. Our WIOA Youth programs have long targeted the much harder-to-serve out-of school youth population.
The Franklin/Hampshire area, like Massachusetts, experienced a steady increase in the labor force population and a decrease in unemployment between the 2008 recession and 2019. The area has gone from a high of 6.8% unemployment in 2012 to a rate of 2.9% in February 2020. Average weekly wages have increased but still lag well behind the state at 67% of the statewide average.
Small employers dominate the Franklin/Hampshire area. In March of 2018 over 75% of area employers had fewer than 10 employees and only 1.8% of employers had over 100 employees. Not only are wages only 67% of the statewide average, but in a recent period, Franklin/Hampshire wages increased at a slower rate than the state’s increase.
Updated Labor Market Analysis affirmed the Board’s conviction that the most striking feature of the Franklin/Hampshire (F/H) economy is the importance of the Educational Services sector. This sector accounts for nearly 1 in 4 jobs (22.9%) in F/H, compared to 1 in 10 (9.3%) statewide. Moreover, half of those jobs are located at the College and University level.
Additional key data points that informed our subsequent Strategic Planning sessions include the following:
With this updated picture of the region in mind, the Board took time to consider existing major plans with which it is critical we align, including the Massachusetts Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act State Plan, The Pioneer Valley Regional Workforce Plan,1 the Franklin Regional Council of Governments’ Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy Plan, The Plan for Progress, and the Hampshire County Strategic Agenda. Several themes emerged from a review of these plans that Board Members felt were important:
In addition, the Board reviewed Pioneer Valley Workforce Planning data, which is now updated regularly by the state as part of the Regional Planning process under the Governor’s Workforce Skills Cabinet.
This data supports our identification of Healthcare/Social Assistance, Manufacturing, and Educational Services as our top three critical Industries. Under the top three priority industries, the Plan also identifies the top ten critical occupations in the Pioneer Valley region. They are as follows:
Healthcare and Social Assistance Occupational Groups, specifically:
Educational Services Occupational Groups, specifically:
Advanced Manufacturing Occupational Groups, specifically:
Cross-Industry Occupations such as those that are IT-related, Professional Services, Back-Office Administrative Support, and Logistical Supports.
The following continue to be challenges to our work:
Conversely, our region has very unique workforce development strengths that we can call upon. Among these strengths are:
Policy implications include the following:
Additional strategic issues related to our priority industry areas that our work takes into consideration include:
Consideration of the data, priority industries, unique assets, and our challenges led the Board to arrive at four major Strategic Initiatives for the next five years. What follows are those Initiatives and how we plan to measure our progress in forwarding them, as well as Year I Strategic Activities to meet our goals. At the end of each year, the Board will measure its progress and change or adapt Strategic Activities as needed.
To shape, nurture, and sustain a regional workforce system that promotes the economic well-being of a diverse workforce and employer base.
Prioritize jobseeker readiness, versatility, and potential for advancement through creative programming and partnership.
Measures:
Year I Strategies:
Convene targeted growth businesses to stay up-to-date on employer needs, and to ensure knowledge and utilization of state and regional economic development and workforce development resources.
Measures:
Year I Strategies:
Increase visibility of the Franklin Hampshire Workforce system through a MassHire Franklin Hampshire marketing campaign to promote our services: employer, job seeker, economic development, rural policy advocacy, etc.
Measures:
Year I Strategies:
Work with community partners to identify and address leading-edge workforce issues, including but not limited to: access to jobs, quality jobs, diversity and inclusion, and the impact of automation, technology, and climate change on the work of the future.
Measures:
Year I Strategies:
We are frequently asked, “What are the skills needed in today’s workplace and the workplace of the future?”
Again and again, employers came back to so-called “soft skills.” But a closer look at those soft skills yields a more complex picture. A survey of Pioneer Valley employers conducted by Greenfield Community College2 found that four out of five employers identified the following as the most critical skills needed:
As one of our Board members noted “Soft skills are actually hard skills.” And they are essential skills. But they can be learned through the right combination of readiness, education, and training. Educators and job seekers have that challenge to meet.
But the rest of us also have a challenge. A report by MIT called “The Future of Work” observes:
“Today’s challenge, and likely tomorrow’s, is not too few jobs. Instead, it is the quality and accessibility of the jobs that will exist and the career trajectories that will be offered to workers, particularly to those with less education….”
"New and emerging technologies will have a profound effect on the work of the future and will create new opportunities for economic growth. Whether that growth translates to higher living standards, better working conditions, greater economic security, and improved health and longevity in the United States and elsewhere depends on institutions of governance, public investments, education, law, and public and private leadership.3”
The working partnerships known as Workforce Boards have that opportunity and that challenge.
