Learning from each other, developing a baseline, and moving forward
By Lesley Hirsch — Assistant Commissioner of Research and Information, New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development
Building on our past work on problem definitions, last Wednesday’s work session focused on the following key goals:
- Developing a baseline of the programs/services that each LWD division operates and a common understanding of them
- Identifying relevant connections, concepts, and themes across divisions to refine our problem definitions
To accomplish this, each of the participating division heads presented on our respective work to better understand perspectives, challenges and priorities across divisions. Some of the key questions we tried to address included:
● What things are encouraging people to use our services or discouraging them from using them?
● How are we measuring the impact of our services?
● Which criteria would we use to prioritize our services?
● Which programs of ours do you view as the most important, and which do we think need the most improvement?
Throughout our presentations, team members engaged and interacted with each other, identified common challenges, provided each other with insights and feedback, and also took the opportunity to learn from one another. In doing so, we further explored the problems we are trying to solve, and also began to explore the perspectives of our users.
As the Assistant Commissioner for Research and Information, I work across different divisions within the Department of Labor and Workforce Development to track developments in the labor market to inform New Jerseyans’ work-related decisions. My primary vision for the Department — which I was pleased to share with the working group — is to rethink our research and data products and services so that they meet the needs of our stakeholders: when they need them, where they need them, and how they need them.
With that said, I’m thrilled that the Governor has embraced workforce development as a prong of his economic plan for New Jersey and has put us together with his Chief Innovation Officer, Beth Noveck, to work on the New Jersey Career Network. ORI is committed to working hand-in-glove with the entire LWD team, the CIO and the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development to bring this and other cutting-edge, user-friendly technology to bear for our customers.
Moving forward, the project team will leverage our learnings about each other to hone our problem definitions, and began to develop persona profiles of the program users for whom we will design the New Jersey Career Network.
What are your thoughts on our approach? Have you used LWD programs before, and if so, which ones? We would love to hear about your personal experiences, how you interacted with our programs and services, and where you see room for improvement.
