The Jobs with Purpose initiative is designed to assist cities proactively address their workforce needs through investment, planning, and strategy implementation.Georgia cities face increasing challenges in recruiting and maintaining a talented and engaged workforce. Competition from the private sector to increasing retirements to shifts in job expectations by potential employees has required city officials to evaluate their recruitment and retention efforts and to think more strategically about their workforce pipeline.
Using the “Georgia Municipal Workforce Development Strategy and Playbook,” produced by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government (CVIOG) at the University of Georgia in consultation with Georgia Municipal Association’s (GMA) Municipal Workforce Development Advisory Council and funded by Georgia City Solutions, Inc. (GCS), the Jobs with Purpose initiative will address the playbook’s recommended strategies in pilot cities in the following areas:
- Employee Recruitment
- Employee Retention
- Pay and Benefits
- Planning and Strategic Partnerships
Cities will also receive assistance in developing a recruitment strategy based on GMA’s Starts With Me! workforce development campaign. The campaign provides messaging and collateral resources to aid in attracting qualified applicants and provides a simplified repository of materials that can be utilized and incorporated into the overall recruiting and retention efforts.
- Strengthen the municipal workforce pipeline.
- Develop municipal career pathways.
- Increase interest in city government careers.
- Upskilling and reskilling of persons for municipal jobs to provide higher paying jobs and economic mobility.
- Create a model that is scalable and transferable to other cities, regions, and states.
Expected Outcomes
Participating cities will:
- Complete a workforce needs assessment and identify gaps that need to be addressed.
- Review and understand the local workforce pipeline and needs.
- Identify the local, regional, and state partners that they can collaborate with to meet future workforce-related goals.
- Develop an actionable strategy to address their own workforce needs based on any issues raised in the needs assessment and local pipeline evaluation.
- Develop a recruitment strategy using GMA’s Starts With Me! workforce development campaign.
Participation Pledge
Paticipating cities will:
- Analyze their existing human resources data to provide quantitative statistics.
- Provide meeting space for onsite project meetings.
- Leadership commits to the ongoing support of the program.
- City agrees to participate in annual knowledge sharing and lessons learned forums with other participating cities.
