HIGHLIGHTS

• Workforce development is a complex ecosystem, with many types of programs, funders, and participants.
• We explored how behavioral science can be applied to workforce development programs to make them more effective.
• This project culminated with our report, Behavioral Insights for Workforce Development, which analyzes common barriers within workforce development programs and offers high-level design ideas for how those barriers might be addressed.

The Challenge

Navigating a complex labor market means that individual workers have to make countless decisions—big and small—about what kind of work they want to do and what they need to learn to achieve their career goals and earn a living.

Workforce development programs of all kinds exist to help people navigate from one field to another, or gain skills to advance within their current position. Workforce development is a complex ecosystem, with many types of programs, funders, and participants. It includes community colleges, apprenticeships, on-the-job training, online seminars, federal programs, and much more. 

While skills training alone is not enough to address structural inequalities in the economy, participation in workforce development appears at times to yield substantial returns. Where programs with clear financial benefits are underutilized, insights from behavioral science research can help explain what might be happening. 

Taking a behavioral approach can help us understand why people may not be participating in these programs, as well as offer ideas for addressing these specific challenges. Ultimately, by accounting for the complexity of human decision-making, we can design programs that work with human nature, not against it, benefiting countless lives and livelihoods.

Our Approach

From November 2019 through July 2021, ideas42 explored how behavioral science can be applied to workforce development programs, with the aim of identifying how to make them more effective.

Because context matters tremendously—and because seemingly small details such as the phrasing of questions on a form or the norms conveyed by other participants in a busy computer lab can have a big impact on whether and how participants are able to achieve their goals—we explored in detail how three specific workforce development programs work. In so doing, we sought to understand where participants got off-track, and how insights from behavioral science could be used to better help them succeed.

To understand what behavioral barriers inhibit participants from following through on their intentions to enroll in and complete workforce programs, we partnered with Goodwill, PelotonU, and Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas. We reviewed these three programs’ learning environments and processes, generated behaviorally-informed hypotheses about what got people off-track, and conducted 37 in-depth interviews with program participants and staff (particularly coaches who work directly with participants in each program). 

For more, read our full report, Behavioral Insights for Workforce Development.

Takeaway

Through our conversations, we identified four common behavioral barriers—hassles, scarcity, identity and mindset, and choice conflict—all of which can impact participant engagement in workforce programs. Our report, Behavioral Insights for Workforce Development, analyzes common barriers within workforce development programs and offers high-level design ideas for how those barriers might be addressed. These design ideas require refinement and adaptation before they can be implemented in a specific programmatic context, but we hope they will inspire leaders of workforce development programs to think deeply about the behavioral challenges their participants face and start to identify creative ways to address those challenges.

Ultimately, we believe smart behavioral design can help more people engage with effective workforce development programs, thus improving their career outlook in the everchanging U.S. labor market.

For more, read our full report, Behavioral Insights for Workforce Development. 

Visit ideas42.org and follow @ideas42 on Twitter to learn more about our work. Contact us at education@ideas42.org with questions.