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How One Local Workforce Board is Coordinating Employer Engagement Regionally

Businesses and workers across the country have been nothing if not resilient over the past two years, as they worked to overcome unprecedented challenges brought on by the pandemic. Businesses in California’s Santa Cruz County are no exception. A recent report by the Santa Cruz County Workforce Development Board (SCCWDB) highlights the major issues businesses face within […]

Businesses and workers across the country have been nothing if not resilient over the past two years, as they worked to overcome unprecedented challenges brought on by the pandemic. Businesses in California’s Santa Cruz County are no exception. A recent report by the Santa Cruz County Workforce Development Board (SCCWDB) highlights the major issues businesses face within the current environment.

To assist businesses with a targeted recovery effort, the SCCWDB created the Business Resource Network (BRN), a talented group of well-connected business experts who leverage public-private funding and resources to ensure Santa Cruz companies remain competitive.

Peter Detlefs, a BRN team member and Business Services Manager for Workforce Santa Cruz County, explained BRN partners include representatives from city and county governments, nonprofits and public sector organizations whose main focus is to determine the biggest pain point keeping employers awake at night and finding solutions to their issues.

“We can then make an appropriate referral within our network to an organization that has the right expertise to solve challenges, including talent recruitment and workforce training, business advising, financing, or simply doing business in our county,” he said.

To expand reach to new companies that are not familiar with the BRN, the SCCWDB launched a proactive outreach campaign by leveraging a national initiative called Behind Every Employer, a digital advertising campaign that strategically connects companies with education and workforce organizations across the country to provide solutions for the workforce challenges they face.

SCCWDB adopted this campaign for the BRN. The campaign includes a dedicated landing page that highlights available services, digital ads to garner employer leads from Twitter and LinkedIn, and an Appointment Lab that sets up appointments to meet with high-value businesses that want to partner and utilize services.

The campaign also includes the research necessary to create the ideal customer profile, along with key message points to use in engaging employers. The campaign launched in early February 2022, and so far, the targeted outreach to 679 companies has yielded a 53% open rate of the invitation to connect – that’s 34% higher than industry benchmarks. Of the 364 companies that opened the invitation and/or clicked on an ad, approximately 13% have asked to be contacted, and eight high-value appointments have been established in just two weeks.

“Our campaign focus is to coordinate employer engagement efforts with our BRN team members and to make sure companies have the resources they need to recover and grow,” said SCCWDB Director Andy Stone. “The digital ads, coupled with the Appointment Lab, eliminate the effort, time and resources it takes for effective outreach, so the BRN team members can instead focus on developing and nurturing these businesses to gain new market share, all without adding additional staff.”

Leaders of the Behind Every Employer campaign are allowing local workforce and education organizations to leverage the brand and work with Full Capacity Marketing to create a local lead generation campaign, just as SCCWDB is doing.

If you are a workforce or education organization looking to step up your employer engagement efforts, get more information or contact us for a consult at https://behindeveryemployer.org/join-the-movement.

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