Opinion in Crain's Chicago: Getting new hires in the door is only half the workforce challenge

Excerpt below, read the full opinion piece in Crain’s Chicago.

Chicago has spent years building stronger talent pathways and that work matters now more than ever. Across the region, employers and civic institutions have invested heavily in apprenticeships, earn-and-learn models, credentialing programs and career pathways. The Chicago Apprentice Network, launched in 2017 by Accenture, Aon and Zurich North America, now has dozens of companies across multiple industries. City Colleges of Chicago has become a more visible part of the region’s workforce infrastructure. Public and private dollars are flowing into the pipeline.

Chicago’s workforce development infrastructure has earned national attention. The region is competing for growth across technology, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity and clean energy. Workforce development funding is increasingly tied to outcomes beyond enrollment, which means post-placement retention is becoming a funding question, not just an HR question. If publicly funded talent pipelines are producing graduates who leave within the first year because the workplace culture was not ready for them, the region is not just losing employees. It is losing the return on a workforce strategy that took years and millions of dollars to build.

The next phase of Chicago’s workforce strategy should not only ask how to build the pipeline. It should ask whether workplace culture is converting that pipeline into performance. That is a different conversation. It requires employers to look honestly at what happens after placement and to treat first-year attrition not as a hiring failure but as a signal that the conditions inside the organization need the same investment as the conditions outside it.