Employ Prince George’s, an industry leading workforce development 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting job seekers secure wage employment and assisting businesses to find skilled and qualified employees, proudly announces the launch of an ambitious, multi-year initiative designed to improve employment outcomes through an expansion of its career coaching services for area job seekers. In collaboration with education and career coaching nonprofit InsideTrack, the Prince George’s County-based workforce development organization will train its team of career advisors and coaches on evidence-based best practices in human-centered coaching to help understand the complex barriers and challenges to re-employment that often face people experiencing job loss or a career transition.
“Despite a tight labor market and low unemployment rate, we know that there are still too many working adults and families in our community that have been left behind, or out of, the regions Covid-19 recovery efforts the past two years,” said Walter Simmons, Employ Prince George’s President & CEO. “This is about moving beyond basic case management support for people in career transitions and using an evidenced based approach to truly understand and assist job seekers who are experiencing complex human, social, cultural, and economic challenges to achieving a livable wage and maintaining a middle-class household. It’s an example of the type of worker-centered innovation that can enable us to help every individual overcome obstacles facing them and to find gainful, meaningful, and sustainable employment.”
Founded in 2018, Employ Prince George serves over 25,000 job seekers and businesses annually in Prince George’s County, MD., which is home to close to a million residents in the densely populated suburbs of Washington, D.C. Over the course of the next 18 months, Employ Prince George’s will work with expert coaches and consultants from InsideTrack to train frontline staff and supervisors and to help them develop the coaching skills needed to help job seekers set goals, build a plan of action, navigate the job search, and overcome other barriers to securing employment.
InsideTrack’s evidence-based coaching methodology has been rigorously tested and refined over the course of more than twenty years, serving more than 2.9 million learners and workers. The coaching program with Employ Prince George’s is designed to help better serve the needs of the diverse population of working and job seeking adults in the County—one of the most diverse and largest by population size in the United States. Staff from Employ Prince George’s will begin to deploy a trauma-informed model of support, helping individuals to navigate difficult or traumatic circumstances such as the loss of income, illness, family caregiving responsibilities, language barriers, or workplace bias.
“In today’s economy, jobs are abundant, but opportunities for long-term economic and career advancement are unequally distributed,” said Mo McKenna, Associate Vice President of partner success at InsideTrack. “Building a more equitable and inclusive economy requires more than simply connecting people with the first available job. Instead, we need to understand the systemic barriers to economic mobility that too often stand in their way—and empower workers with the knowledge, confidence, and skill sets they need to succeed in the search process and to achieve their professional aspirations.”
Best known for pioneering the application of executive-style success coaching for students in higher education, InsideTrack has recently expanded its partnerships to serve a growing number of workforce development and training organizations, labor organizations, and public sector agencies. The organization draws on more than 20 years of experience in student success and support to provide a suite of offerings, ranging from retention coaching, career coaching, professional development and training, and other high-touch services designed to improve the success of learners and employees.
Since opening in 2018, Employ Prince George’s has successfully launched fourteen unique workforce development programs, expanded into multiple locations in Maryland, and founded Employ DMV to better serve customers across Maryland, DC, and Northern Virginia. In 2022, the National Association of Workforce Development Boards awarded the organization with the Trailblazer Award in recognition of its innovative approach and last month, CEP Simmons received the Workforce Professional of the Year Award from the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals in recognition of his individual accomplishments in leading the organization through its first five years of growth and impact.
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