WhereWeGo, a leading workforce technology company founded by former educators, today announced the launch of WhereWeGo Labs, a new initiative to build fast, free workforce tools around real problems workers and workforce organizations face every day.
The initiative responds to a growing gap in the workforce ecosystem: too often, tools are slow to build, expensive to maintain and ultimately underutilized after launch. The workforce field generates an enormous amount of research, reports and strategy documents, but relatively few lightweight tools that translate those ideas into practical use for workers. AI now makes it possible to build those tools much faster and cheaper. WhereWeGo Labs will launch new workforce tools every 30 days and is inviting workers, workforce practitioners, training providers and partners to suggest problems the team should tackle next.
“Everyone recognizes the need to fill jobs in high-growth industries like advanced manufacturing, yet most people would struggle to name even three of the roles in that field,” said Ben Ifshin, co-founder and CEO of WhereWeGo. “That is exactly the kind of gap WhereWeGo Labs is built to tackle. We’re launching fast, building in public, and inviting workers, practitioners, and partners to tell us what problems we should solve next.
Founded by two former public high school teachers, WhereWeGo has built digital platforms that have helped more than three million Americans explore careers, training programs and career pathways. The company’s work spans multiple regions and partners, with a focus on connecting workers, employers and training providers.
WhereWeGo Labs is built around two core goals: showing that useful workforce tools can now be built faster and more affordably, and tackling real problems faced by workers and workforce organizations whether or not they fit a traditional business case.
Initial tools currently in development, along with examples of the kinds of problems the WhereWeGo Labs initiative is designed to tackle, include:
- Training Program Navigation for Mississippi: Workers often struggle to find clear, trustworthy information about local training options. This tool helps people explore Mississippi training programs through a searchable, filterable experience built around the questions real workers are actually asking.
- Industry Clarity Score: Some industries have major opportunities, but from a worker’s perspective they can still feel opaque, fragmented or hard to enter. This tool evaluates how clear an industry is for workers by assessing barriers to entry, visibility into roles and pathways, and how easy it is to understand the steps needed to get started.
- “Am I Cooked?”: As AI reshapes the labor market, many workers have little clarity about whether their role is vulnerable or what to do next. This interactive tool helps individuals assess career risk and identify adjacent pathways using the latest research on AI-driven job displacement.
- Workforce Pell Eligibility Check: Many training providers and institutions are trying to understand whether their programs may qualify under emerging Workforce Pell guidelines. This tool helps them quickly assess eligibility questions in a policy environment that is still evolving.
- Can a Mom Actually Work Here: Many workplaces say they support families, but workers with caregiving responsibilities often face hidden barriers in practice. This tool helps organizations evaluate how supportive their workplace is and identify concrete ways to improve.
The launch of WhereWeGo Labs builds on the company’s broader approach: combining research, user data and real-world application to create light and easy-to-use tools that help to connect individuals with the right training and career pathways.
“When you build out in the open, you give your products a chance to evolve and get tangible feedback from real workers and practitioners,” said Leah Lykins, co-founder and chief product officer of WhereWeGo. “Our approach is to act fast, embrace imperfection and use real-world feedback to refine our tools. This means that we have a much greater chance of solving the problems that are real barriers for workers and those who try to serve them.”
The company’s latest report, informed by years of platform data, user behavior insights and work with workforce organizations across the country, highlights ongoing challenges in career navigation, training discovery and system complexity. WhereWeGo Labs extends that work by putting those insights into practice.
WhereWeGo invites workers, training providers, workforce organizations and other partners to explore the first WhereWeGo Labs tools and submit ideas for future builds. To learn more, visit labs.wherewego.org.
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