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Workforce Elements

The components of the Workforce Vector are termed the Workforce Elements. The nearly 40 elements fall into five broad business and Human Resource categories:

  1. Increasing the output of your current employees;

  2. Retaining your current employees;

  3. Hiring individuals who are not employed, under-employed, or unemployed;

  4. Attracting individuals employed by others; and

  5. Building your future workforce.

Broad descriptions of the five categories are described below. Detailed definitions of the ~40 workforce elements can be found here.

The Workforce Elements table, broken into five categories.

1. Employee Output: The first workforce category involves increasing the productivity of your current employees so you can reduce the number of new employees you need to hire. These productivity enhancements are split into three elements. a) Continuous Improvement - Improving processes using tools like Lean to increase the output of staff. b) Automation (Other) - Task support machines, like consumer robots, decision support software, sensors, exoskeletons, etc., that help staff incrementally increase output. c) Automation (Robotics) - Industrial automation systems that are replacing staff so they can work in other areas of the organization.

2. Retention: The second category covers the retention of current employees, which reduces the need to hire new employees. There are three elements in the retention category. a) Employee Retention - Reducing the number of team members that are quitting and those being discharged (fired). b) Layoffs - Individuals being laid off because of non-steady demand for products or services, but may need to be replaced at some point in the future. c) Out-migration - Individuals quitting and then moving out of the county. These individuals are included in the workers who have left an organization but are examined separately because special strategies may need to be implemented to successfully retain these individuals in the community.

3. Not in the Labor Force: The third category includes individuals who are not working. They are broken into two broad groups. a) Individuals categorized by age. A few age brackets are further split based on gender and status as a student. b) Individuals categorized in some way that typically crosses age brackets. Examples include individuals with a disability, individuals recently incarcerated, individuals with incomes below the poverty level, Latinos, veterans, and volunteers. These are studied separately because: i) they may need to have subset-specific accommodations addressed before finding suitable employment; or ii) special strategies may need to be developed to succeed at recruiting this sub-group of individuals.

4. Employed Elsewhere: The fourth category includes individuals employed elsewhere, often outside the county. They are broken into three broad groups. a) Individuals typically employed outside the county. This includes individuals who could in-commute to a job in your county and those who may be persuaded to stop out-commuting to a job in a nearby county. It also includes remote workers - individuals at a primary work location different from the normal place of business in the county. b) Migrators - Individuals who are migrating to your county for employment from another county in your state (in-state migration), another state (out-of-state migration), and another country (international migration and refugees). c) Individuals employed in the county. This includes contract employees (Gig workers, Temp workers, ...), converting part-time employees to full-time status, poaching employees from competitors, hiring individuals who want a second job, and enticing local small business owners to transition away from self-employment.

5. Future Employees: The fifth category involves developing your future workforce pipeline. This could involve a variety of strategies like school partnerships, tours of businesses, and participation in youth development activities. We include three elements in this K-22 category: a) Apprenticeship programs;  b) Internships; and c) Youth programs that include skills development on topics like leadership, public speaking, and problem-solving. This work focuses on Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H, and First Lego League.

​After individuals are split into these ~40 different elements, we proceed to quantify the potential to increase the labor pool of each. This is termed the Workforce Potential. 

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