St Nick’s Alliance WorkAdvance Program

The St. Nick’s Alliance WorkAdvance intervention was a sector program in environmental remediation and related occupations with wraparound services. Its goal was to help residents in the Williamsburg-Greenpoint neighborhoods of Brooklyn advance into careers that paid well, offered opportunities for advancement, and helped protect the environment and improve the quality of life of residents. St. Nick’s Alliance’s model focused on training first, which placed participants into training before engaging them in employment services.

St. Nick’s Alliance also adapted its services to meet industry and employer needs while keeping its focus on participants’ long-term career advancement and upward mobility.

During intake, staff thoroughly screened applicants, including through use of a drug test, to identify the candidates they believed were the most suitable for the intervention. To ensure participants were prepared and qualified for the skills training and potential occupations, staff evaluated participants’ level of motivation to be in the program and their likelihood of completion, assessed their reading and math literacy skills, and determined whether they met income eligibility requirements. About six months into implementation, St. Nick’s Alliance refined their screening process based on employer input by adding a criminal background check. Once participants enrolled in the program, they received the following core services:

• Work-readiness activities and soft-skills training. Participants completed sector-specific orientations and received coaching to help them develop goals and maintain progress toward their career advancement objectives. During a classroom-based career-readiness training, staff helped participants develop a résumé and cover letter and addressed transportation barriers. Participants also received training in interview skills and soft skills. Staff also showed them examples of performance reviews to help them understand how employers would evaluate their work once they found a job.
• Occupational or sectoral training. Participants could receive occupational skills training in sectors such as environmental remediation and pest control and could obtain up to five credentials. St. Nick’s Alliance offered the pest control training on-site and partnered with private schools that offered the other trainings off-site. Participants in the training program attended full-time classes on weekdays in cohort style groups and received occupational skills training concurrently with work readiness activities.
• Job development and job placement. Upon completing training, participants received assistance from two on-site job developers who facilitated one-on-one job matching of participants to employers within their designated industries and distributed their résumés in batches to employers in related fields.
• Employment retention and advancement services. Participants received various post-employment services to help them maintain and advance in their job, such as coaching on advancement goals, instruction on how to negotiate for higher wages, and case management to tackle barriers to retention. Staff developed a follow-up plan to maintain communication with participants and provided them with feedback from employers on their performance.

Staff dedicated substantial time to building rapport with participants by routinely visiting participants at their training sites and following up via email or phone to check on their progress. Staff also adjusted their approach to training when building relationships with employers by remaining attuned to their recommendations and feedback. For example, in response to the high demand for mold remediation skills after Hurricane Sandy, the service provider shifted its environmental remediation certificate to offer mold remediation technician training. St. Nick’s Alliance staff aimed to strengthen relationships with employers by ensuring participants had all the certifications required for any job to help the employer save time and resources. Staff maintained communication with employers weekly to identify job openings, conduct job matching, and follow up on previous hires. Employers also engaged in the WorkAdvance program by providing counseling on curricula and sector trends, serving as guest speakers in career-readiness classes, participating in mock interviews, and hosting visits by participants in their workplace.

The initial screening helped St. Nick’s Alliance identify applicants they believed were most adept, committed, and determined to be in the program. Six months into the program, the enrollment screening criteria became more stringent for the Environmental Remediation Technician program after adding a criminal background check and screening out those with . prior criminal justice involvement . This change was based on employers’ input. After the program experienced barriers to employment for participants with prior criminal justice system involvement, St. Nick’s Alliance changed some other program components during implementation. For instance, the provider received technical assistance from MDRC, a non-profit organization, to enhance its services and make the program more hands-on. The provider also began incorporating employer role-playing scenarios to help participants understand employer perspectives and improve their behavior and decision-making in the workplace. In addition, St. Nick’s Alliance began delivering messaging and language focused on advancement at the beginning of program services instead of waiting to talk about advancement until participants were employed.

Challenges. St. Nick’s Alliance had limited experience with sectoral approaches, which affected the intervention’s implementation. The organization needed considerable MDRC technical assistance for more than a year to implement the program and enhance staff capacity. St. Nick’s Alliance previously offered some skills training on environmental remediation but not as extensively and robustly as needed for the WorkAdvance program. The organization had to expand its occupational skills training program to include a broader set of careers that emphasized advancement, including pest control technician and hazmat driver. When it came to advancement, job developers had difficulty finding permanent employment with advancement potential for participants in environmental remediation because the industry had a high concentration of short-term, project-based work. Moreover, the service provider found it challenging to engage study participants in the career-readiness classes because of the prolonged wait time (up to three months or more) between the time of enrollment and the start of the class, which was provided simultaneously with the occupational skills training courses. It took time for St. Nick’s Alliance to find the appropriate training providers that met employers’ needs and to establish a formal partnership to enroll participants into their training courses. This delay caused a bottleneck in service delivery from participants waiting to start training and increased drop-off rates.