As a career navigator, you can't address all of your client's needs on your own. Community partnerships and collaborations are vital to your success and most importantly, to achieving successful outcomes for the people you serve. In this module, building community partnerships, you will learn to recognize ways career navigators are central to building and maintaining sustainable partnerships that can support career development work. By the end of this module, you will be able to, explain how to engage businesses for talent pipeline opportunities, explain how to engage with stakeholders, identify sources of funding for participants. You'll start off by focusing on partnership outreach. By the end of this video, you'll be able to explain the role of community partner stakeholders within career development organizations, as well as be able to practice steps to build community partnerships. Community partnerships bring a wide range of value to your clients and career development activities. Stakeholders and the public sector provide wraparound services to make sure that client basic needs are being met and that their rights are protected. The business sector can often provide talent pipeline opportunities and access to training unavailable elsewhere. Beyond the public and business sectors, there are other potential partners whose interests may include expertise such as legal consultancy, administrate, accounting, IT or other community partnerships that could significantly impact your organization's initiatives. While each sector can provide a range of technical, human, knowledge, physical and financial resources, cross-sector partnerships can bring the community together to achieve a common vision which is to build sustainable workforce development and a more stable society. The process of identifying partners starts by conducting a gap analysis within your own organization. By identifying what is missing from your own organization's training needs and talent pipeline, you are better equipped to identify what types of partners can add value to your organization. Next, research to find potential partners who could address the gaps you've discovered while still supporting their own organization's initiatives. Sometimes you won't have a choice about partners such as local government agencies. Whenever possible, however, engage stakeholders, explore your options and choose the ones that will benefit your initiatives and client needs the most. In all situations, however, it is important to be realistic about what the partnership is likely to achieve and to be open about the challenges involved. Of course, each partnership will follow its own unique development pathway. There are, however, steps to be aware of at important stages of partnership building that can help keep stakeholder engagement balanced and on course. The first phase is scoping and building the partnership. A key initial step in this phase is identifying partners based on the gap analysis completed within your own organization and workforce research. Engaging with stakeholders that you've determined could be a good fit to fill the gap is the next step which can ultimately lead to signing an agreement that includes planning milestones, goals, and expected outcomes of the collaboration. The second phase centers on managing and maintaining the partnership. The steps for this phase focus on implementation of the partnership agreement and include structuring, mobilizing and delivering on the partnership plan and signed agreement. The next phase involves measuring, reviewing and revising the agreements that have been made to evaluate the success of the partnership and determine if the goals and outcomes are being met. Measuring and reviewing is vital to informing the fourth phase of partnership building, sustaining. In this phase, both parties need to evaluate if they need to move on or if the collaboration has been beneficial and thus both parties should begin planning for future continued collaboration. All partnerships face challenges. Community partnerships are no different. In order to work together and overcome inevitable challenges that may come up, partners can focus on three core principles; equity, transparency and mutual benefit. Equity leads to respect for the added value each party brings. Transparency leads to trust that creates a relationship in which partners are more willing to innovate and take risks. Mutual benefit leads to engagement, which is more likely to sustain and build relationships over time. These principles can provide the foundation where the partnership can be built then as things progress, they continue to provide the cement that holds the partnership together over time. Successful engagement and partnership with stakeholders takes a range of skills and experience. Some will come naturally to you and some will take more practice. No matter what path you take to engage new stakeholders and build successful collaborations with them, the benefits to your clients will be worth the journey. The content in this course is based on information from The Partnering Toolbook produced by The Partnering Initiative.
