Our Approach

“Guiding leaders and their communities in creating a new jobs and skilled talent era”

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing severe turmoil in labor markets as some employment sectors need to rapidly increase their workforce and others are furloughing or laying off employees. This is creating a new job-skills crisis as many workers need retraining to meet the skill demands of vacant jobs or entry-level job training for newly created positions. Schooling at all levels also has been disrupted with a likely degradation in the quality of educational achievement. Yet the increased adoption of automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence will further boost skill requirements for the rest of this decade and beyond.

Imperial’s consultants help form and support regional public-private partnerships we term Regional Talent Innovation Networks (RETAINs). They assist in the development of new leadership and in devising innovative approaches to solving the current employment crisis. Imperial seeks to involve business people, educators, union leaders, parents, government officials, and community organizations in forming a new vision of how their regional talent development system will work.

RETAINs build bridges that connect people to jobs. RETAINs are created or expanded through a three-step AAA Process: AWARENESS — ALIGNMENT — ACTION.

STEP 1. AWARENESS

• Why has COVID-19 increased the importance of providing updated training and education programs to students and workers at the regional and national level?
• How and where are RETAINs rebuilding local job pipelines?

STEP 2. ALLIGNMENT

• Who are the community leaders who need to cooperate in building or expanding a RETAIN?
• How can our proven strategies help them collaborate to build their new workforce vision?

STEP 3. ACTION

• What education/skill-building programs does your RETAIN need?
• Who will offer them and how will personnel be recruited or assessed?
• Where will they be offered?
• How will they be funded?
• When will they begin?
• How will the results be measured?

Imperial is ready to assist you through the entire 3-step RETAIN process or any one of the steps that you currently need. This might include regional workforce summits, leadership workshops, or program planning.

Imperial believes that we can move regions beyond the current jobs crisis into a decade of increased opportunity through forming partnerships focused on developing the skills and education required for employment in a 21st-century global economy. This includes offering ongoing education/training updates to the current workforce and providing students with better educational foundations for the career areas of today and tomorrow.

Imperial also consults with individual businesses, government entities, educational institutions, and organizations on how to solve talent shortages.