Rebuilding Regional Talent Pipelines (RETAINs)

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

Imperial’s consultants help form and support regional public-private partnerships. Our focus is on solving local skills-jobs gap thereby strengthening regional economies. Our approach centers on community intermediaries known as RETAINs — Regional Talent Innovation Networks. RETAINs have many local brand names: ConxusNEO (Akron, OH), High School Inc. (Santa Ana, CA), the Vermillion Advantage (Danville, IL), the New North (18 counties in northeastern Wisconsin) and 1,000 other RETAINs across the United States.

A RETAIN acts as a broad non-profit intermediary linking businesses, educational institutions, unions, government agencies, and relevant non-profit groups. It acts as a catalyst to create a significantly updated talent pipeline for a 21st-century workforce. In the short term a RETAIN develops business-education partnerships that co-operate in creating training and education programs to fill local talent gaps. It also raises the productivity of current workers by initiating on-going employee reskilling. In the long term, a RETAIN updates local educational programs to better prepare more students and the current workforce for the rapidly changing job and career requirements of a high-tech economy.

Imperial assists with the creation or expansion of a RETAIN through a three-step AAA process: AWARENESS — ALIGNMENT— ACTION

AWARENESS — raising the community’s realization that the local education-to-employment system urgently needs reform.

ALIGNMENT — helping community leaders form a new collaborative vision of an updated talent-delivery system.

ACTION — establishing programs that provide local employers with the skilled talent they need.