In the competitive global marketplace, those responsible for recruiting and retaining employees are using any advantage to help their organizations win the war for talent. They also are getting more and more frustrated with traditional talent recruitment means because many of those sources are not very fruitful in today’s environment.

Retaining employees is part of that challenge, and keeping employees skilled and ensuring they perform at a high level goes a long way toward retention efforts.

Since it was developed, workforce executives increasingly have been using the publicly funded workforce system, as my personal experience can attest. The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 was designed to coordinate most, if not all, of the federally funded workforce training programs.

One of the major aspects of the legislation was to create the nation’s one-stop career center systems. State and local workforce investment boards, which are business-led, are responsible for setting up policies that affect the operations of the states’ one-stop career center systems. One of their major goals is to help businesses find and retain workers. These systems are similar to other public career centers, although their goal is to be more business-focused.

How can talent managers access these centers and get them to help solve some of their talent issues?

In the beginning, when I was the chairman of the Washington D.C.-based Metro Tech IT Training program, I was skeptical about how a $20 million publicly funded training program could be managed through three states’ one-stop centers and satisfy the needs of businesses. Most public training program funds are allocated and spent with really no business involvement until the participants are trained.

So, the Metro Tech board (along with the Department of Labor) decided to change the standard model for funding workforce programs. We decided we needed to get the employers more involved in the beginning of the recruiting and training process.