Benefits

Jobs to Careers benefits workers and their families, helps employers retain talented and committed staff members, and ensures that patients receive the highest-quality care.

Jobs to Careers produces benefits for frontline workers, their employers, educational institutions, and health care consumers. The profiles of each partnership detail these benefits, along with the specific outcomes that result from Jobs to Careers.

Benefits to Frontline Workers

For frontline workers, Jobs to Careers brings financial rewards, new opportunities for career and skill development and further education, and improved self-confidence and job satisfaction.

Financial Rewards: By participating in Jobs to Careers, frontline employees typically increase their earnings, either through a job promotion, as a reward for assuming greater responsibilities in a current job, or after transitioning from part-time to full-time work. They also may receive financial incentives for completing coursework and benefit from employer-paid tuition assistance and paid release time.
Skill and Career Development: As one of the most important outcomes of Jobs to Careers, frontline workers acquire new knowledge and skills to take on additional job tasks, improve their job performance, and advance to higher-level careers. They also gain a better understanding of the issues facing their clients, enabling them to negotiate challenges at work better.
Higher Education: Through Jobs to Careers, frontline workers obtain industry-recognized credentials while earning academic credits toward a college degree. Often, they achieve many of these educational gains without attending classes on a college campus, through a mix of work-based learning, classroom instruction at the workplace, and distance learning.
Improved self-confidence: Frontline workers cite increased self-confidence as their greatest reward for participating in Jobs to Careers. Workers become more confident in their ability to provide good patient care, navigate educational institutions, and master coursework. Having the skills to do their jobs well also reduces job stress.
Greater job satisfaction: Focus groups conducted before the launch of the Jobs to Careers initiative revealed that relationships between frontline workers and their immediate supervisors are often antagonistic. By teaching supervisors how to become effective mentors and coaches, Jobs to Careers helps ensure that frontline workers receive valuable support at the workplace. Consequently, workers report that supervisors treat them with more respect, give them greater responsibilities, and solicit their input about work tasks and patient treatment plans. Additionally, frontline workers recognize that their employers are investing time, staff, and money into their development. As a result, they feel more supported, more valued, and less cynical about the intentions of managers and the organization. This all contributes to higher job satisfaction.

Benefits to Employers

For health care employers, Jobs to Careers outcomes include higher worker retention, improved quality of care, and direct financial benefits.

Improved Staff Retention and Recruiting: Frontline workers receiving training feel more committed to their employers. This in turn can reduce costly turnover and high vacancy rates in critical jobs. And because frontline workers already know the workplace culture and procedures, they can step into new, higher-level jobs more easily and with fewer hours of orientation than new hires would need. In addition, health care organizations that invest in their workers are often recognized in the community as “preferred employers,” attracting higher quality jobseekers for available jobs.
Higher Quality Care: Jobs to Careers provides the tools for frontline workers to provide better care and service to patients. Through a skilled frontline workforce, health care organizations can address service gaps, improve patient satisfaction, and build a strong team of care providers.
Increased Revenue: A better skilled frontline workforce opens up opportunities to expand services, while improving staff productivity. Furthermore, reductions in staff turnover save money.

Benefits to Education Partners

For community colleges and other education partners, Jobs to Careers can mean higher enrollment and revenue, improved student outcomes, and new opportunities to develop programs and partnerships and initiate institutional reforms.

Higher Enrollment and Revenue: Work-based learning increases the number of students that health care education programs can serve, increasing revenue while lowering costs. Colleges can save money by delivering a significant portion of the curriculum at the work site. Further, by using qualified employer staff as adjunct faculty, they can lessen the need to find classroom space or hire additional full-time instructors.
Improved Student Achievement: Because Jobs to Careers supports its students well, program completion rates improve.
New Programs and Partnerships: By collaborating with health care organizations, colleges expand access to quality, affordable education and training in high-demand fields.
Initiating Institutional Changes: Through Jobs to Careers, colleges usher in institutional changes, such as awarding credit for workplace training and integrating adult basic education with technical coursework.

Benefits to Health Care Consumers

Through Jobs to Careers, patients have reported higher satisfaction with care and services delivered by frontline workers. For instance, higher-skilled nurse aides can help elderly residents of long-term care facilities avoid falls and injuries. Behavioral health counselors who gain certification are better equipped to lead addiction counseling sessions. And training frontline workers to become nurses and medical interpreters can help fill service gaps, so patients are more likely to receive the care they need in a timely and professional manner.