On Tuesday, the Colorado Workforce Development Council unveiled its 2025 Colorado Talent Pipeline Report and included in it the two- and five-year plans for workforce development coming out of the Opportunity Now Regional Talent Summits. In doing this, the CWDC brought to fruition the important first phase of an effort that the Colorado Chamber of Commerce helped launch to boost skilled talent in the state.
The Chamber, along with Colorado Succeeds and several other partners formed the Education to Employment Alliance in 2023 to try to close the gap between the skills that employers need and the skills that in-state job seekers were presenting. One of the key recommendations in the alliance’s October 2023 report was the creation of regional talent-development goals and action plans via a series of meetings between employers and educators.
In 2024, members of that alliance helped to write and pass House Bill 24-1365, which outlined how the regional-talent summits would work and funded those events. Then from February to June of this year, the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade put on summits in seven areas of the state, drawing 500 business and public partners offering their thoughts on what changes were needed.
Since the conclusion of the summits, regional action committees — many of which featured local chambers or businesses — have been meeting to turn the suggestions from the summits into actionable plans. Those two- and five-year plans, rolled out Tuesday, include 232 tactics for how to increase the pipeline of workers into nine key industries on a region-by-region basis and assign to various government and private-sector partners the responsibility of accomplishing those goals.
The Colorado Chamber — particularly Ed Sealover, our vice president of strategic initiatives — was at the table throughout this process. We were a leader in the E2E Alliance, helped to write the enacting legislation for the summits, worked to get businesses to the summits and helped to organize the events, including leading some of the breakout groups there.
Workforce development is one of the four focus areas of our Vision 2033 plan, particularly as the lack of skilled talent consistently ranks in our annual member surveys as one of the top three barriers to company expansion. As these new strategies begin to take root in conjunction with other work that we are doing in this area, we believe that employers will not have to search as hard to find skilled talent, and we also believe it will be easier for them to partner with schools on necessary workforce training.
The Chamber is already scheduling meetings with state leaders to determine what steps it can take next to ensure that employers are involved in the enactment of these tactical plans and are able to voice their needs throughout the process. If you have particular things that you would like to see coming from the plans, please contact Ed at [email protected], and he’s be happy to work with you on them.