Overview
The Sustainability Planning Tool is a set of worksheets that educators and employers can use to begin creating a long-term plan to maintain
and expand upon an initiative focused on the career advancement of incumbent workers. Developed from the practical experience of employer/educator partnerships funded through the Jobs to Careers initiative, this tool is relevant to workforce development efforts that are concerned with sustainability. An explicit focus of Jobs to Careers is to continue innovations and increased access to training opportunities made possible through the initiative.
The emphasis on sustainability is an ongoing concern for many workforce development practitioners, who want to know how the methods and practices developed during the course of a project can continue to improve the advancement opportunities of employees beyond those immediately targeted for services. Project managers can use the Sustainability
Planning Tool to engage senior leaders and others on the project team in identifying aspects of their work that can and should be sustained, and in identifying sources of revenue to sup- port the work going forward. Fiscal managers can obtain estimates of costs associated with sustaining particular components of the work.
Work teams can develop overarching plans and goals for moving their work forward.
Use this tool to engage senior leaders in your organization in a discussion about sustaining your project. As you work through the questions, think about the elements of yourcurrent project that you intend to sustain as they are and those that may change. Begin with a discussion about your vision for frontline employee development. Then work through each individual question in the chart. Be sure to think about the budgetary impact of each element you plan to sustain.
How To Use the Sustainability Tool
A project team needs to accomplish two activities before using this worksheet:
The second answer is necessary because the tool asks the project team to quantify the cost of each plan element they wish to sustain. The organizations in a partnership can only commit to sustaining the project and its costs when the costs can be compared with the project’s value.
Having answered these questions, the next step is to begin using the Sustainability Planning Tool
Worksheet 1: Setting the Vision
A clear vision is essential as a basis for determining what needs to be sustained. The worksheet asks the project team members to:
Worksheet 2: Implementing the Vision
Next, analyze elements of the project design and identify those elements that they intend to sustain as they are and those elements that may change. The elements in the worksheet include:
Worksheet 3: Sustainability Work Plan
Finally, based on the first two worksheets, develop a specific sustainability work plan. For each action step in the plan, identify the deliverables, a due date for completion of the step, and who will be responsible.