Authored By: Kia Wright, Executive Director, VOICES
Every community wants the same thing from its workforce: talented, motivated people who are prepared to grow, contribute, and stay. That kind of workforce doesn’t happen by accident. It is built through intentional investment in young people and in the systems that shape their pathways into employment.
I’ve spent years working alongside youth, employers, educators, and public agencies in Indiana, and one thing is clear. When systems are aligned, young people succeed. When they are not, even strong starts can be difficult to sustain.
We see it play out in familiar ways. A young person completes training. They show up ready to work. They are hired. And a few months later, the connection breaks. Not because of a lack of effort or ambition, but because the supports surrounding work were never designed to move in sync.
That gap between early success and long-term stability is where the real opportunity for systems to change lives.
Youth workforce conversations often focus on individual preparation. We talk about soft skills, punctuality, credentials, and professionalism. These are important. They matter to employers and to young people building confidence in the workplace. But they are not the whole picture.
Work does not exist in isolation from the rest of a young person’s life. Depending on their circumstances, a young person may also be navigating education or training requirements, family responsibilities, transportation logistics, housing transitions, health needs, or interactions with public systems. Some may encounter only one of these at a time. Others may move in and out of several over the course of a year.
None of this diminishes talent or potential. It simply reflects reality. Workforce systems that acknowledge this complexity are better positioned to support long-term success. Systems that ignore it often place the responsibility for coordination on the young person, without realizing it.
When employment doesn’t last, we tend to call it a workforce issue. More often, it is a signal that systems were not aligned to support continuity.
At VOICES, we reached a point where expanding programs alone no longer felt like progress. We saw young people thrive inside individual initiatives, then struggle when those initiatives ended and they were left to navigate the next step on their own.
The shift didn’t come from a new framework or pilot. It came from getting honest about the role we needed to play in the system.
We started paying closer attention to what was happening across the system. We identified where communication broke down between partners, where eligibility rules worked at cross-purposes, and where employers were ready to invest in young talent but lacked the support needed to retain them. We also saw young people meeting expectations yet still encountering barriers beyond their control.
These were not isolated issues. They were structural and required coordination rather than additional programs layered on top.
VOICES works at the intersection of multiple systems. We’re close to young people and collaborate with courts, employers, schools, workforce agencies, and funders. That vantage point lets us see how decisions in one space ripple across the others. We’re also intentional about evolving our role to better support our community and system partners. Today, much of our work is focused on:
Translating lived experience into insight systems can help us act on.
Convening partners for greater resource preservation and impact.
Identifying where policy and practice drift apart.
Supporting alignment that leads to durable workforce outcomes.
This is how inclusive youth workforce models take shape. Not through theory, but through coordination and shared responsibility.
Inclusive youth workforce models are not about adding more services. They are about changing how success is defined. That shift asks leaders to look beyond short-term placement and consider long-term stability. It means examining whether timelines are aligned, whether metrics reflect growth and retention, and whether funding supports coordination as much as activity.
When workforce readiness is understood as a systems outcome, responsibility is shared. Employers, educators, public agencies, and community partners all have a role in shaping pathways that work.
Across the country, employers are seeking talent while young people are eager for opportunity. Bridging that gap is not a question of motivation. It is a question of design.
Inclusive youth workforce models enable us to invest intentionally in homegrown talent and ensure young people have clear, supported pathways into the workforce. At VOICES, we are committed to helping make that alignment possible so young people, employers, and communities can all move forward together.
