Every year, states, workforce boards, foundations, chambers, and economic development organizations invest significant resources in understanding their labor markets. They study talent shortages, skills gaps, education and training pipelines, emerging industries, AI, economic mobility, youth employment, and the future of work.
The research is often excellent. A report is released, leaders gather to discuss the findings, a presentation is delivered, and the report is shared with partners. Then comes the question that should have been part of the conversation from the beginning: Now what?
Research Is Not the Finish Line
We have gotten very good at describing workforce challenges. We can identify occupations experiencing shortages, measure changing skill requirements, see where training supply does not align with employer demand, and understand which populations or industries are experiencing disruption. The harder part is determining what we should do differently because of that evidence.
If research shows employers are demanding skills that training programs are not teaching, that is more than a skills-gap finding. It raises questions about how programs are funded, approved, evaluated, and updated. If young people are struggling to find entry-level jobs that lead to economic mobility, documenting the decline is not enough. We should ask whether youth workforce investments, work-based learning, and career pathways reflect the labor market young people are actually entering.
The value of research is ultimately determined by the decisions it changes.
Closing the Research-to-Action Gap
Research organizations are typically asked to tell us what is happening. Policymakers and system leaders are then expected to determine what to do about it. Too often, there is little infrastructure connecting those two activities.
A workforce study may contain dozens of important findings, but a legislator needs to know the problem, why it matters, what action is being requested, what it will cost, and what outcome should be expected. A state agency needs to understand which programs should change, what funding can be used, and whether additional authority is necessary. A local workforce board needs to know what the evidence means for employer engagement, training investments, career services, and local planning.
That translation should not be an afterthought.
This is the idea behind the FORGE Framework™: Findings, Opportunities, Recommendations, Governance, and Execution. Start with what the evidence actually tells us. Identify where there is an opportunity to improve an outcome. Develop specific recommendations. Determine who has the authority to act and whether change requires legislation, funding, agency action, or simply different implementation. Finally, translate the strategy into what actually happens on the ground.
The principle behind FORGE is simple: don't stop at the finding.
We Don't Always Need Another Program
One of the most common responses to a new workforce challenge is to create a new initiative. New technology? Create a program. New industry? Create a program. New population challenge? Create another program.
Sometimes that is necessary, but states already operate enormous workforce and education infrastructures: WIOA, apprenticeship, Eligible Training Provider Lists, career and technical education, employer training funds, community colleges, short-term credentials, Workforce Pell, and economic development programs. Before building something new, we should ask whether the systems we already have can respond differently.
A study identifying emerging skill needs may not justify a new training program. It may justify changing how existing training dollars are prioritized. Research showing weak economic returns from certain pathways may not require a new accountability system. It may require using better labor market evidence within the systems already in place.
The goal should not simply be more workforce infrastructure. It should be making existing infrastructure more responsive to the labor market it is intended to serve.
Design Research With the Decision in Mind
Before commissioning the next workforce study, organizations should ask one simple question:
What decisions do we hope this research will help us make?
If legislators are the audience, build the research so findings can inform policy decisions. If agencies will use it, understand which programs and authorities could be affected. If local workforce boards will implement recommendations, make sure the analysis gives them something actionable. If the objective is a new state investment, identify the evidence policymakers will need to understand its purpose, beneficiaries, cost, and expected outcomes.
That does not mean deciding the recommendations before conducting the research. It means designing research with actionability in mind.
A workforce study should not reach its highest point of value on the day it is released. Six months later, we should be able to point to a funding decision that changed, a program that was redesigned, a policy that was introduced, or a workforce organization that started doing something differently.
We don't suffer from a lack of workforce information. We have more data, research, dashboards, and analytics available to decision-makers than ever before. Our next challenge is making better use of it.
So when the presentation ends and the final report lands in your inbox, there should be one more item on the agenda:
What are we going to do differently because of what we just learned?