Welcome to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s TPM Academy® curriculum. This introduction is designed to familiarize you with the Talent Pipeline Management (TPM) initiative and to orient you toward the curriculum that you are about to explore.
TPM® started in 2014 as an effort to mobilize the business community to close the skills gap by applying lessons learned from supply chain management to education and workforce partnerships. If employers play an expanded leadership role as “end-customers” of a talent supply chain, they will be more effective at determining their most critical workforce needs, communicating those needs to trusted partners, and managing and improving performance.
Since 2014, the Chamber Foundation has co-developed and field-tested a set of strategies that, when implemented together, make for an end-to-end talent management approach. These strategies are intended to address what has been the missing piece—or weakest link—in many public-private partnerships, namely effective and sustained employer engagement and leadership. What these strategies provide is a systematic framework for how employers can engage in collective action regarding common workforce needs, better organize and share data related to those needs, and proactively engage talent-sourcing providers to build high-performing internal and external talent pipelines that perform well in a cost-benefit analysis, including a measurable return on investment, for learners and employers.
This need to enhance the employer’s role in public-private partnerships has resulted in the creation of the TPM Academy, for which this curriculum was created. The Chamber Foundation considers this a living document, updated based on lessons learned from the field and contributions made by TPM practitioners. As the TPM movement grows, so will the resources available to the network. While this curriculum provides a structured framework and guide, it is also meant to be customized based on each community’s unique needs and challenges.
The curriculum is composed of a TPM orientation and six strategies. The orientation is designed to familiarize you with what TPM is—and is not—and provides a self-assessment to determine whether the TPM approach is the right fit for your organization and community. The orientation can also determine your readiness to implement a TPM Academy to build employer capacity to execute TPM in your community.
In addition, the orientation explores options for where to start when building talent pipelines to address current and future needs. Options include starting with upskilling initiatives that better prepare current workers for success in new, emerging, or changing job roles and for career advancement. These upskilling initiatives would focus first on building the internal side of the talent pipeline, including career advancement for current workers to fill the most critical job openings. Another option is to start with a focus on improving the number and quality of new hires coming from provider partners. This would focus on the external side of the talent pipeline.
No matter where you choose to start, TPM encourages you to gather data and make decisions based on that data. The resulting end-to-end talent pipelines can include both internal upskilling and external new hire strategies. These pipelines can be designed to address a wide range of priorities including increasing the number and quality of new hires and promotions, improving retention, and meeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals. Much more than a curriculum, the TPM Academy is also supported by a national network of peer practitioners and a set of web tools that are designed to facilitate implementation of the six strategies regardless of where you decide to start when building talent pipelines.
Should you not have an existing employer-led collaborative in place, Strategy 1 starts with identifying one or more challenges and focus areas and from there guides you through organizing and launching one or more collaboratives of your own.
Next, Strategies 2–4 provide a systematic process for employers to gather and share their workforce data in a format that can facilitate new career pathway partnerships or improve existing ones. Strategies 5–6 are designed to help employer-led collaboratives put their data to work by co-designing internal and/or external talent pipelines, making them more resilient to external disruptions and shocks like an economic recession or a pandemic, and continuously improving them with trusted provider partners.
Whether you decide to forge your own path and make use of the TPM Academy curriculum as a complementary resource, are participating in the Chamber Foundation’s TPM Academy, or are interested in launching a TPM Academy for your region, state, or industry, the TPM network stands ready to learn and evolve with you.
Are you ready to join the movement? If so, we hope you enjoy exploring the TPM Academy curriculum!
