Ideagen Global - Catalyze Magazine, March 2023

CREATING STRONG
WORKFORCE
INITIATIVES
With Ernest Dupont, Executive Director,
Workforce Initiatives, CVS Health
George: What advice, Ernie, would you provide to
other companies looking to build a strong, robust,
successful workforce initiatives element in their
company?
Ernest: That's a great question, George, and it's
one I get quite a bit, and it's really the same answer
every time. There's one primary thing that's most
important, and that is thinking through a long-term
lens and not a short-term series of wins. When we
started the workforce initiatives work that we do
today at scale, it began with a persistence around
creating these partnerships and looking for
common ground around mission and purpose with
communities and community organizations. So
often, and in our experience early on, we hit a brick
wall and didn't go any further with a multitude of
different partnerships that we had initiated during
that timeframe. It took a great level of persistence.
It took some foresight about not giving up on
what's important, and that is those individuals that
are underserved and those individuals that perhaps
just by the nature of the zip code they grow up in,
don't have the same resources that we all may have
had as young people. It's critically important that
anybody interested in moving forward with a
program like this that they take a long-term view.
It took us 3 to 5 years to start to hit some of the
outcomes we wanted through the course of our
work, and it is based on the relationships and
common purpose we build. We started small and
weren't looking for big numbers early on. If you
can do that and stay true to the purpose, it's
critically important. Another thing that I would
add, George, is that there are oftentimes things
that become shiny objects along the way that
can pull your attention away from the true heart
of the work we're trying to accomplish. I think
it's critically important to stay focused on what
the work is, and that's helping to transition
people through non-traditional pipelines of
talent to success.
It goes back to our aspirational goals, which are
breaking the cycle of poverty and recognizing
that every individual has potential and the ability
to realize that potential if they're given the right
tools. So if a company is interested in doing
something like this, I'd love to talk with them.
We think the more companies involved in this
work, the better because it's helping
communities robustly across the country.
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