How Employ Milwaukee Uses Outcomes-Focused Software to Amplify Impact and Diversify Funding

With Social Solutions’ case management technology, this workforce development agency can measure outcomes to inform decisions, apply best practices and demonstrate impact.

Employ Milwaukee is a workforce development board that coordinates career services through funded partners for specific populations in the greater Milwaukee area. Staff work to provide adults and youth with the knowledge to make informed career decisions, gain skills, find work and move up in their careers—ultimately leading to economic self-sufficiency. Employ Milwaukee provides employment training through one-stop career centers where participants can access multiple programs and receive various services all in one place. The agency aims to develop workforce solutions that promote regional economic growth and employment opportunities for all job seekers.

While the agency was seeing significant growth, Employ Milwaukee program leaders wanted to gain a deeper understanding of program performance to determine how they could be more successful and, in turn, empower their participants to succeed even more.

To truly understand program performance, Employ Milwaukee’s Workforce Investment Board (WIB) leaders needed an innovative set of outcome-driven tools that connect with the state reporting system and allow collaboration between programs and providers to track results effectively. Employ Milwaukee turned to Social Solutions software to accommodate their wide-range data tracking and reporting needs so that the agency could advance from counting outputs to demonstrating outcomes.

Moving Beyond Outputs to Increase and Diversity Funding

Social Solutions technology enables Employ Milwaukee to develop a robust, single-software solution capable of coordinating service delivery and aggregating reporting for nearly 70 funded entities. The technology allows the agency to provide evidence-based data for funders and drastically reduces the time staff members spend on data entry and administrative tasks.

“[Social Solutions] software helps us reduce the ramp-up time for new programs drastically—what used to take us a year or more now takes our agency weeks.”

Bruce Wantuch, Data Manager, Employ Milwaukee

Social Solutions has helped Employ Milwaukee streamline operations and utilize historical data to anticipate where dollars have the most impact and identify the community’s unmet needs. To determine how to allocate funding for each participant, Employ Milwaukee can now tie funding streams to services received. These capabilities allow Employ Milwaukee to drive results, improve service delivery, and diversify, increase and manage funding more effectively. Within Social Solutions software, staff can track the services received for each participant and determine funding and reporting needs. This is especially important as co-enrollment between multiple funding streams becomes more common among Employ Milwaukee participants. This functionality empowers Employ Milwaukee to stand out to funders. They can provide specific reports detailing how their dollars have been used and show the success rates of funded participants from day one.

Demonstrating Outcomes to Amplify Impact

By exploring their data-driven outcomes, Employ Milwaukee can manage resources more effectively and enhance service delivery. At times, they have had to contend with unstable funding and WIA dollars being cut or delayed, resulting in limited resources for programs. In those instances, Employ Milwaukee uses historical information to determine which training sessions and sectors provide maximum impact per dollar and allocate resources to those areas first.

In one case, a GED program offered in conjunction with Milwaukee Public Schools, which allows GED candidates to receive a standard high school diploma, was fully funded but inadequately attended. Rather than returning unused dollars or failing the contract, Employ Milwaukee was able to identify the need to boost attendance and provide logistical resources to turn the program around and make it a success.

Equipped with the right software, Bruce and his team are now better positioned to allocate funds to drive the most impact. Social Solutions is proud to help Employ Milwaukee empower its participants with valuable opportunities while also amplifying economic growth and inspiring real change in their communities.