Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas (TX) – Three-Year Strategic Plan
Challenge
Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas (WFSDallas) is the local workforce development board serving Dallas County, Texas. The county’s central role in the fast-growing Dallas-Fort Worth metro area—a national economic hotspot for business activity, corporate relocations, philanthropic connections, and technological innovation—drives employer demand for skilled talent across multiple industry sectors. At the same time, challenges like limited access to transportation and childcare remain persistent barriers to employment across all education levels, backgrounds, and skillsets. Difficulties faced by service providers in reaching underserved communities and building trust within high-need areas further complicate economic mobility in the region. To achieve its mission of connecting people to jobs, WFSDallas must step up both employer engagement and tailored support for workers.
Response
In June 2024, WFSDallas engaged TIP Strategies to prepare an organizational strategic plan in collaboration with the Board and staff leadership. While focused on a three-year horizon, the plan also reflected the Board’s aspirations and the organization’s current capacity. It reassessed WFSDallas’s mission and values in light of the Board’s new strategic direction and cast a new vision. Designed to serve as a roadmap for the organization’s next phase, the plan also acknowledged past progress and outlined short- and long-term strategies. WFSDallas identified elevating its services and further solidifying its position as a proactive, well-connected, and trusted partner as key outcomes of the planning process. The resulting framework focuses WFSDallas’s efforts in four key areas: jobseeker services, employer engagement, workforce leadership, and resource expansion. Throughout the planning process, the Board and staff helped identify current priorities, build on strengths, and sustain recent momentum. External stakeholders from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors contributed through roundtables and interviews. In addition, case studies of workforce boards in Texas and other states informed a review of best practices to model. Finally, to further strengthen WFSDallas’s data expertise, TIP also prepared a customized Job Quality and Access tool, delivered as an interactive data visualization, which compares occupational characteristics across Dallas County’s industry sectors.