The Florida Eight

The Florida Eight initiative is designed to help the eight economic development regions form or improve business retention teams, provide team resources and project communications otherwise not available, develop business retention strategic plans, help convene key team members, and help teams identify mutual and exclusive roles and responsibilities. Though the strategic plans must include some consideration of diversification in international markets, and lead to improvement of business retention and recruitment, and employment prospects for the workforce; RBTs will have broad latitude in seeking out and securing the right approaches, tools, and resources to get the job accomplished. Flexibilities may include: policy, collaboration, new approaches to incumbent industry data and trends, relationship management with incumbent industries, better utilization of existing or nascent tools, improved data collection, and/or sharing common resources cross-regions.

The Analysts’ Briefing will provide overview of the filing protocol and MOU development requirement for RBT applicants, as well as discussion of the resources that will be made available through the initiative, such as a virtual team ream website for each RBT. The application process for RBTs will be discussed during the briefing as well. Although the briefing will be digitally recorded for later playback, live participation is encouraged so that questions can be raised for all to learn in real-time.

Friday’s e-newsletter will include links to a deeper briefing packet about The Florida Eight, and I encourage you to watch for these details and also share with your regional partners and neighbors. Please share this SAVE-THE-DATE now with those in your region who may be interested in RBT leadership or participation, and reference additional details in the briefing packet <<insert here>> or online at www.workforceflorida.com.

The webinar briefing can be viewed HERE.