Message From Our Executive Director

Laura G. Sanders, Executive Director

Welcome to  Workforce Solutions!

Although the economy continues to show signs of improvement, questions continue to arise about America’s willingness and ability to compete in the global marketplace.  We are faced with many challenges as technology continues to increase and qualified workers decrease.  While every business faces these challenges, we must be most concerned about small businesses. They have larger obstacles and fewer resources.  We know that job growth for the foreseeable future will come from small business.  Our seven county area is comprised of approximately 4,000 employers with a population of 183,000.  It is imperative that we consider regional endeavors.  We must join together to keep our businesses in this region.  Education, Economic Developers and Workforce Professionals must work together to support businesses in our area and to attract new ones.

The quality of this area's workforce must improve.  Improvement begins with our youth.  With the help of State funds, United Way, corporate donations, and Communities In Schools funding, Workforce Solutions have staff on eleven school district campuses assisting and encouraging youth to stay in school. Students who entered High School with little hope of completing are now planning for college with scholarships.

We are assisting employers with their current workers by funding training to upgrade skill competencies.  In the health care field, we have funded Nurse Aids to become Licensed Vocational Nurses, and Licensed Vocational Nurses to become Registered Nurses. We have computer classes being provided to assist workers who need to improve their computer skills. We have and continue to fund training for existing chemical industry workers. We are assisting food industry workers with food handling and work ethic training. We are in the process of forming a consortium of employers to provide input for customer service curriculum development. If you are an employer who has employees who could benefit from customer service training, I welcome you to consider being a part of this. All of these training projects were developed with employer input.

The last resource I would like to share with you is our computerized assessment training software.  This is a new service and we have approximately twenty area businesses that have used it as a new employee selection tool. The employer chooses what skills they want the potential workers to possess.

If you would like more information about the many services we have to offer at Workforce Solutions, please feel free to contact one of our seven workforce centers.  Thank you for visiting our web site, and we look forward to serving your needs.