Providing training to meet current industry standards

To increase the skills capacity of the community, the St. Cloud Printing Families Forward project decided to buy two simulators for printing presses, which would allow a company to train press operators on trouble shooting issues without impacting the company's production. The St. Cloud Printing project decided to use 40,000 dollars of grant money to pay for the simulators, and the company offered to pay the Saint Cloud Technical College 22,500 dollars for training its press operators on the equipment. In turn, the Saint Cloud Technical College would purchase the simulators through the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation with 22,500 dollars of its own money and the 40,000 dollars from the St. Cloud Printing Families Forward project. Through this initiative, the St. Cloud Printing Families Forward project will help to build the capacity of the Technical College. The company will also be doing marketing for the training offered through the technical college because the training on the simulators will be done at the company's plant for six weeks, which will allow more visibility of the Technical College to the company's employees.

To the GWDC Families Forward staff team, this sounded like the exact type of partnering activities the GWDC had been promoting over the last few years; get businesses involved and have them help pay for training or equipment. However, this is not where the example ends. Trouble arose when the partners discussed the curriculum that needed to be developed / updated to provide training on the simulators. The training is something employers need for their employees to ensure their employees are skilled, and the technical college is willing to provide the training. However, the funds for developing the curriculum are not available, which creates an obstacle for moving this much needed initiative forward. This issue has not been fully resolved. However, the Saint Cloud Technical College, Stearns-Benton WorkForce Center, and the company are all working together to determine a solution.

Staffing to meet employers' needs when they need something

When the Stearns-Benton WorkForce Center began the Families Forward project, the Job Service staff were supposed to administer WorkKeys assessments to potential Quebecor World, Inc. hires. The WorkForce Center would then sell the assessments to other companies, which would provide a revenue source for the WorkForce Center. When Quebecor World, Inc. began their hiring process, they wanted the assessments done immediately because new employees were desperately needed on the plant floor. However, the WorkForce Center did not have the staff available to immediately serve those people and attempted to schedule the assessments a week or more out. The economy had dipped into a recession; the number of customers frequenting the WorkForce Center had risen; and, budgets had decreased. All of which impacted the ability of the WorkForce Center to serve this particular business, and presumably other businesses as well, in the timeframe necessary for meeting their needs. Quebecor World, Inc. was then trained to do their own assessments, and the WorkForce Center lost a potential funding source.

Today the assessments are used by the WorkForce Center to increase the quality of their referrals to Quebecor. WorkForce Center staff administer the assessments to clients who are interested in working at Quebecor, and referrals are made if a person's skills meet that employer's needs. By doing this, the WorkForce Center is certifying the person's qualifications and changing the negative perception that employer may have had of the quality of job candidates served through the WorkForce Center.

This is a potential enhanced service by the WorkForce Center if and when more employers would access Job Service's ability to profile their jobs using WorkKeys.

For those current employees at Quebecor who do participate in the Workkeys assessment and who have identified areas which need improvement, there is an online service "KeyTrain" available through this system (ACT) to provide remediation and retesting.