Montana could invest more in training its workers – Idaho program ranked 9th in the country. Workforce training is an asset, not an expense.

Sometimes when government money is used to attract new business, the money disappears and the new business either fails or never shows up in the first place.

Not so with the state Business Workforce Training Act.

It is the grant program under which Centene eventually will get about $400,000 to help get its incipient Great Falls work force up to speed.

Under the program, the money isn’t provided up front, but rather after the jobs are in place.

"They create jobs and demonstrate the wages and costs before we release the money," said Gary Morehouse, assistant administrator of the Commerce Department’s Business Resources Division. In other words, he said, the money only gets advanced if the job creation is successful.

Businesses receiving grants under the state program must meet a number of job-creation criteria, including:

Full Story: http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051129/OPINION01/511290304/1014/OPINION

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Work Force Training Is Critical for Expanding Companies

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Institutes of higher education, including community colleges, are an ideal place to conduct work force training.

“We custom-build a training package that will allow a company to build a work force that will be able to start when the facility opens,” said Jerry Beck, president of the College of Southern Idaho (CSI) in Twin Falls, Idaho. “Then we continue our relationship to make sure the company has ongoing work force training.

CSI, a community college, was instrumental in Dell Computer Corp.’s decision to locate a technical support center in Twin Fall three years ago.

In less than a year after opening, Dell expanded the facility three times and now employs about 650 workers.

Even before it knew that the company interested in Twin Falls was Dell, CSI worked with the consultant representing the company to conduct an unannounced test of area high school students on their knowledge of technology. Students at CSI were also tested.

Beck described this type of testing as rare.

“The company wanted to know what kind of technological community we were and how many people had the skills necessary,” he said. “This got us in the running for the project.”

Once it became known that Dell was the company, college officials traveled to company headquarters in Austin, Texas, to see what skills people needed to have prior to going into Dell’s training.

Beck said a curriculum was written and training began even before Dell chose Twin Falls so it could be ready to open the facility on time.

“As a college, we took a risk,” he said.

The risk paid off. Today, Dell is one of the largest employers in Southern Idaho and uses two classrooms at CSI for its training.

Not an Expense, But an Asset

Beck said that work force training, once perceived as simply a cost of doing business, has undergone a metamorphosis in the eyes of company executives. It stems from the belief that facilities need to be profitable instantaneously.

“That’s the expectation of companies,” Beck said. “That is a huge difference in working with CEOs of companies that are relocating.”

Staying on top of work force training can be difficult in these times. Employees don’t stay with same company for years like they did in the past, and employers are constantly changing their mix of products and processes.

That raises the stakes even more for work force training.

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Companies expect their new facilities to be profitable immediately, and a trained labor pool is part of that objective. Also included is a comprehensive chart, with points of contact, for major work force training incentive programs in each of the 50 states.

The amount of time before a company expects to have a return on its investment on a new facility has been reduced to virtually nothing. Not so long ago, when a company began operations in a new facility, it gave itself a window of 90 days where workers were trained and the bugs were worked out in the production process.

On the 91st day, the company expected to start generating profits from operations at the plant.

Today, companies launch their operations on the assumption that the new facility will be profitable from the first day.

Chart of State Work Force Training Programs http://www.expansionmanagement.com/smo/DocReserve/DocReserve_Content/WorkForce%20Chart.pdf

By: Ken Krizner, Managing Editor

Full Story: http://www.expansionmanagement.com/smo/newsviewer/default.asp?cmd=articledetail&articleid=16743&st=3