Two grant programs for work-force training, one offered through Ulster Community College and the other through the state Department of Labor, are enabling Ulster County businesses to operate more efficiently ”“ a critical requirement in today”™s global economy.
Deborah O”™Connor, associate dean for continuing and professional education at the college, works closely with companies to identify their specific needs, so that the training in many instances is customized to the firm. “The need for training is amazing,” she said. “While most of the time learning can be informative, sometimes it can”™t. For instance, when companies have more complicated processes. That”™s particularly true in the medical and manufacturing industries, which need constant development.”
Indeed, Frank Falatyn, president of Fala Technologies, a firm in the town of Ulster that manufactures machines for the semiconductor industry, said that his biggest worry is getting qualified workers. In the past, Falatyn found a ready source of qualified workers who formerly worked for IBM, which closed its Kingston facility in the early 1990s, but now much of that talent pool is on the verge of retiring. “We”™re beginning to have difficulty finding people locally,” he said, noting that his company”™s highly technical processes require a very specific skill set. The grant programs have “sustained us for the last 10 years.”
O”™Connor works with Nancy E.K. Schaef, director of the Ulster County Office of Employment and Training and director of the Ulster County Workforce Development Board, who in turn partners with BOCES and other agencies, as well as economic development groups such as Ulster County Development Corp. and chambers of commerce, to identify the area”™s work-force needs. She also looks at broad regional trends to anticipate future work force demand so the region can stay competitive in attracting new companies.
When Fleet Bank (now Bank of America) opened a tax-processing center at TechCity more than a decade ago, O”™Connor”™s office worked in tandem with the bank to provide data-entry training. Right now, “we”™re tentatively working on various entry-level manufacturing-type training for the solar energy industry,” she said, citing response to the creation of The Solar Energy Consortium, a private-public partnership seeking to bring in solar energy companies to the area. Having a qualified work force is one of the keys to the initiative”™s success and O”™Connor is establishing “what type of programming we can do to make sure people are trained in the skills they need.”
The SUNY work-force development grants are capped at $75,000. Companies are required to kick in 10 percent to 25 percent of the cost of training. Interest is so keen there”™s a waiting list for the grants, which are distributed to the state”™s 30 community colleges from a pool of $2 million. The purpose of the grants is two-fold: training new workers looking to fill existing jobs; and training incumbent workers looking to move up within the company.
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In deciding which applicants get the money, “we”™ll focus on those things that have the biggest potential impact and the greatest number of people served,” said O”™Connor. Each year, she balances meeting the collective need with providing training that”™s critical to a specific company”™s growth. Last year, for example, a SUNY grant was awarded to Alcoa Fastening Systems, based in Kingston, for training that would enable the company better to compete globally.
This year, three SUNY work force development grants have been awarded, amounting to approximately $55,000 each. One will provide training on supervisory skills and clinical topics for a consortium of three hospitals: Benedictine, Kingston and Ellenville Memorial. Another grant was awarded to a group of five counties: Ulster, Dutchess, Orange, Sullivan and Rockland; and to the Council of Industry, a manufacturers”™ association, to provide 25 classes related to manufacturing. Ulster is managing the grant, but the courses will be offered at community colleges throughout the five-county area.
A third grant has been awarded to Fala Technologies for technical training related to the semiconductor industry, which will be taught by experts brought in from New York City. Fala is kicking in $7,500 and some of the classes will be offered to other companies at a nominal fee. Last summer, Fala sponsored a five-day course on 3-D modeling called Solidworks, used by manufacturers to design parts and machines. The program was also available to smaller firms, which couldn”™t afford to do the training on their own, O”™Connor said.
In the past, experts have been brought in from as far away as Silicon Valley, Falatyn said. “We search for the professors out there and have a few thousand dollars to bring them here. Deborah gets them and does all the accounting. She talks with different manufacturing companies. We brainstorm and figure out what type of training we need as a region and for my company.”
O”™Connor also assists companies in applying for the state”™s Building Skills in New York State (BUSINYS) grants, which pay for 100 percent of targeted training. Among the recent beneficiaries are Colony Liquor & Wine Distributors; Emergency One; Ulster Savings Bank; Stavo Industries; and Timely Signs. O”™Connor said the program was replaced at the beginning this year with Advance New York, which will operate similarly but have different requirements.
George Quigley, president of Stavo Industries, based in Kingston, said the BUSINYS grant helped his company, which manufactures filtration products for fluids, grow over the past three years. “The training was the catalyst,” he said. “It allowed us to focus on new areas and be more efficient.” Courses were taught in enterprise-resource planning, which looks at how all aspects of the company are tied together and seeks to improve data collection and analysis. The money also paid for classes in computer-aided design as well as leadership management and legal issues, such as sexual harassment.
Timely Signs, a family-owned business in Kingston, underwent a makeover thanks to training provided by two $45,000 grants within the past four years. The BUSINYS grants paid for classes held on site as well as at SUNY Ulster”™s Business Resource Center, in the town of Ulster. A personal coach was brought in from Massachusetts to do some of the training, and a consultant from Focus Dynamics, a business consultancy in Woodstock, also participated.
Joe Beichert, Timely Sign”™s vice president of sales and marketing, said the extensive training helped boost sales by 70 percent. The training “benefited management as well as production and the service installation staff,” said Beichert, noting the customization was particularly valuable since “there is no school that develops someone for the sign industry. Everybody needs training when they get in the door.”
There were classes in design software, team building, customer service, and a finance course tailored to nonfinance managers. A course in project management, which examined “how work flows from the front door to back door and installation in the field” in order “to make the process seamless and offer better products for our clients” was notably valuable, said Beichert.
“We really worked on the strategic planning. This was an opportunity to plan out our course of action over the next five years,” he said. The training assisted the sign company to put a management structure in place, which resulted in the elevation of three employees to middle management. The firm also subsequently hired six new employees, a staff increase of 18 percent.
“Companies have been thrilled this opportunity has been available to them,” concluded O”™Connor. “The amount of continuous lifetime learning you need to do now to stay current in your job has really increased exponentially.”
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