Workforce Development Helps Managers, Workers Advance

Nearly 10 percent of the workers at Rogers Tool Works Inc. are studying — on their own time — management techniques.

About half of the 75 students are supervisors or managers already; many of the others hope to be.

Thanks to their employer and the Business and Industry Workforce Development Institute of NorthWest Arkansas Community College, the RTW workers have the opportunity to improve their skills and advance their careers.

“They’ve got the have-training, will-travel attitude,” says RTW’s human resources supervisor, Tonya Bodenhamer, about the Workforce Development Institute, which brings training to its clients’ premises, if desired. “We’ve been very impressed.”

The Workforce Development Institute is about five years old, but it’s really gained momentum since last fall when Mary Ann Shope became its director. A 20-member advisory board, made up of representatives from the business community, recently approved mission and vision statements.

The institute’s mission: to provide the best training and professional support to the region’s businesses and industry.

Its vision: that the institute will be the market leader.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” says Shope. “We have a really good staff. It’s very small but they’re very committed to what they do. We certainly have the support of the college and the business community, and I believe, in time, we’ll be able to live out that vision, and we certainly live out that mission every day.”

Shope says the institute is careful not to duplicate training already available at other local institutions although some areas do occasionally overlap. But, as an example, if a business is looking for technical training, she may refer the request to Northwest Technical Institute in Springdale. Conversely, NTI may refer other requests to the Workforce Development Institute.

Industries seeking help from the institute have a couple of basic options. They can select from existing courses or they can work with the institute in creating their own classes.

In the former, many of the classes the institute offers come from the American Management Association. RTW chooses its classes from the AMA’s curriculum. Already, the company has offered classes in first-line supervision and in stress management. Currently, its workers are studying “Manager’s Guide to Human Behavior.”

Bodenhamer, the company’s human resource supervisor, says in-house training can be offered to more workers at a greatly reduced cost than other forms of training.

To send three supervisors to a week-long training course in Dallas, St. Louis or some other city costs, on average, about $5,000 per person, she estimates.

“We’re reaching 75 people at about the same cost as to send three people away,” Bodenhamer says. “Really, for us, it’s wonderful.”

RTW employees may earn certificates in management but the AMA requires them to successfully complete six of its courses to do so. Bodenhamer says the company will offer a total of eight courses to its employees.

Shope notes that the state offers training incentives to manufacturers. Coordinated by the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, the Department of Higher Education and the Department of Workforce Education, the incentive program provides grants to manufacturers. Existing Workforce Training grants can reimburse manufacturers for up to 70 percent of the cost of training, Shope says.

Shope and her staff will help manufacturers apply for that reimbursement.

Bodenhamer says RTW is recouping up to 50 percent of the cost from state grants. The remainder of the cost is paid for by the company.

With a workforce of about 850 people, however, RTW is large enough to restrict enrollment to its own employees. But, Shope says, smaller employers aren’t overlooked.

“We can work with industry in any kind of way,” she says. “If you’re a small company with just two or three employees or you can only let two or three employees go [for training] at a time,” then the Institute can provide open-enrollment classes.

“By and large, we try to have at least six people [in a class] to cover our overhead,” Shope adds.

The biggest demand, so far, has been for computer training, Shope says. That’s challenging for the Institute because there are so many kinds of software that are used by businesses.

“That’s been a real challenge,” she adds.