A great success story coming from the WEDnetPA partner - Greater Altoona Career and Technology Center featuring participating company: Keller Engineers.
The ability to keep pace with technology is an on-going challenge. To be competitive, our engineers, technicians and surveyors must utilize the most up-to-date software and equipment available. In order to be productive and produce quality projects, we have to not only use technology correctly, but be proficient when doing so.
The technical software used by our firm is updated every year; therefore, we must continuously train our staff to properly, efficiently, and effectively utilize the software. Additionally, specialized trainings are required for many of our staff members in order to be certified/re-certified each year by state and federal agencies.
Providing relevant, on-going training for our workforce is included in our firm’s Mission Statement and addresses an employee benefit. We believe that providing quality training is not only an investment in our firm, but in our employees. A well trained employee is not only more technically competent, but more satisfied and less likely to leave. One of the biggest benefits is that our employees appreciate the fact that we care enough about them, and our clients, to address the need for on-going training. They understand that with training, the end product we generate is a better quality product for our clients.
Hands-on training is necessary; however, removing our entire billable design workforce from production is extremely expensive. This year, WEDnet funds allowed us to contract with a certified trainer to come on-site and provide training that was customized to address each department’s specific needs. By setting up laptop computers, over the course of two days, our staff members received customized training using project specific work. This year we will also use WEDnet funds for Microsoft Outlook-Working Smart training, Social Networking and Marketing training sessions, and we sent one technician off site to participate in survey specific software training. He in turn “trained” other employees.
The fact that grant money to help with our training needs is available through WEDnetPA prompts us to focus on identifying our training needs and address them in an organized, timely manner. Had we not received the WEDnet grant, we most likely would have delayed some much needed training which directly benefits our bottom line. The entire WEDnet process was streamlined and easy to follow. We apply for WEDnet grants every opportunity available, and encourage other businesses to do so.
