The Paulding County Business Advisory Council held their quarterly meeting this week at the Paulding Exempted Village (PEVS) High School FFA room. Discussion about how to build the county workforce was the main focus. Representatives from ten of the county’s largest employers, the Superintendents of all three county schools, Ohio Means Jobs (OMJ), Northwest State Community College (NSCC) and the Paulding County Economic Development (PCED) director all met for the discussion.
What began a year ago as the PC HR Managers meeting, has morphed into a collaboration with all the noted parties being involved. PCED Director Tim Copsey stated, “We gathered all the HR Managers together last year to try and grasp what it was the businesses needed in workforce development, just prior to the Covid shutdown. We then reconvened with a Zoom meeting later in the year. The HR Managers were going through a lot of unknown at that time so we kind of backed off then. Just after that, there was a meeting I attended with the local schools and the Western Buckeye Educational Service Center. They were looking for a way to connect with the area businesses. We decided that we could merge these two groups to share ideas with each other and the PC Business Advisory Council was formed.”
All of the current efforts to help keep students engaged with business in the county were shared with the business leaders in this meeting. Prior to Christmas, the PCED office visited with the county high school student council members at all the schools to brainstorm their input in developing a plan to connect with the students. A second visit was scheduled to meet with all the seniors at the three high schools and Vantage Career Center. The third visit was to meet with all the juniors. OMJ of Paulding-Defiance County purchased booklets to hand out to all students. They contained a list and brief summary and contact information for these largest employers.
The Superintendents of all three county schools shared building additions or tweaked changes in their curriculum to explain what is being attempted to soon try and meet some of the real world business needs today. This included both implementation of some hands on training but also some possible marketing and budgeting training.
The business representatives were all asked to share thoughts on what they hoped to see and even expected in future employees. The intent of the discussion was to find common needs that the schools and outside providers could develop training for. Tiffany Dargenson with OMJ, and Jim Drewes and Matt Kibler of NSCC then shared opportunities to collectively train the potential workforce and how that might benefit the businesses. PEVS HS Principal Chris Etzler asked the business leaders for more input on some additional curriculum that could beresearched and PEVS Workforce Development Instructor Shawn Brewer shared some thoughts from his experiences with students and businesses this year as well.
“This was the first meeting that the business partners really spoke out and shared some good thoughts for possible improvement and the schools are all engaged in helping where they can. I’m not sure any of us have the exact right answer at this time, but if the open conversation continues from both sides like this, we are well on the way to something exciting. We know that baby boomers are going to retire faster than we have graduates for a few more years, but anything we collaborate to help offset even a few of the open employment opportunities in our county is a start,” continued Copsey.
Follow up meetings will be scheduled including meetings with those businesses that did not attend today. The next PCBAC meeting will be scheduled in early August.
