Get the Technology Resources your Business Needs to Succeed

By Justin Stansbury

In today’s competitive employment market your ability to recruit top talent can impact your bottom line. Sourcing and retaining IT talent is a problem we hear from many of our clients. With IT unemployment rates at an all-time low, companies are turning to staffing options. Often times, the complexities involved in technology usually mean one resource does not meet all of your needs.

Additionally, projects such as OS or application upgrades typically are short term and do not warrant hiring full time technical support. Finding and keeping the right skill set can be both time consuming and expensive. Before you spend more time looking for qualified candidates, ask yourself these questions: we take care of IT

•Do you plan on hiring or contracting more IT people in the next year?

•Do you have any short term needs that would make more sense to consider outsourcing?

• Are there any skit I sets where it would warrant for you to contract a position rather than hire and maintain?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above, Corporate Technologies can save you the time and headache by doing the search for you. We can help you find the diamonds in the rough. Whatever your needs may be, we can provide IT resources to support your business. From desk side support requests to core infrastructure support, or from network engineers to general IT support, our On Site IT Placement solution has you covered.

Have an upcoming project and can’t justify hiring a full time engineer? support to your existing team?

Managed IT Staffing - we can provide you affordable access to the resources you need to expand your business, increase your profits, and help meet the demand for technology resources. Corporate Technologies manages the entire hiring process.

•resume search and review

• technical screening

•background and reference checks

•interview schedule

•payroll processing

•ongoing quality control

CTO Assist - we can provide you with the design and development, information technology management, technical support and computer services. Our skilled engineers with the expertise you are looking for, can take care of an extensive range of hardware platforms and software disciplines your company retains.

•short term or long term technical resources

• right level of technical skills and industry exposure with out the full time commitment

•project based

•you will save up to 50% compared to standard billing rates*

* three month commitment is required

So how does WCCO Belting recruit employees? We encourage employees to recruit by word-of-mouth and rely heavily on employee referrals. For example, the instructor of an English language course at North Dakota State College of Science recently toured our production facility at the invitation of two New American employees who were taking the class.

Employee referrals are also a main contributor to our growing workforce. Many of our New American employees have suggested friends or relatives for open positions. If an employee is referred to us and makes it through their first 90 days, both the new employee and employee who made the referral are monetarily rewarded.

Additionally, our HR team works closely with Job Service of North Dakota to recruit anyone in the community looking for a career.

During the application process, we do our best to accommodate any potential employee. If a person can’t complete the form due to a language barrier, for example, our receptionist will offer help. If we believe the person can work safely and effectively on the production floor, he or she is a candidate for employment. The candidate is granted a meeting with our operations manager, who determines his or her ability to comprehend spoken and/or written instructions. The manager then finds the best area for the new employee to start his or her career, and connects that person with people whom the newcomer is likely to be comfortable working with.

WCCO has a training program to educate all new employees on belt manufacturing. Few people do what we do in the world, so whether or not you are fluent in English, you will be new to WCCO’s language.

By starting everyone on a level playing field (while remaining sensitive to each person’s unique needs), we reduce the risk of conflict due to lack of familiarity or experience. As a matter of fact, our feedback is that new employees find their coworkers more open to offering them help, because those coworkers once had been new to WCCO themselves.

Employees feel included and valued from the beginning.

As a manufacturer with custom operating procedures, it was critical for us to develop processes to keep all new employees calm and engaged. By doing so, we have increased job satisfaction while creating a loyal and dedicated workforce.

Hiring immigrants can provide a new set of challenges for businesses that may not be accustomed to diverse cultural barriers. But the positive impact it can have on your business and an individual’s career success is priceless.

We are fortunate because throughout our history and at the direction of our current leadership team, we continue to make people feel comfortable at WCCO Belting. In the end, a sense of belonging is a basic human need.

New Americans are not only helping WCCO Belting drive business forward, but also are strengthening our culture by promoting the value of diversity. Can hiring New Americans do the same for your business? PB

THOMAS SHORMA PRESIDENT AND CEO WCCO BELTING, INC. WAHPETON, N.D.

BISMARCK, N.D. – The term “grid resilience” has gotten lots of attention this fall due to three hurricanes, wildfires and the potential for other natural disasters. And while hurricanes aren’t typically a menace to North Dakotans, snowstorms are.

Thus, U.S. Department of Energy analysts have been looking at the nation’s electric grid and making recommendations to ensure energy reliability when customers need it most: during extreme weather conditions.

North Dakotans are no strangers to weather extremes, which range from sub-zero temperatures in the winter to scorching droughts in the summer. But we’ve come to take reliable electricity for granted – partly because our power plants are located next to coal mines.

Thanks to our near-inexhaustible fuel supply, which sits next to the plants that turn coal into electricity and send that electricity to our homes, we’re not concerned about the vagaries of weather.

But are threats looming that should give us a pause? In the short term, probably not, but over the long term, the situation could change.

Simply put, coal-based electricity was “out-of-favor” during the eight years of the Obama administration. While North Dakota’s lignite-based power plants survived intact, the same cannot be said for those power plants that drew coal supplies from long distances.

From 2010 to 2015, 37,000 megawatts of coal generation was retired. A megawatt is enough to serve 800 homes. North Dakota has about 4,000 megawatts of lignite-based capacity, so the loss of 37,000 megawatts would be the equivalent of nine states with the generation capacity of North Dakota – or, stated another way, the capacity to serve 30 million homes.

The loss of that much baseload generation has worried energy analysts, and the Trump administration is addressing their concerns.

In April, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry asked his staff to review the evolution of wholesale electricity markets, compensation for resilience in wholesale energy markets, and premature baseload power plant retirements. The result was the department’s “Staff report to the secretary on electricity markets and reliability,” often referred to as the “grid study.”

This report provided a comprehensive overview of today’s electricity markets, the principal causes of baseload generation retirements and the issues surrounding electric grid reliability and resilience.