Stay Competitive with Skills Training.

Stay Competitive with Skills Training.

As a business leader and decision maker, you can stay competitive and improve your bottom line by investing in training for new and current employees. Developing the skills of employees will enhance productivity, increase efficiency and create opportunities to gain new customers.

Funding from the state of Iowa could help offset training costs for your company. One state-funded agreement, the 260E Iowa Industrial New Jobs Training program, can reduce training costs for businesses seeking to upskill their workforce. The 260E program allows Northeast Iowa Community College (NICC) and its business partners to enhance the region’s workforce through employee upskilling and education.

Aveka Nutra Processing, of Waukon, is one of many companies who partnered with the College on 260E agreements. Aveka applied the state funding toward training for quality and food safety, various maintenance functions and subjects, technical courses for the engineering team and production personnel, as well as leadership, team building and project management courses.

“In my experience, formal training through the College can motivate a person to keep learning and improving special skills. Specific topics such as food microbiology or spray drying processing are better learned in a formal setting to gain knowledge in specific areas of our business that cannot always be learned on the job. As manufacturing moves to more automated processes and programming, we will also have more training needs in areas of automation and computer skills,” said Kayce Burris, manager of quality at Aveka Nutra Processing.

NICC Vice President of Business and Community Solutions, Wendy Mihm-Herold, Ph.D., sees the 260E program as a catalyst for business growth and the health of the local economy.

“The 260E program through the state of Iowa creates training opportunities for local businesses of all sizes. This funding support enhances the skills of new employees in nearly every sector of our northeast Iowa economy. This critical support allows businesses to grow and thrive,” she said.

Since 1985, Northeast Iowa Community College has secured and invested $102,930,469 in the 260E Iowa Industrial New Jobs Training program, funding 338 different projects and creating 17,498 jobs. From 2020-2021, the College invested $4,685,000 in Iowa Industrial New Jobs Training Certificates, creating 379 jobs.