Tag team: businesses collaborate with the N.C. Community College System to build the skilled workforce that they need.

PositionSPONSORED SECTION: WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

Manufacturing roots run back more than a century in Catawba County. In 2014, the sector employed about one-quarter of its workers. Many of them build furniture, but their employers need more. When they couldn't find enough staff, five furniture-makers joined Hickory-based Catawba Valley Community College to open the Catawba Valley Furniture Academy. It creates a workforce by teaching students skills such as upholstery, pattern-making and assembly. Since it opened in January 2014, the academy has graduated about 30 students every six months, and all have found well-paying jobs in the high-tech furniture factories that dot the county. In July, the academy received a $50,000 grant from the Unifour Foundation, a Catawba Valley Community Foundation program that helps better Alexander, Burke, Caldwell and Catawba counties. That money will expand the program.

On the heels of that success, the college created the Manufacturing Academy with help from almost 30 local companies. One of them is Turbotec Products Inc., which has dual headquarters in Bloomfield, Conn., and Hickory, where its workers manufacture heat-transfer tubing for heating and air conditioning and refrigeration. "The basic idea is that the academy will graduate people who have the soft skills and basic manufacturing knowledge necessary to be a very good day-one hire," says Joe Lutz, Turbotecs human resources director. Twenty incumbent workers--who were sent to the academy to learn new skills by their employers--and students began classes in early October. "We have raised enough private sector money to give scholarships to those non-incumbent participants in the academy, so they go for free."

Lutz says all manufacturers in the county will benefit from the academy. "We are always adjusting to the current needs of manufacturers. Hopefully we will be able to react to changes as they become visible and then unfold in real time, and local companies and the local economy do not have to suffer while we start a dialogue each time. ... Employers know it and are helping. The companies involved in the fundamentals of course quite often contribute to the color and texture of the instruction being given. They are spending their time, their money and giving great effort to make it happen."

The N.C. Community College System leads collaborative workforce-development efforts, such as Catawba Valley's academies, and offers them at no cost to new and established companies statewide. It's a popular program. The N.C. Department of Commerce recently reported that about 40% of...

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