New Jobs and Retraining Initiatives - Chesterfield Business News

The Small Business New Jobs Initiative and the Retraining Initiative are two new programs under the Virginia Department of Businesses Assistance’s (DBA) Workforce Services Program that will better allow DBA to serve the needs of Virginia’s small businesses and the retraining needs for Virginia’s workforce.

Funding for these two new initiatives will come from the existing budget of
DBA’s Workforce Services Program. Companies must meet minimum job creation
and investment criteria in order to be eligible. The return on investment
for most projects under these initiatives will be one year.

The Small Business New Jobs Initiative, a pilot program for Fiscal Year
2003, will provide staff to work with for-profit, existing companies that
have been in operation for a minimum of one year to provide customized
recruitment and training to qualified workers at all skill levels for newly
created jobs.

In order to be eligible for the initiative, companies must:

Create a net of 5 to 24 new jobs within a 12-month period
Have a total of no more than 200 employees company-wide
Make a minimum capital investment of $100,000.

The results of this fiscal year’s pilot initiative will dictate future allocations and criteria.

The Retraining Initiative will provide consulting services and grants to companies to assist in retraining their existing work force. For the purposes of this initiative, retraining means an upgrade in skills for existing employees identified as essential to the production or distribution of a product or service. To be eligible for retraining funds, a company must demonstrate that it is:

Undergoing integration of new technology into its production process
Changing product or service line in keeping with marketplace demands
Substantially changing its service delivery process, which would require assimilation of new skills and technological capabilities by the firm’s existing labor force.

“…there is a critical need for Virginia’s existing businesses to retrain their workforce to remain competitive in the global economy,” said Secretary of Commerce and Trade
Michael J. Schewel. “Life-long learning is necessary to keep up with the
technology-charged, highly automated production processes in businesses
today.”

For more information regarding DBA’s Workforce Services program, please contact the Virginia Department of Business Assistance at www.dba.state.va.us or (804) 371-8120.