Stephens County Officially Declared Work Ready

11/04/2009

Stephens County is officially a “Work Ready” community. 

Monday, Governor Sonny Perdue officially presented the certification to Stephens County leaders at a luncheon in Atlanta. 

The certification accomplishes a goal that was set out in early 2007. 

Work Ready Community Team Leader Gordon Broome said the certification is a nice feeling. 

“Many, many times it would have been easy to throw up our hands, but fortunately we had people at the High School, we had some people in industry, we had people in the Department of Labor,” said Broome. “It was a joint effort and a great community effort to accomplish this.” 

The goal of the program is to enable communities to show they have the quality workforce needed to fill current and future jobs 

To become “work ready,” a community must have specified numbers of residents pass the state’s Work Ready Assessment. In addition, the high school graduation rate must show improvement of at least two percentage points per year. 

Over the last two years the graduation rate went up 15.5 percent and in addition, out of those who took the Work Ready Assessment, 29 percent of Stephens County’s certified individuals achieved “gold” certification level, as compared as to 20 percent statewide. “Gold” certification means a person can perform 90 percent of the jobs in Georgia. 

Former Stephens County Development Authority Chairman Bob Defenbaugh, who helped initiate the certification efforts, said that number shows quite a bit about this community. 

“The critical thing that this should tell our community is that we do have some of the most qualified people in our workforce and in the available workforce to attract the type of jobs that we need in our community,” said Defenbaugh. 

Broome agreed, stating that this effort shows above average skills exist in the local workforce. 

“I think for the first time, we really have some statistics that we can back up that this is the place to come and locate industry,” he said. 

Stephens County joins Franklin and Hart counties as “work ready” certified. Only 22 out of 159 counties in Georgia have received this certification. 

Meanwhile, the county’s work is not done. As a part of the process, over the next two years, the Work Ready Community Team must sustain its efforts to increase the numbers of businesses requiring workers to gain certification, assess more individuals, improve scores of non-passers, and maintain a high school graduation rate of over 75 percent.

Source: www.wnegradio.com