Financial help for Rhode Island companies looking to train their work force is as close as state government, which through the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporate and the state Department of Labor and Training provides an assortment of grants every year to for-profit businesses both large and small. The largest is the R.I. Human Resource Investment Council’s Competitiveness Improvement Program, a yearly competitive program that offers grants of up to $25,000 to assist companies with the cost of training existing workers.
Melody Majkut, assistant coordinator of HRIC, which operates under the Department of Labor and Training, said these grants require one-to-one matches from employers and are available once every year, with requests for proposals going out in March.
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While the emphasis is on manufacturing, Competitiveness Improvement grants can be used for a variety of training needs, except for those considered part of a company’s “regular order of business,” such as orientation programs for new employees or new product training for sales departments.
Majkut said many companies have used these grants to provide new technical and manufacturing training, including ISOcertification. And although these funds can’t be used to show “new employees where to hang their coats,” they can be used to send employees to skill building seminars and to fund programs such as English as a Second Language. “The whole goal is to try to make the company more competitive.”
Approximately 860 applications have been received since the state started the Competitiveness Improvement Program in 1993. They’ve funded approximately 500 awards, with some companies receiving grants more than once. Because it’s competitive the application is fairly extensive, requiring employers to describe their mission, vision, objectives and budgets. Grant requests are rated and scored by volunteers from the public and private sectors (state government, nonprofit agencies and business community) and there are strict mechanisms to make sure grants are dispensed purely on a proposal’s merits. “In other words,” Majkut said, although there may be bigwigs in the program, “there is no politics” nor political favoritism.
Once a company wins, after skipping a year it can apply again, and in nine rounds the state has invested about $10 million into the program, with a total investment (including employer representation) of about $40 million into workforce training.
There is also a category called “Advanced Plus” for companies that have won a Competitiveness Improvement grant two or three times already, which provides up to $35,000 for training existing employees and also to helps a company plan ahead in general. The Competitiveness Improvement Program also includes the opportunity for a consortium (three or more companies) to apply for a matching grant of up to $50,000 to share training needs.
Companies that don’t succeed at first can get free training from the HRIC to show where they went wrong and how to apply again next time, which means no one is sent away empty handed, Majkut said. “We’re trying to root for everybody.”
The HRIC also holds workshops prior to each round of funding, and are continually trying to make their program more “custom focused and user friendly,” she said. A lot of businesses, she added, are “intimidated” by the state and therefore reluctant to seek help there, which is a shame since so much funding is available.
“This is our biggest program for employers,” Majkut said, and because of a lack of marketing resources many businesses aren’t aware these funding options are available. In the last round only 61 companies applied, and so far their advertising has been “mostly word of mouth.”
Getting better all the time
For smaller companies (under 100 employees) the HRIC provides a program called “Project Upgrade” with noncompetitive matching grants of up to $5,000 to train existing full-time workers in areas such as introducing new machinery and equipment, changing software packages, cross training formerly specialized staff or conducting “quality in the workplace” initiatives like Total Quality Management or ISO 9000.
Companies “just have to fill out an application,” and Project Upgrade grants are available throughout the year, with the current round expiring on June 30, Majkut said. The HRIC also administers tax credit programs of up to $5,000 per employee for retraining or upgrading of the workforce over a three-year period.
The state also offers an adult education tax credit for employers of 25 percent of the costs up to a maximum of $200 per employee and $1,000 per employer per year, as well as an employers’ apprenticeship tax credit for new apprentices in machine tool and plastic process, which is an annual credit of 50 percent of the actual wages paid to a qualifying apprentice or $4,800, whichever is less.
On a federal level, there’s a Work Opportunity Tax Credit that can reduce employer tax liability by as much as $2,100 per qualified new worker or $1,500 per qualified summer youth. For more information on these programs, call the Workforce Partnership of Greater Rhode Island, Inc. at 222-2090 or visit www.griworkforce.com; call the Providence/Cranston Workforce Development Board at 861-0800 or visit www.pcwdb.org; or call the State Apprenticeship Council at 457-1859.
And finally, the EDC offers “Set Aside” grants to provide training assistance to for-profit companies that are expanding their workforce in the state or moving into Rhode Island. Because these grants are specifically geared for new employees, funds can be used for objectives “seen as regular order of business,” Majkut said. Grants can be up to any amount, and the state provides $1 million per year for the program. For more information, call the EDC at 222-2601, ext. 162 or visit www.riedc.com.
