Montgomery County Community College’s Workforce and Economic Development Division invites eligible Montgomery County companies to apply for Workforce and Economic Development Network of Pennsylvania (WEDnetPA) funding for their workforce training needs.

WEDnetPA is a state training reimbursement grant program where eligible companies can receive state grants to help pay for workforce training. As a WEDnetPA partner, MCCC administers and distributes funding to Montgomery County companies. During FY22-23, MCCC administered over $450,000 of WEDnetPA funding, helping 33 companies and training nearly 500 employees.

To be eligible, companies must be located in Pennsylvania and be part of eligible industry clusters, as defined in the Commonwealth’s guidelines. The maximum grant is $2,000 per employee, up to $100,000 per company per fiscal year. Companies may only receive funding for two consecutive years or three years out of five. Nonprofit organizations are not eligible for funding.

For employees to qualify, they must be residents of and permanently employed in Pennsylvania on a full-time basis. In addition, they must earn at least $12 per hour and be employed by the specific company location for which a grant is awarded.

Training programs, explains Bernadette DeBias, MCCC’s Director of Workforce Development, should start after July 1, 2023, and be completed before June 30, 2024. The programs should involve skill building for current jobs or advancement. Employers pay for the cost of training upfront and are reimbursed at completion. Companies can choose their WEDnetPA partner and the training vendors.

MCCC’s Workforce Development and Economic Division works with companies to develop customized training that is specifically designed to meet their goals, helping them to grow and increase their competitive advantage.

“We worked with MCCC to deliver lean training, which was a relatively new concept to our employees. After learning some basic concepts, we began to immediately 3S our facility, and we implemented process flow to improve the manufacturing process,” said Clark Dhein, President of MacKissic, Inc., Parker Ford. “Prior to the training, we had an absentee issue. After the training, employees are more engaged and aligned as a team. We are focused on value add to our customer. We have daily meetings, employees are engaged and aligned, work in a safer environment and our attendance problem is gone!”

Some examples of MCCC’s customized training in 2022 include:

• OSHA 10 training at several manufacturing facilities
• Customized Lean manufacturing training which enabled employees to apply best practices on the manufacturing floor while learning under the guidance of a Master Six Sigma Black Belt
• Leadership training for senior managers
• Leadership training for new functional managers
• Excel training – beginning, intermediate, and advanced
• Microsoft Office and Teams training
• Strategic alignment and visioning

“This is only a small list of customized programs that MCCC’s Workforce Training and Economic Development Division provides,” said DeBias. “Training can be held in-person or virtually for companies by our qualified trainers, who are subject-matter experts within industry, and are proficient in developing training solutions.”

The EF Precision Group, Willow Grove, valued the experience of the trainers and customized programs.

“Bernadette matched us with Dennis Noble, an adjunct professor at MCCC, to provide DISC for our management team. Our team genuinely enjoyed working with Dennis and the enlightenment provided from his leadership expertise. Our leadership toolkits evolved with self-awareness from the team’s assessments. Dennis’s insights to this framework will continue to help us foster relationships in several aspects of the business world, but most importantly in our organization, resulting in  improved communication and engagement,” said Christy Byrne, Human Resource Manager.

To apply for WEDnetPA funding grants, companies should submit applications now for the new fiscal year. Companies can submit training plans for the entire fiscal year, from July 1, 2023, through June 30, 2024, said DeBias.

Anyone interested in learning more about WEDnetPA and the application process, should contact Bernadette DeBias (bdebias@mc3.edu) or Katina Faulk (kfaulk@mc3.edu) to discuss eligibility, process, and training plans.