Industry drives J.O.B.S. project forward

Group meets Friday morning at ATEC

COLUMBIA BASIN - Industry support has given new passion and a new name to the organization formerly known as the operations task force.

Othello-based SVZ-USA President Jeni Billups, also a volunteer and the chair of the executive committee for the Northwest Food Processors Association's Innovation Productivity Center, or IPC, said her interest was piqued when she heard of the task force's efforts to recruit employees into or from around the area and to local industries.

"We share a common need with other manufacturers in the region in regards to our workforce pipeline," Billups explained. "One of the edicts under the IPC the association has identified as an area of critical focus is workforce pipeline training. I thought it could be interesting from both of those vantage points to sit in on the meeting."

Billups found the task force needed an infusion of industry.

"They needed people in the local area that had the need out there to show up in more force, take more leadership and guidance in the task force, so it would present more meaning to the existing public and education people that were still hanging in there and doing a good job," she said.

"It brought industry in to drive it, and that's really what it needed," the community college's Center for Business and Industry Services Director Allan Peterson said.

"Government institutions and the educational system can't provide the solutions by themselves," Billups added. "It's an island approach when it's done that way, as opposed to what we're trying to accomplish, which is a more regional cross-section collaboration."

That collaboration led to the organization being renamed Central Washington J.O.B.S. Project. The J.O.B.S. stands for "jobs-oriented business strategies." Peterson and Billups are co-chairs of the project.

Peterson said one of the group's goals was a name describing its activities.

"What we want to do is let everybody in the (Columbia) Basin, Adams and Grant counties, know what we are about, what we can do, what's going on, how this can help people looking for work, people looking for workers, how this all can come together and benefit everybody," he said.

Billups said the project's largest goal is leading the group toward addressing both immediate needs and creating a sustainable "cyclical model."

"The focus is to look at your current and future employees," she said.

By adopting the system currently being created, Billups said, the project feels efforts will lead to making the region more competitive and industries more profitable.

"That leads then to the cycle of increasing the quality of life," she said. "But you can only do that if your focus is on the current and future employees' needs, if you're not looking at the individual companies' needs, taking that self-serving tendency out and taking away this employee-stealing practice that always exists when there's a shortage."

The immediate step is to identify critical job positions and necessary skill sets within the local industry and working with the educational and public systems to modify or adopt programs to be able to "get to the core of the needs," Billups said.

The project also hopes to work with students at the high school level, in addition to the junior college level, Billups added.

"We want to adopt an internship model, where students are going through the educational system and they're going to also receive hands-on training through the industry involved in this effort," she said.

Students in the program would emerge with the necessary skills and practical experience along the way, Billups said. "They're going to benefit by having more opportunities for their personal employment and gain. Industry as a whole is going to have an increased skilled labor source. Whether it's coming directly to my company or someone else, that's not the goal."

A referral recognition program is also under consideration, Billups said.

It's an "exciting" time for people to get involved in the project, she noted.

"All of this is being developed at this moment," she said. "People can come in at any point in time once it's off the ground, but what better time to come in and have a say?"

The group meets Friday at 8 a.m. in the Hardin Room of Big Bend Community College's ATEC Building.

For more information, call 509-793-2374.