President Bob opened the meeting and called on David Burton who led the pledge and invocation.
President Bob expressed his appreciation to the members that attended and helped with preparation of the Founder's Dinner. Frank Mulherin will head up the 2011 Founder's Dinner.
Bob also recognized and congratulated Walt Sprouse and Robert Osborne; both being new grandfathers.
Mallory Millender spoke briefly about the upcoming 2010 Census. He urged the members to communicate to their employees and co-workers the importance of filling out and returning the Census forms. For each 1% of census forms that are not returned, $85 million dollars is spent gathering the information door-to-door by census workers. Mallory also shared how the information is used and stressed that the census information is kept strictly confidential.
Phil Wahl introduced Chris Baucom, our guest speaker. Chris is the Business Development Manager of the Georgia Office of Workforce Development. He provided a very informative presentation on the Georgia Work Ready Program. Georgia Work Ready is a program that provides readiness assessments for prospective workers in the areas of Applied Mathematics, Reading for Information, and Locating Information. Candidates are graded and are certified at Platinum, Gold, Silver or Bronze levels. The GA Work Ready Program also provides Job Profiles for companies that want to determine the level of proficiency required in the three areas for specific jobs functions. This allows companies to compare the task requirements of their jobs to the qualifications of applicants that have been assessed.
112,000 Georgians have earned Work Ready certificates and 138 businesses have earned Work Ready Certification. Businesses can become involved in Georgia Work Ready by:
- Recognize Georgia Work Ready
- Prefer Georgia Work Ready
- Profile specific jobs and Require Georgia Work Ready when making hiring decisions
- Become a certified Georgia Work Ready facility
Georgia provides an incentive to small businesses (< 50 employees) that hire certified Work Ready individuals. The incentive is $250 per certified employee hired ($1,250 maximum.)
At the conclusion of his presentation, Chris fielded questions from the members.
For more information on Georgia Work Ready go to www.gaworkready.org
The meeting was adjourned following the recital of the Four-Way Test.
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