If you’re an employer looking to upskill your workforce, you may think you need a clear picture of what you need before engaging a local college or university for one of their customized training programs.
But that’s not necessarily the case, says Karissa Amstadt, director of operations at Waukesha County Technical College’s Corporate Training Center. The center provides customized professional development training across industries including government, health care, manufacturing, finance and more.
Account managers, who are generally the first point of contact for a business or organization looking to participate in a training program, “are experts in having those very entry-level conversations,” Amstadt said.
The account managers can also connect with the CTC’s trainers, who can help determine what’s needed in order to achieve the employer’s desired outcomes.
“Our trainers all come from industry,” said Laura Krohn, WCTC chief of staff and former executive director of the college’s CTC. “They all have industry experience and have that firsthand knowledge of what goes on inside businesses, so we do a nice job of pairing the right trainer based on the type of business or potential business need. They are able to have pretty in-depth conversations to get to the root core of what problem they’re trying to solve with the training.”
WCTC has about 15 trainers on staff, but its faculty members also teach in the corporate training setting. Over the past year, WCTC’s Corporate Training Center has served hundreds of organizations and more than 5,000 individuals. With the greater presence of artificial intelligence in the workplace, WCTC has seen an increase in demand for applied AI lab training programs.
Other area institutions, including the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Gateway Technical College and more, similarly offer customized training programs to businesses looking to upskill their employees.
Liza Longhini, a customized training consultant at UWM, similarly said that her institution’s Customized Training Solutions trainers set its programs apart.
“They’re not only just subject matter experts, but they have real world knowledge and they’re industry experts,” Longhini said.
Many companies have been asking for “an off-the-shelf program,” said John Siegert, a customized training consultant at UWM. The university offers a range of courses, listed on its website, that are available to the business community.
Oftentimes, businesses have seen the programs offered to the public, and that’s where the conversation typically starts, Siegert said.
Companies like Plymouth-based Sargento Foods and Hartford-based Signicast as well as government agencies such as the Wisconsin Department of Health Sciences have benefited from UWM’s customized programs.
Gateway Technical College’s Business and Workforce Solutions offers customized training across various industries, including manufacturing and construction. There are a couple of different avenues to take for customized training, said Mark Kappes, dean of Business and Workforce Solutions at Gateway.
The first option would be to take a subset of Gateway’s academic programs and have it taught specifically tailored to the needs of a specific employer.
Another option involves taking a procedure or process within a company and building a training package around it to address a skills gap, Kappes said.
“It may be training them on CNC or maybe on advanced manufacturing like robotics,” Kappes said. “Let’s say they’re getting new robots in their factory for the first time. We may teach PLC programming to all of their employees that would be engaged in that area.”
Flexible time and place
All of WCTC’s customized training programs allow for flexible scheduling, Amstadt said. Programming can take place at WCTC, on-site at the organization, or remotely.
“That’s really the customized instructional style,” Amstadt said.
Longhini said that more hands-on training often works better in person than as a remote option.
“We have something like train the trainer, where they really need to be there and working in small groups and practicing their training, so we can really get it,” Longhini said.
The way a program is delivered will ultimately be tailored to the company’s needs.
“Our job is to try to meet their needs and how they want the program to be delivered as best we can,” Siegert said.
At Gateway Technical College, the timing and location for training can be flexible. While many training programs take place at an employer’s facility, there are some challenges to consider.
“The issue with that is when employers are using their own equipment, they’re taking their equipment offline, so they’re not producing anything,” Kappes said.
As a result, it often makes sense for employers to have employees trained at Gateway’s iMET Center, located at 2320 Renaissance Boulevard in Sturtevant. The facility offers machines and spaces comparable to a manufacturing company’s facility.
“It’s actually a benefit to employers, because they’re really not impacting their manufacturing processes that day,” Kappes said.
But training ultimately doesn’t need to be a one-time event, Longhini said.
“(Employers) can look at us for training to fill this one gap right now, but they might have gaps down the road,” she said. “And that’s where we really try to be a training partner with them and keep that relationship established.”
