Denver Workforce Services serves as a comprehensive employment and training resource for employers, jobseekers, TANF recipients, veterans, and youth throughout Denver. Having created a strong collaboration with contractors, we connect jobseekers with needed skills to secure sustainable employment, and we connect employers with a trained and ready workforce.

SUCCESS STORIES

Denver Workforce Services is proud to showcase its recent innovations, industry partnerships, and testimonials. In addition to the story below, here's our latest summary and here are our postings along with many others from throughout the Colorado Workforce System.

An overdue opportunity

Denver Workforce placed 161 job seekers in on-the-job training opportunities in 2014 with a wide range of employers, one of whom was Performance Air Cooling, a Denver-based firm that provides commercial refrigeration service and installation throughout the metro area and in mountain communities.

“This has been a really wonderful example of allowing our firm to take a chance on an employee that had been unemployed for a little while, and someone who was outside of the industry,” said Alison Vaughan Terry of Performance Air. “The Training Subsidy Program made it possible for us to hire and train him. We are really grateful for the opportunity and so pleased with how well it worked out,” she said.

Such placements are a win all around: the jobseeker gets a leg up in an opportunity that he or she likely wouldn’t otherwise find, the employer gets to focus on building capacity without investing the staff time in the initial screening/interviewing or the usual front-end costs and risk, and OED gets the chance to demonstrate the value of its job posting, screening, interviewing, and job-support services. Job retention rates over the year in these subsidized positions tops 80%, so it’s often a lasting investment as well.

The fact that the subsidized position for Performance Air involved a long-term unemployed worker was an extra plus, as OED is focusing increased attention on individuals who have been out of the workforce, or underemployed, for at least six months and who could benefit from additional middle-skill training.

Let's create your Success Story with a training subsidy! Contact Bret Walker, (720) 913-1529.