The Georgia Department of Technical and Adult Education’s Quick Start employee training program saw surge in foreign clients last year, with 65 of its 296 projects being international companies.
Quick Start is a state-funded incentive for companies to locate or expand in Georgia.
Foreign companies have increasingly been taking advantage of the free program so their Georgia employees can learn to work within the management’s corporate culture, according to Rodger Brown, Quick Start’s director of communications.
“We save international companies a lot of time and trouble by facilitating American workers’ interactions with foreign management and vice versa,” he told GlobalFax.
Quick Start sends its trainers to the company’s foreign locations to learn the “business flow” and working procedures of that company, he said. By the time a company is ready to open its doors in Georgia, the employees here have already been trained to run the operation and have been introduced to the company’s culture, he added.
Last year’s 65 Quick Start projects with international companies represented a significant increase from the previous year’s 45, Mr. Brown noted. Twenty-seven of the international projects in 2001 were new operations and 38 were expansions.
Japanese companies had the largest number of Quick Start training programs in 2001, followed by the United Kingdom, France and Switzerland, in that order.
Quick Start pre-screens potential employees, hires and trains them for either manufacturing or service jobs. Training is available on an on-going basis after the company opens operations in Georgia.
Contact Quick Start at (404) 679-1700 or visit www.georgiaquickstart.org for more information.