Employment Training Panel Awards $46,341 to Rocklin Area Chamber

The California Labor and Workforce Development Agency’s Employment Training Panel (ETP) approved 39 contracts totaling over $8.6 million in job training funds. This money will provide training to 6,033 California workers for various high-wage occupations.

The Panel awarded a $46,341 contract to the Rocklin Area Chamber of Commerce to provide entrepreneurial training to 129 small business owners in Placer County in an effort to enhance their competitive business management skills needed to successfully manage and grow a small business to a higher level of financial success.

The Rocklin Chamber, established in 1969, is dedicated to fostering business growth in the Rocklin area. Training will be made available to small business owners who employ no more than nine workers.

Chamber Board Member David Kaiser, CEO of Granite Community Bank, and Steve Gándola, owner of EmPraxis and a member of the Small Business Resource Committee, spearheaded the effort to secure this grant.

‘When I learned of these available funds I started to envision all the ways the Chamber could benefit its members through training,’ Gándola said. ‘That’s why I decided to devote the effort to help the committee secure this funding.’

ETP is a business and labor supported state agency that assists employers in strengthening their competitive edge by providing funds to partially off-set the costs of job skills training that is necessary to maintain high-performance workplaces. California’s ETP is a performance-based program, providing funds for trainees who successfully complete approved training programs and are retained in well-paying jobs for a specific period of time.

The program is funded by the Employment Training Tax paid by California employers, and targets firms threatened by out-of-state and international competition. Since its inception in 1983, the ETP program has provided over $1 billion to train more than 660,000 workers in over 65,000 California companies. Employers match training funds awarded through ETP contracts, making these projects true public-private partnerships.

To view copies of the proposals considered by the Panel at its most recent meeting, visit the ETP website at www.etp.ca.gov. For more information about the ETP program and/or its Entrepreneurial and Small Business Programs, visit the website or call 327-5640.

‘We’re very excited to have this funding so we can provide new services to our members,’ Kaiser said. ‘It’ll allow us to explore new benefits that will increase the success of businesses in Rocklin.’

Stay tuned in the coming months for new business owner training programs that will be offered as a result of this funding.