Transcript

My name is Michael White.  I’m the Director of Continuing Education and Economic Development at Darton College.  Our department offers non-academic classes, professional and workforce development, and leisure opportunities for Albany and the surrounding area.  One of the things that we find most employers will tell you is their key asset and that’s their employees.  They find that that’s, you know, where the power of their company comes from is their employees.  But unfortunately, when economic times get tough, one of the first things to be cut from a budget is professional development.  It’s also one of the last things to be added back to the budget.

This is precisely the time that an employer should focus on their employees by providing these trainings.  By providing professional development for their employees they should—they’re not only committed to their company’s success but the success of their employees, and in turn, their employees are more committed to the business.  It also can improve efficiency and productivity amongst their employees, but more importantly, it can increase job satisfaction amongst those employees.  And a satisfied employee is more likely to go that extra mile, stay that extra hour to do more with less, which is very important, obviously, during those tough economic times.

Darton Continuing Education can help a company provide that training in a number of different ways.  We can send an instructor to a business to provide a training.  You can send your employees to our state of the art facility for training.  Or it might be just simply send your employees to one of our seminars or events such as the Professional Women’s Forum.  But if time is an issue, which often is, we offer a wide range of online professional development courses, so employees can sign up for those and do those as they have time in between their shifts and those types of things.

If you’re thinking outside of the box, we provide team building programs on our state of the art Alpine Towers Challenge Course, and this involves two 50-foot climbing towers and an obstacle course.  It can be a really neat change of pace for your employees.  If nothing else, you might consider being flexible with your scheduling of your employees to allow them to enroll in an academic course here at Darton College to improve their career.  But the bottom line is professional development is something that’s an ongoing process.  Whether the economy is strong or you’re going through tough budget times, it’s never about investment to provide training and professional development to your employees.

Darton CE is happy to meet with your company and find out what kind of training needs you have and custom design a program that would fit your budget.  You can reach us at 229-317-6730 or visit us on the web at www.darton.edu\ce.