Governor’s Grants in Rhode Island

April 29th, 2007 Posted by Mark

The state of Rhode Island is not only changing the way that it does health care insurance for its employers. It is also changing the way that it allows employers to do training of their employees. In fact, it is making the training easier—by helping to pay for it for many of the state’s employers. To be exact, as many as 69 companies in the state of Rhode Island, involving more than 4000 employees in the state, are now looking at more than $1.3 million to share in order to train their employees. The program is meant to give Rhode Island employers grants to support development of training programs through employer sponsorship.

The program is organized by the Governor’s Workforce Board. It includes some of the states biggest employers, such as Citizens Bank, Cox Communications, and General Dynamics, but it also surely includes all sizes of employers as well. The grants typically come in sizes up to $50000, from the Department of Labor and Training overall. And these funds do not come for free. As I said, Rhode Island employers, these grants are meant to stimulate employer-sponsored training program, so you must sponsor the training program and put up matching money in order to get the grants in the first place.

The reason for these grants, says the governor of Rhode Island, Gov. Carcieri, is to encourage employers to develop the work force of tomorrow today. All employers are aware of the stiff competition out there for the top employees, and the competition to retain these employees once you get them on your books. In this way, the grant program tackles two issues. It provides an incentive that employers can offer, training, that could attract top talent to a company, as well as provides incentive for employees stay once they are there. Plus, these workers who get trained can then turn around and become even better employees down the road.

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