{{RELATEDLINKS}}For the fourth year
in a row, leading
site location
consultants have
chosen Georgia as
the No. 1 state for
workforce development
programs.
In its Summer
2013 issue,
Area Development
magazine published
the results
of its fourth annual
Consultants Survey,
which credits
Quick Start as the
key factor in that top ranking.
According the article, “Quality and cost of labor
is a key driver in every location decision. Georgia’s
Quick Start work force development program is
one of the best in the nation and provides customized
training at no cost to qualified companies in
an array of industries. Nearly one million workers
at 6,200 companies of all sizes have benefited from
Quick Start.”
Georgia Quick Start, the nation’s oldest and
most successful workforce training organization,
provides comprehensive, customized training to
qualified existing, expanding, and new businesses
— free of charge — to create and save jobs, and
promote business success.
Some of the state’s newest manufacturers reaffirm
the effectiveness of Quick Start, its value, and
the role it played in Georgia’s winning their jobcreating
investments.
“I can’t say enough about Georgia Quick Start,”
said Todd Henry,
plant manager
for Caterpillar’s
new 1,400-job
manufacturing
plant near Athens.
“They’ve just been
phenomenal.”
And then
there’s Baxter
International’s
1,400-job biomanufacturing
plant near
Covington. To
help support training
for Baxter as well as future biotech companies
locating in Georgia, Quick Start will operate the
new Georgia BioScience Training Center.
Valery Gallagher, Baxter International’s director
of government affairs, summed up the value
Quick Start brings to advanced manufacturers and
the taxpaying citizens of Georgia. Georgia competes
globally for new jobs, she said. “And the
uniqueness that Georgia brings is the Quick Start
program. The Quick Start program for us was one
of the key determinants.” She concluded, “As we
looked at what different site locations offer, Quick
Start was an enormous part of our decision-making
process.”
In addition to ranking Georgia as the No. 1 state
for workforce development programs, the consultants
responding to Area Development’s 2013
survey ranked Georgia No. 1 for rail and highway
accessibility and No. 2 overall based on its ranking
in all 18 categories related to its overall business
environment, labor climate, and infrastructure and
global access.