There is a common thread in discussions about the current manufacturing landscape. That thread is workforce development.

With the unemployment rate low and other forces putting the squeeze on companies in need of manpower, creative solutions are needed to find and maintain employees. In recent years, training of employees and the larger workforce has arisen as a much more formidable challenge. Local governments and economic development entities across the country are implementing workforce development programs to meet this need.

Challenges on this scale call for a diversity of approaches, and there are no shortage of experiments being carried out to find the panacea for up-skilling en masse. While much attention is given to training programs for high skilled manufacturing jobs, and justifiably so, there are still other pieces of the puzzle. For example, how to introduce the unemployed and disadvantaged into the workforce, so they can eventually work their way up the ladder to those mid-to-high skilled jobs.

One company in Norwich has been working on this front for many years. Achieve, which unified with CWS in June of 2017, has been providing pathways to employment since 1952 and currently serves 2,200 individuals with disabilities in Broome, Chenango, and Tioga counties. CWS Packaging in Norwich serves as one platform for introducing those individuals into the workforce, typically employing between 100 and 110 individuals in packaging for the pharmaceutical, medical, and cosmetic industries.