Beltrami County’s new employment training program won’t launch until Jan. 1, but for Workforce Impact’s director, the operation is already underway.

Brian Ophus, a lifelong resident of Bemidji and BSU graduate, is helming Workforce Impact, the program set to replace the county’s contracted services with Rural Minnesota Concentrated Program, Inc., or CEP. Since the mid-1990s, when welfare reform was passed nationally, the county had contracted services through CEP.

However, in 2016, the Beltrami County Health and Human Services Department were authorized to end the contracted services and create its own workforce program to meet the needs of a changing regional economy.

The county’s contract with CEP end Dec. 31 and as a result, it’s created a full schedule for Ophus, whose main effort is moving people from the private provider to Workforce Impact, headquartered at Northwest Technical College.

“We’re already working now. CEP has its contract finishing at the end of the year, so this is a transition month for us,” Ophus said. “They’ve started transferring clients over to our program, so we’ve started to set up orientations and overviews of what Workforce Impact offers.”

Additionally, a new contract with Oshkiimaajitahdah, which provides employment services for the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, has also been worked on by Ophus and other officials. The contract, with a time period of six months, will include Red Lake employing a supervisor and two workforce navigators to work in the program.

“We have a six month contract to get things started,” Ophus said. “Our hope is that it will develop into something long term. We want the people we serve to be well represented and Red Lake brings that cultural competency to us.”

Once Workforce Impact officially launches, Ophus said it will operate with two divisions, with one sector tasked with communicating with the business community and the other focused on job training.

“For the business community, we want to learn about their environments, what the jobs are and what the companies need now and what they’ll need in the future,” Ophus said. “For our clients that we serve, it won’t just be about getting them a job. We found that, for the most part, if a person got a job just to have one, they’re not going to sustain that employment. We need to have that sustainability. Here, they will come to NTC and they will see that we’re committed to their training and education.”

When the program’s staff is full, Ophus said Workforce Impact will have two business account representatives to reach out to the community, four navigation case managers and one case aide.

According to Ophus, the two division model is a must for the environment in the area.

“Beltrami County has a high poverty rate, but we also have companies out here that have available jobs. There are also people who want to work who might not have the education,” Ophus said. “There is a gap of people who want to work but don’t have the skills and there are the businesses with requirements. So here we are in the middle, providing training to get people to work.”