The Pee Dee Region Workforce Development Board and Regional Partnership Workforce Development Board developed a strategic plan unique to our region.  Click here to read it. (PDF)

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The Pee Dee and Regional Partnership boards met jointly on November 15, 2007 to review North Carolinas new board standards with the intent to develop a plan of action to meet the new standards requirement by July 2008.

Board members worked through a set of questions to review their work to date and to determine the relevancy of the strategic goals that were put in place in 2005.

Attendees next worked through a review of the standards requirements to determine where gaps exist and then developed strategies to close the identified gaps.

The information in this report provides the work of the board retreat. In addition, an appendix is included outlining the boards' 2005 strategic goals, and the NC Board Standards.

Click here for The Journey to Standards Report (PDF)

National trends indicate that communities throughout the country are facing current or imminent shortages of skilled workers to meet the demands of local employers. This trend is compounded by the aging of the workforce. With these facts in mind the Business Services Representatives of Workforce Development Boards throughout North Carolina conducted a survey of employers across the entire state to find what workforce skills may be in short supply, if any; what training programs they may need in the future as they seek to have a better trained workforce; where they are securing their current labor force; and, what training resources they have used. Additional questions were included in the survey instrument as it was developed.

This report reflects the current status of workforce skills needs in North Carolina. The findings in this report are from a survey conducted by the Business Services Representatives in regions across North Carolina.

Click here to read the North Carolina Statewide Skills Survey (PDF)

"WIRED Initiative"

Workforce Innovations in Regional Economic Development

Piedmont Triad Partnership has been awarded a WIRED Initiative Grant.  Piedmont Triad consists of twelve economically interdependent counties, with Montgomery county in the Pee Dee Region Workforce Development Area being one of the twelve.   Piedmont Triad has been more adversely impacted by globalization than almost any other U.S. metropolitan region.  The Region's key manufacturing industries-textiles, apparel, and furniture-have been devastated by globalization and the availability of inexpensive offshore labor

The Piedmont Triad has already undertaken all preliminary steps required to quickly implement a transformational economic strategy that integrates workforce, economic development, education, and entrepreneurship.  All that was lacking to transform the Region into a globally competitive hotspot was funding, which has been made available through the WIRED Initiative.  The Initiative is for three years and at the end of the three year period, the Region will show major improvements both in workforce innovation and system outcome metrics that USDOL uses to measure progress and sustaining funding will be available to continue the Region's economic progress.

Implementation of the goals, objectives, benchmarks and performance measures of the vision plan will create high-wage, high skill jobs in the Piedmont Triad to replace the low-skill manufacturing jobs the Region is losing to globalization and offshore competition.  In addition, the WIRED demonstration project will result in the development of a regional model that will ideally represent the USDOL mission of creating a new paradigm for advancing America's economic competitiveness through replicable regional transformation.  The Piedmont Triad will transform not just education and workforce development, but the entire regional economy and service delivery system through an innovative strategy that integrates workforce development, education, cluster-focused economic development and entrepreneurship.