The Liberty County Board of Commissioners renewed an agreement to work with Coastal Workforce Services during its meeting last week.

According to the Coastal Workforce Services website, in 2000, the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 was implemented in Georgia. The coastal region was created as one of 20 designated areas in Georgia. The region includes Liberty and Long counties.

Coastal Workforce Services implements different programs that help people find employment. Sheron Morgan, interim executive director of the Coastal Workforce Investment Board, presented commissioners an agreement to continue working with the CWIB, along with some changes brought about by a new law.

The Workforce Innovations Opportunity Act, signed in 2014, focuses on working closely with businesses.

Morgan said that previously, Coastal Workforce’s services included training individuals for jobs, but those people couldn’t find jobs once they were done with training. She described it as working backward.

“One thing about this program is you will be able to train an individual they way that you see fit for your business, opposed to us training them and they come on the job and need additional training,” Morgan said.

Morgan gave an example of a manufacturing business that was in need of employees with a particular skill. Coastal Workforce worked with the Department of Labor, which was the service provider at the time — it’s now Innovative Employment Solutions — and identified individuals who were hired by the plant and trained in the plant’s way of operation.

“We paid up to 50 percent of the training wages for those individuals while they were in training. The contract was for 6 months. We paid 50 percent of wages, no overtime. … That was a savings for that company,” Morgan said.

If given a waiver by the governor, Coastal Workforce can pay up to 75 percent of those wages.

Individuals are employees of the company from the first day of the program’s on-the-job training. People interested in the program must meet with case managers and be deemed eligible.

Coastal Workforce recently announced the ability to provide financial aid to people seeking education and certification in some high-demand professions.

To learn more about Coastal Workforce and its other career programs, go to www.coastalworkforceservices.org.