Workforce Solutions Rural Capital Area Closing Career Centers to the Public; Maintaining Services Remotely
To all of our community partners, thank you for all of your support and collaboration amid our collective coronavirus (COVID-19) preparations and response.
As we shared in our release earlier this week, we understand that these are concerning times for our community, and appreciate everything you’ve done to connect our Central Texas families and employers to the services and support they need most.
We wanted to share this blog update to reinforce that Workforce Solutions Rural Capital Area (WSRCA) has mobilized to support our communities at this difficult time, while ensuring that our workforce development services continue throughout our nine-county region.
Latest Update
Out of an abundance of caution for the health and safety of our communities, our WSRCA Board has made the decision to move to Phase 2 out of 4, as part of our Coronavirus (COVID-19) Response Plan, and close all Rural Capital Area Career Centers to public access.
What this means:
- All WSRCA Career Centers throughout region will be closing to the public as of 5 p.m. today, until further notice.
- Career center staff will work on-site with exceptions as identified by each partner agency.
- We will conduct modified business operations, maximizing virtual and telephone services to communicate with customers.
- Career workshops will move to a virtual environment.
- There will be very limited exceptions to allow for individual appointments.
- Stringent hygiene and sanitizing practices will continue as well social distancing between staff.
While we are temporarily closing our doors to public access, our talented teams will continue to ensure that our customers find world-class workforce solutions through our available services.
For more information about the phases, and the determination process for elevating our response, please reach out to us directly: communications@ruralcapital.net
Additional Support
Our team has launched a special page on our website providing local, state and federal COVID-19 resources for our business services customers, job seekers and early childhood development programs.
Link: https://workforcesolutionsrca.com/employers/covid-19-coronavirus-resources
We continue to refresh the page with the latest updates to the Unemployment Benefits program from the Texas Workforce Commission, guidance on wages, hours, leave and workplace safety from the U.S. Department of Labor, and access to emergency business resources and links from the U.S. Small Business Administration.
We’ve also launched a special toll free hotline for workers affected by COVID-19 concerns to find immediate workforce solutions: 1-844-344-2780
And for our business community, we set up the email address, rapidresponse@ruralcapital.net, to connect employers with a Rapid Response specialist, for assistance with customized proactive outplacement services or layoff aversion strategies at no cost. Our Rapid Response services are tailored to each company, based on the needs of the affected employees.
Through our social media channels, we’ve also been sharing vital information on our available services, as well posts from all of you - our valued community partners. Please follow and share: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube
The Demand So Far
As for requests for services, we have seen an increase in calls at our career centers in the past week.
Here’s a look at our growing call volume:
Here’s a look at the number of individual job seeker registrations we’ve handled over the past 3 weeks, and the spike this week:
We’ve also seen a spike in the amount job order requests and open positions employers are adding to WorkInTexas.com throughout the Rural Capital Area:
Many families and child care programs that participate in our child care services have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s a closer look at the impact on the child care providers in our counties:
We are taking the following steps to mitigate the impact on families/providers:
- Effective March 1, 2020, children may accrue absences without impacting ongoing eligibility for services or provider reimbursements. Providers will continue to be paid, if children are absent, or if the provider is temporarily closed due to COVID-19. Texas Workforce Commission is monitoring the situation and will make a future determination on when this policy will conclude.
- WSRCA is authorized to make supplemental payments to child care providers to cover lost parent share of cost payments. More information on how supplemental payments will be calculated is forthcoming.
- For child care questions from the public, please have them contact our WSRCA Child Care Services team toll free 1-877-223-0404, or by email at rcachildcareservices@ruralcapital.net.
Hopefully this information provides you with a better understanding of some of the opportunities and challenges that our talented team of specialists have been working to address.
Again, we can’t thank you enough for all of your guidance and support, as we work collaboratively to empower our communities to weather any difficult days ahead.
Together, We’re Building a World Class Workforce!
TOPICS: Business Services, Talent Development, COVID-19
