Austrians Awed by Quick Start

A group of 22 Austrian business executives recently visited Quick Start and other corporate Atlanta offices as part of an advanced business management program they are taking at Limak International Management Academy in Linz, Austria.

The international portion of the program, offered in conjunction with Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, combines classroom work at Goizueta with corporate visits in Atlanta, New York and Washington, D.C.

“The Quick Start visit exactly hits our criteria for what we want to expose them to,” says Catherine Neiner, program manager at Goizueta. “We want to take them to firms they wouldn’t otherwise see in Austria.” Goizueta, which has participated in the program for 12 years, included Quick Start in the tour for the second consecutive year.

Quick Start Director Pam Griffin presented an overview of the technical college system before detailing Quick Start’s workforce training program for manufacturing and service industries, noting its 34-year history of training 390,000 people for 3,700 companies.

Sun Clinton, Quick Start senior multimedia training developer, explained computer-based training (CBT) and its animation capabilities, using the CIBA Vision and Dan Foss projects as examples of Quick Start’s custom-tailored services. CBT is formulated as an alternative to classroom training so trainees can view material on their own time.

David Bolton, Quick Start media production manager, led the visitors through a showing of impressive, high-end videos produced for client companies. He highlighted the various purposes of videography, such as recruitment, pre-employment training, orientation — all intended to help reduce employee turnover.

“Do you ever go overseas to a company to produce a video?” Bolton was asked.

“Not often,” he replied. “But we go where necessary if it will help the company — and therefore Georgia.”

Clearly wowed by Quick Start, the Austrian visitors couldn’t suppress their numerous questions. How is it funded — no federal money? How, specifically, are employees trained? What was Quick Start’s biggest success? How do companies qualify? What’s the relationship with the Department of Labor? Do Quick Start-trained employees have an obligation to stay a certain length of time? And it’s all free?

“They kept talking about it after they left Quick Start,” Neiner recalls. “They were fascinated. They felt it was a great example of a government-private connection.”

During their two-week stay in Atlanta, the Austrians also visited corporate giants CNN, Coca-Cola, Home Depot and Cingular, as well as the highly touted Emory Hospital. And in Washington, D.C., they visited several federal agencies.

But when the U.S. trip was over and Neiner had collected all the evaluation forms, it was Quick Start that received the highest ratings.