Krystal Levi, center, president and CEO of the Northern Indiana Workforce Board, cuts the ribbon during the ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday for WorkOne’s new location at 3113 E. Center St., Warsaw. She is surrounded by WorkOne and Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce staff and Chamber ambassadors. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — WorkOne has moved its Warsaw office to 3113 E. Center St. to better serve those in need of employment services.

Wednesday, July 26, Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce celebrated WorkOne’s new location with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Previously, WorkOne was in Goodwill.

Krystal Levi, president and CEO of the Northern Indiana Workforce Board, said WorkOne moved because they wanted more space and to be in a place where people could see where they were. She said signage was very important to them.

“WorkOne (offers) basic career services, career advice, helping put together a resume, interviewing skills. We have training dollars available for individuals who are looking to skill themselves up for better employment,” Levi said.

WorkOne works with the Indiana Department of Workforce Development for funding.

“The Northern Indiana Workforce Board receives federal funding through the Department of Workforce Development. We also receive state funds – part of the Next Level Jobs employer training grants, those come through us. The Workforce Ready Grants that they’ve done,” she said. “Even though they’re trained at Ivy Tech, or Vincennes, Holy Cross has some money, they have to come through us for the career advisor piece of it so that we can help make sure that they’re really on track to do what they want to do.”

Though the WorkOne office is in Warsaw, Levi said it serves all of Kosciusko County.

“We have done in the past some outreach to Syracuse, and it looks like we’re going to be doing some more outreach to Syracuse with the Polywood layoffs,” she said. “So we do a ton of work. We go in when we hear of a plant closure, like LSC (Communications), which is down here as well. We take in services to the employees through the employer. The employer lets us come in. We help people understand when they should file their unemployment, other benefits that might be available to them through the government and then all the things that we can offer here.”

Right now, they’re doing workshops at LSC, which have been ongoing for a couple of weeks and will continue until LSC fully closes in September. WorkOne is starting to work with Polywood as well, she said.

LSC announced in early June that it was permanently closing its Warsaw plant, affecting 525 employees. About 200 employees at Polywood were notified they were being laid off last week, according to WSBT Channel 22, with the reason being given as “seasonal work.”

“We’re glad to be in business so that we can get all of this information and help out to people, but we’re most happy when businesses are thriving and we can just send them people who need employment,” Levi stated.

This year, with the two layoffs at LSC and Polywood, they’ve been busy.

“But, also, when new companies come in, we set up hiring fairs and we do some vetting of the potential employees for them. Since we moved this office, the traffic has increased. We’ve noticed a significant uptick in our attendance, if you will, than what we had when we were in Goodwill,” she said.

Indiana’s unemployment rate for June 2023 was 3.2%, compared to the national unemployment rate of 3.6%.

Levi said that’s a misnomer because of the way the unemployment rate is calculated.

“We’re still pulling back from COVID. There’s still a lot of people that are not engaged in the workforce, and we know that because of issues with childcare, transportation, things that just happened. Even mental health. People wanting to go back to work or stay home with their children. It ends up being a quality-of-life issue as much as not wanting to work, which sometimes you hear; it’s not that at all. It’s just figuring out how to. And that’s a lot of our focus now is, how do we help people get back to work? Work with employers for flexible schedules, if we can, and that’s part of what our business service team does. And then working with staff to help them find jobs that fit some of those characteristics, things that they need,” she explained.

With all the remote work people were able to do during the pandemic, she said it wasn’t uncommon for employers to call employees back into the workforce but the employees won’t go back.

“And it’s, again, back to that, are we comfortable being back out in the world? And it feels good to be able to work from home in your jammies,” Levi continued.

WorkOne’s re-employment service programs are done virtually, as are their workshops, so there are ways people looking for work can connect to WorkOne without going into the office, but Levi said they like the one-on-one in-person hands-on meetings. No appointment is necessary, though it helps to call in and set an appointment with an advisor.

“Anybody can walk in – documented, undocumented, we serve everybody. I say that because sometimes people don’t know that and we have a large immigration population that’s here and we want them to come in because we want to help them get documents and we can do that. We have resources,” she said.

According to a sign on the door, business hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Fridays; and closed Saturdays and Sundays.