State grant helps ABM reinvest in its workforce.

The Boston office of ABM Janitorial Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of ABM Industries Incorporated, has been awarded a $57,750 Workforce Training Grant from the Massachusetts Workforce Training Fund, reports Jay Halloran, ABM's Regional Manager in Boston.

The Massachusetts Workforce Training Fund is a state fund financed entirely by Massachusetts employers. Its purpose is to provide financial resources to Massachusetts businesses and workers to train current and newly hired employees. The Workforce Training Fund is administered by the Division of Employment and Training (DET), an agency of the Massachusetts Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

The ABM grant is being used to offer management and job skills enhancement training to 180 employees through programs designed by Impact Skill Sets, Inc., which offers consulting and training services to help organizations develop, implement and sustain methodologies needed to improve performance. The training is offered in both English and Spanish.

"At ABM, we are always striving to improve our level of customer service through providing the best trained personnel in the business," said Mr. Halloran. "We thank the Massachusetts Workforce Training Fund for this grant, which helps us continue to achieve this goal."

Thirty of ABM's supervisors and managers are taking part in the Impact Management training program, designed to teach new management techniques and skills that will help improve efficiency, productivity, and how to achieve results by motivating others.

The Massachusetts Workforce Training Fund grant will also help train 150 ABM janitors through the Impact Foundation in Quality program, designed to help janitors develop work skills to improve the quality of their work and reduce costs for the organization as a whole. The training is designed to increase efficiency, productivity and response times with error free work.

This highly interactive training is taught in the classroom and at the job sites with trainers and DVD video leaning tools in both English and Spanish, according to James P. O'Neil, president of Impact Skill Sets, Inc.

ABM Janitorial Services operates more than 200 branch offices nationwide, serving 38 states and 36 of the 40 largest major metropolitan areas across the country.