TIFTON — In an effort to guide employees of COI Food Services to other local job openings, a job fair was held recently at the company’s distribution center in Tifton. COI announced in August that it will close its Tifton facility, affecting nearly 200 employees.

Two days following the announcement, Tifton-Tift County President and CEO Brad Day said members of the chamber’s First Focus on Local Business group spoke with company officials from its home office in Nashville, Tenn. and with other officials at the Tifton distribution center. The group formulated a three-point plan to help COI’s workers before the plant projected closing date in mid-October.

First, a job fair was scheduled, which was held on Wednesday, Aug. 27th at COI. Tammy Sandiford, COI’s Human Resources Manager, said over a dozen companies were on hand to speak to workers and she has received many good reviews.

"A lot of our workers filled out applications and some did interviews," Sandiford said. "Since then, we’ve heard that some of our workers have had follow-up interviews as well. It was very important to have that here since we have 200 workers that will be looking for jobs. It all happened quite suddenly and having it here benefited our employees a lot."

As part of the job fair, a Rapid Response team was also formed, led by representatives from the Department of Labor, to immediately help workers find leads on jobs.

Secondly, the Georgia Department of Economic Development will provide information on 10 companies in the region that were expanding and looking for skilled labor. Finally, Moultrie Technical College is assisting the workers with their Certified Work Read program to ensure they have certain basic skills that will help them find jobs.

"This kind of situation is exactly why the First Focus on Local Business was formed," Day said. "We can’t control the action that COI was forced to take but we can control how we react to it. This announcement came very quickly and I think the response from this group was equally quick. They put a plan of action into place immediately and I believe that will benefit those workers."

Day added that COI’s staff has welcomed all input from the chamber and the First Focus group and Sandiford said the assistance from the Georgia Department of Labor was overwhelming.

"They did an amazing job with the job fair," she said. "They just took it over and put the program together and did a phenomenal job of helping to make it happen. I can’t say enough about how helpful they were."

The First Focus group was formed during the summer and is made up of representatives from educational institutions, regulatory agencies, local utilities, occupational health care facilities and staffing agencies among others.

Day said the job fair was only the beginning as First Focus representatives will stay in contact with those from COI to continue to help workers find jobs locally.

"We are also getting help from a manufacturing consulting group from Georgia Tech that we can use as a resource for some of their methods concerning Lean manufacturing," Day said. "We have a lot of resources that we should take advantage of to assist all of our local manufacturers. It’s the chamber’s job to put those partners together so that it benefits everyone."