658 Richmond St. NW

Grand Rapids, MI 49504

616-456-1613

September 6, 2017

The Honorable Rick Snyder

Governor

P.O. Box 30013

Lansing, MI 48909

Dear Governor Snyder,

On behalf of Williams Distributing / Kitchen & Bath, I would like to express our appreciation for the workforce development services provided by Michigan Works! of Kent and Allegan Counties. Williams Distributing is a distributor or kitchen cabinets, plumbing products, HVAC equipment & parts, fireplaces and garage doors. Our headquarters are in Grand Rapids, MI, and we have sites throughout the lower Peninsula and one in Escanaba. We have approximately 350 employees, have been in business since 1968, and are a family run and owed business.

I connected with Michigan Works! because I needed assistance with skilled employees initially in our HVAC and Hearth departments. We really struggled to find qualified people in different Michigan markets without taking them from our customers, which is not something we are willing to do. We are constantly searching for these people, which brought down overall production levels. Thankfully, we connected with Michigan Works! and learned about the STFF grant and other options we could consider to widen our hiring pool. Michigan Works! helped me reach my goal of hiring and training twelve new full-time employees during the time period of this grant that I would have struggled to fill elsewhere.

My company has benefited by working with Michigan Works! because it allowed us to branch out of our limited talent pool of candidates with prior experience. We were able to hire people without the specific skills required for the job because we had assistance through this grant to offset some of those training costs during their first weeks on the job. What I find most valuable about partnering with Michigan works is how it’s really a partnership. The representatives we worked with were so helpful at providing us tools to help with the grant but also in this process they send over candidates they felt were a fit to our organization after learning about us and offering other insights and services available to use that weren’t utilizing and could help us find qualified candidates. I feel very fortunate that we were able to work together and look forward to doing more of that going forward.

Sincerely,

Amanda Williams

Human Resources Director

616-771-0485