Winn-Worth Betco News

Located in Northern Iowa, along the border of Minnesota, Winnebago and Worth Counties have amazing properties available for growing companies! Our counties provide easy access to the Twin Cities and Des Moines metro hubs. This is one of the many reasons that our counties are an ideal location for an...Continue Reading

DES MOINES – Today, Governor Reynolds announced two Virtual Town Hall meetings to support and inform the Child Care Task Force. On March 10, Governor Reynolds signed Executive Order 8 launching a new Child Care Task Force to develop a comprehensive strategy to address the child care shortage and barriers t...Continue Reading

Winnebago and Worth Counties want you to follow our social media to stay connected with our communities! We want to make sure that everyone stays connected, which is why we are urging everyone to follow us on our new social media accounts. Following us on social media will help resident...Continue Reading

LAKE MILLS, IA, April 26, 2021 Melissa Michaelis of Winn-Worth Betco was one of 170 economic development professionals to attend the Heartland Economic Development Course (HEDC) in April.  Heartland attendees receive fundamental economic development training on topics ranging from business, retention and expansion, workforce development, real estate and entrepreneurship t...Continue Reading

North Iowa Area Community College invites adults, ages 23 and up, to apply for an Extreme Makeover – a unique makeover that changes lives. For more than 15 years, NIACC has been providing adult students with this opportunity to return to college at no cost.  Extreme Makeover: College Edition is a contes...Continue Reading

MASON CITY, Iowa— The NIACC John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center hosted Venture School Launch Day on Thursday, March 25, 2021. The spring 2021 cohort of nine teams competed in person after attending classes virtually for 8 weeks of training, doing customer discovery and developing their business model alongside local entrepreneur mentors...Continue Reading

Now that Spring is here, NIACC and the Winnebago County Conservation Board want you to get outside and enjoy it. To help you do that, they are hosting a program on “Geocaching” on Saturday, April 17th. The program will be held at Thorpe Park, five miles west of Forest City...Continue Reading

BY BONNIE KAY BALDWIN LAKE MILLS GRAPHIC For those coffee lovers out there wanting to try a new cup of Joe and searching for the best coffee they can find, there’s a drop of good news dawning. Justin and Michelle Kester have fired up a brand-new undertaking—roasting coffee beans. The idea, as Justin pu...Continue Reading

More than 75 percent of the companies responding to a recent survey from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) expect the COVID-19 pandemic will have a financial impact on their business, with more than 50 percent anticipating changes to their operations. Prior to the pandemic many manufacturing companies had design and constructio...Continue Reading

Years ago in this column, I reminded readers that January is named after the Roman god Janus — the one looking backward and forward at the same time. The cover on this January issue seems the perfect illustration of that notion. We were determined to not focus again on th...Continue Reading

COVID-19 didn’t just upset the established model of corporate site selection in 2020; the global pandemic obliterated it. Site Selection Magazine’s annual survey of site selection consultants, conducted in late November, revealed five ways in which the global outbreak of coronavirus significantly altered how companies choose their business facility locations: Instead o...Continue Reading

For the last five years, Emsi has been tracking how communities are faring in their efforts to attract and develop talent. Our Talent Attraction Index equally weighs six metrics: migration, growth of jobs and skilled workers, regional competitiveness, job openings, and education attainment to rank each county and create ou...Continue Reading

Joensuu, a city of 76,000 in Eastern Finland, is home to the European Forest Institute, appropriately enough. It’s also the home base of Valamis, a leading IT company specializing in the digitalization of learning. That may not be a new discipline, but it will take on greater urgency as remot...Continue Reading

Sprung from the lush forests of Oregon just 15 years ago, a different breed of outsourcer has found small town America to be a vital talent resource. FCR (derived from First Call Response) got its start in the legacy timber town of Roseburg, a community of 21,000 that today is hom...Continue Reading

Texas enters 2021 as the world’s ninth largest economy, proof of the success of a long-term strategy to make Texas the best place to start or relocate a business, said Robert Allen, President and CEO of the Texas Economic Development Corporation. “This is more than just a statistic,” Allen said. “Th...Continue Reading

Texas enters 2021 as the world's ninth largest economy, proof of the success of a long-term strategy to make Texas the best place to start or relocate a business, said Robert Allen, President and CEO of the Texas Economic Development Corporation. "This is more than just a statistic," Allen said. "The fact that ou...Continue Reading

Why would my community want to attract a REMOTE WORKFORCE? -- To grow your economy, of course! The coronavirus pandemic has affected U.S. workplaces in many ways, including transitioning many employees to remote work. As some businesses begin to welcome employees back to the office, many remote workers, about two-thirds t...Continue Reading

Lichtsinn RV and its team of employees donated more than $27,000 to select organizations for the 2020 calendar year through the Lichtsinn RV WE CARE Charitable Giving Program. The WE CARE Program is the giving arm of Lichtsinn RV, the closest RV Dealer to Winnebago Industries, located in Forest City. Accordin...Continue Reading

The world as we all knew it changed earlier this year with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Seemingly overnight, everything that we used to think was normal had changed, and things that once were deemed impossible for the workplace became the “new normal.” Now, seven months later, most o...Continue Reading

AD: Can you define people analytics for our readers? Williams: People analytics is described as the method of analytics which can support leaders as they make decisions about their employees and workforce. This method applies statistics, technology, and expertise to large sets of HR data, which should result in better business and managemen...Continue Reading

As someone who lives in a city (albeit not a large one), I am perhaps not the most qualified to discuss the topic of rural economies. On the other hand, both my parents were raised on wheat farms in eastern Washington. Consequently, one of the most pressing issues in rura...Continue Reading

Many executives are increasingly weighing the impact of environmental changes and catastrophic weather — which already have devastated communities — on their businesses and future needs. Examples include the millions of acres that have been scorched in California and Colorado this year, and hurricane damage in the Gulf States. Louisiana...Continue Reading

They’re the words Iowa manufacturers have been waiting all year to hear: “Things are looking up.”  Iowa manufacturers expect increased sales, employment and capital investments in the first quarter (January-March), according to the results of the latest ABI Quarterly Iowa Business Survey. “The survey results are incredibly positive for Iowa’s economy,” sai...Continue Reading