Does your company invest in professional development for its employees? If not, now is a great time to reconsider. Investing in the professional growth of your employees has many benefits that more than justify any associated costs. In this post, we’ll look at five different reasons managers should make skill development a priority.

If you've ever left the Portland area to live where English wasn't the main spoken language—or even lived in a neighborhood of Portland where English was less common—you know the challenge non-native English speakers face daily. Even people with impeccable language skills must process many cultural, contextual, and idiomatic elements of the workplace while also doing whatever work you hired them to do.

The United States gains a lot of strength from being a place where people from anywhere can find their place and succeed. If your workplace has hired non-native English speakers, you must make an effort to promote strong communication between colleagues of different backgrounds. You may also need to account for more considerable language barriers, such as when coworkers or employees do their work well but with intermediate English language proficiency, resulting in misunderstandings.

By improving office communication and helping everyone get on the same page, you can make your workplace a safe and prosperous environment for native and non-native English speakers.

Catalyst Trade believes that "coffee is a sacrament," inviting us to grab a cup and join them as they revolutionize the way coffee is traded. Co-owner Emily McIntyre was looking for help growing her international business when she found the Oregon SBDC Network Global Trade Center and participated in the Global Trade Management program in the spring of 2020. Faced with the challenges of building a business across multiple continents and cultures, compounded by a global pandemic, Emily was inspired by the class sessions on cultural competency taught by David Kohl. After years of preparation, Catalyst Trade is excited to finally launch their vertical integration in Ethiopia, along with introducing Kenya and Peru as new coffee origins. As Catalyst Trade continues to lean on the PCC SBDC to help them grow, Emily and her team work hard to transform the future of coffee.

Learn more about Emily's story below!

While the reception workers in any business can make customers feel comfortable and well-oriented, there are few contexts where they are as vital as in the medical world. Patient access specialists work as the first contact with patients visiting a doctor's office or other healthcare settings.

People often come to the doctor with stress or concerns, and the patient access specialist they encounter shapes their experience, calms them down and helps them feel cared for and supported. If you're looking for a role that impacts people and keeps you busy with new tasks every day, a patient access specialist is a fantastic role that can lead to other industry opportunities.

Whether a hospital is in the middle of a significant world health event or working with typical patient volumes, the phlebotomists are one of the many sets of personnel that keep them running smoothly. Phlebotomists take and process blood, which is one of the critical sources of information that helps doctors and their teams to do their work. Too little bloodwork severely restricts diagnoses and treatment. When there aren't enough phlebotomists, these delays in bloodwork can impact the entire hospital, making it harder to treat patients in the ways they need most.

Here are just a few ways in which phlebotomists are part of the life's blood of hospitals.

Medical treatments go through rigorous testing before approval because doctors, patients, and all relevant parties want to know they can rely on those treatments.

Indeed, there are occasional side effects and reasons why someone isn't the right fit for the treatment, but medical professionals must know the exceptions before approving treatments for broader use. So how do they ensure that their clinical trials effectively give them the information they need to rely on the treatments down the road?

One of the significant ways to ensure they collect sound data is through diverse applicants in their clinical research studies. Having applicants from all walks of life helps increase confidence in the treatment's effectiveness across all people. If there are disparities in clinical results, such as different outcomes for one gender versus another, doctors and patients must have that information before opting into the final version of the treatment. Diverse trials can help researchers adjust the formulation and timing of a treatment to create a final protocol that works as well as possible for many people.

Kayla Banda moved to Portland from Reno, Nevada during the COVID pandemic. Having worked at the Small Business Development Center in Reno, she reached out to inquire about assisting small businesses in Portland and was immediately welcomed to the PCC SBDC team.

The rental market in Portland is an exciting one. Many real estate investors have found success in purchasing residential or commercial properties to then rent to various customers. Many people opt to do this as they have the capital and time to do so, and as their responsibilities grow or decrease over time, they choose how much help to get with property-related work.

Whether you're a real estate investor who ideally manages all their properties or hires a separate property manager to handle the day-to-day for your rentals, you'd be surprised how valuable you would find an Oregon property management license.

Many people are looking for a career where, as their strengths mature and they gain experience. They'll see increased opportunities. Additionally, they value work that isn't wildly cyclical, temporary, or unstable.

Working as a real estate broker requires hard work, communication, and studying. Once you've made these efforts, you earn a steady, stable workplace. The need for housing is constant, and working under an experienced principal broker gives you access to the know-how you need to put your learning to use and gain a reputation for excellence.