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Q&A
SBS training and education programs under Local Law 156
1:13:10
ยท
4 min
Commissioner Gross discusses SBS's approach to training and education programs, including goals, facilitation, and language access support.
- SBS aims to serve more businesses each year with available resources
- An agency-wide outreach team has partnered with over 600 community-based organizations
- Mobile unit events doubled in the last fiscal year, reaching over 18,000 New Yorkers
- SBS uses a CRM to manage contact information and send follow-up surveys
- Language access is provided through:
- A dedicated language access coordinator
- Translators and interpreters for service delivery
- Staff with linguistic diversity
- Courses directly offered in non-English languages
- Language Line support for vendors and staff
Oswald Feliz
1:13:10
Local law 156 requires that SBS report to the council on training and education provided by SBS.
1:13:18
Does SBS have a goal for how many trainings and educational sessions are generally held every year?
Dynishal Gross
1:13:25
Yes, chair Felice.
1:13:26
So if you I'm sure you're familiar with our MMR and PMMR chapter.
1:13:32
SBS's goals are sometimes expressed as a numerical target and other times as a directional target.
1:13:40
So in the area of business courses we attempt to serve more businesses every year with the resources that we have and in local law 156 we describe our services to small businesses in this area between y twenty and f y twenty four.
Oswald Feliz
1:14:03
Okay.
1:14:05
Over the past two years, every borough other than Brooklyn saw an increase in the number of business training education sessions held.
1:14:13
What led to these decreases in training sessions?
Dynishal Gross
1:14:18
We're really proud of the work that our staff and vendors do to connect small businesses to SBS services.
1:14:25
In the last couple of years we have invested in the creation of an agency wide outreach team.
1:14:32
That outreach team on the ground has partnered with more than 600 community based organizations including you know industry associations from various immigrant communities, community based development organizations, we've worked with member offices as well to increase awareness of SBS services.
1:14:52
I think that increased outreach leading to increase awareness has led to an increase in the services that we have provide provided.
1:15:02
And also we attempt to develop and continually adapt the business education offerings to be responsive to changing business conditions and what business owners respond to in the content and express a need for.
1:15:18
So we have reached, let's see, we doubled our mobile unit events in the last fiscal year to holding over 100 of them and reaching over 18,000 New Yorkers.
1:15:34
I believe since the agency wide outreach team was created we've reached more than 33,000 New Yorkers through through that effort and therefore you know that has translated to conversion in our business training services.
Oswald Feliz
1:15:51
Okay, who facilitates these sessions?
1:15:54
Does SBS follow-up with the participants after the trainings and also how how is language access supported in these sessions?
Dynishal Gross
1:16:03
Yes, thank you chair Felice.
1:16:06
We register small businesses for all of our courses and and manage our contact information through a strong CRM.
1:16:18
That management allows us to send a follow-up survey to every consumer of our services once they have completed satisfaction with the course also how they learned about us so we know how to promote our work effectively and also if they would recommend SBS to their peers or other small businesses.
1:16:40
So we do survey them consistently.
1:16:42
We also are dedicated to providing broad language access to our services.
1:16:47
We do that through we have a language access coordinator and our executive team that works across the agency to ensure that we've got translators and interpreters for our service delivery, that's from our jobs NYC hiring hall to our webinars.
1:17:05
In addition, we work hard to hire staff with linguistic diversity.
1:17:11
And we provide some courses directly in non English languages.
1:17:16
15 of our courses are translated into at least one other language and they're available in Spanish, Fifteen are available in Spanish and Chinese, eight in Russian, five in Korean, Haitian Creole, French, Bengali, and Arabic.
1:17:33
And as a last effort, we have language line for as a support for all of our vendors and staff if needed.