Company History

FMS is a private corporation established in 2000 as a practical and positive solution to the growing need for qualified and expert workforce development management services within Florida. Florida was one of 10 states that were authorized to begin implementation of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) in 1999 as an early enactment state.

At that time, the founding members of FMS were all established professionals in the nation's workforce systems with expertise in upper level operational and program supervision, strategic planning, financial and budget management, contract management, quality assurance and performance tracking, internal programmatic monitoring and auditing, facilities management, staff development, and vocational assessments.

Currently, FMS provides program operational expertise, performance management, quality assurance, organizational evaluation and programmatic monitoring in workforce development systems across the nation. FMS' corporate offices are located in Gainesville, Florida where we manage our centralized fiscal, information technology and administrative functions.

Some of our workforce clients include:

FloridaWorks

In July of 2005 FMS began operating as the Administrative Entity for FloridaWorks, the regional workforce board for Florida Region 9, Alachua and Bradford Counties. FMS is responsible for providing board management, fiscal management, contract management, operational oversight, information technology, and one-stop career center management. We also provide FloridaWorks with subject expert guidance, and leadership support.

FMS is responsible for working closely with FloridaWorks to identify best practices both in local service delivery and through networking and sharing of information between workforce board colleagues. FMS guides FloridaWorks in the development of strategies and procedures that are based on identified and proven techniques for achieving regulatory compliance and performance excellence. We also collaborate with career center services providers to guide improvements to existing processes based on data gathered during our program evaluation activities.

Policy-Studies, Inc.

In 2004 FMS was engaged by Policy Studies, Inc. (PSI), a national workforce development and child support enforcement provider headquartered in Denver, Colorado, to provide quality assurance, performance management, staff development training and vocational assessment to all projects within their workforce development division. PSI currently has offices in 33 states with over 1,900 employees.

FMS is responsible for the continuous quality assessment of their programs where we use a coaching model to identify operational problems and then work cooperatively with staff to assist them in improving performance. This model has proven effective, as it helps identify issues in real time and lets us coach staff to achieve better performance in an environment which is not threatening or punitive. In each project where we have used this methodology we have seen dramatic improvements in performance.

Florida Institute for Workforce Innovation

In April of 2000, FMS was awarded a contract from the Florida Institute for Workforce Innovation (FIWI) to serve as their Administrative Entity. FIWI is a non- profit workforce development provider which is modeled after the structure of a regional board of directors. The FIWI board oversees the organization and FMS serves as staff to the board assisting in the development of policy and budget management.

FIWI's Board of Directors oversees the corporate structure and provides overall FIWI governance authority. In 2000, the FIWI Board established a professional services agreement with FMS to provide all administrative, operational and platform support to each project run by FIWI.

The FIWI Board quickly discovered that utilizing FMS' highly-skilled and experienced experts in key leadership positions is a cost-effective solution to providing necessary operational and administrative oversight. The management group allocation is shared by each local project that FIWI operates and eliminates redundancy of upper management- level responsibilities. This shared management model frees up the majority of the financial resources for direct service delivery, increasing positive employment outcomes for our customers, and also enables the sharing of operational best practices, policies, procedures and other documentation that govern FIWI's work product.

FMS is currently responsible for multiple administrative services for FIWI including providing workforce operational oversight and management, organizational assessment, program monitoring and performance management, developing business process improvements and strategic and business planning and development.