LARAMIE - Work force development and training should happen within the community colleges rather than through a separate technical or training school system, Gov. Dave Freudenthal said Thursday.

In remarks conveyed electronically to the Governor's Summit on Workforce Solutions at the University of Wyoming Union, Freudenthal said the seven community colleges should be helped to develop the capacity to address the work force needs in the state.

He said that while employers, particularly those in the service industry, are having difficulty finding employees, the state should consider itself fortunate to have sufficient resources to develop solutions to these problems.

"Governors in many states are cutting budgets and trying to figure out, frankly, how to keep the train on the tracks," he said.

Freudenthal spoke to more than 300 people from private industry, education at all levels, economic development programs and the state work force services agency.

He said employers are looking at nontraditional workers, such as older and retired people, to fill some of their needs.

"As we think about these workers, it requires us to manage differently, to think differently about the workplace and to understand that both the requirements and attitudes of older workers are just going to be different," the governor said.

As to younger generations, Freudenthal said, "Sometimes I wonder what exactly it will take to motivate not just Generation Y but our own kids in the notion that the future is theirs if they want to create it, as opposed to the future being created for them and handed to them."

Tucker Fagan, a Cheyenne businessman who formerly directed the Wyoming Business Council, gave the audience a primer in leadership skills in the workplace to help employers retain employees.

"You have to create an environment where people want to come to work and to help," he said. "You do this through honesty and integrity and being fair and decent."

"Never, ever scream at one of your colleagues or subordinates; never demean someone," Fagan said.

But if you are a supervisor, he said, "you can't be a buddy" of your employees. "And you can't show favoritism to people who may have some of the same interests that you have."

Jerimiah Rieman, policy analyst for the Department of Workforce Services, said in an interview following the conference that "the capstone" of the event was a meeting in which "employer-driven, regionally based partnerships" were formed to help the education, economic development and work force agencies develop policies "to supply employers with the labor force they need."

Rieman said one speaker at the conference emphasized that the "Generation Y" workers, defined as those born between 1977 and 1995, "need guidance, need flexibility." Another workshop focused on the new laws related to hiring legal foreign workers.