One of the major concerns facing businesses in the Midcoast, and throughout the state, is the lack of workforce. Dozens of businesses are looking for employees and in a few months the demand for good employees will be far greater as many of our seasonal businesses will be reopening.

With Maine being the oldest state in the nation, and with more baby boomers retiring monthly, certain industries and companies are experiencing workforce shortages, and those that aren’t will face them soon.

We are seeing a shift in our workforce with more young employees filling leadership roles, and that trend must continue if we are to continue our recent surge of growth. Those leaders that can relate to both the newer employee and also to our established employees, meaning millenials and boomers, will be the most valuable leaders. Yet whether you are a millennial, a boomer or any generation in between, one thing is certain, that in the Midcoast you will have an opportunity to find employment.

The Southern Midcoast Maine Chamber is always trying to tend to the needs of our member businesses and is devoting some events and programming to begin to connect employers with local employees throughout the region. We urge you, whether you are an employee or an employer, to keep these events and programs in mind.

The first event is the SMMC Hiring Fair happening on Tuesday, March 21 in Brunswick with our partners, the Midcoast CareerCenter.

The details on the time and location will be released once the contracts are signed, but it will be in Brunswick for sure. You can always check in at the SMMC office for all the details next week (207-725-8797).

What we do know is that 50-75 businesses are likely to be on hand if past hiring fairs are any indication. The previous location, the Knights of Columbus hall, could only fit 45 booths but there was always a waiting list of interested employers.

With the demand for employees so high right now, this number should exceed 50 businesses and maybe many more.

The event is free to attend and all employees attending the fair are encouraged to bring resumes and business cards to give to the hiring employers. As we have been organizing this event, we have heard of a need to have multiple hiring fairs throughout the year, not just in March, and thus the SMMC is looking at having multiple fairs in 2017.

Another event to keep in mind is our Business-to-Business Fair on April 18 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Freeport along with our partner the Greater Freeport Chamber of Commerce. The B2B will feature 30-40 businesses on hand, including a head shot booth and breakout room for trainings.

Though originally intended to be strictly a business networking event where area business leaders can connect with other businesses in the region, we are adding a hiring component this year. If the business is looking for employees they will have a special designation with a flag or sign designating that they are hiring.

Attendance is free so long as you have a business card or resume.

Finally, the Southern Midcoast Maine Chamber will be instituting a series of discussions about the workforce issue with local business leaders.

The issue is two-fold. Either the Midcoast region has the amount of people it needs to fill the workforce, but they are not trained, or the Midcoast region doesn’t have the people it needs. Likely it is a little of both.

If the issue is training, then the solution is to convene discussions between the businesses and the schools. Ask the businesses what skills and training the employees need, and then see if the schools can teach that.

For instance, say a roofing company needs metal roofers, then they get a school to teach metal fabrication, and they develop a pipeline of students who are ready to become employees once they graduate.

If the issue is we don’t have the number of potential employees to fill the positions (meaning we either don’t have the people living in the region or if we do have them in the region, but they don’t see themselves as a “potential employee”) then we need to figure out why.

In a study, the chamber asked what are the roadblocks to employers finding good employees and employees finding good employers. Eight major roadblocks were identified with one example being transportation.

The transportation roadblock is that some employees are willing to work but they either don’t have affordable, reliable, or available transportation. So how do we solve that? We need to get the transportation stakeholders in the room (meaning the rail, taxi and bus providers), along with the businesses and some employees from the area to discuss the issues with transportation.

Do we have enough? Can we afford more? Is the issue affordability or reliability? How did other rural areas develop more enhanced transportation systems and can we copy some of their work? All of these questions and dozens more need to be discussed.

From there some action steps will happen and slowly we will begin to tackle the transportation issues, so that in 5-10 years from now transportation won’t be a roadblock to employment anymore. That is an optimistic timeline for this work as much of this work will be evolving for decades as the needs change. What we need to build is a system and framework to handle those anticipated changes. Transportation is only one example.

What about housing (is there enough and is it affordable)? What about substance abuse? These are all major roadblocks and examples of the work we need to do.

We need to have discussion around each identified roadblock. I don’t know which ones we will tackle first, but we are figuring that out, and when we know, you will know because we will ask for your input. It’s vitally important we hear from you on this. It’s important for the growth of our region.

Actually, it’s important for us to even maintain our current standing. We have the knowledge to solve these issues, we just need to work together. The SMMC looks forward to bringing you and the businesses together to help find these solutions.