Last week, I broke down some of the programs the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber does throughout the year to give some insights on what our chamber does. In that column, I introduced our newest, and perhaps most necessary program, Chamber Works 2030, which is our decades-long commitment to innovative and tangible workforce programming to better connect the schools, businesses and municipalities.

Chamber Works 2030 was built by three dozen business leaders who evaluated nearly 30 potential programs, before selecting six new workforce programs for this inaugural year. We announced these programs at our Chamber Awards Night on March 11, but I want to lay out the programs for you in more depth so you can see exactly what our goals are.

Before we get into the programs though, I think the process of how we came to these choices is very important as annually we’ll revisit these 30 potential programs, and likely add more programs as people share ideas with us. For starters, the potential program list is something I cultivated from 15 years of chamber work, by borrowing good ideas from other chambers, creating some of my own, and ideas that came up in the room.

It’s important to recognize, that there’s not one reason alone that employers can’t find employees right now- it’s many reasons. Some people aren’t aware of a career path, or they don’t have the educational attainment for the positions. Other times it’s because of barriers in their lives that they need to overcome, like not having childcare coverage so they can work outside of the home, or not having transportation to get to a job. Just this past Monday, ABC News did a study based on Department of Labor statistics highlighting how many potential employees have become caregivers for not just children but adults since the pandemic began. That ABC News report estimated that as many as 1 in 4 unemployed people are out of work due to caregiver responsibilities.

We knew when launching our workforce program that we needed to look at all of these reasons when we evaluated potential programs. Thus, we divided the programs into three buckets. Pathways & Partnerships is about connecting schools to businesses and helping the unemployed find desired career paths. The Barrier Solutions bucket included nine societal barriers preventing employees from their careers. The third bucket we named Community Elevation Projects which were mostly single topic ideas that either were unique to the 21st Century or had never been tackled before (and a catch-all bucket for programs that didn’t fit in the other two buckets).

When we pared the list down, we actually had 11 programs that the team felt equally compelled by, but we knew 11 new programs were too much to take on in the first year. From there we pared the list to six programs which consist of three pathway programs, two barrier solutions programs and one community elevation project.

We described the first two programs last week, as they were somewhat self-explanatory. Career Counselor Bus Tours is the first program and consists of getting school administrators on a bus monthly for tours of businesses so they can learn about the careers that are available in our communities and what the educational requirements are. One-Minute Job Posting Videos is the idea that if potential employees aren’t finding job postings in the regular places, but everyone watches social media videos regularly, then why don’t we make short, fun, energetic, job posting videos about available positions to reach that audience?

The third program is creating a working group to submit a Paid Internship Proposal Plan to the state of Maine for some of the American Rescue Plan dollars that are earmarked for people to do “paid meaningful work.” This group will also examine potential credits for students. These funds will be competitive, but if we can secure these funds, we could potentially split wages with employers so that they can bring on some inexperienced employees who may want to pursue a career in their field. It’s a huge undertaking but very possible with the right plan.

The final three programs, we call our discovery programs, as we’re still deciding which piece of these we will be taking on. Let me be very, very, very clear, we are under no false pretense that we can solve the entirety of any of these issues in one year- they are far too big. What we hope to do is to take an aspect of the issue and work towards a tangible solution for that aspect, then perhaps examine another aspect of it.

Our three discovery programs are to look at: Housing Solutions for Affordability & Availability; Overcoming Childcare Obstacles & Expansion, and; Updating and Streamlining Credentialing Standards to Support Critical Employees.

We don’t know which aspects of those issues we will take until we convene our experts in these fields to discuss it, but assuredly we’ll work towards a tangible solution in each of these. A real-life example is easier to understand- but please know this is only an example. For Childcare, our team of experts might suggest we look at ratios of children in classrooms, or examine on-site childcare requirements, or near-site childcare, or after-school programs, or increasing worker wages. Once we select one of those aspects we will build a workplan towards a tangible solution like a policy change, or a new chamber program.

I’m not an expert in any of these fields, nor should I be. But as the Executive Director of our chamber, I can be the convener of these conversations. I can get the right experts in the room to help create new solutions. It’s necessary, and exciting, and I’ll tell you more about each of these programs as more updates become available. If you would like to discuss this with me further, or find out how your company and sponsor this work, call me at 725-8797 or e-mail cory@midcoastmaine.com.

Cory King is the executive director of the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber.