Last week, in Part I of our year-end recap, we highlighted how 2022 began with the creation of our one-of-a-kind workforce program, introduction of our new chamber name, appreciation for our annual Cornerstone Member businesses and recognition of our 2022 award winners. This week, I want to focus on the workforce program and discuss our networking successes.

As a reminder, year-end recaps are a nice way to say thank you to the businesses and individuals that helped you reach that success, but also, recaps are a vital planning tool. By looking back and summarizing the year, we find patterns of businesses who helped throughout the year, we see how projects evolved, we can pinpoint the individuals that helped with specific successes, we can learn from our failed projects, and we use all of that information to determine who we could partner with in the new year, including which types of successes certain businesses want to support. Some of our best volunteers, business partners and leaders have been identified through year-end recaps, and with them, we established future successes.

The work behind our workforce program

As stated in Part I of the recap, our Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber new workforce program, which would become known as Chamber Works 2030, began almost exactly 12 months ago. Our Workforce Advisory Team, comprised of nearly three dozen hand-picked individuals, met from November through January and selected six workforce programs to tackle in 2022, which we announced in March at our Annual Awards Dinner. After the announcement, the work on building the programs truly began.

Off the bat, we knew we didn’t have the capacity to run six new program teams concurrently and still execute all of our other chamber programs and activities. Thus, we broke our six programs into two groups based on if they required short-term planning or long-term planning in order to launch. Short-term planning programs were determined as those that already had a beginning, a middle and an end concretely established, and for those, we created Program Teams. For the longer-term planning programs, we knew where they began, but the framework for the solutions weren’t as clear, and for those, we created Discovery Teams. The programs announced in March were as follows:

Program Teams
• Program #1: Guidance Counselor Bus Tours (aka Career Pathway Bus Tours)
• Program #2: 1-Minute Job Posting Videos
• Program #3: Pilot Program for HS Student Paid Job Training/Credit

Discovery Teams
• Discovery #1: Housing Solutions for Affordability and Availability
• Discovery #2: Overcoming Childcare Obstacles and Expansion
• Discovery #3: Updating and Streamlining Credentialing Standards to Support Critical Employees

As you can see, the Program Teams are more defined — you can outline the workflow of what is required for a guidance counselor bus tour almost from the title alone — while the discovery teams are broader. Discovery teams require another layer of planning, as we know, for instance, that we won’t solve the entirety of housing affordability and availability. However, we should be able to find a solution to an aspect of housing, with the right team of industry experts identifying an aspect of need and then building a program around that need.

As alluded to in the open, we must recognize our successes and also our challenges. Taking on six new projects was ambitious, and we didn’t have the capacity to make much headway on the Discovery programs in 2022. They will be a primary focus of ours in 2023, but our collaborative efforts instead got poured into the three Program Teams to build those programs for launch.

That started in May as we worked for about two months with Mt. Ararat High School, Brunswick High School and Morse High School on submitting joint applications for grant funding for “paid meaningful work” for students. We were the only regional chamber to partner with our local schools in this process, and that got us some additional points on our grant applications and helped us secure the support requested. The last six months have been working with the State of Maine to get the right policies and procedures in place to ensure this can be the best learning experience for students, while also adhering to the needs of the businesses who will host the students. I’m proud to say this paid internship-style program should be launching in the next 30 days, with the bus tours and one-minute job posting videos in the months to follow. We expect to have all three running by the time of this year’s Awards Dinner in March.

Chamber networking: Chamber After Hours, 12 @ 12, ribbon cutting, trail walks and golf tournament

Another great success of 2022 was the reemergence of our chamber networking programs after the pandemic. It was incredible to have a full year of monthly networking activities again, and business leaders were appreciative to reconnect face-to-face after being maxed-out on screen time connections alone. Our most notorious networking events are the Chamber After Hours — a monthly open-house style mixer hosted by a member business. I remember when REMAX/Riverside had suggested hosting the February After Hours at Sea Dog Brewing that we weren’t sure how the attendance would be. Then over 100 business leaders came out in person and we knew it would be a big year.

Thank you to our 2022 Chamber After Hours hosts and sponsors: REMAX/Riverside, Sea Dog Brewing, Darling’s Brunswick Ford, Brunswick Landing Ventures, HM Payson, One Sixty Five, Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program, J Edward Knight, Ebb & Flow Yoga Studio, Topsham Fair Mall, The Cheesy Skillet, Smitty’s Game Lab, Reform Physical Therapy and Midcoast Humane.

Also, thanks to the hosts and attendees of our other chamber networking events, including the monthly 12 @ 12 Networking Lunches, dozens of ribbon cuttings in 2022, monthly chamber trail walkers and our golf tournament attendees. We look forward to booking out the full 2023 schedule for these networking events beginning in January.

Next week, we wrap up the recap with Midcoast Tree Festival numbers and more.

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