Written by Sytease Geib, this story was originally printed in the March VOICE Magazine, published by the Thurston County Chamber of Commerce.
On Feb. 15, the Thurston Chamber Workforce Development team helped lead a regional workforce meeting on behalf of Pacific Mountain Workforce Development Council and included partners in education, workforce development and WorkSource. This group discussed the implementation of a new approach to maximize the service delivery experience to businesses and job seekers.
The Thurston County Chamber is the contracted entity for PacMtn’s Business Service initiatives throughout a five-county region including Thurston, Mason, Lewis, Grays Harbor and Pacific counties. A large part of this role is to provide leadership and functional oversight of business service activity through the WorkSource system and create a collaborative approach to bring other partners within the region together to discuss big picture strategies, form integrated teams and reduce duplication of efforts.
T
he concept of partnering with other organizations delivering similar or complimentary services to customers seems easy and the right thing to do, yet when implemented it becomes tricky. Providing the platform for sharing ideas, concerns and best practices with regional partners creates trust and inclusiveness which are foundational to building long lasting partnerships.
The Chamber will host these regional business service team meetings every quarter. The format: latest updates on big picture projects/activities, re-cap of goals and progress and regional training topics based upon feedback and cross training opportunities shared by the regional team members.
