When I do business retention and expansion interviews with primary employers, the main issue most of them want to talk about is labor force. More specifically, the lack of workers and how that’s impacting their companies.
The Chamber teamed up with other partners three years ago to form Talent 2.0. Founding partners include the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce, the Loveland Chamber of Commerce, City of Loveland, City of Fort Collins, One NoCo Economic Development, Larimer County Workforce Center / Larimer County Economic Development Department, and United Way of Larimer County.
Together we have focused on initiatives to help employers find talent.
The biggest tool to-date is www.WorkInNorthernColorado.com. It’s your go-to tool to use when trying to tell the Northern Colorado story to prospects outside the area. Since it launched in May, over 7,600 area jobs have been posted to the site.
So far so good, but finding workers is about more than recruiting them to the area. What are we doing to develop a local talent pipeline?
A lot can be done and will be over time. A good example is the launch of the Building Trades Sector Partnership last week. About 40 people met at Larimer County’s administrative building in Loveland last Wednesday. Most represented companies in the construction industry.
The main question before them was their interest in working together to advocate for programs and activities that promote and support the interest in the construction trades. A lot was discussed during the meeting, but the short version summary is ‘Heck yeah!’
If you have an interest in the Trades Sector Partnership or any of our other work on talent / workforce development, let us know by contacting Ann Hutchison at [email protected].