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Ron Bunch joins us for the first episode in our Chamber of the Year Finalist Series. Ron is the President & CEO of the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce in Kentucky. Throughout this COY Finalist Series, we will be discussing what each Chamber is doing to stand out to be noticed and considered for Chamber of the Year.
Ron talks about several programs that the Bowling Green Area Chamber is doing with regards to education and workforce development. One of their signature programs is their SCK (South Central Kentucky) Launch program which was developed with the Covey team. The Bowling Green area was the first community to implement the K-12 program from Covey. The SCK Lauch program teaches ethics based leadership skill to grades K-12. In the SCK Launch program, the Chamber works with the Ford Foundation to acquire current technology for these students to learn with the same tools that they will be using in the workplace. The Bowling Green Chamber also works with Gallup to collect accurate data each month about the workforce needs in the region. Another goal that they have through the partnership with Gallup is to provide the opportunity for 100% of their students to explore some type of work experience before graduation. Currently they are seeing about 1/3 of their workforce needs being met within their region while 2/3 or the workforce needs are coming from recruitment from outside the area.
These education and workforce programs tie in with a program that the Chamber puts on at the University each year called “Welcome Back Western”. With this program, the Chamber partners who participate can start building relationships with the 20,000 university students with a goal of keeping more of the students in the local workforce as they finish their educations. Each of these programs strategically build upon each other in a very synergistic way.
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The Bowling Green Area Chamber also has an annual Women’s Leadership Conference that is steadily building momentum each year.
Ron talks about the importance of dynamic team building. He points out that with the aging baby boomer population, that there is insufficient talent for the workforce. The Bowling Green Area Chamber uses the StrengthsFinder program from Clifton to identify the strengths for future employees and to build a more positive and productive workplace for the current Chamber staff. His goal for each staff member is to create independent subject matter experts. Ron quotes a nation wide study that shows only 15-20% of employees are engaged at work. By matching staff strengths with areas of responsibility, they have happier, more productive team members who then are better equipped to serve their member partners and can create a viral effect for these member partners to better serve their customers.
The piece of advice from Ron that resonated the most for me was the idea for Chambers to take a leadership role in their communities. The Bowling Green Area Chamber has done this in many different areas, but especially in education and workforce development.
If you would like to connect with Ron Bunch about anything he discussed in this episode, you can reach him by email at ron@bgchamber.com or his COO, Merideth at merideth@bgchamber.com.
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