PITTSFIELD, Mass — Berkshire Community College (BCC) hosted the 2025 Berkshire State of Work Summit, "From Hiring to Thriving: A New Era of Workplace Culture," on Wednesday.

 

The event was presented by BCC, MassHire, Berkshire Innovation Center, Berkshire Regional Planning Commission and 1Berkshire and was held on the college's main campus.

 

The conference focused on the workforce challenges and opportunities facing Berkshire employers, from attracting the right talent to ensuring their employees flourish in a supportive and dynamic work environment. There were 15 sessions and about 40 speakers at this year's event bringing around 200 people.

 

The executive director of workforce development and community education at BCC, Linda Clairmont, started the morning off speaking about the challenges of the workforce.

 

"We've all had these conversations with each other in various ways about the challenges of the current workforce, and we're going to hopefully chart a new course toward a more resilient, inclusive and dynamic workplace," she said.

 

She brought up how many workplaces have different generations working there simultaneously leading many different approaches to work.

 

"A data point that has been especially interesting to me over these past weeks of planning is the idea that we might in our workplace have five generations of employees, so someone in their 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s, 30s, 20s, right? And there are distinct differences in how each generation approaches work, and so for you, for employers, this can be a real challenge," Claremont said.

 

Clairmont asked the audience to keep in mind what usually gets asked at the end of a job interview: what are “the top three things that you need to feel successful, rewarded and engaged in your workplace?”

 

"Carry those thoughts with you throughout the day today as you engage with the various sessions that you're attending. Especially at the end of the day when we reconvene here in the theater to talk about the overall themes of the day,” she said. “Today is just the beginning. Throughout the day, the BCC summit team will be listening carefully for the common themes that we think could be explored in future sessions."

 

BCC hopes to use this data to take on these workplace challenges in the future.

"Our goal is to help us and you create thriving workplaces."

 

BCC President Ellen Kennedy introduced the keynote speaker JD Chesloff, who is the president and CEO of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable.

 

"For us at the round table, we believe that workforce development and economic development are really one of the same. There's no distance between the two," he said.

 

He spoke about what other places were doing to help with hiring.

 

"As I have visited other states and even other countries this consistent theme emerges. Other places are much more intentional about aligning their economic development and their workforce development strategies. In North Carolina, for example, their community college system prioritizes in-demand industries such as manufacturing and tech, ensuring this pipeline of workers for that industry, which then they use to attract employers and build an entire cluster," he said.

 

Chesloff discussed his time in Berkshire County growing up and the local hiring climate and what some employers are doing to find alternative solutions for recruiting, retention, and employee work readiness.

"We know that the state and the Berkshires has a talent crunch caused by the cost of living, by demographic trends, by changes in immigration policy, by the migration of talent. So what do we do about it? And this is the fun part. This is why we're all here today," Chesloff said.

 

He suggested Massachusetts employers had trouble filling talent and were hiring remotely or those out of state or elsewhere when they could do it here.

 

"We have the talent right here in Massachusetts. It's right here in our communities. We just need to remove the barriers to their barriers to the workforce. So we can do this by adjusting language barriers, by adjusting the high cost of health, of child care, training through co ops, internships, apprenticeship, connecting graduates from our outstanding institutions of higher education like the one we're in today, more intentionally with employment opportunities. This is the stuff we're working on," he said.

 

Chesloff suggested four strategies for them to think about: think differently about hiring, support employees needs in the workplace, advocate, and seek out new partnerships.

 

BCC President Ellen Kennedy said its critical to start coming together to converse on this topic and work to figure out what to do.

 

"I think we're in an incredibly disruptive moment in some ways. I think there's so much happening at the national level, which not only doesn't quickly impact us, but seems to be impacting everyone much more quickly. I think JD Chesloff talked about it, that businesses are rethinking quick investment in things. They're delaying making decisions that would grow workforces. And I think all of us are trying to figure out, how do you navigate in this kind of time? It's a real inflection point  across the nation, across the world, and it's happening right here in Berkshire County. So I think it's a critical time to be having these conversations. And I think the best minds need to come together, and that's what you have today, some really great people coming together to have honest and clarifying conversations about what to do," she said.