The Changing Chamber

Redefining the way ahead for Worthing and Adur Chamber and its members

We are all so familiar with the Government roadmap for the next few months ahead. Things are pretty clear as to when you can meet with friends and family but how does all this relate to business? How many people can you have in a small room together? When will venues be able to lift the 50% capacity rule? When can we have an event with 100+ people? What happens if this all gets delayed? So many questions to make sense of and work to do to provide a safe … and enjoyable …. experience for our members.

For a business, that pre lockdown, did all its events, training and meetings face to face there is a lot to consider for this new way ahead. Will people still want to attend training and events online? I think we will all agree that we have saved so much time with the efficient use of zoom to run meetings, no more travelling for an hour’s meeting!

So, when and where will we start introducing face to face events? We are going to start with a really informal networking event, outdoors in a large garden in June, keep a look out for an announcement coming soon! Then, as soon as the situation allows, we will be back to our formal networking events with a speaker (and breakfast!). However, one thing we are going to look at in depth is what people want. Do they still want the event to start at 7.30am, like we always have, or is it time for a change? Many people now working from home are enjoying that family time before the school drop off. We want to make sure we provide something for everyone, so if you are not a fan of early mornings we still have an event that works for you!

What benefits does Membership bring?

Recently we’ve been running some focus group sessions with our members. We are the changing Chamber and we want to reflect that in our member benefits. The group was asked what are the top three member benefits that are important to them. In no particular order of priority, they all said networking, all desperate to get back to face to face and have conversations with real people, as we mentioned we have plans in place for this. The next was how much they valued the business support and advice, being informed of all the grants and funding through lockdown was invaluable, we make sense of it all and pass the key information on, we were always at the end of the phone to help, as well as offering a pretty fantastic selection of free expert hours for our members all through lockdown. The third was the help we can give members to promote their business, some of them are effectively using the opportunity to submit good news stories for the e-news, sharing articles in Connect magazine, offering to run an expert hour or training session. Some admitted they are not making the best use of this. We have some plans in place to make this bigger and better!

Better Business Show

You’ll see on the infographic the last date marked is 23rd September, this is for the Better Business Show with a big fanfare of celebration for our amazing business community. For those of you that have attended in the past you will know what a brilliant and worthwhile day this is, if we could bottle the buzz in the room we’d be onto a winner!  This year the show will be at a new venue – Worthing Leisure Centre in the main sports hall. We are going to have much more space with a separate room for the keynote speakers. We already have 2 keynote speakers booked, you’ll have to wait to find out who though! Stand bookings are now open and the early bird rate finishes on 28th May. If you want to exhibit we’d recommend getting your stand booked early, there are a variety of stands available from just £199 + VAT . You can find lots of information about the show here https://worthingandadurchamber.co.uk/BB2021

If you want to find out more about being part of our amazing business community, please look at our website www.worthingandadurchamber.co.uk or even better give us a call and see how we can help you. Remember together business is stronger.

Tracie Davey
Operations Manager
Worthing and Adur Chamber
tracie@worthingandadurchamber.co.uk
01903 203484