BARRHEAD - There is a lot to be positive about in the Town of Barrhead's business community, according to the first-ever municipally-sponsored business survey shows.
Planning, economic development, and legislation services director Jenny Bruns unveiled the results at the May 27 council meeting.
The 19-question survey was mailed out to Town of Barrhead businesses with their business licence renewals, with 10 per cent or 30 of the 300 businesses within the town's borders.
"The idea was to gather some insight into the current state of businesses, some of their challenges and outlooks," she said.
The town received 30 surveys back, or 10 per cent of the registered businesses.
Bruns added that, ideally, they had hoped to achieve a significantly better response rate, allowing for a more accurate picture of the community's business across a broad cross-section of industries.
"By integrating the survey with the [business license renewal process], we thought we might get more responses, but 10 per cent is pretty standard for something like this," she said. "The results will help us shape some future support initiatives."
Some of the key trends highlighted in the survey, Bruns said, include a stable or growing business environment, interest in marketing and grant support, and widespread challenges in staffing and the increasing cost of doing business.
Regarding business performance, one of the questions asked respondents how their business had performed over the last 12 months. About half of the respondents reported their business was stable with significant changes over the period, while 30 per cent reported moderate growth, 10 per cent reported a decline in business, and about seven per cent said they experienced significant growth.
Of the businesses that reported growing, 53 per cent stated they were planning to introduce new products or services, 41 per cent planned to increase operational capacity, and 29 per cent said they would be hiring more employees.
"If you took this as a sample of what is happening across the rest of the businesses saying they are going to increase the number of employees, that is potentially a lot of people and indicates that we need to do some labour market work," Bruns said.
Regarding what business owners felt most contributed to their business's success, 80 per cent stated it was the quality of their products and services, while just 80 per cent also credited a strong customer base, and 30 per cent said location was a factor.
On the opposite side of the equation, 57 per cent responded that increased operational costs were their top challenge, followed by 48 per cent who said hiring and staff retention was their top challenge and 17 per cent who said it was competition or changing customer habits.
As for support, 75 per cent of respondents requested marketing and promotional support, while 50 per cent asked for help accessing grants and other funding. Additionally, 25 percent indicated that networking assistance would be most helpful. Another 25 per cent suggested business training.
On the latter, Bruns said she has started working on connecting businesses with supports such as Community Futures Yellowhead East, which, in addition to providing loan funding, also provides many business education learning opportunities.
"When it came to satisfaction with the local environment, 60 per cent were satisfied, seven per cent were very satisfied, while 30 per cent were neutral, and three per cent were dissatisfied," she said. "[On the latter] it was about the business community not working together."
Bruns said the town's next steps for the short term include creating a distribution list for grant and training information for businesses that have opted in, promoting local support services and partner organizations, and connecting businesses with appropriate supports, such as the Chamber of Commerce, Community Futures, and the Barrhead Business Support Network.
Medium-term plan actions include exploring workforce development strategies and partnerships to address staffing shortages, as well as supporting marketing efforts through the creation of toolkits that will be distributed with business license renewals and listing available resources.
Long-term plans, Bruns said, include a more comprehensive follow-up survey and establishing industry-specific engagements and projects to address issues such as labour and housing shortages.
Barry Kerton, TownandCountryToday.com
