BRE Promotes Survival, Growth of Local Firms (News)
Enterprise Fredericton is always looking for ways to optimize employment growth within our business community. To that end, the region adopted the Business Retention and Expansion initiative (BRE), a community-based economic development tool that focuses on our region's existing business infrastructure.
The BRE initiative is a cost-effective approach which encourages employment growth and economic prosperity by helping communities identify barriers that impede growth and survival of local businesses. The initiative seeks solutions and opportunities that contribute to the sustainability and expansion of our region's business base.
Within BRE is the Business Pulse initiative. The program was established to maintain contact with existing businesses, promote employment retention and growth, and align programs and services with business needs. This initiative is one of the focal points for Enterprise Fredericton and consists of two phases.
In the initial phase, the goal was to conduct a comprehensive survey, in person, of 400 local companies. The survey process began in June 2007 and was completed in December 2008. The aggregate data collected from the surveys were released to the public in March 2009 and can be found on our Enterprise Fredericton website (www.enterprisefredericton.ca) under the Community Growth Strategy tab.
Phase two of the Business Pulse initiative will be an online survey template which will facilitate data collection and complement the work of phase one.
Based on the recommendations from phase one, specific themes of this survey will ultimately give us direction in our efforts to hasten the process of helping our local business community. These online surveys will be conducted quarterly and will contain a maximum of 20 questions which can be completed in less than four minutes.
Enterprise Fredericton will be sending out targeted online surveys over the next year to gauge activity levels in areas such as human resources, innovation, productivity, supply chain, retention and export. Privacy is our utmost priority and company information will not be made public. Similar to phase one, only aggregate data will be released.
Enterprise Fredericton encourages full participation to our online surveys.
This is an opportunity to let us know how to improve service to our local business community.
For more information on the Business Pulse initiative or to register for the online surveys, please contact our office at 444-4686 or email us at info@ent-fredericton.ca.
Lucas Roze is a communications officer for Enterprise Fredericton. He can be reached at lucas.roze@ent-fredericton.ca.