northland chamber

Merchant of Doom and Gloom

The Quarterly Northland Chamber of Commerce Business Confidence Survey is due out in a few days time.

We have heard results from a number of Business Confidence Surveys lately all espousing doom and gloom. These are surveys carried out on a national basis. The Northland Survey is one of the only Northland Regional Surveys carried out and we await the results.

I would like to Cover the Northland’ Confidence Surveys, What they tell us and how they relate to you and your business in particular.

Firstly, what is a business confidence survey? – The Business confidence survey allows us to take a regular detailed snapshot of the Northland Economy. With a database of over 1,200 businesses in Northland, company participation in the survey enables the Chamber to monitor business sentiment and intentions. Respondents are asked about their employment and investment intentions; their expectations of the economy’s performance and their own business situation; and what the main issues affecting their businesses are

What do these surveys tell us? – These surveys are handy tools for those looking at the Northland Economy. . They provide a useful tool for tracking how the economy is moving. They tell of business intentions in hiring staff over the next 3 months, whether businesses are investing further in capital and business owners perception of the economy and business owners perception of there own performance. Planners and agencies can change policy (or not) based on the results of the Quarterly Survey.

How do these surveys relate to your business in particular? Firstly, you can look at the results overall and compare the economy perception to your own business. This may give you an indication on how well you are (or are not) doing. Or you can ignore the results and just keep on doing what you are doing.

One of the common criticisms of these surveys, however, is the ‘Doom and Gloom’ aspect. In other words if we keep reporting negative results that somehow business will start to perform poorly to meet the expectations outlined by these surveys.

Most Northland business owners however will not let results of surveys such as these affect them negatively.

They know that the fate of their business stand firmly in their own hands. They are planning now for growth taking into account adverse economic conditions such as exchange rates, lack of skilled labour, interest rates and fierce competition. Yes there are probably some trying times ahead however if there is one thing about Northland people and businesses is that they are extremely tough and resilient and tend to file ‘bad news stories’ where they belong because they are just too busy getting on with it.

The Northland Chamber of Commerce is the networking, education, advocacy and marketing group for Northland business, and is part of a nationwide network of 30 and a world-wide movement of 21,000 chambers. Subscription to the free fortnightly chamber e-news can be arranged on info@northchamber.co.nz. Enquiries to 09-4384771 or www.northchamber.co.nz, www.kaiparachamber.co.nz and www.farnorthchamber.co.nz
You can have a say on this by going to the Northland Chamber of Commerce Feedback website on www.northchamber.blogspot.com