Results from the Capital Region BEC

Skills Development Survey January 2009.

Our thanks to all of you who took the time to participate in the recent Skills Development Survey.  We got an excellent response and a lot of valuable information about what you really want in the way of developing your business skills.  This is some of what you had to say:

• Broadly speaking you are less confident about you knowledge of e-Commerce, market research and government regulations.

• While you are more confident about your knowledge and skills on business planning, budgeting, and costing and pricing.

• More of you said that you would definitely benefit if you had greater knowledge about employment contracts (57.3%), business structures (56%) and disclaimers (54.7%) than any other legal matters included in the survey.

• And more of you said that you would definitely benefit if you had greater knowledge about key performance indicators (68.0%), financial analysis (65.3%) and, again, business structures (60.0%) than any other accounting matters included in the survey.

•  Of your preferred methods of developing your business skills, workshops were easily the most popular choice (81.3%), followed by one-to-one mentoring (56.0%) and forum style seminars (44.0%).

•  Week days were easily your greatest preference when it came to your preferred days of the week to devote time to developing your business skills. We have definitely taken on board that you don’t want skills development on weekends!

•  And finally, mornings were easily your strongest preference when it came to the time of day when you want to do your skills development.  Afternoons will never be mentioned again!!

Again, our thanks for participating in the 2009 survey and we hope to see you at some of our skills development offerings around the Capital Region in 2009.