Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce held its latest business-after-business event on Thursday at the Hume Hotel.
The after work gathering — that is hosted by different businesses each time — featured guest speaker Lori Schmidt, CEO of Productivity Alberta. Schmidt spoke on business productivity and the diagnostic tools available to assist businesses in ways of improving productivity.
The speaker was tied into an initiative currently taking place in the Nelson area.
In order to get a handle on ways to improve small and medium sized business productivity, Community Futures of Central Kootenay is completing the background research on a workplace productivity initiative. Recently the Chamber hosted a focus group on business productivity to assist a Community Futures initiative.
This project will focus on how business support organizations can help address the issue of productivity and innovation within our business community.
Community Futures is conducting background research on productivity and innovation and will also be launching a diagnostic tool that will be focused on how to increase productivity for the small and medium enterprises.
The project stems from employers in this region face an additional challenge of higher than the provincial average aging workforce and lower than average immigration patterns. In the not too distance future the potential is there for our region’s productivity to fall further behind due to labour and skills shortages.