Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce Quarterly Business Confidence Survey, Sponsored by Bronze Partner, Red Hot Business Coaching & Consulting
Don’t Go it Alone
If you’ve ever been curious about having someone on the outside help you with your business – there has never been a better time than this current Covid environment. Find out more about our Bronze Partners, Red Hot Business Coaching & Consulting, here.
Don’t Go it Alone
If you’ve ever been curious about having someone on the outside help you with your business – there has never been a better time than this current Covid environment. Find out more about our Bronze Partners, Red Hot Business Coaching & Consulting, here.
Business Confidence Quick Survey Report – July 2023
The Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce completed this Business Confidence Survey in July 2023.
The survey was completed with the support of Bronze Partner, Red Hot Business Coaching & Consultancy.
Key Findings – July 2023 Business Confidence Survey
The overall picture from this survey is that there is a continuing ‘Cost of doing business crisis’ with over 85% of businesses expecting that the cost of doing business will be ‘Much More or Somewhat More’ expensive over the next 6 months. This is an increase of nearly 7% compared to March 2023 and a 12.5% increase from January 2023.
For the first time in about 2 years, we have seen a slow down in the immediate need for staff with only 38.1% of businesses saying that they are experiencing issues with filling staff vacancies in their business. This is 15.1% change from March 23 when over 50% of businesses were experiencing issues in recruiting staff. We would suggest that this is a direct result of businesses feeling the impact of higher costs and the economic slowdown.
Planning is key for any business and it would appear that planning ahead has been a key activity for Hutt Valley businesses, with 84.2% of businesses having planned and already factored the change in economic situation to their business decisions or have made no change to their approach to their business planning. This indicates that most businesses have been working hard to be ready for this current economic situation.
There are some factors which are a continued trend from previous surveys. These include:
- 9% of businesses indicated that they are you expecting to need to recruit staff in the next 12 months. Whilst this is down slightly from the high experienced in March 2023 (at 68.75%) it does suggest that there is still demand for staff as businesses start to consider the next 12 months.
- There is a continued business sentiment for ‘their business’ in the 3-month and 12-month outlook with businesses expecting that things will be 17.7% and 8.62% ‘Somewhat Better or Much Better’ respectively.
One other area of positive outlook is an overall increase in the business sentiment for ‘New Zealand’ in the 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month outlook with businesses expecting that things will be 5%, 11.8% and 15% ‘Somewhat Better or Much Better’ respectively when compared to March 2023. Most of this sentiment has changed from businesses feeling New Zealand will be ‘Much Worse of Somewhat Worse’.