Employee issues come first

October 18 2001 Employee issues take more time than e-Commerce, globalization or growth planning. And Canadian entrepreneurs say it's more stressful to run a company now than five years ago. These are the main conclusions of a poll conducted by Research Dimensions for Grant Thornton LLP which asked owners-managers to rank their top 10 business headaches, ranging from customer relations to succession planning.

Globalization, e-commerce, and growing threats of litigation seemed to be backburner issues for most Canadian entrepreneurs. Time-crunched owner-managers said that business growth should be their number one priority, but employee issues took up most of their time.

"This survey is a bit of a wake-up call for Canadian entrepreneurs," says Alex MacBeath, executive partner at Grant Thornton LLP, a leading firm of chartered accountants and business advisers with offices across Canada.

This survey suggests "Canadian entrepreneurs feel there are not enough hours in the day to address fundamental issues to growth such as business planning or improving customer service," says MacBeath who is based in Toronto.

The survey highlighs a number of regional differences. For instance, the challenge of running a business is felt most acutely in British Columbia, with 80% of respondents feeling that there is more stress these days, followed by Alberta (69%), Ontario and (68%) and Atlantic Canada (67%).

10 key issues affecting today's business owners according to the survey:

Percentage of owner-managers saying that the following issues are extremely or very important to them:

1 Strengthening customer relationships (97%)
2 Finding and keeping good people (89%) - 63% agree there is an extreme shortage of skilled labour in their region
3 Minimizing corporate and personal taxes (81%)
4 Growing the business (73%)
5 Keeping pace with technology (68%) - basic skill levels of employees lead the list
6 Managing cash flow (66%)
7 Current business climate (65%)
8 Creating & executing strategy (62%)
9 Retirement & succession planning (55%) - personal retirement and succession planning are essential in respondents' business plans
10 Finding expansion capital (50%).

Full survey results are available at: www.GrantThornton.ca.