A Member of Huron County's Economic Development Team Wins Award in Bright Ideas Competition with the Economic Developers Council of Ontario

by Bob Montgomery

Brittany Wise is the Manager of the Huron Business Centre, which is part of the county's Economic Development Department.

Wise partnered with the Township of Southgate’s Economic Development Officer, Brenna Carroll, and they won the Economic Developers Council of Ontario's Bright Ideas Competition for 2023 on the topic of Public Sector Best Practices for Encouraging Small Business Transitions. Wise says specifically they were looking at succession planning for people that are leaving their business and that could be because they're retiring, or transitioning into a new business or just looking to get out of their current business.

Wise says a study done by the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses in 2022 showed that 76 percent of business owners planned to leave their business within the next ten years, most of them through retirement and only one in ten had a succession plan in place. “And so without the successful transfer of those local business assets communities, and in particular our rural communities, would lose access to those local products and services and reduce their ability to attract and retain a skilled work force.”

Wise says it's a very real concern and one that they're already starting to see in rural communities. Part of her project was to understand how other people across Canada are supporting those transitions in their communities and how some of their best practises could be applied in Huron County. She says some of the more common problems are owners who wait too long before letting people who might be able to help them with the transition know that they're closing and that doesn't give them time to put a plan together or attract a buyer. Wise adds in some cases people are too emotionally attached to their business and they believe their business is worth more than anyone is willing to pay for it. She says if those businesses just close and leave because there hasn't been a transition plan, the community loses the services that business provided and if enough of those services are lost it can become difficult to attract people to live in that community.

Wise says it is a defined and serious problem but it's also only been recognized recently and at this point there isn't a lot of support from public sector groups. “So what we did was look at four public sector programs across Canada and did interviews and research on them and then put together a tool kit for other economic development professionals to start implementing this work in their communities.” Among their suggestions were the need for collaborative partnerships, and the need to have on-going education and outreach, and they included some of the best practice things that were identified in the four communities to help other communities get started.