Join the 2022 National BR|E Benchmarking Challenge!

Yes. Every participant will have an independent database and login within the Synchronist software. Your data will not be available to anyone outside your group/organization. For the study, the data will only be used in aggregate for national and perhaps, if data is available, for regional benchmarks. Care will be taken to preserve the confidentiality of data for all participants as it has been for Synchronist users for 20+ years.

Main Street businesses and Primary sector businesses have different risk, growth, and value drivers. These business dynamics are critical to understanding the drivers of a specific company and their needs from the community. Therefore, in Synchronist we have always separated these interview guides to drill down into the important issues of each sector.

Yes, Main Street firms are hurting, but the community drivers for most communities are the primary sector companies which draw new money into the community. They are also at different stages of post-COVID recovery. Therefore, it makes sense to focus on Prime first.

And finally, as a first-ever National BR|E Benchmarking Challenge, it is important to keep it simple. Focusing on one sector helps minimize the confusion for participants and organizers. Main Street can come later if we are successful with the Prime Challenge.

Prime is short-hand for primary sector business. A primary sector company does at least 51% of their business in multiple states, nationally, or globally or sells product into the supply chain for these companies. Primary sector companies include service as well as manufacturing companies. Headquarters, back office, insurance, media, software companies can be prime companies. The deciding factor is where the product or service is sold/used.

A Main Street business is a business that sells to individuals who live in or travel through a trade area. Main Street businesses include: accommodations, food & beverage, retail, tourism, convention, entertainment, recreation, and local services are examples.

State, federal, colleges and universities all draw money into the community from outside the community. Their workforce challenges are more like those of a manufacturing company. Therefore, they can be considered Prime companies for the purpose of the Challenge interviews.

Absolutely! The Synchronist Prime interview guide can be downloaded HERE and reviewed before you make your decision.

At minimum, each participant will have national and local benchmarks. The national benchmarks will be provided in a report available to all qualified participants. If participation/data supports it, the report could also include additional benchmark layers:

• Regional
• Rural and Urban

Examples of benchmarks include essentially every answer to every question on the interview guide as well as sub-part. Our working group will ultimately decide which ones make the report. The following represent over 30 benchmarks and are those most often requested by Synchronist users over the years.

• Company life cycle status
• Workforce: Availability, Quality, Stability, and
• Productivity
• Workforce recruitment problems
• Workforce skill gaps
• Plans to expand
• Room to expand
• Real estate requirements (new)
• Supply chain disruptions (new)
• Barriers to growth
• Utility services
• Community services

Everyone is saying employers have a workforce availability problem right now. But what does that really mean? And, how do we translate that into local action?

What statement is more likely to get action?

1. The CEO of the EDC says we need a workforce recruitment program.
2. It seems like all of our employers are telling us they are having trouble getting employees?
3. Our business retention interview tell us that 30% or our employers are having serious problems recruiting employees here.
4. When compared to our regional and national peers, we have a serious worker recruitment problem. When business executives rank workforce availability, we have the fewest positive rankings. Local 1.6:1; Regional 3.25:1 and National 4:1.
5. This graphic shows our competitive challenge with workforce recruitment.

Local executive interview results can tell you if you have a problem, box on graph. But only benchmark data can tell you if that problem that rises to the level of a competitive disadvantage.

In this graphic, we look at the ratio of executives giving the community a high-ranking for workforce availability (5, 6, 7; highly available) vs a low ranking (1, 2, 3) for one community: National 4:1; Regional 3.25:1 and Local 1.6:1 (51% gave a high ranking while 30% gave a low ranking). By showing the local benchmark with regional and national peers it becomes absolutely clear this community has a significant workforce challenge or competitive dis advantage to be addressed.

Every community has a number for every question asked. The Challenge will give the workforce problem – and other business/community issues – a meaning with up-to-the-minute, contextual information.

No, there is no limit on the number of executive interviews you can conduct; however, there is a time limit for data entry which is Tuesday, August 31st.