Hawke's Bay mentors lead the way

After winning the inaugural Business Mentors New Zealand Competition mid-way through last year the Hawke's Bay Business Mentoring Team is well on track to pick up the award again.

A six-month assessment since then to measure "key performance" indicators at mentoring centres across 17 regions from Northland to Southland has resulted in the Bay's team again leading the way.

Four performance measures were used - promptness of a co-ordinator's response; level of follow-up support; usefulness or helpfulness of advice and overall satisfaction of the service.

The Bay's mentoring team, co-ordinated by Keith White and Ron Massey, topped all four categories.

Mr Massey, the Napier City Council's economic development officer, said the focus since the team started out about 18 years ago had always been to source the best advice for business operators.

"We often use more than one mentor. They are spread across the board from marketing, accounting and financial to specialist areas like agriculture."

The group has 15 active mentors on the books, and their determination to assist small and medium businesses was "tops", Mr Massey said.

He also paid tribute to Mr White.

"He runs it so well."

Mr Massey said the diversity of businesses who sought mentoring advice was broad, and there had been a noticeable increase in numbers, which was probably indicative of tougher economic times.

Over the past two years about 100 businesses had sought mentoring assistance.