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| Source: Xero's Emotional metrics: small business mindsets during the pandemic report. The mindsets of small business owners from January to August 2020 ranged from feeling "worn down" to a sense of loss. |
The Xero Small Business Insights (SBI) Special Report, Pandemic Insights: Small Business Experience, was produced with AlphaBeta (part of Accenture), and based on anonymised and aggregated records of over 300,000 Xero subscribers. It shows the impact on small business revenues and jobs in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. In North America and Asia, these insights are supported by survey-based customer research.
● Following the March lockdown New Zealand experienced the largest revenue fall of 40%, but has since seen recovery
● At peak, Australian small businesses had the largest job losses, at 12%
● Manufacturing is leading recovery in New Zealand and Australia with revenue growth of between 1% and 13%
● Small business was twice as badly hit as big business
● Tech-enabled businesses generally saw 40% fewer job losses
"Being able to quickly provide insights of this scale, with country comparisons, provides better understanding as to how the small business recovery can be supported around the world," said Steve Vamos, CEO, Xero.
“Small business is family and community. It’s a big source of growth and innovation in economies and they are doing it tough right now.”
Xero’s second report, Emotional metrics: small business mindsets during the pandemic, focuses on the human impact of the crisis with research in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, North America and Singapore. The nature of small business means owners often have close personal-level relationships with their staff and customers. The upheaval caused by a pandemic has economic consequences for small business owners, and presents challenges managing the human impacts, Xero said.
The research finds that 43% of small business owners in these countries are worried about their own mental health, and 39% are worried about the mental health of their employees. Analysis from a sentiment measurement tool, Mindset AI*, also shows the predominant emotion of small businesses is one of being “worn down”.
"We have found several Xero small business customers who survived the Spanish Flu of 1918 and are still operating today, including a winery in South Australia and a pie and eel shop in London," said Vamos.
"It is incredible to think that these businesses have already survived a global pandemic, along with many other major economic disruptions since, and are still trading during this latest crisis. We are in awe of their resilience,” he said.
Xero is a cloud-based accounting software platform for small businesses with 2.38 million subscribers globally. Xero offers an ecosystem of over 800 third-party apps and 200+ connections to banks and other financial partners. The Xero Small Business Insights (SBI) programme provides analysis on the sector’s health, with its metrics based on anonymised, aggregated data drawn from hundreds of thousands of Xero subscribers. The result is a picture of business conditions that’s more accurate than most private surveys, which typically have a far smaller sample size, Xero said.
Details:
Read the Pandemic Insights: Small Business Experience report
Read the Emotional metrics: small business mindsets during the pandemic report.
*Mindset AI Study, PepperComm, August 2020. Mindset.AI, operated by integrated marketing and communications firm Peppercomm, analyses millions of public conversations drawn from thousands of varied sources across the Internet using advanced artificial intelligence designed to research crisis-focused emotional states.
