Develop professional development plans which focus on building capacity for innovation, supporting intrapreneurs and creating opportunities for employees to be informed on leading edge practices, through attending conferences, taking courses, and/or participating in workshops.

• Timeline: 2024
• Status: In Progress
• Progress: In 2025 Economic Development staff participated in a number of training opportunities.
• Impact: Economic Development staff participated in more than 17 training and professional development activities.

Solidify Innisfil’s reputation as a leader in innovative collaboration by exploring opportunities to increase knowledge sharing with other economic development and business support professionals (including roundtables, masterminds, conference speaking/guest lecture opportunities).

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Status: In Progress
• Progress: In 2025 Economic Development staff participated in a number of knowledge sharing activities including workshop presentations, guest lectures and conference panels.
• Impact: In 2025 Economic Development staff participated in a number of knowledge sharing activities including 2 workshop presentations, 1 guest lectures at a post-secondary institution, 2 conference panels, 1 innovation competition, and participation as Directors on two Committees and Chair of one Board of Directors. Recognitions of staff achievements included one nomination for DMZ Woman of the Year, one EDCO Bright Ideas Award Winner and one 40 Under 40 in Economic Development Recipient. The Town of Innisfil won the 2025 EDCO Award of Excellence, in the Planning & Strategic Development – Rural Award category for the Innisfil Heights Investment Readiness Initiative.

Employ customer relationship management (CRM) tools to track business engagement activities and leads in a dashboard which would allow staff to better manage and follow up with leads.

• Timeline: 2024
• Status: Complete
• Progress: In 2024, the Economic Development Team onboarded the new TIEIT CRM system to manage leads and develop a pipeline to support inquiries.
• Impact: More than 3,480 stakeholders have been added, and through which the team has established contacts with more than 788 companies.

Deploy annual statistically valid survey tools to measure the health of businesses and determine which businesses need assistance based on priorities. Questions can focus on understanding business growth and expansion challenges; their labour force needs, and programming supports.

• Timeline: This action is targeted to begin in 2025.
• Status: Not yet initiated.
• Progress: A new BRE survey has been drafted for use beginning in 2026.
• Impact: Impact to be presented on project completion.

Position quarterly networking and/or Council tours to allow Town leadership to build relationships with local stakeholders and encourage networking and collaboration between stakeholders.

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Status: In Progress
• Progress: This strategic action item is contingent upon additional staff support which has not yet received budgetary approval.
• Impact: Impact to be presented on project completion.

Explore new marketing tools and platforms to share economic development progress, successes, and KPIs.

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Status: In Progress
• Progress: Staff implemented a number of new marketing strategies across a range of advertising platforms including social media, digital platforms, and print. Campaigns included the new Discover Lakeside Dining campaign, Investment Attraction campaign promoting Innisfil Heights, and various Shop Innisfil and DMZ Innisfil campaigns. 
• Impact: The total Economic Development Brand reach exceeded the target of 275,000 marketing impressions, hitting a reach of 2.2 M in 2025 (this includes social media views, website visits and marketing emails sent). Website visits in 2025 exceeded those in 2024 by 131% with 32,685 visits to the Town’s Economic Development webpages. The Economic Development Office gained 796 new social media followers, a 20% increase over 2024.