The Age Friendly Business Programme was held at the the James Cumming Wing last week.
Hosted by Gore District Council Ready for Living co-ordinator Kylie Aitken, local businesses and organisations were invited to hear Geoff Pearman speak on the topic.About 25 people attended.
Ms Aitken said the workshop aimed to support businesses and service providers in adapting to a changing older population.
The first Age Friendly Business programme was held in 2020.
A toolkit was created for that programme that enabled business owners and service providers to take part in a self-assessment of how well they met the needs of older people, as well as others in the community.
"The uptake has been slower than we hoped — eight businesses — so we decided to redevelop and look at small ways businesses can make changes to support the older community."
Mr Pearman discussed the demographics of the community, she said.
"Over 20% of our local population [is] aged over 65 and this statistic continues to grow.
"This growth created increasing spending power for that demographic."
SBS St James Theatre Manager Paul McPhail attended the first workshop in 2020.
After attending he made changes to how the theatre operated.
These changes included teaching staff to engage with people more, changing the times of movie screenings, catering movie choices to an older market and reducing the size of ice creams.
"He has received a lot of positive feedback due to the small changes he made," Ms Aitken said.
During his presentation, Mr Pearman said businesses could no longer take customers over 50 years of age for granted.
"People have choices and will purchase goods and services from businesses who understand their needs," he said.
