Emergency budget - good news for small businesses

There are some very solid small businesses in Peterborough, sitting alongside sizeable employers like Tesco, BGL and British Sugar.

But, however long they’ve been established or loyal their customer base, many have struggled through the recession. The pre-election uncertainty at the beginning of the year – despite the glimmer of better times to come - forced many businesses to simply baton down the hatches and hope to keep the cash flowing long enough for the market to experience a definite upturn.

We have a number of clients who have held off recruiting or investing in new equipment for instance, waiting for more stability in the market.

So we were relieved and delighted on their behalf to see a tax break thrown out in the emergency budget.

Chancellor George Osborne announced an increase in small business rate relief from October. This will help 500,000 small firms nationally – and a significant number regionally and locally - enjoy a tax reduction.

Of course, lower taxes frees up more money. For some firms that will mean the opportunity to start implementing the kind of medium term recruitment strategies that have been sitting on the shelf for months.

And that’s good news.

Agency Workers Regulations

The Agency Workers Regulations have been on our radar for well over 18 months.

We’ve been working closely with our industry regulator the Recruitment and Employment Confederation to ensure we are fully versed with the regulations, what it’s going to mean for us and our clients and how we can remain compliant and help clients to be as well.

As a result of the relationship we have built up, the REC’s director of external relations Tom Hadley has agreed to come and speak at a special employment law briefing we’ve arranged with Hegarty LLP Solicitors.

This is a fantastic opportunity for HR professionals from Greater Peterborough to engage with a heavy weight industry expert – Tom is well known and respected across the country.

He’s going to discuss the practical and legal implications of the introduction of the regulations on employers and, hopefully, will have time to take some questions too.

Hegarty’s employment expert Martin Bloom will also be presenting at the event later this month, offering a legal spin on the introduction of the regulations.

We’ve always taken the REC stand – that these regulations, which will be enforced from October 2011, are likely to have far reaching implications on the demand for temporary workers. Our objective now is to help make their introduction as smooth as possible for clients.

Outplacement

Sitting in a room with a professional who’s just discovered their job – and therefore they – are redundant is not at the top of my list of enjoyable work moments.

But it is right up there on the job satisfaction scale.

Let me explain: being made redundant is on a level with a house move or relationship break up when it comes to stress-inducing life events. It may have come out of the blue. Financial concerns are often paramount. Self esteem takes a dive as does self confidence. All of a certain the future looks very uncertain.

But all of that can be turned around by arming the person with knowledge and advice – outplacement as it’s known.

We were called in by a company which was laying off 25 professionals.

Members of our team met all 25 on a one to one basis. We were able to discuss their individual needs, examine their skill sets, talk through options, give them advice about the local job market, help bring their CVs up to date and offer job search tips.

The feedback we received suggested every single one found the interview valuable and felt much more positive about the future than they had before the process started.
We couldn’t place them all in jobs immediately but we could ‘empower’ them to coin a 1990s phrase – and that’s a good feeling – for them and for us.