The chancellor, Rishi Sunak revealed his budget for 2021 in the UK. And one of his key pieces of advice was for SMEs. Small to medium enterprises. There's an initiative called ‘help to grow’ that has been launched, also he said that the opportunity for SMEs was in two key areas. The first one was within technology and the second one was actually in the skills area, specifically in how skilled your management and your people leaders are.
These are two clear ideas of where you can put your focus and energy into improving your team performance and your business performance for growth. Okay. So why has he said that? He said that 18% growth is possible by looking at these two key areas over the next three years. Well, the UK, Would you believe, is actually 16% lower in terms of productivity and performance against its counterparts, such as Japan, Canada, France, the U.S. and Germany.
We've got a lot of work to do as a country and when you look at the G seven, we're actually fifth out of seven. There's only seven in there! We are ranked fifth in terms of performance and productivity. So, UK SMEs, you are not alone. This is a problem that is happening across the UK and a challenge for many businesses.
Many SMEs will have the challenge to grow through a low budget and no training manager. Without someone focusing on this area for a business, it can become a ‘leaky bucket’. What I mean by this is that we can focus on the contracts we acquire or the sales that we make without looking at the development of the people and start to lose profit through high turnover and low employee engagement. According to Workplaceintelligence.com the cost of replacing a millennial that leaves within 3 years is £15,000. They surveyed hundreds of HR professionals within this survey.
Since I’ve been on both sides of the fence, from working within a growing company and then later in my career as a business management consultant, I definitely have learned that when you are in the thick of operations, that the main focus can become putting out immediate fires rather than looking the key improvements that can be made to support a great culture and retention of people.
When working with businesses to help them to implement learning and performance practices, the best part is absolutely when you the people grow and start to uncover their potential and secondly to see a business grow to achieve results that they didn’t even know were possible. Uncovering potential for people which leads to profits for a business is one of the most satisfying jobs in the world.
Always remember, everything happens gradually and suddenly.
The Modern Mind Group are emotioneering human performance not engineering it.
As people operations and performance consultants, we work with your business to identify and improve performance gaps so that you can be more profitable and professionally develop your people. Over 12 years of expertise in people operations and performance with results to back it all up. Why settle for the average when there is a world of possibility when you know how to achieve it? Untapped potential - Let's go get it!
Working with SMEs with 5 to 100 employees, that have a low budget and no training manager. Contact us today for a discovery call and learn more.