Business

By Rebecca Mossman, HR Director EMEA & APAC at HireRight Solving the productivity puzzle is fast becoming a key strategic priority for UK business leaders if they are to keep up with their international counterparts. According to the ONS, Britain produces 30% less per hour than workers in Germany and France. This means that it takes British workers five days to do what our German counterparts do in four. As a result, earlier this month George Osborne unveiled a productivity plan in...

By Steve Taggart As we reported recently, micro businesses and entrepreneurship are getting some great press lately and the growth of small businesses is helping to drive economic recovery here in the UK. But new research has shown that the so-called ‘startup revolution’ appears to be losing pace. The data, which was gathered by business service website Company Check, shows the growth in numbers of new businesses being incorporated each year to have slowed from 13.4% year-on-year between 2010-11 to...

By James Rubin, CEO, www.envirowaste.co.uk UK recycling rates increased rapidly by 32% between 2000 and 2012 but recently this rate has flatlined. Only 33.9% of household waste in London was sent for recycling last year despite Boris Johnson suggesting an initial target of 45% and the EU setting a target of 50% recycling by 2020. As Europe’s greenest major city with 40% of surface area made up of public green spaces, we should be able to work towards these targets....

By David Dumeresque of executive search experts, Tyzack Peter Whitehead, former editor of the FT Non-Executive Directors’ Club, wrote in a Financial Times article titled Non-executive director: a task for which no one is qualified: “The list of attributes required of a non-executive director is so long, precise and contradictory that there cannot be a single board member in the world who fully fits the bill.” There is no doubt that the role of the non-executive director (NED) has changed...

By Mark Mason, Chairman enterprise app consultancy and developer, Mubaloo According to the latest budget, the UK is growing faster than any other major country (UK, 2.6%, USA 2.4%, Canada 2.4%, Japan 0.1%, France 0.4%, Germany 1.5% and Italy which shrank by 0.4%). The UK is also borrowing less and is more focused on long term sustainable growth than it was five years ago. Indeed, we are now at the end of the longest continuous rise in public debt since 17th...

By Jane Ollis, MD of Rift Accounting Micro businesses and entrepreneurship are getting some great press lately and it’s fully deserved. There are now over five million firms in the UK with between 0-9 employees, a huge rise of 1.5 million since the turn of the century. The growth in micro businesses has helped drive the economic recovery and put entrepreneurs at the heart of British business. A new report from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  Second quarter figures released today have revealed notions of a 'Northern Powerhouse' could soon become reality with job growth rates in many of the UK’s northern cities soaring ahead of the south. Whilst London still held a 17.02 per cent share of the nation's 391,811 jobs last quarter, active job growth across the UK's top cities paints a very different picture. Despite Edinburgh only attributing a 0.62 per cent share of the UK's jobs, it ranks...

By Shahin Shamsabadi, Head of Business Intelligence MENA at The Risk Advisory Group We are perhaps only days away from a deal that could open up a country that has been shunned for nearly four decades.  This is a country that in spite of crippling sanctions boasts an established banking sector, infrastructural foundations in the transport, aviation and energy industries and a sophisticated consumer market.  A large, well-educated workforce, an abundance of natural resources, as well as more than 20 free...

By Roy Russell, Founder and CEO, Ascertus Limited The motivation for entrepreneurs to sell their businesses can be many. Mine was to grow my already successful, 12 year old document management solutions firm by being a part of a larger corporation. The notion of leveraging the support of the parent company to improve the offering and catapult the prospects – not simply of the business, but also of the staff – was appealing. At the time, the sale had all...