The FSB ‘Voice of Small Business’ survey revealed that small businesses still have difficulties finding suitably skilled staff despite a steep rise in unemployment. In order to solve this global crisis, businesses will have to look at new flexible approaches as a knowledge driven work environment makes it much harder to find the right person for the job, regardless of geographical location or business size.

Quite some time ago the Government announced that it will introduce new legislation that will persuade individuals to build a private pension. The legislation will start to take effect next year with the largest employers. Smaller businesses will have up to four years to implement the change.

I read an article a few days ago about how you can build Emotional Capital on your balance sheet by inspiring everyone connected to an organisation. Even though emotional commitment is very important, I see something wide of the mark with this approach.

Globally 63% of organisations have gone through, or in some cases are still going through, significant reductions in their workforce. Many of these organisations did not base their workforce cuts on individual performance or careful planning, but rather on those who responded to voluntary redundancy options and retirement offers. This means many organisations unfortunately have a situation where they are no longer ideally suited to assemble a team of top performers who are able to drive growth.

The recent Government proposals regarding parental leave from the workplace have been met with a mixture of appraisal and anger in almost equal parts. Parenting organisations have welcomed the changes, insisting that a rethink was long overdue but small businesses who already struggle to cope under the present parental leave rules, have been left feeling aggrieved and overlooked.

More often than not growth is driven by leaders who inspire their teams to be more effective and to contribute to the overall goal of a business. On the other hand it is quite easy for leaders to get caught up in the business instead of focussing on leadership and growth.

If your business is doing just ok, but you’d like it to do more than just ok, it’s often more productive to take a step back and look at things from a different angle.

The benefits of a University education have long been established. It is generally assumed that intellectually gifted students with lots of potential will go to University and come out with a degree that demonstrates that they are a versatile and reliable worker, no questions asked.

In 1975 I owned a small chain of Newsagents in Harrow, called Dale’s. Two of the shops delivered newspapers and magazines which required in those days a start time of 5 am, 7 days a week for 363 days of the year (there were no papers on Good Friday and Christmas Day). The early start was necessitated because rounds needed to be “marked up” by hand as there were no computers to streamline a labour intensive process. And everything had to be ready to go for 7am, when the paperboys and papergirls were legally allowed to leave the shop and start the deliveries.

I think that it is no secret that when corporate times are hard, the training budget is usually one of the first to suffer. All the fine words about staff training, personal development and commitment to customer care often have to take a back seat for a while. If you work in Human Resources or it is your role to implement staff training we need to look at how “we” are going to get around this issue. The thing that springs to my mind is in-house training.

The recession has affected everyone in one way or another. Many organisations have been, and some still are, in survival mode, trying to keep their heads above water, shedding employees like a winter coat.