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.

Receiving the dreaded ‘At Risk’ letter has the ability to put your life into a complete tailspin (in my case this was a TUPE notice that we all knew would lead to redundancy). I remember the ice cold chill that flushed down my spine, followed by a feeling of complete disbelief that all my hard work over the last few years has been for nothing.  After I got over the initial shock and evaluated the situation objectively things looked significantly better.  Most people will go through a phase of dismay, it’s normal.

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.

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.

When asked for his verdict on losing the 1992 Presidential Campaign to Bill Clinton, George Bush Senior identified “the vision thing,” or rather his lack of it, as a major contributing factor. This notion that leadership is about a single leader with a unifying vision which they communicate, usually in inspirational Churchillian rhetoric, is an enduring one.

Answering that question can depend on who we are and where we fit into the process. I am a tutor so naturally I want lots of people to go on a training course, mine in particular. I passionately believe in the process and still get enormous satisfaction out of running courses even after 5000 delegates over to past 16 years.

In the world of business training there seems to have been a great rush towards accredited courses over the last few years. The rush has in part been driven by the availability of government backed funding through schemes such as Train to Gain, with its mantra of NVQs for everyone. It is difficult to argue that a qualification is a bad thing and indeed whilst I was working as a Skills Broker on the Train to Gain programme, I helped hundreds of people on their way to just such a qualification.