It’s been a tough few years for business owners. Brexit, the pandemic, and the energy and cost of living crisis have all taken their toll and seen the number of businesses in Britain drop by 6.6% – from 5.9 million in 2020 to 5.5 million now.
Even so, SMEs make up 99.9% of the UK business population. Let’s take a closer look at what an SME is and what funding options are available if you’re thinking of starting out on your own.
Intellectual property is a set of legal rights put in place to stop a person or business stealing another’s ideas, designs or products.
Just having an idea isn’t quite enough to secure intellectual property rights though, you’ll have to have something more tangible in place – so while having an idea for a book won’t count, any words you have written towards that book will.
So, if you’ve come up with the prototype for the next must-have piece of tech or a winning idea for a new business, here’s all you need to know about intellectual property in the UK…
Mental health problems are more common than you may think – figures from Mind, the mental health charity show that 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year.
The effects of the coronavirus lockdown might even make this figure higher – being stuck between the same four walls can have a negative impact on mental health at the best of times, feelings that will be exacerbated by the pandemic ad talk of death and illness, not to mention insecurity over jobs and personal and business finance.
May 9 to 15 is Mental Health Awareness Week, a campaign designed to help encourage people to talk about mental health and address and issues head on. This year’s campaign will focus on the problem of loneliness.
It looks like we’re headed for a heatwave next week, with temperatures in London set to hit 24°C – not ideal for life in an office. If you have to endure a suffocating commute, or your packed into a crowded office for the best part of the day, then you’ll be well within your rights to complain that it’s just too hot – especially if you’re forced to wear a suit for work.
So, as an employer, is it time you implemented a summer dress code, to lighten the mood and help keep things cool as the temperature rises? And should non-customer facing staff be able to wear what they like to work in, as they can when they work from home?
Since the start of the pandemic, working from home has become the norm for hundreds of thousands of employees across the UK. W
Figures from Statista, the market and consumer data specialists, highlight how 38% of workers aged between 30 and 49 are doing some work from home as of February 2022. Age appears to affect remote working opportunities, as just 23% of younger workers aged between 16 and 29 report that they are working from home. 21% said they are unable to do so.
When working from home, a conference call is the only way to stay in the loop where meetings are concerned. And although our service is easy to use, there are certain rules you need to abide by when on a teleconference.
To make sure you don’t make a show of yourself on a call with up to 100 other people listening in, make a not of our top 9 tips for proper conference call etiquette…
Before the pandemic struck, more than 3 million of us spent two or more hours on the daily commute – that’s almost three-quarters (72%) as many as this time ten years ago, according to research from the Trade Unions Congress (TUC).
At that point, the number of commuters travelling a mind-numbing three or more hours a day had risen by three-quarters (75%) from 500,000 to 800,000 over the same period. We were all clearly doing too much commuting.
That all changed over the last couple of years, as Covid-19 restrictions and lockdowns meant more of us than ever had to work from home. But things are changing again as restrictions have been lifted completely and we’re all being encouraged to return to the office. And that means a return to public transport for many of us – so why not make the most of the time?
The distractions come thick and fast when you’re working from home – daytime TV, housework, knocks at the door, and cold callers on the phone all do their best to break your concentration.
And then the cat seems to need feeding every five minutes – while there’s no doubting having a pet around the place can help alleviate the loneliness that can come with working from home, they’re not always great for productivity, but they’re nothing compared to having a baby around the house while you’re trying to work – so, if you’re a work from home parent, is it time you considered taking on a nanny?
Accounting is one of the most arduous tasks a small business owner has to face – all you want to do is get on with the day-to-day running of things but each month you end up getting yourself lost in a mountain of receipts, bank statements, pay slips and credit notes.
The good news is, there is accounting software out there that can help, you just need to know exactly what it is you’re after to find the right software to suit your business needs.
More of us than ever before are working from home. As we enter the second year of pandemic restrictions, most of us who are able to will have worked remotely at some stage since this time in 2020.
Many have moved to a hybrid system – part-time home and part-time office – which means you may be able to choose which days you work from home. Is Monday and Friday best as it means you miss the first and final commutes of the week? Or how about Tuesdays – being at home on officially the worst day of the week has to be a good thing? Or what about breaking up the week with a work from home Wednesday?
Let’s try and work out which day is best for you to work from home.
With just a couple of days to go until Christmas Eve, there’s a good chance many of your staff are beginning to wind down – unless, of course, Christmas is your busiest time of the year. If things do slow down over the festive period, you might be taking things easy yourself, or even on holiday already.
But what if you need people to stay switched on over the holidays? Especially in that ‘dead zone’ between Christmas and New Year? Here are some tips to help keep things ticking over.
