The pressure on firms struggling to hire staff is at an all-time high. According to the latest ONS labour market statistics released in May (2022), for the first time since records began, there are fewer unemployed people than job vacancies. Businesses say they are willing to pay more for the right individuals, but finding suitable people to employ seems like an impossible task. Faced with such challenges, how can startups increase their chances of securing the talent they desperately need to grow?
Since the Paris Climate Agreement, businesses of all sizes from all areas of the world have been focusing on decarbonisation. The commitment to keep global temperatures under 2ºc and significantly reduce the amount of carbon emissions generated worldwide is something that no industry is free from. But the property and construction sectors are particularly feeling the pressure.
Congratulations startup founder: you’ve had the lightbulb idea, built a game-changing solution, developed a killer product and you’re finally market-ready. But now comes the hardest part: getting your solution out of stealth mode and into the waiting hands of your target customers.
Sustainable finance is not just a box-ticking exercise – it must be a marriage of environmental and social impact. It has become a popular buzzphrase for investors as they seek to put their funding into companies that aim to solve the world’s biggest problems, most notably climate change.
Sustainable IT solutions partner, and certified B Corporation Klyk announces their ambitious sustainability targets and the launch of their IT repair café on June 24th. Over the next five years Klyk aims to cut CO2 emissions by 1,200 tonnes and reduce electronic waste (e-waste) by 145 tonnes.
Trustly, the leading global payments platform for digital Account-to-Account transactions (A2A) today announces the acquisition of the UK-based Open Banking Payments platform Ecospend. Ecospend’s strong UK A2A product and full bank connectivity will complement and enable Trustly to deliver a market-leading product in the UK, and further accelerate its UK roll-out – one of Europe’s most rapidly growing A2A regions and a core growth market for Trustly.
It is no secret that during the midst of the covid pandemic, thousands of people decided to start their own business. The under 25’s boomed with innovation during lockdown, and a new study has shown that e-commerce, freight and real estate were the top sectors for the start-up businesses in under 25’s.
Crowd Data Systems (CDS), a B2B SaaS platform providing data-driven decision support to corporate treasury, has secured an €1m seed round led by Triple Point Ventures, alongside Portfolio Ventures and a number of angel investors. This investment will enable the business to build out sales, marketing and customer success in order to meet its next phase of growth.
This five step Business Strategy plan is called the FFS (The Fraser Five Step) and is a simple way to create a clear and actionable business plan for your startup.
It’s an irony for small businesses that when it comes to finance, the more they need it, the less there is. With interest rates up for a fourth consecutive time in May and inflation forecast to be as high as 10% by the end of 2022 – a 40-year high – the economic outlook is highly uncertain. Traditional lenders are nervous and wary of increasing lending to SMEs, which already saw their debt rise by a quarter during the pandemic, and it’s no longer just struggling businesses that have a hard time securing funding.
According to McKinsey, more inclusive and diverse organisations are 35% more likely to outperform their competition. Also, they tend to capture new markets more effectively than their counterparts. However, diversity is still an issue in the UK workforce. Almost half of employees feel that their employers are not doing enough to achieve the right balance.
Getting the backing of a Venture Capital Fund (VC) is often a key milestone for any growing business, it is, therefore, important to strategise both your preparation and approach.
May 2022: The key to increasing investment in more female-founded companies is by increasing the representation of female VCs, suggests VC-backed, female-founded retail technology app Slip. Although less than 20% of investors in Slip are female, Co-founder and CEO Tash Grossman believes that increased female investor representation would support the growth of more female-founded businesses.
Salience Labs has raised a seed round of $11.5m to develop an ultra high-speed multi-chip processor combining photonics and electronics to accelerate exponential advances in AI. The round was led by Cambridge Innovation Capital and Oxford Science Enterprises, with Oxford Investment Consultants, former CEO of Dialog Semiconductor Jalal Bagherli, ex-Temasek Board Member Yew Lin Goh and Arm-backed Deeptech Labs participating.
Cancer is the main reason employers claim for their staff across all group risk benefits (employer-sponsored life assurance, income protection and critical illness), so it’s especially important that employers know how to make the most of the support available under these policies.
Racing to disrupt both access and sustainability within the cycling industry, kid’s bike subscription service, Bike Club, gears up for national and European expansion after closing £16.75m in new investment.
Nearly two thirds (63%) of employers say they offer early parenthood support, according to research from Peppy, leaving those employers who don’t, extremely vulnerable to losing staff to other more family-friendly organisations at the point their staff become parents.
As the years go by, technology continues to advance at a steady pace. From initial trials of self-driving vehicles to sophisticated mobile phones with endless features, we are living in an increasingly futuristic world. On one side, the constant growth in innovation may excite the younger generations, who are used to handling digital devices from an early age. On the other, the older population may feel somewhat intimidated by the continuous rollout of new technologies.
From seven-second TikTok videos on our phones, click and collect McDonald’s orders and generous returns policies on our clothes, our modern existence is characterised by the need for speed, ease and flexibility. Convenience is what we expect and what we now demand from technology providers. There was a time when consumers were prepared to wait a year for a software update and willing to pay extra for new features. Today, expectations have changed and been replaced by an expectation of flexibility and the convenience of pay-as-you-go subscription billing methods.
Hybrid working is being adopted by businesses all over the world and equally, is becoming an expectation of employees looking for a new job. What was initially a strategy to keep people safe has now become a highly-sought norm that has revolutionised the workplace forever.
