54 roundtable: building on success ... continued from previous page
causing salaries of technical staff to rise while drawing talent away from the Thames Valley and towards London.”
Stradling agreed that The City was a big draw, particularly for young CV-aware recruits. He also accepted that good people always cost more, but pointed out: “There is nothing in corporate banking terms that we cannot give such people within the Thames Valley, so we just have to make it more appealing, a better place to work in their minds.”
Bloxham also highlighted that changes in the UK immigration laws have had a huge effect upon recruitment. “Five years ago it was very easy to hire skilled people from outside the EU. That’s not the case anymore.”
Murray queried if flexibility, part-time staffing and zero hour contract issues were causing problems for employers.
Jones: “We’ve got people on zero hours contracts and we are not embarrassed to say it. It’s necessary in certain elements of our business, but what we do is constantly review such contracts then look to shift them across onto a contract that suits their work pattern, as well as us. But, it seems to me that it’s one of those things that the media has got hold of. There will be some people who may abuse it, but the vast majority of businesses use them for good valid reasons.”
Get out of the bunker
Bloxham suggested that many businesses that survived or, indeed, thrived in the downturn had got used to a ‘bunker mentality’ and now have adopted an austere, tougher, more cautious approach to business. This is potentially counter productive, he explained, and suggested that such companies now need to expand their horizons and look positively for growth.
Grundon had noticed ‘bunker mentality’ among businesses in the south east. “They ask those difficult decisions: What sort of recovery will this be? When do you start adding more people? When do you start not making a silly decision?”
Neil Grundon
Apprentices, legislation and zero hours
Hiring apprentices was an issue in the Thames Valley said Tatham. “I am passionate about apprenticeships, but, although hiring interns and sandwich students is easier because they look for business experience in their third university year, I find getting apprentice candidates into our IT business is difficult.”
Jones agreed. “We are not seen as the glitzy, sexy side of the catering industry. Everyone wants to be a Ramsey or a Heston, or work in the hotel or restaurant scene.
“Contract catering is not fashionable and we have to push hard to find the right calibre of youngster coming out of college at apprentice level. It’s amazing really given the state of the economy.”
CH&Co had got involved in several initiatives – even working with competitors – to encourage uptake of a career in the catering sector.
Grundon said recruitment in his sector was less troublesome, with its focus on a ‘green’ environment. Employment law was where he had recruitment concerns. “At the moment legislation discriminates against the old and the young, because employers don’t want to employ either. The young seem to want to throw themselves in harms way and the old don’t want to leave.”
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Jones said hospitality had “fallen off a cliff” during the downturn, and admitted CH&Co had initially drifted into a ‘bunker mentality’ cutting back on certain investments. “But, we realised we had to get out of that mood, or things would be catastrophic. So we made new investments along the way, restructured the businss and we are now back on track.”
He agreed with Bloxham that some companies, even blue-chips, were still suffering from ‘bunker mentality’.
Grundon: “We did not decrease our capital spend during the downturn. We knew what we wanted and it just seemed the right thing to do, whereas our competitors took on debt or sold or merged or whatever. In doing what we did, we think we will come out in front of our competitors.”
Jones: “The majority of our clients are starting to realise that there are better times ahead. There are positive shifts in behavioural patterns, which is good because confidence breeds confidence.”
Stanley who operates in the B2C market was pleased to announce that golfers still played golf during the downturn and his business had doubled in the past five years.
Invest in technology to keep pace with customers
Another Westcoast growth indicator Tatham highlighted was that businesses have been investing in machines not people over the past five years, trying to squeeze more
efficiency out of their companies or to change the way they operate. “As technology has rapidly changed and become cheaper, more and more companies have been investing in new bits of technological kit for their businesses, to improve productivity and efficiency.”
“Cloud will make another dramatic change to businesses and we are shortly going to see the Internet of everything,” Tatham predicted.
Grundon agreed with the future impact of technological change. He predicted some companies, lagging in the rapidly changing technology market, might yet jump ahead by simply missing out one stage of technological advance, and adopting cloud, for example.
Stanley: “The challenge we see is how to engage with customers and that is ever more via iPhones, tablets, social media, apps. The buzzword for us is multi-device channels and we now need to use all of them to attract, inform and get our messages out to customers. We have invested heavily in technology to do that, but we should remember that our customers are constantly investing in it too.”
Bloxham’s company has fared well because it supplies personnel to the sectors currently leading technological advances but he warned that as demand for technical skills grows, and businesses overall begin to look for growth, the recruitment market will shift to favour the job seeker over the employer.
Bob Alsop
Time for M&A and investment?
Corporate finance director Alsop stated that growth prospects had improved: “There are generally more people looking for acquisition opportunities. There was a time when some people simply focused on their business and brought their costs down in order to survive. People have paid down debt and are now thinking what should we be doing next?
“Before the credit crunch, many businesses generally had some form of term debt. However, many have reduced this significantly or are not leveraged at all, so there is the opportunity to introduce leverage to acquire good quality businesses. The demand is still for high-quality assets though, and there is strong competition for them.”
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – NOVEMBER 2013
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