sme 100 – roundtable 47


There are 1.1million SMEs in the UK, and the Government plainly sees them as a powerful workforce to help drive economic recovery. This Roundtable hosted by The Business Magazine together with the sponsors and co- compilers of our SME 100 – Santander Corporate and Commercial Banking, law firm Field Seymour Parkes, business advisers and accountants Haines Watts and SME growth advisers VitalSix – set out to find the answers …


Are SMEs sitting comfortably in the recovery driving seat?


Participants


Barry Anns: Group MD – du Pré Group, IT, telecoms and software


Susan Elliott: Managing director – VitalSix


Penelope Garden: Partner – Field Seymour Parkes


Simon MacDowall: COO – SFW, agile software application services


Dr Susan Matos: Head of knowledge transfer programmes, University of Reading


Alex Minchin: Managing director – Zest Digital, digital marketing


Ian Nash: Business development director Thames Valley – Santander


Barry Potter: Partner – Haines Watts


Sean Taylor: Managing director - Content Guru and Redwood Technologies, IT software and ‘cloud’ communications


David Murray:


Managing editor and publisher of The Business Magazine, chaired the discussion


Lined up to debate: our Roundtable team Journalist John Burbedge reports the Roundtable highlights


Are the feet of owner- managers poised over accelerator or brake pedals?


”We are being told we are set fair for a sustained low-inflation recovery,” stated David Murray, “but there are concerns that this is fuelled by a fall in the amount that households save – down from 9% in 2009 to 5% – so is this recovery underpinned mainly by consumer spending?


“Or, as the Government wants, is the recovery now founded on increasing private business investment and employment, and will this in turn drive the increased productivity that will help sustain our economic growth?”


Murray added that a recent survey by GE Capital had reported SMEs being set to create 660,000 jobs in the next year. “This is good news, but is that the confident recruitment view of this Roundtable?”


Sean Taylor had no hesitation. “Absolutely. We are hiring, taking on people at the moment, but it is a very big regional


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MAY 2014


challenge. We struggle to gain the right types of people for our business – typically STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) graduates.


“The region is great for us as a business, and we promote the clustering of like-minded businesses in this ‘Tech Valley Europe’, but we do have to compete against the very strong gravitational pull of London with its high wages and vibrant lifestyle.


“We have about 40 places currently open for graduates and we can’t fill them fast enough. It’s absolutely vital that we attract talent into this region.”


Alex Minchin’s company is under four years old but has grown to nine staff, with five being taken on last year. “Recruitment is arguably easier in the digital sector because it is a boom area. People want to get into it.” Even so, he admitted that his company tended to look for graduates in subjects such as history that found it more difficult to gain employment. “We find that they can apply their skills to our industry very well. Classic subjects areas (such as history) tend to have fewer employment opportunities, and this creates the perfect


Susan Elliott


scenario for a small business like ours, and for a graduate looking to get into work.”


Dr Susan Matos added that graduates from less directly related degree subjects such as history could quite often bring fresh skills and a different perspective to a business, valuable for corporate innovation and differentiation.


Moving offices to central Oxford to be closer to likely clients had proved a two-edged sword, Minchin revealed. “Office space has proved so expensive – £16.50 per sq ft outside Oxford, £45 per sq ft inside – that I can’t take on people as I want to.


Continued overleaf ... www.businessmag.co.uk


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