The Analysis News & Opinions
Opinion
UK firms urged to increase employee engagement
Businesses and employers should do more to help close Britain’s productivity gap, according to All Hands on Deck, a policy paper published by the Centre for Policy Studies. I would suggest following the example of US
firms who found high employee engagement was reflected in at least a 20% boost to productivity and profitability compared to firms who did not engage staff. While I would accept there is more that government has to do, business itself can boost productivity. The report focuses on three types of
employee engagement: l Employee ownership – greater use should be made of employee-ownership schemes which have traditionally been seen as reserved for senior executives. A study of 9,000 workers showed the benefits of shared ownership are overwhelming – for both the employer and employee. l Flexible working practices – the nature of work is changing, and at speed, so, in order to keep up with the changing nature of work, firms should offer flexible working from day 1 rather than sticking to the current restriction of it only being available to those who have been with an employer for 26 weeks. l A focus on individual well-being and financial security – firms who support the health and wellbeing of employees have been shown to benefit via increased employee motivation, greater likelihood that the employee will stay with the company long- term, and significant reduction in the number of sick-days taken by staff. All Hands on Deck calls for the wider adoption of the Mid-Life MOT which supports employees to make decisions on their long-term financial health. We need to extend models of employee
ownership that have been shown to work, instead of the scheme proposed by John McDonnell which amounts to little more than government theft of companies’ assets.
Guy Opperman MP Author, All Hands on Deck
WBO provokes calls for insolvency reform
The lack of improvement in the UK’s standing in the World Bank’s insolvency rankings underlines the need for UK corporate insolvency reform, according to analysts. For the second year running, the UK is at
14th place in the Resolving Insolvency table in the Doing Business report. This follows a fall from 13th to 14th in 2016’s rankings. As the UK stands still, many other
countries have substantially improved their insolvency and restructuring frameworks, in order to attract more international restructuring deals. The Netherlands has recently made a number of reforms and has climbed from 11th in 2016 to 7th this year. R3 believes that the UK government
should take heed of the implicit warning in the latest rankings, and act quickly to implement many of the proposals for insolvency reform which were announced over the August Bank Holiday. Stuart Frith, president of R3, said: “The
UK cannot afford to stand still when it comes to strengthening our insolvency and restructuring framework. Although the UK framework is strong and internationally well regarded, there are still opportunities to make our framework more responsive, and to make it easier to rescue jobs and businesses. “With continuing uncertainty about how
Brexit will end up affecting cross-border restructuring and insolvency cases, the UK has much to gain from acting swiftly to modernise the underlying framework, and maintain its international competitiveness. “It is very promising that the government
has reiterated its commitment to corporate insolvency framework reform, but now what is needed is follow-through, to ensure the insolvency and restructuring framework – a key ingredient in a successful economy, as
the World Bank recognises – remains fit for purpose, and leads the international pack.” When publishing its reform package
in August, the government said it would introduce the changes through legislation when ‘parliamentary time allows’ – but did not give a clear timetable for this. Mr Frith added: “We look forward to
working with the government to progress these reforms. The reforms are not perfect and there are still tweaks to be made, but overall they could help improve our world-class framework. “A rigorous and responsive insolvency
and restructuring framework is key to the smooth functioning of any economy. The UK performs well on measures such as time taken to resolve cases and recovery rates, but the strength of our recovery framework performs less well
than many other
countries, according to the World Bank. Unless this can be improved upon, our whole economy will see the effects.” Other countries which have improved
their insolvency frameworks recently are rising in the rankings. The Nordic countries are performing well (Finland in 2nd, Norway up to 5th, Denmark to 6th, and Iceland to 12th), while Belgium has jumped up three places in the last year, from 11th to 8th, and Slovenia is up one place to 9th.
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www.CCRMagazine.com December 2018
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