PeoplePerHour.com today unveiled the latest findings from the ongoing Small Business Survey of its 43,000 UK small and micro-businesses. The results suggest widespread optimism and reports of growth in the small business sector, but an overwhelming majority still have no intention of hiring new staff.
82 percent of respondents to the survey plan to invest in their businesses over the next 12 months, but only 17 percent plan to recruit new staff. The majority of investment is planned for technology and the web (39 percent) and marketing (40 percent).
Given that small businesses employ more than 50 percent of the UK workforce, the survey findings would suggest that unemployment – which currently stands at 2.46 million (7.8 percent) – is unlikely to fall anytime soon.
With 80 percent of respondents to the survey citing flexibility as the principal benefit of using freelancers, PeoplePerHour.com founder Xenios Thrasyvoulou suggests the government might learn some valuable lessons from this insight.
“Currently it’s very costly, time-consuming and difficult for small businesses to hire and fire people,” he says. “Many more jobs would be created if the government made employing people more attractive to small businesses. Given the red tape and hassle associated with employing people currently, it’s little wonder growing numbers of small businesses are choosing the freelance option instead.”
Thousands of small businesses that made redundancies during the recession discovered that a plethora of specific roles could be fulfilled by remote freelance staff, who can be engaged on an ad hoc project basis whenever they are required. Many respondents to the Small Business Survey plan to continue preferring freelance help over permanent in house staff, even after the recovery fully kicks-in.
For example, internet agency Miggle (www.miggle.co.uk) is growing rapidly and plans to use freelance experts to cope with increased demand for its services. The company’s founder Alick Mighall explains the benefits of this approach: “Freelancers get jobs done when they need doing, efficiently and cost-effectively. This enables my business to remain flexible. Effectively, I can expand and contract capacity on demand.”
Small businesses like Miggle have fuelled the phenomenal growth of PeoplePerHour.com. In January, the site had 19,000 registered members. Today, more than 44,000 small and micro businesses use the site to buy and sell business services.
Small businesses grow, but still refuse to recruit
Major survey of UK small businesses suggests optimism abounds, but thereís still a reluctance to hire new staff.
