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Small businesses have faced a lot of challenges in the past year, but their biggest concern this year is access to talent
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Despite their worries on access to talent, however, UK entrepreneurs are remaining optimistic
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This comes as O&S data showed that there were nearly a million job vacancies in the UK in December
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CDAM spoke with experts at the Chartered Management Institute to see how small businesses can get ahead in the competition when it comes to the war for talent
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Experts are saying that it's important to build a diverse team when you're recruiting for your business
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and sometimes hire people that may be better at different skills than you are
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Cidiam also spoke with the founder of Ramp.DGlobal, a talent acquisition platform
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and he said that it's important for small businesses to offer unique benefits and incentives
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when it comes to hiring employees. That could be anything from flexible working hours or offering career development in the business
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because when it comes to offering just salaries alone, small businesses might not have a leg up when it comes to the larger competitors
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A report on behalf of Starling Bank and UK Startup Awards 2023 highlighted over half of the
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1,200 small business founders surveyed. were worried about access to talent over the next 12 months
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Chartered Management Institute polls suggest 33% of SMEs are looking to recruit over the next six months
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compared to just 25% of larger organizations. While access to talent remains a really big concern for small business founders over the next year
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so does marketing and sales support. The same survey from Starling Bank suggested that 67% of small business founders
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were mainly worried about their marketing and sales support, so CDAM took some time to speak with some experts about how you can build your brand despite the worries of financing cost of living and inflation Small businesses have been facing a wave of funding concerns since banks started tightening their lending criteria and that means budget cuts tend to
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follow. We spoke with the founder of Fabric Marketing Academy to see what the importance of marketing
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is when it comes to trying to put your money in the places that it needs to be. The Starling Bank
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survey also showed 85% of startups that launched in the last three years have relied on personal
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capital for the initial source of funding, a trend that has long been seen since traditional
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banks began tightening their lending criteria. This means that although small businesses have been struggling to access the funding that
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they need to sustainably run their business, they are starting to make budget cuts in areas
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that might be of harm in the long term, like marketing and sales support
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The managing director at Virgin Startup said a small budget doesn't necessarily correlate
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with the inability to create an effective marketing campaign. While she said that marketing budgets tend to be the first cut, it's important to still market
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your brand in a way that shows your personality and authenticity. Experts suggest that there's a lot of online tools that can help you build your brand
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whether that be posting your own videos on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, but
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also finding online courses that are free and things that are helping you build your brand
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in terms of connecting with your consumers in the right way, but also ultimately just showing
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what your business is about and what it's for and what you're trying to do in terms of making
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an impact with your consumers and the world that you're working in. We at City Am would like to know if you had a business, where would you put your money
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Marketing, salaries? Let us know in the comments below
