Flexible workspace provider, Clockwise, is expanding its offering for start-up and scale up businesses across the UK following a significant rise in demand for flexible office space from regional SMEs. Across its portfolio, Clockwise is responding to growing demand from regional SMEs for flexible, scalable workspace by increasing the availability and variety of its office offering. In Glasgow and Liverpool, existing space is being reconfigured to better reflect changing occupier requirements, while Exeter has recently opened a new phase of workspace to meet strong local demand. Together, these investments will enable more businesses to find workspace that suits their current…

By Paul Timms, Director at IT System Integrators Ltd Choosing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is one of the most significant and most expensive decisions a business will make. Get it right, and you have a platform that supports growth for at least a decade. Get it wrong, and you’re looking at cost overruns, frustrated teams, and the very real possibility of starting the whole process again. The stakes are high, which means the selection process deserves far more rigour than it typically gets. An ERP system should efficiently connect the moving parts of your business including finance, operations,…

Neuroinclusion is becoming a growing priority for employers, with two in five (40%) neuroinclusive businesses reporting better retention when inclusive support is embedded into the workplace.  To help businesses build more inclusive workplaces, assistive technology experts, Everway, have shared new advice exploring why neuroinclusion matters and the practical steps HR leaders can take to create environments where everyone can thrive. Neuroinclusion is not only about supporting employees. When workplaces are designed to work for a wider range of thinking styles, organisations can improve how they attract, retain and engage talent. HR leaders can start by putting neuroinclusion into practice through: 1.…

Slough’s first Robotics Adoption Forum brought businesses face-to-face with George the humanoid robot and challenged more local firms to explore what robotics could do for them. What could a robot do for your business and, with the technology becoming more accessible, why aren’t more companies finding out? That was the question at Slough’s first Robotics Adoption Forum, hosted by Plus X Innovation in collaboration with Extend Robotics on 14 July. The event brought industry leaders, technology experts and growing businesses together with George the humanoid robot for a practical look at how robotics can improve productivity, help address skills shortages…

WERA Hobhouse MP, Baroness Udin and Lord Foster of Bath are among scores of politicians to have signed an open letter calling for the government to make digital wills legally valid. Under the Wills Act 1837, a valid will must be made in writing and signed in the presence of two independent witnesses. The open letter forms part of My Last Wish, a new campaign launched by digital life vault SafeKeep, which argues that the current law is old-fashioned and shuts millions of people out of making a valid will. The campaign calls for secure, properly authenticated electronic wills to…

Written by Dr Annaëlle Hip Kam, Sustainability Scientist at Tunley Environmental Carbon pricing and emissions metrics have reshaped how financial markets assess environmental risk, influencing capital allocation, lending conditions and corporate strategy. Yet, this climate metric alone does not capture the full environmental spectrum of environmental risk embedded in today’s portfolios. While carbon markets have succeeded because emissions are uniform and tradable, this same logic obscures material risks linked to nature loss. By examining how financial activity both depends on and contributes to ecosystem degradation, this article shows that nature-related risk is endogenous to finance and partially non-diversifiable. Moving beyond carbon…

Xero is capturing the stories of young entrepreneurs to share how they began to engage with ‘the numbers’ more confidently Young people in the UK are reconsidering how they enter the world of work. Our latest research found that nearly three quarters (72%) are attracted to entrepreneurship, with only one in five young people (20%) planning a traditional career path. But there are barriers that are holding young people back from starting their own business – and it’s not for lack of wanting. Over a third (37%) say they’re held back by a lack of financial skills – more so…

Summer is a strange season for a lot of UK small businesses. Footfall shifts, spending habits change, and the things that work in November — hot drinks, cosy evenings in, gift purchases — simply stop working. Rather than treating the warmer months as a quiet patch to get through, many owners are using them to test small, low-risk additions to what they already sell. Done well, these additions don’t just plug a seasonal gap; they become permanent extra margin. Here are five approaches worth considering, all of which can be trialled without a big upfront investment or a change to…

LeadFly, a Watford web studio that builds websites for tradesmen, have published some original research tabout the wesbites of independent UK tradesman businesses. Of 788 independent tradesman businesses with a website on file, 71% of those sites returned no working page. Among the 29% that did load, 83% were not mobile friendly and 71% were not secure. Homeowners now find and judge a tradesman online before they ever pick up the phone. So we wanted a hard number for how the independent end of the trade actually looks on the web. We took 788 tradesman businesses that already had a…

Andy Burnham’s first speech as Prime Minister has placed regional growth, the re-industrialisation of Britain and tackling youth unemployment at the centre of his government’s agenda, with a commitment to spread economic opportunity “to every postcode in the land”. The new Prime Minister’s focus on empowering communities beyond London has drawn a mixed but broadly optimistic response from business leaders, who have called for action to support small businesses, reduce barriers to growth and create greater certainty for entrepreneurs. Kevin Fitzgerald, UK Managing Director at employment platform Employment Hero, said Burnham’s “Manchesterism” approach could provide a positive framework for regional…