You’re building a website, putting together a document, or mocking up a design – and without a second thought, you reach for a familiar font. Arial. Tahoma. Times New Roman. Easy. Barely anyone gives it a second thought. But according to new research from digital design studio Kraam, those everyday choices could be quietly working against you. Their latest insight reveals the most disliked fonts from a professional design perspective – not because they’re obscure or gimmicky – but because they’re too familiar, often used without considering how they impact readability, perception, and user experience. The Most Hated Fonts People Still…
Author: sme-admin
The Small Business Protections (Late Payments) Bill has been introduced to parliament, promising a 60-day payment cap, mandatory 8% interest on late payments, and new enforcement processes. Sebastien Marchon, CEO of global fintech Rydoo, holds the view that prevention of late payments will be more effective than imposing fines. He calls for greater use of automation within finance departments to make invoice processing and approval almost immediate, protecting supplier relationships and reducing the £11bn late payments problem. Sebastien argues that as payment performance becomes more visible with regulation, firms are likely to boost uptake of automation tools to ensure they don’t fall foul…
One in seven people in Portugal is now born overseas, highlighting a growing shift that could shape the future of work across Europe. Portugal is quietly becoming one of Europe’s most important workforce pressure test areas, revealing how migrations, ageing populations, talent, and cross-border hiring are reshaping employment across the continent. According to analysis by Agility EOR, the data show that the foreign-born share of Portugal’s population has reached around one in seven people, with immigration now a key driver of labour supply in the country. At the same time, Portugal is facing demographic and economic pressures, with the Organisation…
By Jessie Raby, Founder of new UK-built placement intelligence platform, Prodicta. If a hiring decision or dismissal in your organisation was challenged tomorrow, would you be confident in your ability to defend it? I’s a simple question, but for many employers, the answer is far from clear. Yet the changes being introduced under the Employment Rights Act 2025 have raised this to the top of the agenda. It requires employers to demonstrate that hiring decisions are fair, objective, and documented. From January 2027, employees will have unfair dismissal protection from their first day of employment. The two-year qualifying period is being…
By Kate Lester, Co-founder and CEO, Diamond Logistics Ltd For many ecommerce brands, fulfilment is something that only gets serious attention once it starts to go wrong. Missed or incomplete deliveries, rising costs and customer complaints often appear long before fulfilment is recognised as a strategic issue. After working with thousands of ecommerce businesses over three decades, we see the same fulfilment mistakes repeated time and again—often by otherwise well‑run, fast‑growing brands. Mistake 1: Treating fulfilment as an afterthought Many brands invest heavily in product development, marketing and customer acquisition, only to ‘figure out logistics later’. Fulfilment is expected to…
Social media platforms reportedly raked in a massive £430 million in 2025 alone from criminals targeting UK consumers through scam ads – a 56% increase compared to 2022. Alarmingly, Brits are losing an average of £1,258 per scam advert online. Meta has also recently been named in a lawsuit alleging the tech giant earned around 10% of its profits – approximately $16 billion – from high-risk adverts across its platforms, including scam and banned product ads. But where in the world are users most at risk from online financial scams – and what phrases do scammers most commonly use to lure them in? With this in mind, the forex experts at BrokerChooser scraped…
The marketing playbook that worked in 2025 is actively hurting performance in 2026, says Donatas Smailys, CEO and co-founder of Billo, the largest creator marketing platform in the US. May 13, 2026. Social media marketing moves fast, and trend cycles that once lasted a year now can change as quickly as in weeks. As platform algorithms shift and audience skepticism deepens, a set of tactics that dominated marketing are already showing early signs of failure, experts say. “There is always a lag between when something stops working and when brands stop doing it,” said Donatas Smailys, CEO of Billo, a creator…
Draft legislation announced last week in the King’s Speech aimed at reforming the leasehold system, has been cautiously welcomed by the campaign group Justice for Property Rights. However, the campaign group has warned that as it stands the key provisions of the 2024 Act on leasehold reform have still not been implemented and are set to cost taxpayers billions as a result of legal action currently under appeal. In April 2026, the Court of Appeal granted permission to appeal to several groups of freeholders who argued successfully that many provisions of the 2024 Act amount to an unlawful interference with property rights…
A new rooftop solar scheme backed by Paragon Bank is eliminating upfront costs for SMEs and is forecast to deliver average savings of £552,380 per customer over 25 years*. Businesses signed up to the initiative to date will also collectively avoid more than 45,000 tonnes of carbon emissions over the panels’ lifetime – equivalent to taking over 10,000 petrol cars** off the road for a year. The scheme, launched by FTSE 250 lender Paragon Bank in partnership with HDM Energies in July last year, aims to help SMEs cut energy bills and carbon emissions with no upfront investment – the…
The landscape of workplace integrity is shifting rapidly as digital whistleblowing hits an all-time high, according to Safecall’s 2026 Benchmark Report. The shift toward digital platforms has fundamentally changed how employees blow the whistle. Since 2019, named reports have plummeted from 37% to just 25%. In contrast, anonymous reporting now represents 56% of all submissions – a 9% increase over the same period. This anonymity is even more pronounced online, where it accounts for 63% of all web-based reports. Despite the digital takeover, the human element remains a critical safety net for the most serious workplace grievances. Nearly a quarter…