Recession continues: Don't forget your workforce

Many were expecting news of a small, but not insignificant, recovery of the recession when the lastest quarterly results were released. When, in fact, the economy was found to have contracted by a futher 0.4% it was a surprise to many who had predicted 'green shoots', and not without evidence.

According to the recent 2009 Business Pulse Report of 7,200 smaller and medium enterprises in the UK, some 61% of respondents were confident about business prospects for 2010. Meanwhile 75% were looking forward to a general economic upturn. Some 35% of SMEs reckoned that better times were just around the corner, with January 2010 cited as being the tipping point.

Commenting on the results, Mick Hegarty, strategy director, BT Business, said the results reflected that the UK had been through a challenging and confusing time. “We've had the biggest recession since the 1930s,” he noted. “We've seen the collapes of financial icons that we thought would be there forever. Now we keep hearing about the green shoots of recovery from so many places that it's like we're on Gardener's Question Time.