FLEXIBILITY AND EMBRACING TECH IS HOW SMEs WILL WIN IN 2024 | Chris Mills

Podcast Radio Business Interviews

Chris Mills, SME Productivity Expert at Slack speaks to Clayton M. Coke of Podcast Radio Business to discuss why FLEXIBILITY AND EMBRACING TECH IS HOW SMEs WILL WIN IN 2024

The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt laid out plans to unlock growth and boost productivity in last week’s Autumn Statement and new research has shown this is high on the priorities for UK small businesses with 1 in 3 (34%) recognising flexibility to embrace new ways of working as their biggest business opportunity in 2024.SMEs are keen to also implement new technologies (32%) after both employees and employers struggled withloneliness and ineffective remote working set-up in this year.

Despite the challenges of the cost-of-living crisis and inflation, many SMEs go into the New Year confident with 28% saying their financial stability and cashflow had improved in 2023, while 24% said employee engagement and well-being was the most improved area.

The findings from productivity platform Slack also show that a quarter (24%) of SMEs are prepared to shift the way they work in order to be successful in 2024, withover a quarter (26%) of small business owners calling communication and collaboration within teams vital.

In fact, many are now calling on staff to experiment with new tech to save times and costs (30%) and embrace transparent and collaborative communication (29%) When it comes to communication, internal communications were identified as the most important (76%) employee skill for SMEs going into next year, followed by teamwork (74%) and external communication (73%).

Another challenge to many UK small businesses is the increased energy and operational costs (27%), followed by recruitment and talent retention (26%) and supply chain disruptions (25%).

Now, in the run up to Small Business Saturday, we are being encouraged to support local businesses to help them in their New Year goals with the festive season traditionally being a “make or break season” for many businesses and a time where SMEs start to think about the next financial year.

With a massive 80% of SME owners believing small businesses are crucial to the UK economy. Slack's productivity expert Chris Mills is on hand to offer small business owners advice on how to help increase team connection and boost productivity.Mills can also discuss the research and explain why communication is so important in overcoming many of the UK Small Businesses’ challenges.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/

BACKGROUND AND REGIONAL INFORMATION:

The research for Slack was carried out online by Opinion Matters throughout 15.11.2023 - 17.11.2023 amongst a panel resulting in 502 SME owners (18+)responding. All research conducted adheres to the MRS Codes of Conduct (2010) in the UK and ICC/ESOMAR World Research Guidelines.

Opinion Matters is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office and is fully compliant with the Data Protection Act (1998).