Last night, the Directors of HR Connexions attended the Presidents Annual Dinner, the flagship Sheffield Chamber of Commerce Event. If a sign of a good night can be judged by the number of bacon sandwiches eaten the morning after, it was certainly worth attending!
Great company and conversation, sadly we only got to speak to a handful of guests out of the 350 people who attended the black tie event at Cutlers’ Hall.
After dinner speeches commenced with Nick Tovey, the SCCI President. He demonstrated that even in difficult times there are many successes and initiatives to shout about in the region. Highlighting lots of achievements from local businesses and the benefits of the high speed train service from London to Sheffield to be completed in 2010.
Doug Richard, the Dragons Den star, followed Nick as the guest speaker. He quickly advised the audience not to get dizzy on the rail link developments, but to focus on the impact of the new super high speed broadband service instead. This will put Sheffield as the fastest broadband city in the UK. Great progress if you don’t compare it to a one bed apartment in Korea!
In true after dinner style, Doug kept the audiences attention. He entiwined stories of his experiences with the value that small business & entrepreneurs made to the economy. Quoting ”99.7% is the proportion of all enterprises that are SME and that 47.5% of the UK work force are employed in organisations with less than 10 employees”
Advising that we will not come out of recession this year, he relayed his findings from his time spent reviewing government support schemes for small businesses. As Chairman of the Conservatives Party, Small Business Task Force, he found that there are 3,000 programmes available which are delivered by 2,000 entities. The spending equates to £2.5 billion a year but this has had no effect.
He said “If something isn’t working 98% of the time, you burn it, you close it, you stop it. There is no rational reason to spend £2.5 billion to no avail, but that doesn’t mean entrepreneurial activity doesn’t need support and entrepreneurs don’t need help.”
Based on his personal experience of helping companies of similar size, in similar industries and with similar challenges in both California and in the UK, he concluded that it had proved harder for those companies in the UK to succeed because they were not being supported effectively.
The Sheffield Star have covered his speech and the full Richard Report makes for an interesting read.
