Daniel Riley, leading finance expert and CEO of one of the country’s top business finance providers, Earlypay, said the biggest issue facing businesses in 2022 is attraction and retention of staff.
Biggest issues facing SMEs right now:
- Businesses looking for ways to access funds to compete for staff in the market
- Salaries rising and staff demanding more incentives
- Businesses are having to increase salaries and conditions to stop staff being poached by competitors
- Businesses are desperately trying to access more funds to maintain and grow staffing numbers
“Enquiries from businesses needing cashflow solutions to help bolster their ability to attract and retain staff is now one of the biggest areas of finance activity for Earlypay,” Riley said.
“With record low unemployment, a national labour shortage and rising costs due to inflation, workers are now in the block seat. Businesses are having to find ways of meeting the need for increased wages or conditions to attract and retain workers.
“This against the backdrop of supply chain issues is causing cash gaps for businesses however despite this they need to find a way to get through and debtor finance in the form of Invoice Finance is proving highly popular among businesses.
“Essentially, Invoice Finance involves using your customer invoices as collateral to generate upfront funds. As soon as a business issues an invoice, funds are paid into the business’ bank account and lenders such as Earlypay then take responsibility for following up payment. Businesses pay a small fee for the service, but receive big benefits in return.”
Andrew Skyrme, founder and CEO of Your Resourcing, one of the country’s leading recruitment and labour-hire companies for the building and construction, administrative support and care industries, said his business has achieved significant growth and managed to implement some highly innovative and successful labour acquisition and retention strategies by adopting Invoice Finance.
“At any time, we are employing over 900 people across a broad range of industries. This is a lot of people and demand for workers is increasing, not reducing,” Skyrme said.
“We have to be extremely competitive and innovative in what we offer and how we manage our relationship with our people. We need to understand that people’s needs have changed. Lifestyle and family are now even more important to people and they want to work with a business that offers them certainty and flexibility.
“We have invested significant time and resources into creating a system that provides accrued leave flexibility so that workers on contracts are able to sacrifice part of their pay each week in order to take additional time off at the end of the year and still continue to receive their weekly pay.
“This level of flexibility is important and provides workers with the ability to plan and manage their time and finances with more confidence.
“We have also introduced a complimentary training program that involves providing our workers with free training for industry certificates and qualifications. This means that our people will have access to the ability to gain enhanced learning, training and qualifications while working with us at our cost.
“We understand how expensive and challenging these types of qualifications can be to attain and we want to invest in our people to support them to learn and grow as part of our team.
“Of course, all of these initiatives cost money and lots of upfront expenses to provide this level of support and commitment to create a working environment that will attract new people and importantly retain our wonderful group of employees.
