Yesterday the Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced that employers will receive £1k per employee they bring back from Furlough and retain until January 2021.
Now we have moved to the next phase of the Furlough scheme, with more financial expectation on employers, companies are making that difficult decision of when that most cost affective time is to bring people back to the business. However, for most small businesses footfall is slow, revenue is significantly down, consumer spending and confidence is at an all time low and the only option is looking at reducing overheads by starting a redundancy process.
So is £1K enough? Is the promise of one thousand pounds per person in 6 months time, if paid on time, enough to justify that expenditure now.
On the surface that seems like a great deal especially for buoyant and larger organisations with cash flow reserves, but how realistic is it for small businesses and those with cash flow concerns.
As with many government schemes of late (I hate to bring up the logistical nightmare that was GDPR!) the practical implications on small businesses is often not considered making this scheme potentially inaccessible and may not succeed in what it sets out to do in attempting to keep as many people as possible in employment.
In the budget announcement, many had the hope that we would all suddenly see an extra £500 pounds in our bank account for a bumper summer spending spree in August. Sadly that was not to be but I can’t help thinking that if it came with conditions of use including shopping local or supporting small business and food outlets, this would increase revenue and the ability to retain employees.