Member Article

Staff training the biggest challenge for North East SMEs

A research initiative conference call service provider Conference Genie, has identified staff training as the biggest challenge faced by North East startups and SMEs.

The company conducted a survey to find out the issues facing startups and SMEs in the travel, finance, health & fitness, technology and retail industries, to analyse conflicting factors affecting businesses since the market crash in 2008.

Staff training (43%) was identified as the biggest challenge regarding staffing in the North East, with recruiting talented workers as the second (24%).

Interestingly, recruiting talented staff was identified as the biggest challenge nationally, suggesting that the North East has a strong regional talent pool.

The survey also found that SMEs within the North East believe that transparency (29%) is the most important factor to keep staff morale high, more so than training (19%) and annual leave (19%) which also featured highly on the list.

Comparing this to the UK as a whole, social outings (25%) were highlighted as the most important factor to keep staff morale high across the UK.

Many companies were also quick to point out the value social media plays in today’s SME marketplace.

Over half of SMEs within the North East (57%) said that succeeding through Facebook was by far the most challenging social media tool for their industry to utilise, with Twitter, Instagram and Google+ behind and equally challenging (all at 24%).

The average UK SME identified their customer base as having the biggest impact on the success of their business whereas those in the North East believe the biggest impact has been a strong business plan, their staff and focus on growth (all 19%).

Certainly the survey provides another indication that North East SMEs and the North Eastern marketplace proves to be highly contrastable to the national average.

Copyright Richard Howell and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.