The most annoying thing about young people at work
Plus, income tax receipts surge, recruiter's 90 per cent profit plunge, UK retailers under fire for "murky" loyalty card offers and what we’ve learned this week
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Business Agenda
A summary of the most important business news
1. The body of Autonomy founder Mike Lynch has been confirmed to be recovered by Italian authorities. The Italian coastguard also said the bodies of Morgan Stanley chairman Jonathan Bloomer and US lawyer Christopher Morvillo had been recovered, along with their wives, Judy Bloomer and Neda Morvillo. Mr Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah remains missing. You can read more here.
2. Income tax receipts surged to £32.7bn in July, marking the highest figure for the month since records began in 2008. Rishi Sunak froze income tax and national insurance bands in 2021, subjecting workers to higher tax rates after they received a pay increase, a process known as “fiscal drag”. In the year to July, income tax receipts totalled £281bn, up by £20.7bn, or 8 per cent, compared with the same period last year, according to an analysis of HM Revenue & Customs data. You can read more here.
3. Hays has seen a plunge in annual profits of 90 per cent. The recruiter says that demand for its services had failed to rebound even after Labour confidently secured a majority in last month’s election. It says, “Activity levels have been relatively subdued since the general election and conditions remain challenging.” You can read more here.
4. Large UK retailers face criticism for “murky and confusing” loyalty card offers which may not deliver the savings they claim, according to an investigation by Which?. The consumer group’s probe revealed that some retailers, including Tesco Boots and Superdrug, inflated non-member prices shortly before launching loyalty discounts. You can read more here.
5. PwC China has told clients it expects Chinese authorities to hit it with a six-month business ban that will start as early as September, as part of punishment over its audit of collapsed property developer Evergrande. The action against PwC comes after China’s securities regulator in March said Evergrande had inflated its mainland revenues by almost $80bn in the two years before the developer defaulted on its debts in 2021. You can read more here.
Business Thinker
Deep dives on business and leadership
By Dougal Shaw
The theme today is the multi-generational workforce. Is this something you have experience of at work?
💼 Work Foundation: ‘The opportunities of a multigenerational workforce’
A report published this month by the Work Foundation with Lancaster University has examined age relationships in the modern workplace. It has come up with some fascinating findings. Nearly three-quarters of senior business leaders in Great Britain (73 per cent) have multiple generations in their workforce as populations age and working lives extend. In fact, it found that for the first time in history, there are four generations in the workplace, with workers born in the 1950s and 1960s now working alongside people born in the 2000s. It surveyed 1,000 British business leaders and found that 83 per cent of those with a multi-generational workforce found it brought benefits. However, more than 60 per cent of leaders found that this phenomenon brings significant differences in work culture preferences and expectations, which need to be managed. Read the full report to find out more.
And talking about managing expectations between the generations…
😠 The most annoying thing about young people at work
Journalist Pilita Clark of the Financial Times shares a personal story about a misunderstanding at work around an ‘out of office’ message from a younger colleague. Don’t be fooled by the headline of this story, there’s more to this than meets the eye. She thinks older people have a thing or two to learn from young people about workplace culture.
Business Question
According to a recent survey, what percentage of the UK’s mid-sized businesses plan to invest more than £3m in expansion over the next five years?
A. 51 per cent
B. 39 per cent
C. 27 per cent
D. 63 per cent
The answer can be found at the bottom of the page.
What we’ve learned this week
I wanted to take the opportunity today to run you through some of the key learnings from Business Leader’s content this week and how it can help you lead your business.
1. Understanding the difference between leadership and management
This is from Ed Smith’s excellent column. “Management is the target of our frustration, while leadership is the recipient of our admiration,” he writes. “Management, at its worst, wastes time by creating work. Leadership does the opposite.”
Ed is the former chief selector for England cricket, director of the Institute of Sports Humanities and an expert on decision-making. I highly recommend reading his column here.
2. Get a high street shop
This is from Emma Jones’s latest piece on how businesses should look to benefit from the work of the new Labour government. Referring to policies being proposed by Labour, Emma writes: “It does offer significant potential for small businesses to come together and take on shop units from which they can trade and, in so doing, deliver business advice to neighbours.”
Emma is the founder and chief executive of Enterprise Nation and you can read her piece here.
3. Look at what’s broken in the economy for ideas
This is what Chris Oglesby said in our latest podcast episode about how he grew Bruntwood into one of the largest businesses in northern England. Bruntwood had big success in the 1990s by offering flexible office space in Manchester.
“It’s looking to be deliberately different. What’s broken in the economy? What’s not working?” he said. “I spent some time working in the States and wrote a dissertation on the difference between the US and UK real estate markets. As we started to provide space for this nascent service economy in our cities, we recognised that the UK long-lease was dead and that we needed to provide flexible space for businesses that were going to be much more dynamic.”
You can find the podcast episode here.
Business Quote
Inspiration from leaders
“If you don’t make mistakes, you aren’t really trying.”
– Coleman Hawkins
Business Leader
The best of our content
Why are these start-up founders going back to primary school?
We visit a former primary school in north London that has become the unlikely hub for a group of start-ups focused on sustainability.
You can find out more here.
Other popular pieces
👕 From banking to sportswear: How these brothers built a global clothing empire
🏁 Getting ahead in the battle to attract and retain top talent
🏆 Elite sport shows us how to reach the top and stay there
And finally…
I am a big fan of the Acquired podcast. I have been recommending it to chief executives and founders I have spoken to recently, only to find that many are fans already. The podcast takes a detailed look at the history of big businesses and the story behind their growth.
The latest episode looks at the history of Microsoft from the mid-1990s to the appointment of Satya Nadella (pictured above) in 2014 – a story with ups and downs for the company. It is more like an audiobook than a podcast – the latest episode is four hours long – but it is worth your time. You can listen to the episode on Spotify here.
The answer to today’s Business Question is A. 51 per cent.
