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Recession is a dirty word, very ugly. Moreover it’s scary, especially to the workforce who realise that it could mean terrible things for jobs.
But to the business-owner it can be swings from flat out to slow – so how do you cope with this?
Several suggestions that might be of help:
- Talk to suppliers, get lower prices on items that you buy a lot of, if you buy more of them.
- Be careful with new customers – perhaps they have credit problems with their current suppliers?
- Hold on to current customers – they might value loyalty and remember it when times get better.
- In the slow times, use the time to drum up business.
- Training is a way to use your talented employees and see what they’re capable of.
- Get advice from local authorities.
- Ignoring any debt is a bad choice, talk to creditors and arrange better terms.
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Being a business, GRS Sign Company Ltd., has to consider a variety of options when conducting every day operations. Primary among those are the financial options, of course. Businesses wouldn’t do well by losing money all the time, so the primary purpose is of course, to make money. At the end of the day after paying employees, paying bills, and taking in money for jobs, it is ultimately the aim to have some money left over.
That seems pretty straightforward, I’d say.
The last year has been a bit shaky in the financial markets, and to be fair it’s not really getting any better. Prices are steadily rising, not just of our raw materials but for everything: taxes, food, clothes, mortgages etc., Some affect the business, some don’t. Indirectly of course, they all do – the employees have to factor in food, clothes and so on, whereas the company (directly) wouldn’t have to.
Some businesses expect you to maintain the lowest price possible, some even complain when you raise prices a little to counter the effects of rising prices, but most are in the same boat.
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In homage to Gavin & Stacey, the title says it all. Well, will tell it all.
We are a small company, and justifiably proud to have succeeded to this point. Like many small companies there have been trials and tribulations, ups and downs. With the time and dedication of many people the company has prospered and grown from a one-man outfit at the beginning (some twenty years ago) to nearly twenty employees now.
As you may imagine, whether you work for yourself, another small company, or a large company, the rules and regulations of running businesses have become more and more complicated as time has passed. This is however, becoming more and more of a deluge rather than a few letters informing us of regulatory and legal changes.
Submitting job proposals has become a lesson in following legal mumbo-jumbo. The various policies you must have in place have become so numerous and onerous that not having one can mean the difference between getting a contract and not (and that’s just pre-qualification!).
Writing this article I am aware I am not a manager, I am an employee, and even though I may not be involved in decision-making I have to say that I have sympathy for those that have to wade through this minefield of bureaucratic red tape – just to get in the door – kudos to their patience. I cannot imagine spending day after day filling out forms just so someone deciding on a contact can even look at our contract! How inane and ridiculous is that?
We have a very forthright and straightforward equal opportunities policy – the owner looks at everyone the same, regardless of sex, race, colour, religion, and so on. That seems fair to me. But this being the case, we -still- get rejected because our policy is not good enough. How can you be more fair? Here is one council’s list of Acts we should be “aware of”:
- Sex Discrimination Acts 1975 and 1986;
- Race Relations Act 1976;
- 2000 and 2003;
- Equal Pay Act 1970;
- Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and (Exceptions) Order 1975;
- Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994;
- Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (Amendment) Regulations 2003;
- Employment Rights Act 1996;
- Employment Act 2002;
- Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003;
- Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003.
I (we) write this article in the hope that someone may also be in our position – a small company trying to stay upright, struggling against the governmental nonsense that they throw against us (even in these hard times) – and ask if you could give us a call, contact us, comment on this post. And even, if you think this might have jolted you a little, write to your MP and ask why more and more regulations are piled on us when we are the wheels of industry that keep this country moving…
Lastly, I am reminded of a famous quote, which I think would be appropriate at this point, supposedly attributed to Oscar Wilde:
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
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A question was asked recently, which has brought prices into sharp focus.
Has the see-saw prices of fuel affected the business in the past year or two? If the price of petrol, heating oil, gas, etc., rises, should the business raise prices to accommodate that knock-on effect? Similarly the question could be asked – should the business lower prices to match a lower fuel price?
It is a sad fact of life that fuel prices generally are always on the increase. Petrol is a valuable and widely used commodity and is always increasing all year round, every year. It should be mentioned that in fact, the Government has recently added more tax (two pence per litre) to petrol, making the price per litre rise over £1 for the first time. It is not the fuel industry adding the money here!
This is due to the price per barrel of oil touching $100, and jitters in the financial world about the oncoming winter, fuel stocks, prices, and so on. Again, nothing new. We always worry about having enough fuel for winter.
But petrol is not the only fuel. There is natural gas, dwindling supplies in the North Sea mean that the UK is now importing natural gas from Russia, dependant on another nation for our fuel supplies. Something to consider these days, is wind power, of which Lincolnshire (being a flat county) has an abundance of – we have a new windfarm being developed at Fen Farm in Conisholme by Ecotricity.
Also coal, and wood, admittedly not major fuels these days, but still something to consider.
Now on the other side of the story, we should consider that after Winter, come Spring and Summer, prices generally start falling as people tend to use less fuels (less need for heating houses). There is a nice chart showing the falling energy prices at SimplySwitch. This is a fine balance that we actually tend to ignore, since we notice the increases but seem to minimize the decreases.
Speaking from a business point of view, a similar effect could be noticed, as heating is not needed and we do not use energy on air conditioning (in the UK we don’t need it!).
So, would it be pointless to include energy and fuel prices in general sign prices as the rise and fall of fuel prices is both predictable (and therefore can be built into a sign price as a fixed median amount)? Or would it be a pertinent bit of the puzzle when figuring out how much a single sign, or indeed multiple signs, would cost? If the price of petrol, natural gas, and any other fuels continue rising above the rate of inflation should we raise prices accordingly?
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Is the natural tendency of any standard for it to slip?
Assuming you start out by defining a set of standards that everyone should follow. If no manager or employee monitors the standards – is it the natural tendency for them to slip? Would a mark or two be accepted every so often where the standard calls for none? Perhaps a millimetre or two out is ‘acceptable’?
Naturally GRS is dedicated to maintaining strong and stringent standards for designing, manufacturing, printing, assembly and quality control. It’s not necessary to go into the nitty-gritty here in a blog post but let’s just say that from the moment a job comes in, the standards are applied to each step of the job. From where someone starts designing it, then printing, all the way to the actual assembly.
So it is up to each employee every step of the way to ensure that they performed the job correctly, and if something went wrong, to report it and write up why it went wrong. This for feedback into the quality control system so the standards can be reinforced, corrected if required, or updated if a step or procedure has changed.
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