Before the Small Business Charter, the landscape for small business was much less forgiving.
It was a time where high quality business support and training were hard to navigate for business owners like me. Entrepreneurs and business leaders found themselves relying on trial and error to address day to day difficulties and grow their businesses.
This changed with the establishment of the Small Business Charter, a network of expert business school empowering small business success across the UK. Working with thousands of SMEs, backed by the world class expertise and connections from 67 accredited business schools, the Small Business Charter is preparing our economy for a new entrepreneurial age.
The Labour Party manifesto promises economic growth and wealth creation. They recognise the role SMEs have to play in this through replacing the business rates system, unlocking the supply of finance for businesses looking to grow, publishing a trade strategy and creating Skills England to upskill the workforce for its new Industrial Strategy.
In the Small Business Charter, the new government has a ready-made vehicle for SME-led economic growth in every region with a track record partnering with government and local stakeholders.
This was shown during the pandemic through the Small Business Leadership Programme, which was a vital lifeline to small businesses. 86% of participants said their business took action to target longer term benefits in productivity and 44% reporting a link between the course and their business’s ability to survive the pandemic.
In the Help to Grow: Management Course, we have a programme that is a model for small business success. Programmes like the Help to Grow: Management Course can aid the Labour Government in accelerating its target for growth, equipping SME leaders with improved management practices, giving them the confidence to effectively run their business.
In under three years of delivery, the programme is approaching 10,000 participants. 93% of the business leaders completing the programme said they had greater confidence in leading and managing their business. 85% reported being better able to innovate within their business.
On measures such as adapting to change, managing employees, and leading their business over the next 3 years, participants on the Help to Grow: Management Course are better equipped than businesses from control groups that did not go on the course.
As you can see, these results have empowered small business success across the country. This real-world support and training is delivering skills and expertise that businesses can apply in their day-to-day work and to apply to their growth for the future. This excellence and track record of success encapsulates the work we will do in the future, and the values we are best known for – expert, connected, and trusted.
The seeds we have planted over the past decade are bearing fruit and with programmes like Help to Grow: Management unlocking prosperity and growth across the country through better management and leadership, the UK can become a world leading, flourishing entrepreneurial landscape.
With these structures in place and tailor-made support for the largest proportion of businesses in the UK, we will use the next 10 years to work with this new government. Through the continuation of Help to Grow: Management, or programmes like it, the Government can utilise the connectivity with SMEs and local economies and produce the next generation of high-performance firms. The knowledge and expertise in our world class business schools can supercharge this across all frontiers, from technology, to finance, sustainability or producing tomorrow’s leaders.
If we want to be ambitious as a country and take bold steps to encourage growth over the next decade, we must endorse and get behind what has worked over the past decade in a very difficult environment for growth and productivity.
Michael Hayman MBE, Chair, Small Business Charter