CBI Conference: Contractors will be among the winners
Date: December 03, 2009
Contractors will be among the winners of the biggest root-and-branch reform to the model of business in Britain in more than a decade, the CBI said in their annual conference. The next decade will be one of fundamental change for businesses in the UK and the actions business takes will begin to have a significant impact on the shape of the UK economy.
The CBI concludes that in ten years time, businesses will typically be involved in a range of collaborations, partnerships and joint ventures, supporting investment finance, R&D and innovation, training and new organisational structures.
There will be much more rigour in identifying investment and innovation projects for funding and businesses will have outsourced the next level of activities, including many specialist tasks. The workforce will be more diverse, highly flexible and mobile, making the most of new ways of working and using more business-relevant professional skills. This will leave organisations focused on a smaller core of people and projects, supported by a much wider range of individuals and businesses around the periphery. For being skilled, and prepared to work flexibly, such temporary workers will be more highly rewarded than their salaried counterparts, who enjoy greater job stability.
But employers’ drive towards a more flexible labour force, one of several changes the CBI sees as incoming from the “shock” of recession, will not be without challenges. It has implications for pension contributions and the ability of ‘temps’ to secure mortgages, as well as other loans and services, as earnings would be less stable. It will also have an impact on the UK’s perceived weakness in skills quality and availability, as businesses are unlikely to fund training for temporary staff. “Without the right skills and/or mentality,” the CBI said, temporary candidates “will find it increasingly difficult to secure jobs – in some areas, long-term unemployment…will become a major problem.”
Alongside staffing, the other models to face an overhaul over the next decade, also as a direct result of the downturn, are bank lending, commercial partnerships/risk and ethics.
