Welcome to the first edition of Team Talk, a new regular feature about how a team-led business like ours navigates the present and the future.
We’ve talked a lot over the years about how to transform a business by putting people front and centre of everything you do. That won’t change. But with Team Talk, the idea is to widen the lens, not just to reflect on what we’re doing inside Involvement, but to look at what else is going on in our industry and beyond. There are all kinds of things shaping the day-to-day reality for people-led businesses like ours.
Sometimes this column might be serious. Sometimes light-hearted. But it will always be grounded in the belief that teams matter. That people matter. And that better people build better businesses.
Some background, if you’re new here:
At Involvement, we’re a team-led business. That’s not a slogan, it’s a principle. We decided a long time ago that our people are our most important asset. They’re the one thing our competitors cannot copy. So it’s our duty to help them grow. That’s the job.
But there’s another layer to this too, one that doesn’t get talked about enough.
We’re also an SME. And SMEs matter. A lot.
In the UK, there are 5.5 million of us, making up 99.9% of all businesses. We employ over 16 million people and generate more than half of the UK’s private sector turnover. Yet too often, the focus is on corporates, while the real engine room of the economy, businesses like ours, goes overlooked.
You’re far more likely to see a politician pose in front of a gleaming digger or a cutting-edge engineering firm than you are in a modest warehouse, office, or depot, the kind of places where the majority of UK businesses quietly get on with serving customers, employing people, and creating real value. But this is where the bulk of the economy lives.
Back to the bigger picture: over the past 20 years, productivity growth across UK SMEs has stalled. Since 2008, SME productivity growth has crawled at just 0.6% per year (check source). This isn’t because we’re not working hard. It’s because we’re often under-supported.
A big part of the problem is what’s called the “long tail”, the large number of businesses operating well below the productivity frontier. Many are small, under-resourced, and underestimated. But they represent huge untapped potential. Closing that gap, even slightly, could unlock tens of billions for the UK economy.
At Involvement, we think the answer isn’t just more funding or more tech. It’s better leadership. Better teams. Better people.
So in the weeks ahead, Team Talk will shine a light on what matters to SMEs, what matters to our people, and how we can respond to this fast-changing world, not by retreating, but by involving.
