Welcome
Welcome to the very first edition of Team Talk! Team Talk will be a weekly piece by myself, Arjen Cooper-Rolfe (CEO at Involvement) that explores the real issues shaping our work: from productivity challenges and policy shifts to the evolving role of leadership, technology, and team culture.
I’ve talked a lot over the years about how to transform a business by putting people front and centre. That won’t change. But with Team Talk, the idea is to widen the lens, to look at what else is going on in our industry and beyond, specifically from the perspective of SMEs.
SMEs matter. A lot.
In the UK, there are 5.5 million of us, making up 99.8% of all businesses. We employ over 16.6 million people, make up over 60% of private sector employment and generate more than half of the UK’s private sector turnover, according to Gov UK. Yet too often, the focus is on corporates, while the engine room of the economy – SMEs, get overlooked.
In the UK, there are 5.5 million of us, making up 99.8% of all businesses. We employ over 16.6 million people and generate more than half of the UK’s private sector turnover, according to Gov UK. Yet too often, the focus is on corporates, while the real engine room of the economy, SMEs get 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 site, 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 a huge proportion of the economy actually lives.
Over the past 20 years, productivity growth across UK SMEs has stalled. The ONS reported that since 2008, SME productivity growth has crawled at just 0.6% per year. This isn’t because we’re not working hard. 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.
I don’t think the answer is 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.
