In 2026, keeping your best people is one of the toughest challenges for UK SMEs. In a tight talent market, it’s becoming clear that businesses need to be offering more than a competitive salary to build a loyal team. But if pay isn’t enough, it leads to the question, what really makes employees stay? While […]
Artificial intelligence is not creating a completely new class of cyber threat. What it’s doing is making familiar attacks faster to launch, easier to tailor, and harder to stop in time. That distinction matters. For years, organisations have dealt with phishing, social engineering, account compromise, vulnerability exploitation, and ransomware. None of that’s new. What has […]
LEEDS, 9 April 2026: Full-time employment across the UK is growing nearly three times faster than part-time work, according to new data from Employment Hero, a global leader in HR, hiring and payroll software. Analysis of anonymised records from more than 100,000 employees found that full-time roles grew 13.4% year-on-year in 2026 to date, compared […]
Artificial intelligence is already changing how accounting and bookkeeping work gets done. If you’re like many practitioners, you’re already using AI tools daily. Tasks get completed faster. Admin shrinks. Communication sharpens. On the surface, that looks like progress. But there’s a second effect that deserves more attention. As AI reduces the time required to complete […]
UK workers took an average of 9.4 sick days in 2025 — the highest figure in 15 years, according to the CIPD. That level of absence is already stretching HR teams and eating into budgets. From the 6th of April 2026, paying for that absence gets more expensive too. Three Statutory Sick Pay changes take […]
If you’re reading this, the chances are you’re a sole trader or landlord who has just been told—or has just realised—that Making Tax Digital for Income Tax now applies to you. First things first: don’t panic. You have time, the rules are more manageable than you might think, and you are far from alone in […]
You’ve got 220 employees. Maybe 300. You’ve been on your current HR platform for two years and it mostly works. But something’s changed. The payroll errors are getting more frequent. The workarounds your team built to manage multiple cost centres are getting harder to explain to new starters. Someone in finance asked last week why […]
You know what MTD for Income Tax is. You know it’s happening. The question from this point onwards is: will your practice actually be able to handle it? MTD is a permanent rewiring of how your practice operates. The firms that thrive will be those that treat this as an operational challenge, not just a […]
Consider the role of a manufacturing CFO importing raw materials. Using budget forecasting, you run scenario modelling to understand potential cost pressures: No tariff or duty changes (baseline scenario) A 10% increase in material costs A worst-case 20% increase, combined with extended lead times due to customs or border delays With this analysis in place, […]
When employees are financially stressed, that stress doesn’t stay at home — it walks through the door with them every morning. Zellis’s 2025 Financial Wellbeing Report revealed that 92% of UK employees experienced financial stress in the past year, with 89% saying it directly affected their work performance. Nearly half struggle to focus. Over a […]
