Accenture and IHS Markit have released their UK Business Outlook Report for November 2021. This report reveals how confident UK businesses in the service sector feel about their prospects for the next 12 months.

Please find below some of the key highlights from the report:

• UK business confidence drops to 12-month low in October
• Hiring intentions drop from June’s record but stay at marked level
• Capital expenditure plans also drop but remain strong amid focus on green technology and digitisation
• Input costs and output charges expected to rise at unprecedented rates, driving concerns for future growth
• Firms expect skills shortages to persist, hitting confidence surrounding recruitment

Commenting on the report, Simon Eaves, Market Unit Lead at Accenture: “The high levels of business confidence we saw earlier this year have been tempered by some strong economic and unanticipated headwinds. Despite this, business optimism in the UK remains higher than in most other European nations and we must capitalise on this sentiment to inspire further growth across the economy. Supply chain challenges and labour shortages cannot be fixed overnight, but it is critical that business leaders adapt their operations and invest in the right technologies, such as cloud and data, and bring in the right skills to remain competitive. Two areas are dominating every business leaders’ agenda at the moment. There’s the movement to digital as they recover post-Covid and, with it, sustainability which we saw many commitments made at the recent COP26 Summit. Our research shows that businesses that invest in these two important areas will be amongst the winners of the future.”

Also commenting on the report, Andrew Brindley, Director at AJ Recruitment said: “The UK Business Outlook report is produced 3 times per year – this is the third for 2021 and it shows some interesting trends. Companies are still forecasting growth, albeit that confidence has softened slightly in the past few months, as reported widely due to some supply chain issues. In addition to this, businesses are experiencing inflationary pressure on input prices, conversely, they are then expecting this to impact their output prices, staffing, utilities, and fuel costs. These are just some of the areas that have been under the most pressure, pay increases alone have been running at 5.8% (Average weekly earnings in Great Britain – Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)). In addition to this, 65% of businesses are either not confident or are neutral on their ability to recruit in the next 12 months. We are by all accounts heading to a turbulent 12 months.”

This report allows you to benchmark your business against the backdrop of the wider economy. I hope you find it useful to help you measure and understand where Social Care as a sector sits against the wider picture.

If you would like to discuss the findings in the above report, or about how we can collaborate, please let us know. To get in touch, email recruitment@ajrecruitment.com or call us on 03305 552233.

As a specialist, family-run recruitment business, we provide a proactive and consultative approach to recruitment within Social Care. We help organisations to target issues such as continuity of staffing, reducing spend where you have a high volume of agency usage and supporting those who have specific talent requirements or are in hard to fill locations. We can help with any immediate staffing requirements or longer-term recruitment projects to ultimately save you time and money on agency spend.

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