Recruitment Solutions Blog

The minimum wage is one of those policies people feel obliged to praise. It sounds humane. It sounds fair. It sounds as though it protects the weak. And, above all, it comes wrapped in the modern political vocabulary of equality – the one idea nobody now dares question. What is remarkable is not that the Left supports it, but that the Right has adopted the same assumptions. The belief that anything labelled ‘equal’ must be good has quietly replaced the older conservative understanding that equality can be either a virtue or a mistake, depending on how it is achieved. And [...]

So a week ago Rachel Reeves delivered her second Budget. There were manifesto promises last year of a pro-business labour party. I can’t recall anything the current government have done that has been good for business or that encouraged effort and achievement. The housing market will probably slump next year (or is it already?) which we know in the UK always puts the brakes on spending as people feel less wealthy. Taxes have risen but what ‘Rachel from Accounts’ has taken from the working classes she has, in part, given back to those on benefits. Sure some of those people [...]

I received a notification today that employers will now have to pay more, considerably more, to get a sponsor’s licence to bring in a skilled worker for a role which is on the Government’s own Skills Shortage list.Why do we need this increase? I understand that there may be home-grown talent for these roles but if an employer has jumped through the necessary hoops to prove the need to hire a foreign worker then why burden that employer with a charge of £1,320 (per worker) on top of the fees they have already paid to get a Sponsor’s Licence?Like some many [...]

Starmer has made yet another policy announcement which was not in Labour’s election manifesto and this time it’s Tony Blair’s old favourite, a Digital National Identity card apparently to be set up by Blair’s son’s Company. So the backdrop was illegal immigrants taking Brit’s jobs. The story about migrants working for Uber-Eats was very deliberate as is the constant ‘baiting’ of the hard working people of the UK with boatloads of migrants who are then accommodated at the taxpayer’s expense, often in very nice hotels. The owners of the hotels and the Companies who manage the whole operation are earning [...]

"My name’s Frank. I’m 64, a retired electrician. Forty-two years I spent running wires through houses, fixing breakers, making sure people had light in their kitchens and heat in their winters. Never once did anyone ask me where I went to college. Mostly, they just wanted to know if I could get the power back on before their ice cream melted. Last May, I was at my granddaughter Emily’s school career day. You know the drill — doctors, lawyers, a software guy in a slick suit talking about "scaling startups." I was the only one there with a tool belt [...]

It took me years to understand that your co-workers are not necessarily a wise choice for adding to your circle of friends. I learnt this the Hard Way, Here Is Why… The moment you overshare, your words become office gossip. That "cool coworker" will throw you under the bus when things go south. What you think is bonding, they see as leverage. Most people at work are friendly to your face, but compete with you behind closed doors. Your wins? They envy them. Your losses? They secretly celebrate. Office loyalty disappears the moment promotions are on the line. The less [...]

The Government, who now seem totally lost on many many issues, announced a new immigration policy which was unveiled in May. This meant sweeping measures to reform the problematic immigration system, including raising the threshold for skilled worker visas. Under new rules released this week, 111 jobs will be no longer qualify for skilled worker visas, with foreigners only able to take up employment that is graduate-level or above. A temporary skill shortage list will be introduced until the end of 2026 for jobs below degree level that ministers claim are key to building critical infrastructure or industrial strategy. [...]

The UK and European Union have announced plans to develop a new “youth experience scheme”, as part of broader efforts to rebuild post-Brexit cooperation in areas such as trade, security and people-to-people exchange. Although full details of the youth scheme have yet to be finalised, both sides have confirmed their intention to negotiate a formal arrangement that would give young people opportunities to live, work, travel, study or volunteer in each other’s countries for a limited period of time. For UK employers, the scheme could offer some welcome relief, as many brace for tighter restrictions on overseas recruitment following last [...]

So we have a pledge from Kier Starmer to bring down net migration to the UK. But is he going to achieve what the country actually needs? We need highly skilled, motivated workers who come here for a career. Applicants need to be healthy and not have a criminal record. Anything that puts off or restricts such ‘high quality’ migrants will be detrimental to UK PLC. I fear that this is all just a knee-jerk reaction to the very understandable rise of Reform as the only significant opposition to the Red/Blue uniparty. We need to be encouraging quality applicants from [...]

We don’t make much ‘stuff’ in the United Kingdom. For more than two centuries we were the world’s principal manufacturer of textiles, steel, machinery, building materials and then through to engineering products like steam trains, machinery and eventually cars and aeroplanes. From about the 1960’s onwards manufacturing in the UK was in decline and we became largely a service based economy. The UK exports a lot of services and lots of revenue is earned from these exports which is good but we need to manufacture things as well. ‘Made in Britain’ used to be a symbol of quality and national [...]