Employment outlook gloomy…

A survey carried out by Manpower and published on Tuesday shows that UK businesses are more reluctant to take on new staff than at any time since 1994. The credit crunch and economic slowdown has hit the construction sector, high street retailers and finance and business services companies particularly hard. Manpower’s survey backs up recent official figures which show that the number of people out of work and claiming benefits in the UK has been rising steadily for six consecutive months. The number of new claimants and job seekers in July was higher than at any time since 1992.

“In the coming months we will continue to see employers making do with the people they have, finding ways to contain costs”, said Mark Cahill, Managing Director of Manpower. At a regional level, London employers were the most upbeat, while employers in the South East were the most gloomy.

With recruitment on hold for many companies, and possibly even redundancies in the pipeline, it’s inevitable that time and task pressures on staff will increase, making outsourced services like Auditel even more attractive. Because our fees are paid out of the savings we make for our clients, we’re a totally self-funding service,and because we’re outsourced, our clients get an extra member of their management team without any of the usual employment costs.