A thriving tech sector, growing economy, and talented workforce are just a few of the reasons why the UK is a lucrative place to do business. The UK’s 2018/19 tax year saw 672, 890 startups founded in the UK, and with the nation’s ongoing growth, it really is no surprise.  

London, the UK’s diverse capital city, houses some of the world’s most significant financial establishments, and is often considered the financial hub of the world. Alongside this, the UK is the birthplace of the English language, the second most widely spoken language globally, generally considered as the primary ‘world language’ and used by businesses and nations all across the globe. 

In this article, we’re going to look at some of the key reasons why growing global businesses are continuing to look at the UK as one of their destinations of choice for global expansion, and why you should too. 

Access a large, educated talent pool 

For a small island, the UK has an astounding population of over 66 million people. With individuals spread across Engand and the devolved states of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the UK’s population is diverse and unique, and every city in the country offers something different. 

The UK is home to some of the world’s best universities including Oxford and Cambridge. As a result of this, it draws talented and educated individuals from all across the world, with these individuals ultimately becoming a part of the nation’s educated workforce. 

Ranked 5^th in the world for access to growth opportunities, employers in the UK can be sure to attract the best applicants when building their teams. Global businesses expanding into the UK gain the opportunity to recruit some of the best professionals available, accelerating their business forward in the process. 

Ease of doing business 

The UK places eighth in the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ rankings, and with some of the lowest corporation tax rates in the G7 and plenty of government support for innovation, it’s no wonder. Entrepreneurs in the UK can often find the venture capital funding that they need when starting a company or opening an office in the UK, and the nation regularly achieves record levels of venture capital funding each year. 

To date, the United Kingdom has created 72 unicorn startups, making up around 34% of the total in Europe and Israel. 

The UK and its Government are highly tech-focused, and continuously introducing initiatives to support the tech sector’s growth. Some of the UK’s initiatives include fast-track visas to address skills gaps, and a £375m fund to invest into fast-growing UK tech start-ups. 

Flexible labour laws and trade 

The UK’s overall labour cost is lower than other similar European economies such as France, Ireland and Germany. Following Brexit, the UK’s referendum to depart from the European Union in 2016, the UK is able to move away from European standards, and implement its own more flexible labour laws to the benefit of UK-based businesses. 

Although facing some turbulence in its early implementation, the outcome of Brexit will also introduce a range of new trade agreements and opportunities for UK-based businesses. One such example is CANZUK, an ongoing trade deal between the Commonwealth nations of the UK, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia, set to introduce a wealth of new opportunities for all four nations.

Expanding into the UK 

Our UK partners, Procorre Global, are on hand to assist foreign businesses from every corner of the world to expand into the United Kingdom. Procorre Global supports businesses in every stage of their global expansion journey and ensures full support throughout. 

Reach out today to learn more. 

While we are getting comfortable settling into the routines of working from home, there is now news that work from home will no longer be the default from 1 Jan 2022 onwards. On December 14, The Ministry of Health made an announcement that 50% of the employees who can work from home will be allowed to return to the office from the start of January. Of course, these measures only apply to employees who are fully vaccinated or have recovered from Covid-19 recently. 

Whether this piece of news is worth to be celebrated over, it remains unclear. There are sentiments surrounding both sides of the coin; some employees are lamenting over it since work from home has granted them with great advantages, while some employers are cautiously happy about returning to that form of normality.  

After all, there are many existing limits to the whole work from home set up. Some of the struggles of navigating remote working can be very subjective as well, such as not having a conducive enough environment at home for work. Especially when meetings and discussion of confidential information surface, remote working does provide an added challenge for employees who face space constraints problems. 

With these employees, there are some consensuses around that moving back to the office can be better in terms of reduced ambiguities with in-person meetings and the authentic social interaction with colleagues as well.  

However, Singaporeans may not be entirely ready to give up the added advantages of working from home. Some of the cited advantages are lesser time wasted during commute, extra sleep, higher flexibility, and the list goes on. Especially for employees who have children at home, this remote working arrangement has seen to be more productive for some. 

An Organizational behavior expert – Associate Professor Trevor Yu – commented that it remains vital that employers and employees work out a set of flexible work arrangements that is satisfactory for all key stakeholders.  

Amongst the factors of consideration, it is necessary to understand the best conditions the employees work under. Adapting back into the “normal” routine of going back to offices can be a sudden change for many, and while the benefits of returning back are recognized, employees’ safety and headspace should take precedence. After all, going back to offices does not mean returning to pre-Covid arrangements; mandatory mask-wearing policies, regular temperature logging and safe distancing measures will still be in place. All these are added factors that can be uncomfortable for employees, which may impact productivity in the end. 

Ultimately, as Singapore progresses towards recovery, Singaporeans should still prepare to ease back into returning to offices. Employers, however, can better facilitate this shift and adaptation by gathering employees’ sentiments and understanding any legitimate concerns that some employees may have and actively provide a solution to help those employees transition back to normality. 

References: 

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/wfh-return-office-default-working-home-companies-2383286

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/singapore-working-from-home-office-covid-19-604441

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/work-home-return-office-1-jan-vds-2378516

Just as the glimmer of hope of easing into the relaxation of travel restrictions finally appear, the emergence of the new variant of Covid-19 is clamping on that dream. With rising concerns of this new variant also known as Omicron, countries are circling around the conversation of travel restrictions extremely cautiously.

Effective from 29 November 2021, Singapore has expanded its Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) agreements to 18 countries. This means that fully-vaccinated travellers can travel to the VTL destinations without the need to quarantine at either countries upon arrival. These countries are Germany, France, Denmark, Brunei, Italy, United Kingdom, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Spain, USA, Canada, Australia, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Finland and Sweden.

However, with the news of the Omicron variant spreading, this has disrupted some of these existing VTL agreements and even deferred some of the upcoming ones, such as the VTL arrangements with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arabs Emirates. From 6 December 2021, all travellers entering Singapore through the VTLs will have to take Covid-19 tests daily for a week upon arrival. This is on top of the current requirements, which are the swabs for a pre-departure test, an on-arrival polymerase chain reaction test (PCR test), as well as supervised antigen rapid tests (ARTs) on day 3 and day 7 of their visit.

Not only looking at leisure travelling, the Singapore Government released an immediate mandate on 4 December 2021 that employers of S Pass and work permit holders in construction, marine shipyard as well as process sectors will not be allowed to make new applications for their employees to enter the country via the VTL. This applies to employers of other dormitory-bound work pass holders as well.

Such workers can only enter Singapore via the ongoing initiatives specific towards construction, marine shipyard and process sectors or the Work Pass Holder General Lane for all other work pass holders where programmes with upstream testing and isolation in the source country exist.

Malaysians and female work pass holders however, will still be able to enter Singapore via the VTL but will be subjected to the prevailing health protocols. This is due to the reason that these individuals do not generally reside in dormitory environments.

Needless to say, these disruptions towards bringing in migrant workers continue to significantly contribute to the manpower crunch in the construction, marine shipyard and process sectors. Since end-2019 when Covid-19 became rampant globally, the number of work permit holders in these sectors in Singapore has declined by more than 15%.

It is clear that the battle is not won yet, thus it is necessary to take swift actions and tighten up efforts so as to stay in control of the situation. After all, prevention is better than cure, and trudging forward slowly is better than nothing.

References:

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/government-economy/dormitory-bound-work-pass-holders-cannot-enter-singapore-via-vtl-mom

https://safetravel.ica.gov.sg/vtl/requirements-and-process

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/vtl-travellers-covid-19-testing-daily-7-days-singapore-omicron-variant-2356791

Despite the pandemic attacking in waves with variants like Delta spreading around, Hong Kong’s economy has been improving.

In a poll done in September, more than 400 companies have revealed that there would be an increase of 1.7% in pay in 2022, while more than ⅓ of the companies have plans to expand their businesses by hiring more people.

Although the increase in wages may not be as great as compared to other Asian countries like Singapore and Korea, it is still faring better than many countries outside of Asia, who are more heavily disrupted by supply-chain issues.

In addition, unemployment rates between August to October have fallen by 4.3%, with sectors like F&B, and arts and entertainment making gradual recoveries.

As for the economy, retail sales have been growing for the ninth-month straight, a positive trend that would hopefully stay positive. This is partially due to the digital vouchers the government had issued in order to boost domestic spending within the economy.

Subsequently, Hong Kong’s GDP is also forecasted to grow by 6.4% for the full year, while inflation would likely remain in check in contrast to other countries outside of Asia, despite rising import costs.

Overall, even with the slow growth in improvement, things seem to be heading upwards for Hong Kong as the world moves into endemic living. 

References:

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/article/3157995/hong-kong-workers-set-17-cent-pay-rise-2022

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/article/3155863/hong-kong-economy-grows-54-cent-third-quarter

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/government-economy/hong-kong-retail-sales-rise-for-9th-month-as-stimulus-lends-support

Long story short, the rise of neoliberalism as an ideology has led to the rise of the gig economy that we know of today. But what is the gig economy about? What is it at its very core? And more importantly, is this a sustainable form of work, here to stay in the long run? 

The rapid developments in digital communication have led to companies being ran entirely on middle-man, third-party platforms. When we talk about the gig economy, the images of food delivery workers, freelancers and more come to mind. Although freelancers have always existed before this, the pandemic has further accelerated the growth of jobs in the gig economy, with many people taking up jobs delivering food. 

Gig work can be classified according to two factors: skill level and location, thus four types overall: high skill + remote work, high skill + local work, low skill + remote work, and low skill + local work, according to Vallas & Schor. The most popular gig jobs these days, such as being a food delivery driver, is “low skill + local work”, thus many reasons why many have taken up these jobs. 

For single mothers or married women with children, they require greater flexibility in working schedules as they still have to balance childcare/caregiving, with most working women in Singapore generally having to struggle with both.  

For people with lower education, they usually do not have skills applicable for work of higher pay such as white-collar work, and to learn those skills required along with certification to deem them qualified require large amounts of money, which is what they do not have. They are thus restricted to lower paying, lower barriers to entry jobs.  

Racial and ethnic minorities do suffer in finding work in Singapore as well. In lieu of the above, gig work seems tempting: it offers a flexible schedule, it has generally lower barriers to entry, and anyone can be a Grabfood rider regardless of their race and ethnicity. The ubiquity of the internet on the phone allows anyone to join, again emphasising lower barriers to entry. 

It seems to paint a beautiful outlook for people attempting to earn more money, but is gig work as good as it seems? 

The truth about gig work and the gig economy is that it is precarious. Workers receive less legal benefits and rights from employers, as they are not classified as regular employees in the eyes of the law, rather, they are classified as “independent contractors”. In cases of countries like the US, the fight to redefine the rights the gig workers are entitled to – especially in states more focused on the protection of labour rights – emphasises the vulnerability that the workers experience. Rights and benefits a regular employee receives include paid sick leave (though very limited in number), company-sponsored skills upgrading, health insurance, and in Singapore’s case, the Central Provident Fund (CPF). They are also not protected from suddenly losing their jobs, and are very susceptible to changes in demands. For example, during Circuit Breaker last year, Grab drivers who ferry people saw a drop in their business as people avoided leaving the house as much as possible. Still, while one could point out that at the very same time food delivery services (which engage mostly gig workers) flourished at that time, one should also note that this is at an expense to their health, as they are at higher risk of being exposed to an infected person as compared to white collars who get to work entirely from home. 

There is also the fact that supply far outweighs demand in labour for the gig economy — negotiation for better prices and conditions is hard when there are always people too happy to take your place if you do not offer a lower rate, or work for lower pay, thus resulting in a downward pressure spiral on wages. 

In the long run, the lack of career progression coupled with the lack of safety nets and job security do not bode well for the future. For workers with low education levels, they lack opportunities to upgrade their skills through gig work, nor do they have companies that will provide the avenue to do so. As such, though they may be able to afford slightly nicer meals every once in a while, they are stuck doing the same low level gig work again and again. 

On the companies’ side, companies like Grab are still making losses, despite the massive volume of transactions the platform handles daily, be it through food delivery or riding services. It is still making a net loss of several hundred million, even at this stage where it’s practically a household name. Even internationally-known companies in the states like Lyft are also making losses — so really, how long can the gig economy bubble last?  

Overall, while the gig economy may be flourishing as of now, it is hard to say that this form of work will remain sustainable and profitable for both sides in the long run. 

References:  

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/grab-q2-2021-results-grabkitchen-deliveries-payments-2175591

https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/business/famous-companies-arent-profitable/