HLAS

During the COVID-19 pandemic many employees were required to work from home.  Since restrictions have been lifted, employers have put in place “hybrid” working arrangements whereby employees work from home on certain days and in the office for other days. Some of these arrangements are contractual and others are arranged on a voluntary basis. HMRC have recently updated their internal guidance in their Employment Income Manual to deal with situations where employees are travelling between home and their office which, in most cases, will continue to be treated as ordinary commuting and not an allowable business journey. The exception is [...]

Saving used to be the foundation of good financial management. Putting cash away to deal with emergencies, or to build up a cash sum for anything from a deposit on a first home to our old age was the first step to financial security. The banks and building societies were only too pleased to help us become savers. They needed our cash to lend out to other customers and they would pay interest to encourage us to leave it on deposit with them, but times have changed. It looks as though the banks don’t want your savings and they are [...]

Below are a few examples of some great questions from our “101 Great Marketing Questions” template we keep for clients to help think about existing marketing activities and how you can improve on them. Not all the questions will be relevant to your business, but it is a valuable exercise and may help you come up with a few ideas for growing your customer base. Why do our customers buy from us now? What new ways of generating customers can we use to build our business? Which of our marketing efforts brought in the bulk of our clients? What percentage [...]

Digital Security by Design (DSbD) challenge and Digital Catapult have launched a new programme for developers and organisations to experiment with DSbD technologies. The Technology Access Programme has been developed to build a pipeline and community of developers and technology companies to trial and experiment with the new DSbD technologies, to address the cyber security challenges faced by embedded product and software companies. What is available? To support a six-month experimentation period with the DSbD technologies within their own organisations, programme participants will have access to: the Morello Board and CHERI prototype architecture and hardware technical guidance £15,000 in funding [...]

Innovate UK’s ‘Driving the Electric Revolution’ challenge, part of UK Research and Innovation, is investing up to £4.5 million in projects building talent for the future. The aim of this competition is to create and deliver course content and materials that will support skills, talent and training across Power Electronics, Machines and Drives (PEMD) manufacturing and supply chains; building awareness of PEMD and filling key gaps in the UK's workforce talent and training capabilities. Opportunities could include but are not limited to: schools’ engagement apprenticeships and internships upskilling and reskilling of existing workforce technical courses and vocational training undergraduate, postgraduate [...]

‘Help to Grow: Digital’ is a UK-wide scheme to help small and medium-sized businesses adopt digital technologies that are proven to increase productivity. The scheme offers: free, impartial advice and guidance about what digital technology is best suited to your business and how it can boost your business' performance targeted financial support, if your business is eligible, worth up to £5,000 towards the costs of buying approved digital technologies The website offers advice, guidance and tools to help businesses explore the huge potential of digital technology to help your business to grow. It aims to help you: identify the digital technology needs of your business make [...]

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has launched the new ‘Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF) Phase 2: Spring 2022’ competition window. Businesses can bid for a share of up to £60 million in grant funding through this new phase. The competition will provide grant funding for the following project types: studies - feasibility and engineering studies to enable companies to investigate identified energy efficiency and decarbonisation projects prior to making an investment decision energy efficiency - deployment of technologies to reduce industrial energy consumption deep decarbonisation - deployment of technologies to achieve industrial emissions savings Your business must [...]

Following an extended pilot programme, the government has launched a new series of innovation loans worth £150 million. Innovate UK will deliver the loans through a series of competitions over the next three years to support small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) and level up the UK. The first competition has now opened for applications. Innovation loans: Future Economy competition - round 1 As part of the first competition, Innovate UK is offering up to £25 million in loans to micro businesses and SMEs. The funding will be allocated across a series of four consecutive rounds with the next round opening [...]

In the UK there are a wide range of different religions that both employers and employees may need to have some understanding of and how they may occasionally affect the workplace. Many workplaces have employees from different religious and non-religious backgrounds. Encouraging greater awareness and understanding of these backgrounds can be rewarding, particularly in terms of team building. It can also help to reduce the chance of misunderstanding resulting in complaints or disciplinary action. ACAS have produced guidance for employers and employees on how to reduce the chance of religion or belief discrimination happening at work, how it might happen and how [...]