Tomorrow is #MicroBizMatters Day. It is a day intended to focus on the importance of businesses that employ 0-9 people or turnover up to £2m. The Company I work for falls into the second of these categories although our workforce is 12 people. One of the important elements of tomorrow is that it allows businesses like ours who do not operate on a Saturday to play a part in the event, albeit in a very modest way. The other day each year that focuses on small businesses is called Small Business Saturday which is in early December and which began as an American initiative. Small Business Saturday is backed by many MPs who publicise the benefit of supporting small retail businesses and encourage people to do some of their Christmas shopping there. #MicroBizMatters Day enables businesses that fall outside of the retail environment to participate, but of course helping MPs and the rest of society to consider how to support businesses such as ours can be a bit more complex as we don’t offer a quick drop in answer in most cases. However there are several ways in which they could help us, however it is not a one way street.

Just after Small Business Saturday last month there was a debate in the House of Commons on Youth Employment. The debate was convened by Gillian Keegan who is MP for Chichester. As part of the debate a neighbour of hers, Nicholas Soames spoke up

“My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that there is an onus on industries to go into schools and other institutions to tell young people about the opportunities that await them? Sheer effort enabled her to achieve what she did in her career, but lots of people do not get the chance even to know what opportunities might be available to them. It is happening on industries’ watch, and they need to address that.”

Nicholas is right, he is however only grasping part of the issue. As a small business each year we play hosts to an initiative called ‘Open Doors’ run by East Sussex County Council. This year we were visited by 3 Schools and around 30 students. As a business we are members of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Two of the senior members of staff act as mentors to students at a local University. One of us is also a STEM Ambassador which means we are in a position to visit Schools having been through the various checks. Indeed all of our staff have been DBS checked because we do work in Schools on a commercial basis. However if engaging with Schools led to a school leaver approaching us for a job (something that happens constantly in any event), the challenge we face as a small business is that we would need the person concerned to be able to access suitable training. At present thanks to the abject failure of this Government, the over promised Apprenticeship training for non-Levy businesses which was due to start last May is still not available and based on our discussions with local institutions, there is a long way to go.

However there is another way apart from resolving the Apprenticeship system that the Government could help businesses such as ours. They keep on talking about their focus on state procurement for Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs). Yet the impact ends up helping the larger Medium Sized businesses who may employ as many as 250 people and have a turnover of £50m. If we as a business could benefit from specific targets aimed at small and micro businesses, we would be able to expand our business and employ more young people (we last took on a young person in September).

If people like Nicholas Soames and Gillian Keegan are serious about helping young people get into work, they will ensure that they challenge their own people (They are both Tories) to deal with the Apprenticeship chaos and to enhance the public procurement targets. As a final matter, perhaps instead of criticising businesses, Nicholas could use #MicroBizMatters Day tomorrow to visit and commend those promote businesses that do visit Schools and engage with young people. That is what needs to happen on their watch!