Things may be looking up for freelancers and umbrella company contractors, as plans to relax certain regulations may make it easier to use contract workers.
The government, in its infinite wisdom and its unflagging, dogged attempts to revitalise the flagging UK economy, has decided to launch yet another new programme in order to stimulate economic growth and recovery. This time, the new Regulatory Innovation for Growth scheme would sign off on any proposal that would aid a particular firm in meeting any regulatory requirement they may face, cut back on red tape, and improve relations between the firm and the government by providing an investment of £20,000.
Smaller firms are most likely to gain the largest and most noticeable benefits of the new programme, especially since SMEs often run afoul of regulatory problems that limit economic growth. Smaller firms have been instrumental in keeping the UK economy treading water in the years after the credit crunch, so if you ask me it’s quite nice to see some possible help being given in the form of these £20,000 investment grants; a massive infusion of cash into an SME looking to grow could provide the working capital needed to expand its workforce, and with the flexibility of using a freelancer instead of a permanent employee, SMEs can maximise their growth opportunities in quite the cost-effective manner.
This will almost certainly drive use of contract workers in any industry that ends up receiving these investment packets, which will be absolutely brilliant for the freelancing industry as a whole. True, contracting is already a strong field, but the more people who end up pulling in money from freelance gigs the better as these individuals re-invest that cash they receive directly into the economy through the purchase of goods and services of their own; as much as SMEs are the backbone of the economic recovery, contract workers have been the backbone of the nation’s SMEs for years now, so any moves to help the nation’s smaller-sized firms is almost by definition going to aid freelance workers as well.
It’s the best type of symbiotic relationship. If you ask me, we should be doing everything we can to encourage its use; it might help bring us back out of the massive economic hole we’ve all been struggling with for so many years now – enough is enough, and if supporting SMEs, I’m absolutely all for it.
