UK high street faces more than 26,500 shop closures by 2015 – Telegraph.

One in five businesses may have got CRC wrong.

Datacentre power: New hardware cranks up the costs | Hardware | silicon.com.

Following on from the huge success of the Free Business Health Check campaign, from tomorrow, 1st October, anyone booking a Free Business Health Check will be entered into a draw for an Apple iPad. The competition ends on the 30th November 2010.

To view our new e-Book, click here;  The Auditel Formula – You will notice a link to the Apple iPad promotion, full details can be found here; www.auditel.co.uk/fbh

What does the Equality Act do?

The Equality Act 2010 has two main aims: To consolidate the various pieces of anti-discrimination law into one place; and to strengthen the law to improve progress on equality.

All the different forms of discrimination – which include sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation and religion and belief – will remain distinct areas as now, and each will still be defined in different ways.

To strengthen progress on equality, the Act makes some important changes. In particular, these include protection from “associative discrimination” and “perceptive discrimination” and limiting the right of employers to ask for medical information from job applicants.

As an employer, what do I need to know?

• Most anti-discrimination law will stay the same, or practically the same, as now

There are no new strands of discrimination in the Equality Act, so discriminating on the grounds of race, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation and religion or belief, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment remain unlawful, but they are all brought together in a single Act of parliament.

• It will become unlawful to ask medical questions before offering a person a job, except for certain limited reasons

To give additional protection from discrimination to disabled job applicants, and those with a family history of illness, employers will not be permitted to ask job applicants for medical information before offering them a job.

Lawful reasons to ask for medical information include complying with disability discrimination law when making interview arrangements and a genuine, job-related reason.

• Make sure you understand how you can avoid discriminating against people through “associative discrimination”

“Associative Discrimination” is where you treat someone less favourably because of someone they are associated with.

A good example is treating an employee less favourably because they have to care for a disabled relative – this would be associative disability discrimination.

• Employees can complain of harassment even if they themselves have not been harassed

Simply witnessing harassment of others will count as “harassment” under the new law.

• Customers and members of the public can complain of harassment if an employee of yours harasses them on more than two occasions

Employers will have to take reasonable steps to protect their employees from bullying and harassment by customers and clients.

What should I do now?

• Change your recruitment procedures so that you don’t ask applicants for medical information before a job offer is made.
• Contact Auditel – should your employment procedures be reviewed?

Well I was delighted to hear it , but costs are not something that (I respectfully suggest) a firm should look at once and then forget. Costs are like some ghastly disease that can resurface and clobber the patient at any time. I think that they need constant and careful attention to detail. But I guess I have to face reality and that to some firms, cost management is dull work and just not that a high priority… which begs the question, if that is the case, why not hire a performance based procurement team to deal with the cruddy stuff and let the business get on with doing what they do best?

Frustrating.

British Gas hits struggling small firms | This is Money.

via Dairy share prices tumble in tough marketplace | News | Farmers Guardian.

Performance Based Cost Management actually works for you on an entirely self funding basis – that is, it doesn’t cost you anything extra.

On second thoughts then, perhaps free business energy is available to you after all, even if it is only our energy!

Do you find that there is so much pressure heaped upon you in other areas, that drilling down into cost management is simply a bridge too far? When you do get as far as looking at costs, do you sometimes find that you, or your team, lack the expertise to deal with the issue effectively? So often, the net effect is that the business does NOT save money and little gets done.

What would you like to have to help you reduce and manage costs? Is it the time, training, the staff? Or is there something else you feel you’d like to help you out? Please let me know.