Real barriers

In the UK today there are millions of businesses with fewer than 250 employees. Even if public sector workers are excluded from this calculation, small businesses employ more than 50% of the UK population.

For businesses to survive let alone thrive they need to be able to adapt. This has been illustrated in our publication Seven Factors for Business Success.

But in order to be able to overcome barriers, we need to know what they are. The London South Learning and Skills Council asked The Talent Foundation to do just that. This was carried out through consultations with Managing Directors of small businesses and through ethnographical studies of six individual companies.

The results show that the vast majority of barriers are people based. The Talent Foundation took four whole companies through TalentKey, a workshop based on cognitive behaviour theory.

The results show that

• TalentKey has the potential to transform individuals and through them to transform organisations
• Putting the whole company through TalentKey at the same time reinforces the impact across the organisation
• TalentKey stimulates demand for training and development

TalentKey is a tool which helps remove barriers to adaptation, and so can be used to give small businesses some factors for success.

To download the full report, please click here.