Royal approval for Small Firms Summit
HER Majesty The Queen and Prince Philip gave a Royal seal of approval to efforts to build better links between education and business.
The Queen, as part of her Jubilee year tour, visited a Small Firms Summit at the University of Central Lancashire’s Burnley campus on Wednesday.
She chatted to business people involved in education projects as well as academic staff, and graduate, Kieran Fletcher, who has started his own small enterprise, Fundamental Coaching.
Richard Baguley, a part time lecturer at the university, who combines his academic role teaching business skills with a communications company in Lancashire, was one of the party who met the Royal couple.
He told TheBusinessDesk.com: “For the Queen to come here was a fantastic endorsement for the Burnley campus and UCLAN, and tremendous recognition of our work to encourage enterprise.
“Both the Queen and Prince Philip seemed very relaxed, interested and engaged. It was a tremdendous boost for the staff, students here and the Burnley campus.”
The Small Firms Summit was attended by more than 100 business people, funders and advisers and heard from Stephen Falder, founder of AIM-listed company Byotrol and Bryan Adams of Ph Creative, a digital marketing company.
Mr Falder spoke of the need for small firms to foster a team spirit and culture of togetherness.
He suggested too that even small firms should innovate and create a “business within a business” – as his family business HMG Paints did with first Byotrol – which is now a quite separate entity.
“Tackling problems together and having fun is something that small firms can do that big businesses can’t.
“In HMG in 2008 business was hit by the recession and we were faced with making cuts – but instread of losing anyone we all decided to tackle the problems together with the view that things would get better.
“Everyone went down to four days a week for four day’s pay, except the directors who carried on doing five days for less pay. That way we didn’t lose anyone, and when orders picked up as they did, we had everyone there.”
He advocated too greater use of work experience – and giving those who are taken on”a real job to do” and also payment for doing it.
Bryan Adams said social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are “empowering” for small businesses in a number of ways, from interacting with customers to brand protection, to getting a message out to a mass audience without a huge budget.
“My message is we are all global because of social media – the technology is there for small businesses. I don’t believe it’s actually an option, but a fundamental necessity as a primary communication tool.”
Mr Adams said business have “nothing to fear” from social media, and it should be adopted from the “top down” if it is to be successful in an organisation .
