Nearly half a million UK small business owners will be working every day over the Christmas holidays without a single day off and overall are taking 11 days less holiday per year compared to full time workers’ holiday entitlement
Research, conducted for Bizdaq found that almost half a million small business owners will be working every day over the Christmas holidays – including Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. A total of 2.8 million small business owners will be working in some capacity over the Christmas period.
Of the small business owners that will be working over Christmas, 34 per cent said they were planning to work as they couldn’t afford to take the time off. A further 17 per cent of owners are unable to take time off as they do not have enough staff to cover this period.
The cost of finding, training and employing staff is holding back 2.3 million small business owners from hiring additional staff. Additionally the National Minimum Wage and the Living Wage was cited as a growing reason for not being able to hire employees.
Sean Mallon, CEO of Bizdaq, said “It is clear that small business owners are still being let down by successive governments. The hard work and effort put into running and building small businesses is not reflected in the government’s attitude towards them, despite employing over 14.7m across the UK. There have been many initiatives created with much noise, however the delivery has often been poor at best.
The apprenticeship scheme as an example is a great idea, however many small business owners still have very little knowledge or access to this, as evidenced by our report finding that only 14% of small business owners plan on taking on an apprentice next year.
To see that over 60 per cent of small business owners won’t get a break over Christmas goes to show the dedication and passion they possess, and with 43 per cent citing high taxes as a reason contributing towards having to work such long hours is very disappointing.”
