New data, included in the latest Business Barometer from Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, has revealed that overall business confidence in the West Midlands is the highest in the UK, climbing 26 points from previous data to 49%.

 

Results also showed that 63% of companies in the West Midlands expect to hire new staff members over the next year. This stabilises at 57% when you subtract the 6% who expect to lose staff over the year. 

 

41% of companies expect Britain leaving the EU to have a positive impact on their businesses, and 24% expect a negative impact. This gives a net Brexit positivity of 17%.

 

Overall national confidence reached 30%.

 

Lloyd’s Bank Business Barometer surveys 1,200 businesses every month and showcases UK economic trends both regionally and nationwide.

 

Dene Jones, regional director for the West Midlands at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, said: "It’s encouraging to see that firms are preparing to act on their increased confidence by boosting their hiring plans.

 

"By focusing on investment and growth over the next few months, the jobs being created by the region’s businesses will provide a welcome boost to the local economy."

 

An influx of new staff is the perfect opportunity to analyse your HR processes – are they as efficient as they could be? Small and micro business can particularly benefit from investing in good software when they begin to expand. Time and Attendance Midlands can help out. 

 

Our time and attendance management system can offer several modules and functions which would be useful to an HR department. 

 

The Self Service Module (SSM) allows the employee to access HR information held about them on the Tensor.NET database. Information such as addresses, emergency contact entries and bank account numbers can be displayed and changed. Changes to personal information must be authorised by the manager before the system is updated.

 

The Screen Designer can be used to create an unlimited number of extra input forms and database tables to store the new information. The new dialogue screens will be merged seamlessly into existing forms.

 

Reports Wizard guides users through each stage of the report design process, providing control over which sets of data are reported upon, the order and contents of report columns, the report selection criteria and the report ordering requirements. Items such as the font and page properties can also be customised.

 

All user activity within the system is recorded for audit purposes, with time & date transactions of information both before and after changes. Logs also maintain records of system events for fault-finding and troubleshooting.