We run a small business (12 employees) and have spent a decent amount of time reviewing the NI and tax changes that will come in, as well as looking at what our suppliers are doing and customers will accept.
Every one of our suppliers have increased their prices.
We have:
Made one employee redundant - we offered him fewer hours or redundancy and he chose redundancy. He has not been economically viable for some time but we liked him so didn’t want to lay him off, but the changes have forced our hand.
Changed the hours worked of another employee, cutting her hours by about 20%
Increased our prices by 5%
Laid off another worker who just wasn’t great - we would have probably done this anyway to be fair.
Carried out a review of all spending and have cut some extras and made sure we are as efficient as possible.
Interested to see how other businesses are making decisions either based on these changes or using them as an opportunity to tighten things up.