To ask what your place of work is doing to prepare for Brexit?

[ethelfleda]

What is the general consensus? Are companies trying to prepare or are they waiting until we know more about the deal?
The company I work for hasn’t done anything as far as I can tell. I’ve been off for a year on mat leave and so have had my head buried firmly in the sand.

My job is about to get a whole lot easier without all the EU rules but no idea about plans etc, but i'm civil service so there will be something

Plenty. Looking at opportunities and threats.

Work for Big Pharma. Budget for Brexit preparation is approximately 90€ million. Transfer of Manufacturing Licenses to EU almost complete. Packaging operations to be transferred to EU. QP release transferring to EU country. EU Import testing transferring to EU country.

I’ll be working in EU 2 days per week to release product for clinical trials. (QP) . I’ll probably end up moving.

I

My job is about to get a whole lot easier without all the EU rules but no idea about plans etc, but i'm civil service so there will be something

O bless you. That's quite sweet incredibly naive in a way.

@cardibach it’s not me who suggested summer time, it’s the EU www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/31/eu-recommend-member-states-abolish-daylight-saving-time

For my work, it doesn’t matter exactly what time we use, as long as it doesn’t change. All the computer system should be set up as UTC, but humans make mistakes. Sometimes we also didn’t set the time zone correctly in the software. Testing don’t usually show it as it’s ok as when you test it. Then we have these + or - 1 hour bugs creeping up in production. It’s not all the time, but it happens often enough.

londonrach using the Y2K analogy, that’d be like saying “let’s do nothing, life existed before computers you know”

O bless you. That's quite sweetincredibly naive in a way

Umm no, having to deal with all the EU rules in my job is a nightmare, and delays every project by aound 6 months. Cannot wait to be rid.

We're waiting for the property prices to crash to invest in cheaper commercial property.

Lazypuppy - what makes you think you won't have as many rules or more? Especially as we wrote a lot of them.

I realise that, Auto it just seems mad!

@Kewqueue i can't be specific, of course we'll have other rules, but it will all be so much simpler than what we currently have to do with the EU elements.

Basically it can only improve!

I'm a teacher - our school has changed its travel insurance policy to one with a company that has explicitly stated that it will pay out if transport is disrupted because of Brexit.

My DH works for the European Central Bank and they have helped him apply for German citizenship.

Yes because we don't want any of those nasty EU rules do we? Like sickness rights, racial and sex discrimination laws, rules improving the quality of our beaches and rivers, maternity and paternity leave rights, clear food labelling, working conditions, equal pay...

Loads. Entire department set up to plan around it. Doubling the size of our office in a European capital. Reorganising entire client base so they can continue to transact (large bank).

If you're in the civil service you will find that the allegedly horrible EU rules will still be very much part of how you work.

@MyOtherProfile i'm not talking about any of those. Talk about putting words in my mouth!

Those won't dissapear as they are part of our UK legislation now.

Personally I cant wait to start swimming with raw sewage again. Cornwall will be just like the old days.

Manufacturing with supply for our end product coming from Europe and outside of Europe.

We’re applying to become an Authorised Economic Operator (AEO).

ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/general-information-customs/customs-security/authorised-economic-operator-aeo_en

It’s a mine field. Requires work, cost, time, resource with no guarantee that it’ll help, other than a slight hope it may help if there’s a block at the boarders.

Apparently only 600 companies in the UK who have it, mainly logistics type businesses.

It’s something but I remain concerned that our supply chain will be adversely affected in April.

Those won't dissapear as they are part of our UK legislation now.
There's already been lots of talk about removing various rules from the EU. Just because they're currently part of our legislation doesn't mean they are set in stone for ever.

They have founded an office in Amsterdam do have an EU subsdiary up and running. Only got 3 people so far but 250 in London.
But most of our clients are in the EU so may need to route our European sales through the new Dutch office if no deal. So we'd move money and some staff but not all - we do R&D so don't have to worry about physical exports, just emailed reports, journals and presentations.

So I think we'd pay less corporate tax in the UK? Not sure but we wouldn't book sales through London.

Just rubbing our hands and watching the cash pile up. But then we’ve faced larger upheaval in the past. Volatility works for some businesses. That’s capitalism.

@MyOtherProfile - they'll keep the things we need for a civil society and for "adequacy status " when trading with the EU. Which, you will find, is quite a lot of what we have already. They might rebrand it as British but it will be the same.

Officially, not a lot (US-based multi-national.) But they've grown our Irish presence a lot over the last couple of years... Our EMEA HQ is in the UK, but we have plenty of other offices around Europe. And we've also got a fair few UK-only customers. Currently I suspect the biggest threat is the restructuring going on, which is affecting departments globally, and there's a good chance the European offices will be sold off either in parts or as a single entity, we check is nothing to do with Brexit.