Axis Corporate Solutions

When the government’s swine flu hotline opened in July the centre was inundated with 100,000 new cases and clearly the pandemic had reached our shores. Thankfully the following week only a third of that number had been stricken, or had the strength to call. Or maybe the case was that all the sickly people who wanted to stockpile Tamiflu had already been satisfied by the accommodating call centre guys.

 

Either way, for business owners it’s nigh on impossible to know whether your people are genuinely afflicted or simply caught up in the national hysteria, or fancy a week off work. And there’s the problem.

 

Last month the Oxford Economics Think Tank warned that a six month pandemic in the UK could cost our economy £60bn. And the damage will be felt more acutely by small businesses. Of course if your employee really has the lurgy then you don’t want him in the office coughing on your three bean salad.

 

I have unreserved sympathy for anyone who has swine flu, rhino flu or any other kind of flu for that matter. But I have unreserved disdain for anyone who says they have, when they haven’t. Which is probably why I’m not an employer.

 

But instead of investing time and money in producing internally devised cost tracking systems, or absence reporting services, it might be worth spending a few minutes pondering this:

 

Why do employees swing the lead? We can rule out sunbathing. Once in a blue moon it might be when the England cricket team is threatening to win the Ashes. But there is usually an underlying answer, which is one of two:

 

 

Haven’t you noticed that when your best and most committed employee is fighting the advanced stages of pneumonia you can’t push them away from their workstation with a cattle prod? But an unnoticeable sniffle will prompt a flurry of sick notes from the work shy.

 

At times like these it’s worth making sure your team is still happy, and not by sending out a staff engagement survey. Have you got it right in terms of:

 

 

A close knit team that understands and believes in your company’s goals will withstand any viral or economic attack with more vigour.

 

And if you have the perfect environment and are still wondering why you have a worker who has already guzzled twenty packs of Tamiflu – you might take a bit more care on your next recruitment campaign because it will take fifteen years to sack them.

 

 

 

Well it doesn’t seem like two minutes since the much loved Ronaldo headed off to sunnier and wealthier climes to fulfil his childhood dream. And John Terry resisted the vulgar lure of a wheelbarrow of wonga to snub Manchester and stay in the City. Don’t be fooled though, it was probably the rain that put him off.

 

And now, thank goodness, the new Premier League season is about to begin all over again. We can all breathe a sigh of relief; stretch our newly bought replica shirts over our barbeque stuffed frames and head off to spend ten per cent of our weekly income watching our heroes lose. And when they do lose, we upset ourselves with the whim that ten per cent of our one-footed striker’s weekly wage could keep us in beer until 2075.

 

And so this is how the freakenomics of football works. Gone are the days when we could sit behind our club captain on the bus on the way to the game. These days if you so much as look at his helicopter you’ll be tazered by his entourage of baboons. 

 

For years now we have been asking how long could this all carry on? When will the bubble burst? Once proud clubs like Leeds and Southampton’s fall from grace has been accelerated by financial gaffes. And should the unthinkable happen and Sky suffered a corporate wobble, what implications would there be for us all. The collapse of Setanta has crippled Scottish football.

 

But nobody cares at Manchester City where they carry on spending entirely oblivious to the recession. In the last twelve months they have enthusiastically spent just over £200m on transfer fees, committing a further £300m in wages.

 

And across the road the paupers at Old Trafford can take comfort in the truly global attraction of their brand.

 

Even Burnley is sexy now. The Lancashire mill town more recently associated with the BNP and drug addiction levels is now home to everyone’s ‘second team’. I’m sure Burnley has already hit the radar in Abu Dhabi, but can they really expect to prosper in a league awash with cash by advertising a policy of bringing in young and hungry players who think of football first, contracts later and Dom Perignon only when they’ve won a trophy?

 

For the good of football let’s hope so.

 

And now the book plug:

 

Brendan Flood, operations director at Burnley F.C. has penned his diary of the epic tale of the club’s rise to the Premier League. Big Club, Small Town and Me, is due out this week – rrp £9.99.

 

If you want to know how football clubs can progress while watching the pennies, order your copy online by emailing stuart@thmedia.co.uk.

 

It isn’t really suitable reading for Blackburn fans.

 

 

This week the Nationwide has reported that house prices have risen for three consecutive months. And there is more glee on the Stock Market which surged extremely close to its highest point for a year, encouraged by some better than expected corporate figures.

 

Rolls Royce has turned in good results and BSkyB reported a very strong finish with pleasing customer growth in the last three months to June. And the drug makers at Astra Zeneca have breathed a collective sigh of relief on discovering that swine flu was not, in fact, a government prompted diversionary tactic as some of us cynics suggested. So, on the back of a half year pre-tax profit of $5.6bn they can now make hay, as hay fever is the least of our snot engulfed worries.

 

But not everyone is ready to join the ‘Green Shoot Gang’. Moody’s ratings agency has downgraded its forecasts for the year, estimating that the UK economy will shrink by 4.4% by December. And the Centre for Economic and Business Research has issued the sobering prediction that, if we embark on a double dip recession, then unemployment figures will reach 3.8m within two years.

 

Forecasting the economy is not always easy, and experts’ advice often conflicts while modest investors look for a clear light to follow. For sure there are cycles, but we all crave clarity of guidance. Which brings me to Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats shadow chancellor, the sensible voice amidst the blancmange of accusations and recovery plans that has characterised economic debate in the Commons over the past twelve months. The Right Honourable member for Twickenham knew that the economic Tsunami was on the way before 2007. In that alone he was not unique - but he said it. We just didn’t hear (no political motive in this blog). 

 

Forecasting the weather is much harder than making sound fiscal predictions. But again, it is clarity and a realistic message that we want. The boffins at the Met Office, I’m sure, are the best in the business but they don’t understand that saying ‘there is a 65% chance of a warmer than normal summer’, will be translated by the media as: ‘IT’S GOING TO BE HOT, HOT, HOT – RUN TO THE BEACH EVERYONE!”

 

Not only does Dr Cable have a brilliant economic brain combined with a common sense style, he’s also media savvy. So my guess is that if he’d been in charge of the London Weather Centre in May, I wouldn’t have rushed out and wasted lots of cash buying sun screen and bbq briquettes!

 

So he gets my vote, at least for running the met office. And if he is too busy why not let a journalist have a go:

 

In 2010 we will see a week and a half of sunshine in May probably followed by a predominantly wet summer with temperatures hovering around the seasonal average i.e. cold. 

 

You heard it here first.