Neil Pickering Marketing Manager at Kronos UK looks at how SMBs remain at the heart of economic recovery and why the HR department can play a crucial role in deploying their employees in the most effective and productive ways, whilst ensuring employees feel included in the organisation’s success.

Small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) comprise the ‘engine room’ of the UK’s business economy. Recent figures from the Department of Business Skills and Innovation underline their importance and reveal that SMBs make up 99 percent of all businesses and account for 59 percent of all private sector employment and 49 percent of all private sector turnover, so there’s nothing ‘small’ about their role in contributing to the economic recovery. It’s also encouraging to see the number of UK SMBs have grown hugely in the past decade, rising from 3.5 million in the UK in 2000 to 4.5 million in 2011, according to the Federation of Small Businesses. Alongside this, The Voice of Small Business Index, found that 15 per cent of SMBs have increased their staff numbers in the third quarter of 2013. This is the highest figure reported since the Index began in 2010 and mirrors recent improvement in labour market figures.