“Inflation to lead to pay demands?”

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

• Becoming a B Corp
• Top trend predictions for Christmas 2021
• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

With the news within the last week of a sharp rise in inflation up to 2.3%, it is expected next month that the average wage increase will dip below the average pay increase of employees for the first time for 3 years. The average pay increase is currently 2.9% and it is expected that this will drop slightly and inflation will increase above this when the March figures are issued in a month’s time. This means, of course, that worker’s wages will be decreasing again in real terms, which is bound to increase pressure on employers, who are already feeling squeezed on many other fronts: Brexit, Living Wage, Business Rates etc. as discussed previously

I also saw an online article this week about the CEO’s of the Top 100 FTSE companies. Their pay is now an average of 130 times that of their average employee. How can anyone feel comfortable with this situation and how can anyone turn up to work on a Monday morning and face their employees when they know the pay differential is so much. This is not only wrong but completely immoral and it is time to do something about it. One of the criteria for being a B Corporation is that the top earner cannot be earning more than 5 times that of the lowest paid worker (the lowest not the average), and this practice is fairly common amongst companies in the middle of the morality spectrum. Happy staff generally means good profitability, and staff will most definitely not be happy if they are paid as much in a year as their boss earns in three days.

Back to the speciality food world, and I have been at shows in Greece (Food Expo 2017) and London (IFE 2017) this week. The first was much larger than when I went two years ago, and there is much innovation happening in Greece at present – I recommend you go over there when you can. I’m going back for our main holiday this year. IFE, on the other hand, was 25% smaller than three years ago, and whilst the North Hall had a good buzz about it, the South was like a morgue. Several pavilions from other countries had several empty booths – I guess this is the danger when foreign governments pay for companies to come to an export show – some of them just don’t bother. Despite being at the show for nearly two days, I saw two of our customers – most of them just don’t go to IFE these days. Maybe this will change once Crossrail is finished, making the trek across London more bearable for the majority of the UK that have to do this.

Now, for many it is the number-crunching time of year, as we start a new financial year in a few days. Must get back to my abacus!