One popular outcome for directors of a profitable firm in a buoyant market is to go for a buy out – selling the firm as a going concern. The buyer will use any identified risks as argument to reduce the offer price. And here's how.

Managers often crave staff engagement. But commitment is a lot more straight forward and potential much easier to use.

This video contrasts employee engagement and commitment, arguing that commitment is fundamental to management. It goes on to suggest that commitment can be achieved though managers giving development opportunities to staff.

Many firms use a single corrective action procedure for all instances where they wish to tackle specific issues in an employee covering behaviour, capability and sickness. This single procedure is generally referred to as the disciplinary procedure. ACAS, the employment advisory service, supports this single procedure approach.

Any redundancy payment that an employer makes to an employee is part of pay and hence is an expense accounted for on the employer's profit and loss account, taken in the month in which the redundancy occurs.

Redundancy occurs when a firm finds that it has a ‘diminished need for work of a particular kind’. When a firm decides that it does indeed have need of less labour, it must follow its own published procedures in making staff redundant and these procedures must be fair and lawful. But if you don't have a redundancy procedure, you will trip!

Theresa May has announced that the UK is going to counteract the effects of Brexit by launching an industrial strategy. This strategy is to contain a ‘shake up’ of technical education. But what technical education do we need?