Brexit and your role - what are your burning questions?

Laura and Annabel

IMHO the ground rules are changing for everyone in low margin businesses in the wake of Brexit.

Pre-Brexit, if you increased your people costs you would become less competitive because your competitors would continue to pay less and sell at a lower price. Post Brexit, the same reduction in the availability of low- cost, low-skilled labour will apply to everyone - so the potential to continue to undercut competitors will reduce. Since demand will remain constant and supply levels drop, in all probability the only way for EVERYONE to attract in this segment of the market will be to improve their offer, and to pass any increased cost onto the customer (retail or public). The customer will not be able to change supplier for a lower price, because every one else will have had to improve their offer and increase their price. This will not happen overnight, but I believe that over the next 12 to 18 months it will become a reality, unless the government takes a different tack on use of low-cost, low-skilled EU labour.

One final point - improving the offer dosn't have always to be via salary; if you can find something that your staff want that costs less than the equivalent salary, then you can create a competitive recruitment/retention edge. For example, around the year 2000 a Belgian subsidiary of my last company found tremendous difficulty in recruiting fresh engineering graduates, despite paying 15-20% more in salary. Why? Because our competitors were offering low level company cars (at the time, very tax effective) to this population. By offering slightly better cars, and reducing the salaries offered by 10% they were able to monopolise the engineering graduate market again - and more importantly at a lower total cost than before! The real challenge is to identify the low-cost add-ons that are perceived as high value by your target population........

Good luck with your challenge!

Good point. Part of our company is logistics and distribution with quite a proportion of eastern Europeans employed and others are provided through agencies. Monitoring and policing the right to work will impact administratively and may lead to gaps in low skilled workers. Need to review recruitment strategy.

Hello everyone

I have just had another look at the Brexit Hub. The Q&A section, links etc are really helpful and user-friendly.

For me one question and one concern:
Question - what implications/restrictions will there be for British nationals who do not hold dual citizenship and who wish to work within the EU either as a relocation for the foreseeable future or as a secondment?

Concern about the potential impact on people who are Irish citizens and therefore not required to register under the EU settlement scheme if they experience pressure/instructions to do so from recruiters/employers who may not realise they don't need to - may cause hurt to feelings etc

My burning question is about musicians or sports people who tour in Europe, along with their entourage of support staff from the UK. How do the support staff get a visa that covers more than one country, can they get it for a six month period, will there be a schengen restriction of 90 days in 180? I appreciate there are visitor visas for tourists but for business travel I'm getting the impression something else is required. I don't know what.

We have British people whose normal working pattern is more than 90 in 180 working in Europe. It may make sense for us to use more EU workers going forwards.

Given the state of the labour market, the loss of access to low cost EU labour might not have quite the same negative impact as it would have done pre-Covid. I still owe 160 applicants an email for a fixed term and very niche job!