If you’ve made it into work to read this you are one of the lucky ones.
Poor transport infrastructure is causing staff in many small firms to be late for work and costing companies £755m a year, according to research carried out by business cashflow provider Bibby Financial Services.
Bibby spoke to 300 small companies across the UK and found that more than one in five of the firms’ bosses said their companies lost valuable production time because of traffic congestion and public transport delays.
Around 6% of bosses said transport problems caused staff to be late every day of the week, while 22% said staff were late at least once a week.
The survey of small businesses with £50,000 to £1m turnovers also showed that 19% of owners and managers said delays meant their staff had also missed important business meetings.
A further one in 10 businesses claim to have lost key members of staff due to public transport price increases or the lack of any service at all.
Small firms believe the country’s poor transport infrastructure is costing them £755m million in lost productivity and profits each year, according to Bibby.
Nearly a quarter of bosses thought introducing local congestion charging would help them.
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However, 40% reckoned charging would make no difference and many bosses thought it would increase business costs.
David Robertson, chief executive of Bibby Financial Services, said: “Most bosses will except their staff will be late from time to time, but I don’t imagine they have any idea of the overall detrimental effect it has on their businesses.”
