According to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, the number of job vacancies in the UK has fallen to its lowest level for five years as businesses cut back on recruitment. It seems many employers are reluctant to add another permanent salary to their costs. From conversations with our clients who run smaller businesses, higher employment costs appear to be the main reason recruitment is becoming less appealing. Of course, deciding not to recruit does not make the workload disappear. If tasks are starting to slip or your team are taking on too much, you have three options: recruit someone, outsource the work or manage it within your existing team. Start by defining the problem When everyone says they are busy, recruitment can seem like the obvious answer. But before deciding, try this: ask employees to record the time spent on relevant tasks for at least four weeks and note any work that is delayed or left unfinished. This should help you establish whether you genuinely need another person or whether existing processes could be improved. Calculate the full cost of hiring It is easy to focus on the advertised salary when budgeting for a new employee, but the true cost will be higher. A proper calculation should include: gross salary employer’s National Insurance workplace pension contributions recruitment fees training employee benefits Prepare a full annual cost rather than looking only at the monthly salary. Then divide that figure by 12 so you can see the effect on your monthly cash flow. To put that into context, based on 2026/27 rates, a £30,000 salary costs £2,500 a month before employer contributions. Once you add approximately £312.50 in employer’s National Insurance and a minimum workplace pension contribution of around £59.40 (depending on the pension scheme used), the basic monthly cost rises to about £2,872. After allowing for equipment, software, recruitment, training and other benefits, a more realistic budget may be around £3,100 to £3,300 a month. Work out the return you need Before recruiting, be clear about what you need the role to achieve for the business. For a sales role, this may be the additional gross profit the employee is expected to generate. For an operational role, it may be the number of extra customers you can serve. For an administrative role, it may be the time it frees up for you or your senior team to focus on higher-value work. Set out: The total annual cost of the role. The financial benefit you expect it to produce and when. How you will measure whether it is working. Avoid relying on additional turnover alone. A new employee must ultimately generate or protect enough gross profit to cover their cost. If a recruit is expected to produce £50,000 of additional sales but the gross profit margin on those sales is 30%, you would receive £15,000 of gross profit before other overheads. That may not be enough to fund the role. When outsourcing may be the better option Outsourcing can be a useful middle ground when you need additional support but are not in a position to employ someone permanently. Common examples include bookkeeping, payroll, marketing, graphic design, IT support, and finance director support. The main advantage is flexibility. You can pay for the support you need without taking on the full cost and legal responsibilities of employing someone. Outsourcing may be suitable when the workload is irregular, you need expertise that you could not justify employing full time, you want to test demand before recruiting permanently. In our experience, outsourcing tends to work best when the responsibilities, costs and expected response times are agreed clearly from the start. So, ask potential providers for a clear scope of work. Check what is included and how additional work is charged. It is also worth considering how well they understand your business and whether you would feel comfortable working with them regularly. After all, they may become almost as involved in your day-to-day operations as an in-house employee. When using your existing team may work Redistributing work within your team can be sensible when the demand is temporary. A word of warning, though: adding work without removing anything can lead to mistakes, sickness absence and low morale. So be realistic about how much spare capacity your team actually has. To help free up time, look for practical changes you can make, such as stopping reports or meetings that are no longer useful or automating repetitive administration. The time saved may be enough to help your team focus on more important tasks. You do not have to recruit full time The choice does not have to be between a full-time employee and no employee. Other options include: a part-time employee a fixed-term contract an apprentice a freelancer reduced or flexible hours If you’re not sure which option is most suitable, it is worth seeking employment and accounting advice, particularly if you plan to use a freelancer. Simply describing someone as self-employed does not necessarily make them self-employed for tax or employment law purposes. And if the arrangement is classified incorrectly, your business could face unpaid tax and National Insurance, interest, penalties and claims relating to employment rights. We can help you review the proposed arrangement before you make a commitment. Make the decision using your own figures If you are thinking twice about hiring, compare the full cost, likely return and effect on your cash flow under each option. Then give us a call on 01709 589 439 and we can help you work through the figures and compare the available options. 

The other day, we were speaking to a fellow accountant who was thinking about using an AI tool to respond to client emails. Like all of us, he is busy. So, if a tool could help him reply faster, clear his inbox and save a little bit of time each day, why not use it? But the more we talked about it, the more we started to question whether client emails were really the right place to save time. There is a big difference between using AI to help with something behind the scenes and letting it become the voice your clients hear when they contact you. And if that voice starts to sound generic, lazy, or as though nobody has really thought about what they asked, it can start to cheapen your business. AI writing is getting easier to spot When AI writing first became widely available, it was impressive. You could type in a few prompts and, within seconds, it would produce something that looked polished and professional. But now, because we all see so much of it, AI-generated content is easy to recognise. It has a certain rhythm. It can sound very smooth, but still empty. It has that uncanny way of using a lot of words without actually saying anything specific. And now one of the biggest giveaways is the repeated use of phrases like: “It’s not just about X, it’s about Y.” You see that structure everywhere. It appears in blogs, website copy, emails, and it's all over LinkedIn! And once you notice it, you can’t unnotice it. AI also loves short, dramatic lines for emphasis. Like this. I guess it thinks this sounds more powerful, or something. Most of the time, the writing won’t be technically bad. It will be fine. But “fine” is not always good enough when you are trying to build trust with clients. Clients are paying for you People choose a business for all sorts of reasons: the product, the service, the advice, the quality of the work, or simply because it makes their life easier. But often, a big part of what they are buying into is you. That is why the human element matters. Clients and customers want to know that someone understands their situation, has thought about what they need and can guide them properly. So, what happens if a client opens an email from your business and it immediately feels like it has been written by a chatbot? Could they start to wonder whether they are getting the level of care and attention they thought they were paying for? If the email feels like something they could have generated themselves in ChatGPT, it weakens the sense of value. Efficiency has its limits At the start of the AI boom, many businesses were keen to show they were using it. Yes, there was a novelty factor, but more importantly, it made them look up to date with the latest tech. And, of course, there are plenty of tasks where AI can be genuinely useful. But not every task should be automated. Not everything should be made faster. Some things are better because a person has taken the time to think about them properly. A considered reply to a client may take longer than an AI-generated one, but it can strengthen the relationship and show that you have taken the time to respond properly. It’s strange to say, but we may now actually be reaching the point where a business stands out by not using AI. Where AI does make sense None of this means that we should stubbornly cover our eyes and pretend AI tools had never been invented. We use them selectively to help our team with internal systems, processes, planning, summarising meeting notes and reducing the time we spend on repetitive admin tasks. And from what we have seen, that is where AI seems to work best. Anything creative, personal or client-facing deserves much more care. That includes emails, proposals, advice, website copy, social media posts and anything that shapes how people see your business. Yes, doing more of this yourself will take longer. But that isn’t a problem that needs to be fixed. How we can help At Navigate, we take client relationships seriously. We use technology where it helps us work efficiently, but we would never want our clients to feel fobbed off or handed over to a robot. We genuinely care about the people and businesses we work with. If you would like to find out more about working with us, please get in touch with our team on 01709 589 439.