Why SMEs want to hire young people and why it is still hard to do

Earlier this year, Anthony Impey travelled more than 1,000 kilometres and met with over 150 SME leaders across London, Stevenage, Darlington, Manchester, Sheffield, Rotherham, Buxton, Stafford, Bristol and Reading.

The conversations covered costs, recruitment, technology and growth. But in almost every discussion, one issue kept resurfacing: young people entering the workforce.

Not as a policy debate. As a day-to-day business reality.

One message came through consistently. Too many young people are leaving education without being ready for work.

What employers mean when they say young people are not work-ready

This is not usually a criticism of academic qualifications. Many SME leaders said young people often arrive with reasonable technical or academic knowledge.

The challenge lies elsewhere.

It shows up in the basics of working life:

• turning up on time
• communicating clearly
• answering the phone professionally
• understanding how to behave with customers
• taking responsibility

As one employer put it: “It’s not that they can’t do the job. It’s that they don’t understand what it means to be in a job.”

Why this changes the hiring decision

For SMEs, these gaps have immediate consequences.

Every hire matters. There is no extra capacity, no internal training department and no room for costly mistakes. When a young person joins without the expected workplace behaviours, the pressure falls directly onto already stretched managers.

That often makes the hiring decision more cautious. Many small businesses would like to give young people an opportunity, but feel they cannot afford for the hire not to work.

As one leader said: “We’d like to take a chance — but we can’t afford for it not to work.”

The real issue is not capability — it is capacity

One of the clearest insights from the SME Tour was that these businesses are not lacking ambition. They are lacking headroom.

Training and developing young people takes time, structure and management capacity. For many small businesses, those are the very things already in short supply.

What looks like a skills problem is often two problems happening at once: young people arriving without the behaviours needed in today’s workplace, and employers lacking the time and resource to close that gap.

The businesses getting it right are doing it on purpose

Some SMEs are making it work, and they are seeing the benefits.

But this is rarely accidental. The businesses succeeding in this area are being deliberate in how they approach young talent. They:

• set expectations clearly from the start
• focus on behaviours as well as technical skills
• build development into the day-to-day running of the business

Where that happens, the results can be strong:

• higher retention
• a stronger culture
• better long-term performance

As one employer said: “The people we’ve trained ourselves are now some of our best performers.”

A more honest conversation about youth hiring

SMEs do want to hire young people. They can see the value clearly.

But they are managing three realities at the same time:

• young people are not always work-ready
• building those behaviours takes time
• time is already in short supply in a small business

That is the tension at the heart of the issue.

The opportunity if this is solved

Get this right, and the upside is significant.

More young people in work. Stronger and more capable SMEs. A more productive economy.

Because when small businesses invest in young people, they are not just filling vacancies. They are building stronger businesses for the future.

The question is not whether SMEs understand the value. It is whether more of them can realistically act on it.

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