FM sector to ride out the recession storm

23 January 2009

The FM sector remains in a strong position to weather what the government has today announced as an official economic recession.

There may be fewer free coffees and gourmet lunches as FMs focus their strategy on maintaining their organisation’s core business, said Iain Murray, BIFM chairman.

“We will likely see less discretional spend and those ‘nice-to-have’ services,” said Murray who is all managing director of Chard FM. "If you were to batten down the hatches, you would most likely meet your legislative requirements first and then see what cash you have left.

“Health and safety, risk management and business continuity will be paramount. Keeping staff ‘happy’ may be less important during these times people may not be changing jobs as often if they are dissatisfied with working conditions.”

The government will publish figures today that show UK economic output shrank by 1.5 per cent in the last quarter 2008 compared with the previous quarter.

Unemployment is now around 1.9 million and expected to rise in throughout the year.

Speaking on Radio Four’s Today programme this morning, prime minister Gordon Brown said many other leading economies, including the US, were already in recession and the policies required to deal with it were totally different than in the past.

"Every recession in the last sixty years in Britain has been caused by inflation and has been domestically generated," he said. "This is a completely different kind of event. This resulted from a global banking crisis."

Brown would not say how long he thought the recession would last. This would depend on how the international community dealt with the crisis.