Flourish MD Sarah Skelton joined Felicity Hannah once again on Radio 5 Live’s Wake Up to Money, to discuss everything from trade tariffs to after work drinks! 

Our very own Skelly has become quite the regular on the early morning financial show, providing expert insight on how political and economic affairs are affecting UK businesses. 

In this article, we round up Skelly’s take on the hot topics of the day. 

Let’s get to the important business first. According to evidence given to a House of Lords committee, after work drinks are in serious decline. The only exception is in London where they’re surviving, but have shifted to Thursdays instead of Fridays, largely due to people working from home at the end of the week. 

“This is the show for me! We are big on after work drinks at our business. So, Wednesdays and Thursdays are both popular nights,” said Skelly. 

In other news, the UK and US reached an agreement on some tariffs, with rates on UK steel and aluminium imported to the US slashed to zero, and cars down to 10% from 27.5%. It’s “a great deal for both countries,” according to US President Trump, with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer adding that it will “protect and create jobs”. 

Q: Will reductions in trade tariffs create more hiring demand? 

Skelly: “It’s absolutely a step in the right direction. Depending what political party you listen to and the news reporting different views on how good it actually is, but we’re making moves and it’s absolutely going to create jobs. 

“I’ve had clients in the past few months who have put hiring on hold because of the tariff situation, but I’m positively optimistic that this is going to create more jobs and more opportunity.” 

Q: Could tariff deals have been better for UK businesses? 

Skelly said: “Very much. I think we’re missing a lot of the detail. The announcement came out and we’re talking about it being revolutionary and groundbreaking, but we’re missing a lot of the detail. 

“The uncertainty, as has been the case with a lot of the Trump decisions, is what keeps businesses pausing and worrying. It’s a bit unpredictable still.” 

Q: What is needed for more business certainty to create more hiring demand in struggling sectors? 

Skelly said: “From a UK point of view, which is the market that we predominantly operate in, the interest rates dropped yesterday but I think people were hoping for more. It needs to be easier for UK businesses to get funding. 

“The government could do a lot more around promoting their apprenticeships, which is a market we operate in. There are some real advantages in the UK of drawing down the Apprenticeship Levy, especially around AI apprentices, which is what we offer. It could add a lot of value but I think businesses don’t know enough about it.” 

Here, Skelly is referring to the apprenticeship programme offered by Apprentify, Flourish’s sister company. Flourish is part of the Apprentify Group, a group of businesses committed to creating the workforce of tomorrow. Find out more about Apprentify’s AI apprenticeships here. 

Q: How are Flourish’s clients feeling about a cut in interest rates? 

Skelly said: “Certainly it is helpful, it’s definitely heading in the right direction. But I really feel like people were hoping for half a percent. I think the fact that inflation is still high and with the national insurance increases that came into play last month, there’s a lot of book balancing. So you save a penny here but you’re losing it there. That’s the challenge. People are trying to work where they can invest and when.” 

Q: The UK is the third largest AI market in the world after the US and China, and businesses are beginning to adopt AI technologies. But there are concerns, including concerns over energy consumption. A report by Goldman Sachs recently estimated that a ChatGPT query uses almost ten times as much energy as a typical Google search query. 

Skelly said: “We use AI ourselves. It can certainly improve efficiency, and it helps remove bias in the recruitment process, but I don’t think it can replace humans in most cases. 

“The businesses we’re engaged with, most of them want educating. We tend to see that our clients fall into one of two pockets: there are those who openly hold their hands up, don’t have a clue and don’t understand it. 

“We run an AI Catalyst apprenticeship programme which can really support those businesses. But we also have the clients who are really invested in it, we’ve actually got some products, we’ve got some tools, but we need to know better how to use them. That’s more about creating the champions within the business. I think there’s a real appetite for it and I think it’s really exciting.” 

Q: You talked about AI hallucinations… You talked about it stripping biases that are potentially in recruitment, but it’s only as good as its programming. If it’s learning from language that has bias in it, then it’s going to spit bias out. 

“You’re absolutely spot on. I was talking about this with a colleague just yesterday. Businesses we’re working with and our area of recruitment is a lot around sales based recruitment and what we’re finding is skills based hiring and less around education and background. 

“The assessments we do are actually in person, so whilst AI can be great in removing certain bias and making that process slicker and more effective, but I just don’t think you can beat having someone in a room with you, face-to-face and actually looking at their potential, which is what we focus on. 

“The uncertainty factor is always a problem, but we’ve had three really good months since I was last on the show, and when you hear that businesses are recruiting, that is a good indicator. 

“We work across lots of different sectors; the tech sector and we’re doing a lot in the data centre space. They’re growing and investing, so if I look at what we’ve achieved in the last 3 months and what our clients are saying, it’s more positive than it is negative and that’s a good sign.” 

You can listen to Skelly’s second stint on Wake Up to Money in full here.