Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
Labour announced a raft of proposals during its party conference this year, including a reduction in the standard working week to 32 hours (four days) within the next decade.
The four-day working week isn’t a new idea, but it still sparks as much debate as ever.
Some see it as the panacea to our continuing productivity issues. In Britain we’ve long been lagging behind, which seems unusual as we have some of the longest working hours in Europe. Not by a huge amount, though – 42.5 hours a week versus 41.2 hours across the continent on average.
It then makes sense that most of the country’s workers would like to see a shorter working week.
YouGov research shows that 63pc of British people are in favour; we’re among the most enthusiastic of the seven nations surveyed (Britain, Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway). Additionally, almost a third (31pc) think it would make us more prosperous, compared to 19pc who believe the opposite (34pc say it would make no difference). Meanwhile, 45pc believe four-day weeks would make us more productive, compared to 21pc who think we’d be less productive.
The most striking stat is how much happier it

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Originally written by Paul Yeomans on Small Business
Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) can help you develop new products, embed new skills and improve the efficiency of your business to increase profits.
KTP is an Innovate UK-funded programme that for the past 40 years has helped small businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills that reside within UK universities.
The types of projects undertaken via KTP are strategic and significant for the participating business: they are often central to their future growth and success and are undertaken in a fully professional way. These are not part-time projects or student/graduate placements.
How does a Knowledge Transfer Partnership work?
A full-time member of staff is jointly recruited by a company and a university to work on-site in the business but with access to university facilities. The projects also benefit from a team of academic experts, who regularly visit the company to work directly on the project, while project management support from Innovate UK and the university ensures that there are no grant claims for the company to manage as with other funding.
Many Government small business support initiatives have come and gone since the scheme began in the mid-1970s, but KTP

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