Does it even make sense to hire people anymore?
SME owner: you can't afford NOT to read this post
That’s not clickbait. It’s a genuine question.
If you run a business in the UK right now, hiring looks less like growth - and more like risk.
National Insurance is up, so every employee costs you more.
The Employment Rights Bill is coming, and it’s going to be much harder to reduce headcount.
Salaries are rising. So are expectations.
Inflation means everything costs more - making your margins even tighter.
Hiring someone new in the UK means taking on long-term financial and legal responsibility….at a time when your margins are under pressure, your costs are rising, and your flexibility is being stripped away.
So the question stands: Does it still make sense to hire people?
If this was all happening a decade ago, it would have made sense for businesses to look elsewhere - find contractors abroad in more cost-effective markets. But now, even that doesn’t make sense.
This is where AI changes the game.
It lets you scale without hiring. It lets you produce more, faster, with fewer dependencies. It lets your existing team focus on high-value work while the machines handle the rest.
You can build systems instead of teams. You can create leverage without adding headcount. You can grow margins and capabilities - at the same time.
That’s not theory. It’s already happening.
What small businesses have that big ones don’t
This might feel daunting for a small business owner. Overwhelming. But it’s also a major opportunity. Big corporates talk about “transformation.” You don’t need to.
You can test, adopt, and deploy AI in days - not quarters.
You don’t need layers of approval. You don’t need to retrain 500 people. You don’t need a Chief AI Officer.
You just need to start.
And once you do? You stop thinking like a resource-constrained small business.
You start thinking like a high-leverage, high-output machine.
That’s the shift AI offers - if you move now.
If you do hire…
Make it count. Hire the people who bring the ideas, the creativity, the judgement.
But don’t hire to prop up inefficient processes. Don’t hire to paper over cracks. And don’t hire just because that’s what you’ve always done.
Because the businesses that win in this new economy? They hire AI first. And people second.
That’s the new reality dawning on us all right now. AI is changing everything. Whether you welcome that change or not (I certainly don’t), it’s coming. If you’re a business owner. Act now. If you’re an employee, also act now.
Ready to rethink how your business scales?
Start here:
📌 The 25-step AI adoption strategy every CEO wishes they had started last year.
📌 CEO, you read the Shopify and Fiverr leaks. Now what?
And if you’ve already started experimenting with AI, I’d love to hear what’s working. I’m collecting case studies for a follow-up.
Let’s build better businesses - with fewer assumptions.