Here are some stats for you.
If you poll the employees of small firms (1-10), you will find 5.8% of them were unemployed 12 months ago. In large businesses (250+) it was 2.2%. If you look at the percentage of disabled people, it was 7.7% compared with 6.9%.Females 48.2% compared with 37%. Part-timers 32.3% as opposed to 13.6% and 50+ employees are 15.4% of the workforce as compared to 11%.
I’ve taken the very extremes of the size scale here- very small and very large- but there is generally a pretty straight line on the graph between them, which encompasses all the intermediate classifications of businesses.
We all know there are lies, damned lies and statistics and there is no doubt that the actual jobs people do are not always comparable.
But you can’t argue with this: small companies are better at moving people into employment, employ more disabled, female or older people and offer more flexible styles of employment.
And 67% of employees believe they are treated fairly in small companies, compared with 53% in the largest!