Business Review of the Year 2018

From GDPR to Brexit, 2018 has certainly produced its fair share of challenges in the business world. But happily, it’s also been a time of successes in the South West. We spoke to businesses across a range of sectors to find out how 2018 went for them… and what they are (and aren’t) looking forward to in 2019.

In this series of seven reviews we begin by talking to director of Fwd Thinking Recruitment, Sam Laite.

How was 2018? 

The highs have certainly involved embedding the newly-created Fwd brand into the Bath community via strategic sponsorship partnerships. We also saw an extremely effective collaboration with The Bath Life Awards, sponsoring the opening of the New Innovation Tech Hub at the Set Squared offices in Carpenter House, supporting start-up and scale-up tech fast-track businesses, as well as co-founding the MOB, Marketeers of Bath, a unique forum for marketing and business development professionals within Bath to come together for networking and thought leadership. The challenges in the year were around gearing up for GDPR back in May, as well as continuing to address the skill shortage in the tech sector which is a challenge right across the South West.

Looking ahead to 2019….

Despite all of the ‘no deal’ Brexit talks, Bath and the surrounding area has an ever-strengthening digital and tech sector and therefore recruiting into this space alongside more main stream marketing and sales roles make 2019 a really exciting prospect. I think the retail sector and the high street continues to be a contentious subject for our city and this landscape is set to face further changes over the coming 12 months. 

Read the Business Exchange Bath & Somerset online this Tuesday (December 18, 2018) to see how business was this year for Bath-based creative agency Ready.