Comment:Liz Cameron, chief executive of Scottish Chamber of Commerce: "Businesses are looking very clearly at the supply chain, looking at where they can possibly reduce their operating costs, tightening their finances and working alongside their employees to look at different employment patterns and hours of working.
Comment:
Liz Cameron, chief executive of Scottish Chamber of Commerce: "Businesses are looking very clearly at the supply chain, looking at where they can possibly reduce their operating costs, tightening their finances and working alongside their employees to look at different employment patterns and hours of working.
"What they are reluctant to do is to invest in maintaining the skills they have right now.
"That's going to be a very important factor for businesses moving out of the recession in 12 to 24 months.
"It is very difficult when you're looking at survival rather than planning for the future, and a lot of businesses are in the survival game right now in terms of the next 12 months.
"But we are seeing some businesses continuing to both recruit and retain apprentices because they realise that unless they do that now they will not be in a position in 12 to 24 months to actually deliver on some of the potential contracts which are going to be there.
"We are also seeing interest in some of our more medium- sized businesses, which are able to invest right now.
"They are actually looking at taking on additional apprentices and are willing to train them to ensure that the sector has enough trained people coming forward for jobs in 12 to 24 months' time. That's very positive.
"There seems to be more acceptance that we are where we're at, and that we need to deal with it and actually continue to do business.
"And I think that if we can take that positive and turn it into not just business confidence, but consumer confidence, then that's very important - especially at a time when there's no doubt there's going to be additional job losses in the coming months.
"No green shoots, but there is optimism."
