Are unpaid internships really akin to modern day slavery?

How are small businesses impacted by the legal requirement to pay interns after four weeks' unpaid work? Here, one business owner gives his thoughts.

Andy Pearce, CEO of creative start-up thortful.com, is becoming increasingly concerned that making it a legal requirement to pay interns after four weeks’ unpaid work might be detrimental to small businesses, and also the individuals taking advantage of the many internships offered by smaller enterprises.

On October 27th a private member’s bill, introduced by the Conservative peer Chris Holmes, got its second reading in the House of Lords. The bill proposed a ban on work experience placements lasting more than four weeks. It was preceded by a report published by the Social Mobility Commission showing that an overwhelming majority of the public support the introduction of a legal ban on unpaid internships lasting four weeks or more.

Young, talented people working for free is ‘a form of modern slavery’, according to Lord Holmes.

Integral interns

As a young creative start-up in London interns are an extremely vital component of Pearce’s team. ‘We pay them a living wage and it is always our aim that interns should become permanent members of staff on full-time contracts. Indeed, four of the six we’ve employed since launch are still with us and the other two were snapped up armed with the knowledge and experience they learnt. We’d love to employ more but we can’t afford it,’ he says.

This isn’t just about businesses benefiting from ‘free labour’, Pearce feels. ‘It is a huge time investment for us, yes they add value but it takes time and investment in training to get them to this stage.’

As an SME Pearce believes his company offers a different intern experience to larger businesses. ‘More intimate teams, greater responsibility, less formalised programmes. It worries me that by making it law to pay interns after four weeks you are making it impossible for small businesses to benefit from the diverse experience and transferable skills interns have.’

He also objects to the commonly-held stereotype that the only people working as interns are entitled millennial graduates living with Mummy and Daddy in London’s commuter belt.

Breaking the mould

‘Our latest intern, Rebecca, found herself wanting to change career at the age of 30. Hoping to break into marketing, she has joined as an intern and comes to us with a wealth of retail and hospitality experience.

‘Rebecca saved for a couple of years to to do this and regards it, as a non-grad, a training course and one of her only routes into the industry.

SCALING A CARD CREATORS’ COLLECTIVE: THORTFUL →

 

“Dad, no matter what life throws at you, at least you don’t have ugly children.” So reads one of the 40,000 quirky cards in Thortful’s database. The online greeting card company launched in June 2016, led by serial entrepreneur, Andy Pearce and his vision to ethically disrupt the UK’s £1.7 billion greeting card market. “The UK market is the biggest in the world, but only 5 per cent of cards are ever bought online,” Pearce tells GrowthBusiness. High street card companies still operate on the age-old model of ordering designs six to 12 months ahead of time, while card designers work behind the scenes. Thortful’s model places the creators at the heart of the content, and pays them four times the industry average, says Pearce.

“Thortful is a mechanism to allow creators, graphic artists, and photographers new way to sell their designs. It’s about the recognition. We have a team that works with these creators to get their designs more in line with what sells, and right now, we pay the artists the most in the industry. For the first time, a card company is putting creators first, which is why around 70 per cent of creators on our platform are exclusive to us,” he adds.

read more here 

How do we plug the digital skills gap in start-ups if we Brexit? →

By Andrew Pearce

One of my biggest concerns around the possible Brexit is that an unfillable talent gap could be created, particularly among the UK’s start-ups.

In November, a survey by City:AM found that only 9% of the UK’s tech firms were in favour of leaving the European Union.

Over the past 20 years I have grown and sold three tech businesses, routinely employing around 60% of developers from within the EU. Now, I find myself launching a fourth business, with members of the team from Spain, Sweden, Poland, Romania and France. I do employ home-grown talent, but there simply aren’t enough of them to plug the gap.

Why do we fear migrant workers? In my sector they are essential if we’re going to keep the lights on.

All I read during the London’s mayoral campaign was how the capital was one of the most exiting global tech destinations in the world and how it was to become even greater. Yet nowhere in any of the EU manifestos or in the debates do I see any mention of how this will be achieved if we leave.

It is essential, in my opinion, to keep the freedom of movement of people within Europe to make sure that we keep innovating and keep wages reasonable across the sector so that tech start-ups can flourish and technical advancement can continue. Also many people might not be aware of the huge amount of remote development work goes on in countries like Latvia, Czech Republic & Slovenia. A vital outsourcing tool for start-ups allowing them to bring down costs in the early days such as office space.

I am all for nurturing home-grown talent and I am a huge advocate of paid internships and graduate training programs, there simply aren’t enough people that want to specialise in this type of work.

I also fear that a Brexit could impact on the attractiveness of the UK as a go-to country for tech businesses wishing to raise vital early-stage investment. A trend over recent years has been the increased interest in early stage British tech businesses from overseas investors.

Overseas investors have been attracted by the innovative and disruptive business ideas being incubated in the UK. A Brexit could deflect the investment focus away from London and the regional tech hubs across the country to other cities who have their eyes on the European technology capital crown, such as Berlin, Lisbon, Dublin, and Barcelona.

Like the vast majority of my fellow business owners, I am hoping for a ‘Remain’ vote on 23 June. If we want to create a nation of entrepreneurs, then leaving the EU would have far reaching costly implications for SMEs at a time when they should be supported.

 By Andy Pearce, CEO of Thortful.

The Greek Tragedy

After Sunday’s “No” vote in Greece I thought I’d note down a few thoughts on the matter. 

Now: the majority of decisions regarding the economy and immigration are undertaken in Europe by 28 national governments, each beholden to its own voters and taxpayers. 

That makes us, the voters and taxpayers, equally responsible for what happens to Greece next. 

Greece’s current austerity measures are demoralising and inhumane; the kind that leave people starving, homeless and even more financially dependent than before. The state of the Greek people now, at the end of their tether and facing awful uncertainty, is a grotesque consequence of the monetary ruthlessness of big European power players. 

With Greece careening towards bankruptcy in early 2010, was it an entirely wise idea to lend them huge amounts of money with almost entirely unrealistic expectations of how they would be repaid? 

The austerity that has had Greece in a chokehold is to blame for the continuation of its problems, as is the inevitable series of historically tested bad decisions made by its creditors. Between us we have created this mess. Political greed has created this mess. It's our responsibility to resolve it together.

And by that I don’t mean by isolating and bullying a nation out of the EU for failing to do the impossible. 

Buca's moving on

Having spent the last 6 years being based in Richmond along with the Team of Powwownow, its time for Buca to move on to pastures new.

He has moved to join the thortful team in Soho, an exciting new startup changing the way people buy and select greeting cards

He’s adjusting to life in and around Soho, which being brought up in the home counties does take some adjustment.  Traveling on trains, tubes, taxis and escalators has been his biggest challenge over the last month. He’s been dragged both onto and off of escalators, its only in the last couple of days that he seems to have come to terms with moving staircases!

Buca ambition is to become a household name by appearing on thortful cards all over the UK and the USA. watch out for his image in our inventory when we reopen our doors in September 2015

Isn't it time you grew some balls?

Paddy Power's got some, as have Lidl, Virgin Atlantic and Carlsberg.

And now Protein World have demonstrated they too have balls. After the slating of their UK Beach Body Ready campaign, with backlash from certain parts of the community, including defacing of the ads, a petition on Change.org with 70k+ signatures, and even a small protest, all leading to the ASA demanding the adverts be removed (have they gone mad?).

Protein World have now gone and launched their campaign in the USA. Starting with a huge billboard in New York, now that takes balls, but its also great marketing considering their last campaign generated in excess of £1m in new revenues just from the media attention. Whether I like there advert or not, they’re sticking to there guns and coming out fighting. 

There’s no such thing as bad marketing?

Why is it that the big brands in the UK are forever avoiding controversy, by refusing to react in a fun and humorous way to their competition or things that may be happening in the world around them.

They need to wake up and realise the world of marketing as we know it is changing, the days of briefing agencies 18-24 months before a campaign is ready to go live is outdated.  

All brands need to prepare themselves to react to what is going on in the market place. Just because the early days of trying to make viral videos go viral didn’t work for a lot of the big brands and huge amounts of money was spent doing this, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t ignore this approach. The world is moving faster than ever – a brands only hope to stay in the game, is to be at the ready with the best ideas, the ideas that cut through and speaks to their audience in the moment. 

Come on guys let's challenge everything we were taught about Marketing and grow some big bad balls.

Kitesurfing with Mitu

Whilst i was in Cape Verde earlier this year I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to have a weeks wave riding clinic with the World Champion Mitu.