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This article was written by

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This article was written by

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

Tomorrow is May Day, and somewhere in the middle of the country, a married couple in their early forties is opening up a small bakery for the third Friday in succession on which they have not, between them, drawn a salary.

They started the business in 2022. They re-mortgaged the house. They missed two of their daughter’s school plays last term, including the one where she had a line. They have not, for nineteen months, taken a day off. They are, on the official ONS labour-market classification, “self-employed”, which is to say they are not, technically, considered workers at all.

I would like, on this particular May Day, to suggest that they are.

There is a particular sleight-of-hand in British political language that has, over the last fifty years or so, produced an increasingly narrow definition of the word “worker”. A worker, in current usage, is someone who is paid by an employer in return for doing a job, ideally with a contract, a payslip, and a pension contribution. The “workers’ movement”, in modern parlance, is the political and industrial movement representing exactly that figure. Anyone outside the definition is, by implication, something else, an entrepreneur, an investor, a self-employed person, a small-business owner, a family-firm founder. They get other ministries, other sympathies, other adjectives. They do not, on the whole, get celebrated on May Day.

This is, frankly, ridiculous. The bakery couple work, on the broad numbers, more hours than any of their employees. They take home, on average, less per hour than their employees. They have less holiday, less protection, less pension, less sick pay, less of everything. Their economic risk is total. Their political clout is somewhere between negligible and non-existent. Their public image, in much of British political discourse, is closer to that of the tax-avoiding non-dom than that of the sympathetic NHS porter, which is, when you actually meet either, a perfect inversion of reality.

There are, by the latest ONS estimate, just over 4.3 million self-employed workers in the UK. Of those, around 600,000 run businesses with employees of their own. They collectively contribute approximately £303 billion to UK GDP, which is more than the entire UK financial-services sector. They pay corporation tax, dividend tax, capital gains tax, employer NICs, business rates, VAT, and insurance premium tax. They keep more than three million Britons in PAYE jobs. They are, in any meaningful definition, the productive backbone of the country.

And, for at least the last decade, they have been treated by every successive UK administration with a mixture of mild benign neglect and occasional, almost incidental, cruelty. IR35 was a cruelty. Making Tax Digital is a cruelty. The narrowing of business property relief on inheritance tax has been a cruelty. The withdrawal of various small expenses and reliefs has been a cruelty. None of these things has been done because anyone in Whitehall actively dislikes the small-business owner; it is rather that, in the present political configuration, the small-business owner is too small to matter, too dispersed to organise, and too busy to march. The civil servants drafting the SI get the headline figures right, and the headline figures, individually, are small.

May Day, in its original conception, was a workers’ holiday, but, as anyone with any knowledge of the period will tell you, the “workers” it commemorated were not, exclusively, the wage-labour pay-packet figure of present-day usage. They were the broader productive class: artisans, shopkeepers, mechanics, makers, the journeymen in the literal sense who worked with their own tools to produce something useful. A baker in Walsall, in 2026, getting up at 4am to mix the dough, fits that older definition perfectly. The fact that she has, technically, incorporated herself as a private limited company should not, surely, exclude her from the holiday.

I do not, please understand, wish to undermine the more familiar version of May Day. The march, the bunting, the speeches, the flag, they are part of a recognisable British political tradition that I rather enjoy. I just would like, this year, to make a small modest plea for the inclusion in it of the people whose labour is no less skilled, no less hard-won, no less honest, and considerably less protected, than the labour the day was originally meant to celebrate.

So if you are in the bakery this morning, or the small workshop, or the family-run pub, or the consultancy that lives at the kitchen table, or the farm that has been in your name for thirty years, happy May Day. The country is, despite the available evidence, better off because of you. Take five minutes off, if you can. Drink a coffee. Watch the bunting. And, before you go back to it, remember that whatever the textbook says, and whatever the marching song goes, the work you do is, exactly, work.

Richard Alvin

Richard Alvin is a serial entrepreneur, a former advisor to the UK Government about small business and an Honorary Teaching Fellow on Business at Lancaster University.

A winner of the London Chamber of Commerce Business Person of the year and Freeman of the City of London for his services to business and charity. Richard is also Group MD of Capital Business Media and SME business research company Trends Research, regarded as one of the UK’s leading experts in the SME sector and an active angel investor and advisor to new start companies.

Richard is also the host of Save Our Business the U.S. based business advice television show.

Energy Collective Co observes that businesses often recognise that people-related challenges can have significant implications for cost and performance, yet the route to resolving them is not always clearly defined. “We’ve seen organisations encounter HR solutions that appear broad in scope or disconnected from tangible outcomes,” says founder Jade Donegan. “This can create a gap between identifying an issue and implementing an effective response.” She established Energy Collective Co to help bridge this space, encouraging a closer examination of how performance is influenced across both people and systems.

The company focuses on helping improve workforce productivity by examining the psychosocial factors that influence how work is designed and experienced. Drawing on her background in culture and transformation, Jade positions the business alongside organisational decision-making, where people, systems and commercial priorities meet. “I work with leaders to understand what’s driving performance,” she explains. “I believe the path forward becomes clearer when you can distinguish between system factors and individual factors.” This viewpoint sets the foundation for how the organisation engages with its clients and informs the structure of its services.

This perspective, Jade notes, also connects to a common assumption within organisations: that increased HR investment will lead to improved outcomes. She says, “Additional spend can sometimes focus on visible symptoms instead of underlying causes, which can limit the overall impact.” Energy Collective Co introduces the idea that many organisational challenges are not immediately visible, even though their effects can be observed through productivity or engagement. By identifying and addressing one or two high-impact factors, organisations may begin to unlock meaningful improvements in performance.

Broader research provides useful context for this way of thinking. A report shows that 82% of organisations experience some level of misalignment between HR and overall business strategy, with only 18% reporting strong alignment across key areas such as strategy execution and leadership collaboration. “This indicates that even well-intentioned initiatives can fall short when they aren’t directly connected to commercial priorities,” Jade remarks. In this context, Energy Collective Co places emphasis on linking people-related insights to measurable business outcomes, helping ensure that interventions are informed by both organisational needs and strategic direction.

Jade shares an example that illustrates how this philosophy translates into action. “In one case, a company considered investing approximately $15,000 in personality profiling to improve collaboration within its procurement team,” she shares. “Through diagnostic analysis, I identified that the challenge was process inefficiency rather than interpersonal dynamics.” By refining the workflow instead of introducing a new tool, Jade notes that the organisation was able to address the issue more directly.

“It’s about asking whether we are solving the right problem,” she says. “Sometimes the answer sits in how the work is designed, not in who is doing it.” This example highlights the importance of examining assumptions before committing resources.

To support this level of insight, Energy Collective Co has developed a structured diagnostic process that moves beyond standard engagement surveys. The organisation uses a culture, performance and productivity survey with adaptive questioning, allowing responses to guide deeper exploration into specific areas.

This is complemented by a psychosocial diagnostic framework that examines several factors, including leadership capability, work design and organisational systems. Through this process, Jade notes that organisations may gain a clearer understanding of whether challenges originate from structural elements or individual behaviours, which in turn informs the next steps.

This distinction becomes increasingly relevant when considering wider workforce trends. Insights from an HR monitor survey indicate that 32% of employees do not yet have all the skills required for their current roles. “This tells us that performance challenges may relate to capability development, role design or system effectiveness, rather than individual effort alone,” Jade says. By incorporating these factors into its analysis, Energy Collective Co connects workforce capability with broader organisational performance, helping ensure that recommendations reflect both immediate and longer-term considerations.

Once key drivers have been identified, the organisation focuses on delivering targeted and scalable solutions. These may include consulting engagements, tailored training programmes or self-service tools that enable leaders to address challenges directly within their teams. Ongoing pulse checks form part of this process, providing a way to monitor progress and maintain alignment over time. “Sustainable change happens when the business takes ownership of the solution,” Jade states. “Our role is to provide tools that make that possible.” This emphasis on ownership supports continuity beyond the initial intervention.

The delivery model is designed to remain accessible, with streamlined engagement processes and a focus on timely implementation. This can allow organisations to act on insights without unnecessary delay, supporting momentum as changes are introduced. At the same time, it can provide leaders with a structured way to consider the implications of inaction, including replacement costs, legal exposure and complexities linked to workforce management.

Alongside organisational systems, Energy Collective Co also considers individual energy as a contributing factor to performance. Its frameworks explore how mental, emotional and physical energy influence decision-making, collaboration and resilience. By connecting these elements with organisational dynamics, the model presents a more integrated understanding of how performance develops across different levels of the business.

Ultimately, as organisations continue to navigate evolving workforce expectations, Energy Collective Co encourages leaders to reflect on the nature of the challenges they encounter. Questions such as whether an issue stems from people or processes, and how that distinction can be identified, offer a starting point for more informed decision-making. Jade states, “Leaders need to ask more precise questions to create the conditions for more effective decisions.”

The maker of Johnnie Walker whisky and Guinness stout said Wednesday that organic net sales rose 0.3% in period, beating 2.3% slump expected by analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Diageo kept its guidance for this fiscal year unchanged, with organic net sales expected to decline between 2% and 3%.
Like rival drinks makers, Diageo is grappling with persistent weak demand for beer and spirits in critical markets, including the US. Consumers are moderating their alcohol intake to improve their health and in response to higher living costs from US President Donald Trump‘s trade tariffs and conflict in the Middle East.

The distiller is also trying to overcome self-inflicted errors such as poor service levels to some customers since Covid and an intense focus on premium drinks that has left the company underrepresented in growing parts of the market, like “ready-to-drink” canned cocktails.