Needed: a healthy dose of realism, with a side order of humble pie

By Sarah Gee on Jun 5, 09 06:41 PM in Business

Attending last night's Birmingham Young Professional of the Year event made me profoundly aware of the haves and have nots in our city, on many levels.

Firstly, many congratulations to Suzie Branch of BHMG Marketing on being crowned BYPY 2009. Clearly a popular choice, Suzie's citation highlighted both her skills as a business woman and her willingness to put something back in the community - exactly the combination of skills shown by our illustrious city forefathers such as the Cadburys, Lloyds, Chamberlains and Martineaus.

Birmingham Future, which runs BYPY, has emulated these laudable ambitions themselves by launching The Future Foundation, a charitable fund set up to support education, employment and training projects in Birmingham. Last night the 620 guests at the award dinner watched a short video about some of the work done by the Birmingham Foundation -the community charity which will administrate Future's fund - which showed some really tear-jerking projects and the differences they made. It would be a hard man or woman who wasn't moved.

Although there's been a lot written about the dire economic climate, it was clear that not everyone at the ICC was on their uppers: plenty of generous raffle ticket purchases should see many thousands of pounds more available to help train and support Birmingham's young people in the future.

It was also good to see more SMEs represented, both as finalists in the awards, and as attendees at the dinner. With luck, and lower fixed overheads, smaller and more flexible companies are well-placed to ride out the recession, with many already picking up contract work previously done in-house by now-redundant employees. However, the sheer differences in mentality between large and small companies became apparent when the raffle prizes were being drawn. The final offering was an integrated colour printer/scanner/photocopier which a number of us micro-employers were viewing with envious eyes. But then the jeers started: "Who raided the stationery cupboard for that prize?"

Whilst very much said in jest, the comments did make me wince. The thought of companies in Birmingham have spare brand-new printers sitting around waiting for the point at which they're needed is so very alien to small employers; hell, my stationery cupboard IS my office!

It will be very interesting to see if a similar prize at BYPY in 2010 will be greeted with the same derision. My hunch is that many of those mocking last night will not be with the same employer next year, perhaps having struck out on their own, and would be grateful for any help they might receive.

I don't wish difficult times on anyone, but a healthy dose of realism, with a side order of humble pie, doesn't go amiss.