Family Business programme

Innovation is a key challenge for many family businesses. If you’re among their number, we’re here to help.

Our Family Business Programme offers new ways for family firms to collaborate, learn, share, build on their strengths and perform at their peak.

We want to galvanise family businesses to become some of Britain’s best-run firms. To do that, we’re piloting a range of new ways to help improve your business.

Why family businesses are so important to the UK economy

85%

of UK businesses are family owned

59%

of family businesses have ambitious growth plans

46%

of family firms have concerns about the profitability and sustainability of the business

We’ve created a range of powerful initiatives to unlock all the energy and potential held within UK family SMEs. Some activities you can dip in and out of, others are more involved. All of them are designed to get family firms like yours talking, sharing, learning and thriving.

Spark learning sessions

Build confidence in key areas of your business.

Peer learning

Share issues and insights in a trusted group of like-minded peers.

Advisory boards

Gain invaluable support and challenge your strategies with an advisory board.

“Advisory boards are a superb opportunity to get joined-up thinking across the whole of our business over a 12-month period.”

Helen Tonks
MD, Hydraulics Online

“It was the opposite of speed dating style networking events. Spending time with another business on placement means we now have something better than a connection who merely wants to sell us things.”

David Wilson
Manager, Playdale Playgrounds

Hear from some of our Family Business Programme members

An action learning group gave me our “aha” moment

A peer action learning group has helped one media production company get crystal clear on its values and then turn them into the foundation of a sustainable growth strategy.

What a butcher can learn from a steel supplier

Sharing common business problems has brought companies from very different backgrounds together and begun to form long-lasting support networks.

I’m sharing info with my advisory board that has never left the business

With ambitious growth plans of 20 per cent a year, Hydraulics Online are using an advisory board made up of experienced business leaders to mark a clear route.