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2015 Roundup: it’s been a great year!

Written by: LoveLocalJobs.com
Published on: 17 Dec 2015

LoveLocalJobs.com celebrated its fifth business year in 2015, and what a year it has been! It’s been a year of budgets, record-high job vacancies, low unemployment figures and some of the biggest wage shake-ups in decades. The stakes were high to set the right policies for businesses and workers in this election year, and this year’s summer budget had plenty of points to please both UK businesses and employees. We’d like to take the time to discuss what a great year it has been for UK jobs, business engagement and our own achievement.   

A healthy economy

According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), there were 31.21 million people in work this November, representing an employment rate of 73.7% - the highest since records began in 1971. Businesses also celebrated a few great stats of their own this July, after Chancellor George Osborne announced that business investment has grown four times faster than household consumption since 2010, and the UK economy has grown faster than any advanced economy in the world, with a growth rate of 2.6%.

Devolution has also made an early mark on local communities and the wider UK economy this year. Local authorities will now receive all income generated from business rates rather than Whitehall – around £26 billion per year. Authorities also now have the power to lower business rates to boost growth.

In order to help Britain’s growing self-employed sector, class 2 tax contributions will be abolished, benefitting around five million entrepreneurs around the UK. To help young people get into the world of work from many paths, the government has also pledged to introduce a new apprenticeship levy in 2017 of 0.5% from company payrolls. This will raise around £3 billion a year to help fund three million extra apprenticeships – businesses with a wage bill of more than £3 million will be charged the levy.

It’s been a great year for LoveLocalJobs.com businesses

Some of the biggest and brightest companies in the UK choose to advertise with us, and we’re excited to be moving forward into 2016 with more Founding Partners on board and more jobseeker engagement than ever before. Here at LoveLocalJobs.com, we use indisputable statistics to measure how we are progressing and how we can help our businesses to achieve their goals. These highlights all indicate healthy engagement and a successful platform for local businesses:

  • Since our migration to the new jobs board platform, average time on page has increased exponentially. Average session duration has increased by 30% and bounce rate has decreased by 25%. Candidates are now more engaged with LoveLocalJobs.com than ever.
  • Pages per session has increased by 30%, from 4 to 6 on average.

This highlights that jobseekers are spending more time on our site and are finding it easier to navigate and interact with.

  • Year-on-year traffic for BrightonandHoveJobs.com has increased by 14%.
  • In 2015, our whole site was visited by more than 1 million visitors (1,130,408) – an increase of 17% from last year.
  • Our large online presence has also led to an organic traffic increase of 22%.

What we’ve been up to

The LoveLocalJobs.com team are proud of our business and community accomplishments in 2015. We were recognised by European, national and regional awards, and we were shortlisted in the National Recruiter Awards for our commitment to young people and helping them on to their own career ladders. We now have a fresh new site, with leading software used by the likes of The Guardian and The Telegraph to carry out our work on a bigger and better scale in 2016.

We have helped thousands of local people through advice services and expert insights, and have promoted more than 80,000 jobs locally. We are pleased to have all our Founding Partners on board for 2016 and are excited about developing our expansion into London with Love Croydon Jobs.

One of the biggest accomplishments this year, that really brought the new site to life, was the roll out of our Be the Change programme. Several of our brilliant partners have committed themselves to rolling out the programme further and we are excited to be associated with the social enterprise, Humanutopia, to make a difference in communities across the UK. We’ll soon be working alongside three universities, more than 30 schools, several colleges, and dozens of local businesses to inspire and assist more than 1000 young people into the world of work next year and beyond.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support throughout the year, and even though Christmas is around the corner, our team are always on hand to assist jobseekers and businesses to achieve their goals for a new year.

Christmas 2015 Team Image