UK Pest analysis social and cultural environment Introduction“PEST is an acronym

UK – Pest analysis, social and cultural environment Introduction“PEST is an acronym for political, economic, social and technological. It’s a way of understanding how external forces impact your business. It was created by Harvard professor Francis Aguilar in 1967. It should be included in every business plan, in addition to a SWOT analysis, as it is part of risk management and strategy design.” (Business News Daily. 2018.) This states that, Pest analysis, is a tool that is used in the business environment. Pest analysis allows you to deeper your understanding of businesses and lets you discover if there are any issues that may run in the business as well as, in the business community, which will influence the political, economic, social and cultural environment and the technological sides of the business. This essay will demonstrate the UKs social and cultural environment impacts, on the business environment and how it affects the business industry and the economy itself. Social and cultural environment may affect businesses through many aspects it may be due to the ageing population, birth rate and death rate, immigration and diversity (multi-cultural society), lifestyle trends, migration and the change of work trends. In this essay you will see how these aspects have an impact on businesses and the business environment. Ageing population is the aspect that has a huge impact on businesses and in the business environment. The ageing population has an impact on economic growth, savings, investment & consumption, labour markets, pensions, taxation, health and healthcare, and migration. As you can see that, “In 2016, there were 11.8 million UK residents aged 65 years and over, representing 18% of the total population – 25 years before, there were 9.1 million, accounting for 15.8% of the population.” (Living longer – Office for National Statistics. 2019). This indicates the ageing population is increasing and is likely to increase more, this is due to many features, one feature is the fertility and mortality rate. “Today’s population age-structure is determined by historical and recent patterns of fertility and mortality. Over the last 50 years, mortality rates have decreased both globally and, in the UK, (Figure 12). Since the 1960s, fertility rates have also declined, now averaging about 2.5 births per woman of childbearing age globally. In the UK, there has been some stabilisation in fertility rates since the mid-1970s with fertility rates now averaging about 1.9 births per woman (Figure 13).” (Living longer – Office for National Statistics. 2019). Therefore meaning, this shows that in the last 50 years the mortality rates have decreased in the UK as well as, the fertility rates, this shows that as the years go on the birth and death rate should decreases ever more due to many reasons. The death rate has decreased due to UK having an excellent health care system, for the public. “One of the great achievements of medical sciences is that people are living longer. Since the 1950s, life expectancy has jumped almost 20 years in developed countries.” (Medical Daily. 2014). This also, indicates that the aging population is increasing due to the medical improvement and will increase more. “NHS England, in partnership with Age UK, Public Health England, and the Chief Fire Officer’s Association and older people themselves, has published a Practical Guide to Healthy Ageing. Building on the popularity of the Healthy Ageing Guide, in partnership with Carers UK, Carers Trust Age UK, Public Health England, and older carers themselves, we have published a Practical Guide to Healthy Caring. The guide aims to support the 5.4 million carers and in particular those 1.2 million aged over 65.” (NHS England. 2019). As you can see there is a high demand of aging population and because of the NHS and the medical improvement in the UK the ageing population will increase. 60% of women and 52% of men born in 2000-2005 are expected to survive to their eightieth birthdays, compared to less than 40% of the women and men born in 1950-1955, this is all due to having advanced education and best healthcare system in UK, due to NHS and advance medical development people are estimated to live longer than before. Moreover, this therefore means that ageing population will affect businesses. “An aging population and its negative implications for the global economy has been a worry among economists for some time now. A shrinking working-age population, coupled with longer life spans and retirements, means there will be fewer working people around to carry the burden of supporting a larger non-working population. The world population above 65 years old will soon be larger than the population under five years old.” (Business Insider. 2017). This demonstrates that ageing population does affect business and are some negative results, this is because if in the business there are more elder people working, they could retire and therefore meaning this business will have a loss of workers and may have negative impact to carry on the business and will have to hire new worker, train them and get them to the same level as the elder workers that have just left. So, there would be a lot of work and implications to hire new staff. In addition to this it does state that in 2030, older people are expected to outnumber children under 10 years old, this does suggest that elder people may need to still work to earn money for their living and ensure that businesses do still survive without elder people, also, the retirement age could increase to due to having more elder people in the economy. However, some businesses think having an ageing population is a good aspect for example, “today’s older adults seek meaning and purpose, disrupting retirement norms and expressing increasing interest in lifelong work and volunteering.” (Next Avenue. 2018). This example does show that some elderly may still choose to work or even volunteer therefore meaning sometimes businesses may benefit from elder workers because some may have greater knowledge than others and if they do volunteer the business will benefit from not having to pay the wage. Recent statistical data on the importance of these phenomena.In addition to this, a survey on the SMEs (CIPD. 2014), have gathered information about the positive and negative effects of having ‘mature workers. Well, it has been stated that ‘UK’ companies highly value mature employees as they would be the best people for knowledge sharing. As well as that, the survey shows that UK businesses think that elder people would be more improved in problem solving and would have an enhanced customer service due to having greater experiences and opportunities in other businesses. Moreover, due to them being old they would value the business they are working in because it would be less likely for them to leave and try a find a new job, because it could be difficult due to their age and the negative impacts for ageing population in the business environment. So, in this survey the negatives about having ‘mature workers’ are that sometimes mature workers are hard to work with and handle at times, and this does put some businesses off to hire the elder people. Also, the survey found out that having elder worker mixed in younger work force does lead them of having lack of shred same interests and (16%) of having misunderstanding of each other, so this would put off some employers to hire mature workers. “internal progression and problems with succession planning as a key challenge,” this shows that elder workers may not make progression as quick as the younger workers would and may lead the business to fall behind, as well as that the business may suffer form nit having good planning due to lack of focus and again due to lack of progression made. Moreover, as technology is making massive changed and businesses to tend to improve the technology sides of working, if the mature workers are not able to adapt to new technologies used at the work place, they may not be able to do their job and may have to leave. The final point is the most common point that all business does this is a negative of having an elder worker, “mature employees cost organisations more money.” This demonstrates that by having elder workers the bussiness would have to give more money away, so instead of having elder workers you rather have younger worker who are faster, can adapt to new improvements and you would have to pay less wage too. As the aging population does increase business will be affected in a good way as well as a negative way, due to all the social – culture and environment impacts. The Guillemard’s threefold life course model, (Wetherly, P., 2014.), is a diagram that shows the education, work and retirement. As you can see this diagram is trying to indicate that before the 21st century none of the stages would overlap each other due to having specific stages, for example first you would get educated then work then retire and nothing would overlap each other. However, in the 21st century all three stages overlap, so education, work and the retirement stage will overlap each other. This is because now when you get into a business you would be expected to still be in the process to develop and educate new skills and develop and deeper your understanding as the world id developing and inventing new technologies and processes. Also, the threefold cycle shows that while you are working would retire this is due to have a mass ageing population and therefore meaning the retirement age has increase and you would have to work longer. Migration has made a boundless affect on aging population, migration has helped ageing population to slow down. “An immigrant baby boom has helped move Britain from having one of the most rapidly ageing populations in Europe to one of the least, official estimates show. A decade in which the birth rate has increased markedly, driven in part by the arrival of young workers from Eastern Europe and elsewhere, has helped slow the relative rate at which the population has aged.” (Telegraph.co.uk. 2012.). This proposes that migration is benefiting UK this is because if there was no migration the ageing population could have been even higher which means businesses would suffer and UK itself would have a high demand of health and health care, family composition, pensions, housing and on the economic growth. “Our ageing population is putting massive strain on pensions and welfare4: this can only be helped by accepting working-age immigrants. In the last 35 years (up to 2007) the over-65s demographic group grew by 31%, the fastest of all age groupings5, whilst the under-16s shrunk from 26% to 19% of the total population5. “Each increase in life expectancy of one year adds about £12 billion to the aggregate pension liabilities of FTSE 100 companies””6. Pensions will continue to become increasingly costly