Dear Member,   

In this week's ezine we offer advice for employers when an employee is out of work on long-term sick leave.

Each week in the SFA e-zine, we profile a different government support available to small businesses. In this edition, we focus on the Business Expansion Grant, which offers up to €150,000 to manufacturing and services businesses for expansion. 

We provide an update on Brexit including latest SFA/Ibec activity, results from our November member survey and upcoming events on the topic. Find out how your business could benefit from the SFA / Trinity Business School Internship Program and more on #WomanUp, an action plan on female leadership.

If you missed last week's webinar on planning for the Christmas period, you can play it back and check out the highlights video from the SFA Annual Lunch 2017. We invite members to attend the SFA AGM on 29 November. Register to attend the SFA Members Christmas event on 14 December for an evening of festive networking. Book a place on one of our training courses during December on project management and performance management. Save 1 February 2018 in your diary for our new event, Business Connect. We also provide a summary of recent press coverage. 

As always, we’d love to hear from you about any queries you may have, issues you wish to have raised with Government or other stakeholders and your ideas on how we can improve the business environment for us all. Please contact me on tel: 01 605 1602 or e-mail: sven@sfa.ie or tweet: @SFA_Irl or visit: www.sfa.ie.

Kind regards, 

Sven Spollen-Behrens

SFA Director