The View is MFMac’s quickfire ‘pulse check’ of the Scottish business landscape. We asked a selection of clients to share their views on their most recent financial year and how they plan to navigate the year ahead. We estimate that our respondents work for organisations employing north of 100,000 people in Scotland with revenues over £7bn.

Looking Back

Let’s start with past performance. The jury’s out at The View: while one-third (33%) of our respondents say the financial year is going worse than expected, it didn’t take us long to figure out this means that two thirds are bang on track, or even ahead of budget. It’s not a split we like, though: as we get more data to benchmark against, we’d hope to see this improve.

What’s been keeping you up at night? Well, unless you’re a DeepSeek investor our data suggests you’re hoping for a little more stability than the world currently has to offer. A handsome 85% of businesses cited economic uncertainty as the biggest challenge they currently face, followed by a weak economy and regulatory change.

Looking Ahead

Firstly, it’s pretty clear that hiring is in stasis: nobody we spoke to expects to increase headcount beyond 10 people in the next six months. Given between them they employ over 100,000 people, well…you do the maths.

If you’re a glass-half-full kind of reader, you might take some comfort from two data points on this: a) that 42% of our respondents do at least intend to add to their workforce, and b) that a similar number described the talent pool in Scotland as good or excellent.

Secondly, looking ahead your top priority is likely to be increasing revenue (76%) and improving operational efficiency (62%). Like a new Chancellor looking for a growth headline, we doubt many of you would turn down a top-and-bottom-line boost right now.

While we’re on the topic of unsurprising news, over three-quarters (76%) of our respondents lack confidence in the Scottish Government’s plans to improve the economy. The figure barely improves in the context of the UK Government (62%). Around half of our respondents expect to be significantly affected by government cuts and tax rises at both the UK and Scottish levels.

We’re apolitical here at The View so we’ll keep reporting these numbers to track collective confidence over time.

And finally, our closing feature today is on the topic of artificial intelligence. Here at The View, we think you’re essentially unsure about it but still nodding along in meetings nonetheless: on average, you scored a don’t-stick-your-neck-out 5/10 to describe your readiness for AI integration.

AI might be making headlines, but it’s still an unknown quantity for many of us.

See you in six months.
Editor, The View.