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Corporate Finance and Deal Advisory
We offer a dedicated team of experienced individuals with a focus on successfully executing transactions for corporates and financial institutions. We offer an integrated approach, with our corporate finance specialists working seamlessly with tax and other specialists to ensure that every angle is covered.
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Digital Risk
Grant Thornton offers solutions to the digital risk issues you are sure to face. Our skilled and experienced security team can helping by advising and consulting, giving you peace of mind, clear value for money and an enhanced ability to react to attacks.
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Technology Consulting
Motivating and assisting our clients to pursue, maintain and secure the benefits of digital solutions is at the core of our Digital Transformation teams' agenda and goals. We work with business leaders to deliver efficient digital strategies and operating models that provide new or enhanced capabilities.
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Economic Advisory
Our all-island Economics Advisory team combines expertise in economics and business with a wealth of experience across the public and private sectors.
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Forensic Accounting
We have a different way of doing business by delivering real insight through a combination of technical rigour, commercial experience and intuitive judgment. We take pride in delivering responsive and tailored solutions to all our clients, capitalising on the wealth of experience housed within our Belfast and wider Forensics team
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People and Change Consulting
The Grant Thornton People & Change Consulting practice works with clients on these issues as well as on all aspects of how they attract, retain, engage develop, deploy and lead their people.
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Restructuring
We work with a wide variety of clients and stakeholders such as high street banks, private equity funds, directors, government agencies and creditors to implement solutions which provide the best possible outcomes.
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Corporate and International Tax
Northern Ireland businesses face further challenges as they operate in the only part of the UK that has a land border with a country offering a lower tax rate.
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Employer Solutions
Our team specialises in remuneration and incentive planning and works closely with employers, shareholders and employees to ensure that business strategies are aligned and goals achieved in the most tax efficient, cost-effective manner.
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Entrepreneur and Private Client Taxes
Our team of experienced advisors are on hand to guide you through any decision or transaction ranging from the establishment of new business ventures, to realising value on exit, to succession planning and providing for loved ones.
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Global Mobility Services
Grant Thornton offer a different approach to managing global mobility. We have brought together specialists from our tax, global payroll, people and change and financial accounting teams across Ireland and Northern Ireland, while drawing on the knowledge and insights of our global network of over 143 offices of mobility professionals to provide you with a holistic approach to managing global mobility.
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Outsourced Payroll
Our outsourced service provides valued service to over 150 separate PAYE schemes. These ranging from 1 to 1000 employees, working for micro, SME and global employers. The service is supported by the integrated network of tax and global mobility teams and the wider Grant Thornton network delivering a seamless service. Experienced staff deliver a personal service built around your business needs.
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Tax Disputes and Investigations
Our Tax Disputes and Investigation team is made up of tax experts and former HMRC investigators who have years of experience in dealing with a variety of tax investigations. Our expertise and insight can guide you through all interactions, keeping your cost at a minimum while allowing you to continue with the day to day running of your business.
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VAT and Indirect Taxes
At Grant Thornton (NI) LLP, our team helps Northern Ireland businesses manage their UK and global indirect tax risks which, as transactional taxes, can quickly become big liabilities.
Back to the ‘Future of Work’
22 Sep 2020As many businesses are executing or planning a return to a working world which has been entirely redefined by the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be interesting to see how many of the new practices will continue, if there will be a push to get back to ‘normal’, and if turning back is even possible?
I don’t own a DeLorean, but one trend I see no turning back from is ‘flexible working’, which has been emerging over the past decade but has been accelerated by COVID to the mainstream. The necessary shift to remote working for many has highlighted the possibilities and benefits of working outside of the traditional norm of a rigid 9-5, five days a week, office-based structure. It has also broken the stigma that flexible working is solely for carers or parents.
According to global research firm Gartner, 48% of employees expect to work from home post-pandemic, up from 30 per cent pre-pandemic. As employees think more about how, when and where they want to work, employers also need to consider their position based on the experiences and lessons learned from this enforced experiment to inform their policy when looking to the next phase.
So what is flexible working? It is not possible have a one-size-fits-all approach for flexible working, as it essentially describes any working pattern adapted to suit individual needs. Although remote working sits under this, it also includes flexi-time, compressed hours, job sharing, etc.
Even before COVID, anyone working at a company for 6 months had the right to request flexible working arrangements, and under the law an employer must seriously consider any application and only reject it if there are good business reasons for doing so. The pandemic has evidently strengthened the case and demand for flexible working, so rather than dismissing this shift, what are the potential benefits if we embrace it?
Flexible working can increase an organisation’s ability to attract talent, as it is one of the top priorities now for employees, it also widens the talent pool for employers when not restricted by geography.
Evidence shows that when people are empowered and trusted to work when, where and how they want, they are more productive, have improved job satisfaction and commitment, leading to reduced absenteeism, and improved wellbeing.
Flexible working can also create greater business agility and responsiveness to change in the 24/7 world we live in.
As businesses go back to the office and imagine the future of work, they will have to consider how to make flexible working a success. They will need to review how supportive processes are and ensure there is clarity through enhanced communications and training, with ongoing monitoring and evaluation to maximise the potential of the new world of work. In the words of Dr Brown, “your future is what you make of it, so make it a good one”.