The survey found that 68% of spouses regularly worked for their partners business unpaid and a staggering 18% worked five days a week for no pay.

All this unpaid and until now unrecognised work is incredibly valuable to small businesses, particularly when the economic climate is tough. It does raise some interesting questions, however, about the real viability of some of these businesses.

Most of the support provided by partners takes the form of administrative tasks (41%) or book-keeping (29%).  Nevertheless nearly half (46%) say they regularly provide management and consulting advice too and one in four say the original idea for the business was theirs.

For some a monetary transaction does take place with 34% having taken some form of payment for their endeavours.

The research is released as Bibby Financial services launches a site which follows the fortunes of three real business owners at www.live-business.co.uk.

[Picture credit: Lukasz Dunikowski @ Flickr]

This change is relatively small and has gone without comment from normally vocal groups representing small businesses. At the beginning of the year, for example, the Federation of Small Businesses warned that:

Inflation-busting increases in the NMW are beginning to hit some small businesses hard.

This week, however, Bibby Financial Services claimed that these changes would continue to pose an administrative headache (as much as a directly financial one) for small firms managing their own payroll.

To add the flurry of administrative changes heralded by October, the statutory minimum holiday entitlement has also increased from the first of the month.  Employees are now entitled to an additional 0.8 weeks of holiday entitlement which now stands at 4.8 weeks.  How do you measure 0.8 weeks, incidentally?