March 30, 2012
Filed under: Business Advice — Alan @ 12:40 pm
Nottingham is one of the largest cities in the Midlands and it is most famous for being the home of the legend Robin Hood. As well as the being a lot of historical interest in the city, Nottingham is also regarded as one of the best retail centres in the whole of the UK and it has become known as having some of the most diverse shops anywhere.
Fashion is particularly popular in the centre of the city although there are numerous shopping opportunities elsewhere. You will be their will to find everything from printers in Nottingham, to designer stores such as Hugo Boss and Vivian Westwood.
Nottingham is also a very easy city to explore because it has a relatively compact city centre. Unlike other major shopping destinations in the UK such as Manchester and London, you don’t have to take public transport to get between different shopping areas. That said, if you want to avoid the hustle and bustle of the inner-city, then there are plenty of out-of-town shopping opportunities which you can also visit. If you are a resident of Nottingham, these provide an easy to get to shopping experience where you won’t have to worry about parking or traffic.
It is not just chain stores that are prevalent in Nottingham, but there are also many specialist shops and most of these are located in the Hockley area of the city. There are two main shopping areas in the centre of the city, one is called Broadmarsh and the other is the Victoria Centre. A slightly smaller, but more exclusive, shopping destination is the Bridlesmith Gate area, this hosts many of the city’s designer stores and is even where you will find the first Paul Smith boutique.
As you would expect in any major city in the country, Nottingham also has numerous services available as well as shops. Residents in the city will have plenty of choices if they need to go about all those everyday tasks, such as having a car repaired, or going to the dentist or doctors. There are also numerous solicitors in Nottingham which provide services to people from the surrounding area.
Whether you are a Nottingham resident, just visiting, or planning to move to the city, you will find a place that has a vibrant and extensive history. As well as this it has all the modern amenities you would expect in a city of its size.
Article by Alan H
March 28, 2012
Filed under: Business Advice,Employees — admin @ 3:48 pm
Successful firms have a secret “X” factor – the factor which can massively enhance sustained productivity and competitive advantage. Want to know what is? In a word: training.
OK, it’s not the only factor but it’s certainly a major one. Yet struggling firms in our tough economic climate are frequently tempted to cut training budgets as a means of keeping costs to a minimum. In many respects this is a misguided and counterproductive option as an unskilled workforce is bad for business, bad for profits and bad for customers.
For one thing, if you want to keep costs to a minimum, try warding off recruitment fees. When employees leave and posts need to be filled, recruiters trouser a tidy sum of your firm’s hard-earned money. Providing training and opportunities for professional development for staff is known to increase both their motivation and their loyalty. Instead of recruiting from outside the firm, when you’ve skilled your own people up, recruiters don’t get a look-in – you can promote to senior posts internally if your workforce has been equipped with the requisite skills.
Providing administrative staff with accountancy courses, for instance, can hugely increase the efficiency of your firm. Industry-recognised, relevant accountancy courses needn’t cost an arm and a leg: distance-learning options are highly economical financially and in terms of the time investment required to complete the course. Employees don’t have to take days off to attend campus-based training events, and the skills they acquire rival those obtained in traditional classroom-based courses. All they need is a little time (a few hours a week, even the occasional lunch break) and access to the internet.
Training your staff to remain current has other business advantages; staying on top of new policies and rules means that you achieve much better compliance – and that means fewer expensive mistakes and massively reduced risks of wince-inducing litigation. Well informed employees tend to please your customers, too.
Another plus is being able to spread the benefits. One good policy to adopt is to require staff who skill up on training to share their knowledge with others. To stay with the example of accountancy courses, arrange some informal lunchtime meetings for the employee-student to share his or her new knowledge to a group of relevant staff. Your workforce can feed themselves with new skills at the same time as they feed themselves with lunch. In other words, training doesn’t just benefit one employee – you can see to it that they benefit all relevant staff, too.
Don’t underestimate the impact of training on individual employees, either. Research consistently shows that their productivity and efficiency increases, as does their commitment to the company. People don’t enjoy stagnating, doing the same things day in, day out, with little prospect of progression. Training opens doors, improving employee career prospects – prospects which they are much more likely to pursue in the company that trained them.
A final suggestion: the more able you are to allow employees to choose the training which interests them, the more likely and palpable the loyalty and productivity spin-offs become.
In short, this isn’t just a question of train and survive; its train and thrive.
Article for icslearn.co.uk
Filed under: Business Advice — admin @ 11:46 am
There are so many things that you need to consider when it comes to your business, and being socially responsible along with your bottom line are two huge points. So, by making your workplace more energy efficient you can save money on energy prices and give your company a better image.
We all know that the energy situation is in something of a crisis and there are more and more reasons for all of us to go green, and play a part in the world’s future. I guess the big question for you now is how do I go about designing an energy efficient office? Well, this can be a simple task as long as you know what you’re doing.
1. Equipment – When you are buying the machines for your office, you can save energy and money by buying things like scanners, fax machines and printers that come with the certified Energy Star. When you consider that computers can cut energy usage by 60% when certified and using power management, this can make a whole lot of difference for many reasons. Similarly, see if it is viable to have everyone using laptop computers because desktop models can use as much as 80% more energy.
2. Power strips – No matter what equipment you have, it’s likely that you can still save more on energy through getting rid of things like sleep and standby overnight. If you have a printer, laptops and other office machinery, get them plugged in to one strip and just disconnect that are the end of the day so that everything is unplugged and not sucking your energy.
3. Check the market – Tariffs are different in every location or for what you need, and as there is never one company that can claim to be the cheapest you can always find a better deal for both your business and home accounts. So with that in mind, take a look to see if you could switch suppliers and cut your energy bills through more than just energy saving measures.
4. Location is everything – Depending on what your budget is and the location you are choosing, having the office in the right spot can also make you energy efficient. For example, if you use window walls then you can make better use of the natural light and save on lighting costs. Also, if the sun is shining on the office, it will be warmer and you won’t have to spend so much heating the place. What’s more is that many office blocks are being built with energy efficiency in mind so have a look at what they do to lower the building’s expenditure on these bills.
5. Limit printing – Emailing is your friend, and through sending out information over the internet instead of having a number of copies printed, you can save on energy and paper. Make sure everyone in the office knows it, consider using applications like Dropbox and Cloud for sharing private documents so that everyone can see what is going around.
All these things help you to get a more energy efficient office and, of course, there are other things you could do to trim the bill. If you’re getting a new refrigerator, keep it small and try to have any coffee machines or water coolers on timers and this will all help to save the pennies, which ultimately save the pounds.
Article for uswitch.com
Filed under: Business Advice,Business Software,IT — Alan @ 9:45 am
Andrew Savory is the new Chief Technology Officer at Sirius, the systems integrator for open source software. He has said that it is time for SMEs to get more recognition for the work they do. He stated that smaller companies are often just as capable of delivering the same services the bigger companies can, and they are even capable of doing it at competitive prices.
Mr Savory left his position at the LiMo Foundation in order to take the role at Sirius. Previously he was working on creating the first version of the Linux operating system for a smart phone. He has a history of working for small businesses and it is obvious that he thinks they are just as capable of performing in the market as their larger counterparts.
He recently commented, “The G-Cloud is a government initiative that is causing a great deal of excitement in the technology industry. It has a focus on providing services very quickly and allowing the government to test them out to see if they work. I think it is absolutely the right step forward and this is the future of delivering technology services to the government.
“The previous system around development of new software for the government meant that the development process was so long that by the time it was actually completed, the need for the software had disappeared. Obviously this is a very bad way of doing things and it causes a lot of taxpayers’ money to go to waste. This new system eliminates this problem and allows new software to be brought into action at a much faster rate.”
Mr Savory went on to comment about how companies no longer want to wait for new technology to be actioned in the business. They want new technology to be implemented very quickly and they don’t want to have to wait years before an appropriate system is created for their company. This is putting a great deal of pressure on technology companies to develop the services faster and this is something that they are capable of. Those companies that fail to act quickly will be overtaken by their competitors.
Mr Savory also commented about what he believes will stimulate the growth of the technology sector in the UK. He commented that education about technology is absolutely essential to the sectors development. Most notably he commented that children should not be trained on company specific programmes such as Microsoft Office, instead they should be taught how to use spreadsheets and word processors in a general sense.
About this he said, “We might be facing an enormous problem in the future because people will be trained only how to use products by Microsoft, like MS Word. If Microsoft gets overtaken by a competitor then people are going to struggle to make the switch to the new software.
There is going to be a serious lack of education and this is going to cost companies a great deal of money as they will have to retrain their staff. I think it is better to tackle the problem at the school-age and not teach children how to use specific, branded, programs.”
He also mentioned how he welcomes the move by the government to change the focus on IT education from the use of software, to children learning basic programming skills. He welcomes the fact that many universities and schools are now offering Linux computers as well as those that are running Windows
March 24, 2012
Filed under: Business Advice,Marketing — admin @ 6:02 pm
Everyone needs pens. It’s as simple as that. Whoever you speak to, you can be sure they rely on pens every single day of their lives – whether that’s in work to record meetings, make notes or write ‘to do lists’, or to use at home to write birthday cards, make shopping lists and help with the children’s homework.
This is great news for companies looking to use promotional products, as you can be certain that promotional pens will be popular. Research conducted by trade associations in the US and UK help to indicate the popularity of printed pens. Figures from the British Promotional Merchandise Association (BPMA) show that pens are so useful that 39 per cent of Brits said it is the promotional item they would most like to receive. The US-based Advertising Speciality Institute found that pens are the most popular freebie to be given to Brits, with 63 per cent saying they favoured this product over any other gift.
Choosing pens to give out to passersby or potential customers is a great way to support a particular marketing campaign or to simply boost your company profile, as everyone who receives a pen will be reminded of your company or campaign every time they look at it, especially if it features an eye-catching print!
Think of your market potential
One of the first things to learn in business is identify your target market and then tailor your services and advertising strategy directly to this audience.
While it is important to keep your clientele in mind when designing a range of promotional merchandise, you will also be able to grab the attention of those who haven’t heard of you. This could even help boost sales from an untapped market – you never know!
Perhaps you opt for an iconic brand like Parker, Bic or Senator for your campaign. Some Parker pens can be printed or engraved from as little as 50 units – which should suit organisations working to the tightest of budgets.
Ideal for any brand
Whether you are a manufacturer, a retailer or your organisation is a charity beginning a new campaign – whatever you are trying to promote, pens are great ways to get your message out to the public.
Pens have broad appeal regardless of industry or market sector and can be used by all demographics and socio-economic groups.
Pens also tend to be retained for a significant period of time. A BPMA survey revealed that out of all the promotional products received by the respondents, 12 per cent of them kept a promotional pen for the longest period of time.
An inexpensive advertising tool
Another reason why branded pens are a great way to raise awareness about your company is they are really cost-effective.
BPMA research indicates that the average cost per ‘marketing impression’ for a promotional pen is £0.001 per pen, which is considerably lower than other forms of advertising such as TV or radio adverts. What’s more, the entry point is lower with printed pens – you can order 100 pens for less than £150, which is considerably less than a series of TV adverts!
What is the longest period of time you’ve kept a promotional pen? We’d love to hear your stories below!
March 12, 2012
Filed under: Business Advice — admin @ 10:43 am
As a business owner, you make dozens of decisions each day to get your company in the black or to keep it there. However, one of the most profitable decisions you could ever make is actually green.
The UK government has expressed a goal of making the country’s energy supply at least 15 per cent green by the year 2020. Picking up on that initiative, the most active of the UK’s renewable energy companies, Good Energy, has posed a challenge to take the goal even further and make the UK completely renewable by 2050. Everyone knows that renewable energy is good for the planet, but did you know that going green can also be good for your company? If you’re wondering how, you’ve come to the right place to find out.
Green businesses — What’s the secret?
Contrary to previous times, you don’t need to produce green energy to use it. All you have to do to become green is switch to a renewable energy company, but this simple action can open up a world of opportunities for your business. Here are some of the most striking examples.
1. Reduced overhead costs. When you use green energy with Good Energy, you and your employees are more likely to be more conservative with electricity. This means that you can enjoy the cost savings that come from a reduced energy bill.
2. Improved public image. Simply marketing your relationship with a renewable energy company can attract you more “deep green” customers — those who base purchasing decisions on environmental involvement. This kind of customer is more likely to stick with you for the long haul, which is the kind of audience that any business hopes to target.
3. Happier employees. If you use your switch to renewable energy as a springboard into other environmental practices, such as using all natural cleaning products in the workplace and offering healthier, non-processed food and snacks, your employees will be healthier and more productive. Green offices have been demonstrated to experience less employee sick days than those that are not green.
4. Financial rewards. In addition to saving money, you could also earn more of it simply by going green. In order to meet its goal for 2020, the UK government has implemented tax credits for companies who engage in eco-friendly practices, so your use of green energy could actually garner you a nice financial return.
5. The chance to network. Your relationship with a green energy supplier is just the beginning. Use this as an opportunity to connect with other green vendors for all of your business needs, and you could become a part of a well-respected and quickly growing network of environmentally conscious businesses.
The key to making green energy work for you is to be proactive and strike a balance between the needs of your growing business and the well-being of all of the people involved in making it great. Now that you have all of the details, there’s no reason not to switch today.
Article for goodenergy
February 27, 2012
Filed under: Business Advice — Alan @ 2:30 pm
One in four businesses not equipped to deal with stress
New research has revealed that 25% of businesses don’t offer any kind of counselling to help their employees deal with stress. The results of this latest study, which was commissioned by the PMI Health Group, follows on from the CIPD’s assertion that stress has become the number one cause of long term absence from work.
Mike Blade is the compliance director of the PMI Health Group, and he says that this is clearly a concern for businesses as they try to reduce the amount of staff they have on long term sick leave. He also said that stress is the biggest cause of long term sickness in the UK, so it was vital to take the necessary steps to reduce its effects.
Mr Blade added that when companies employed such services as counselling it was imperative that this was clearly communicated to both line managers and employees, as this made sure the services were accessible when they were needed. He also pointed out that this was the only way to address the problem at source and improve productivity, staff retention, attendance levels and performance.
Stress now accounts for 33 per cent of all long-term absence in non-manual jobs and 21 per cent in manual jobs, while 40 per cent of employers reported a rise in stress-related sick days during 2011.*
There are many tried and tested methods to ensure employees do not feel the strain at work, but here are some of the strangest ways employers around the world have tried to beat stress in the workplace:
• A brewery in Prague offers employees and visitors the chance to soak up their stress by providing a hot beer bath, allowing the beer’s sedating qualities to be absorbed into the blood stream!
• Internet giants Google and Yahoo both offer a massage service by a qualified masseuse whenever their employees are feeling the strain of working for such a high-profile brand.
• The Google office in Zurich has a relaxation room where employees can lie on massage chairs in a darkened room, lit only by an aquarium built into the wall.
• Russians are submerging their anxiety by being buried alive on their lunch break! Therapists insist that rather than causing an asphyxiating feeling, a calming effect is produced with employees left ‘at one with their mind’.
• Animal therapy is a booming business in Tokyo. With the lack of space available for animals, people are turning to hiring out ‘man’s best friend’ by the hour in offices to reduce stress levels. In Russia, one company even has a pet marmoset monkey!
• An American company employs a certified Laughter Yoga teacher to teach employees unconditional laughter with yogic breathing. It increases the amount of oxygen in the body, relieving tension and anxiety.
• A concierge is available at Infogain Corp. to help employees manage their personal life when work is getting too busy and stressful. The system assists in paying bills, travel arrangements and even shopping…
• Proctor and Gamble have installed ‘EnergyPods’ within their offices which allow employees to nap for an optimal time before being gently woken up by vibrations and softly played music – leaving the user reputedly rejuvenated and ready for more work.
• With tables made of hay and decorated as a wheat field, the ‘rustic retreat’ in the TripAdvisor office is a place where employees can go to unwind and escape from their heavy workload. It has proved so successful that another area of the office has now been dressed as a bamboo forest.
• After Milan-based clothing company, Comvert, turned an abandoned cinema into their office, a lot of empty space remained up in the circle area. This was, rather imaginatively, turned into a skatebowl for employees to use whenever they want during the day.
• All the walls in Taiwanese company, IPEVO, are made of dried grass lawns so the office is permeated with the smell of the great outdoors – employers claim that it has made the workplace a lot calmer since the grass was put into place.
For more information, and advice on more conventional ways to help manage stress at work, visit www.hse.gov.uk/stress
February 13, 2012
Filed under: Business Advice — admin @ 9:43 pm
Does this sound like you?
You are running a business and struggling with low growth in your home market and mounting pressure on costs?
Unless you’ve been living in a bubble it can’t have escaped your attention that while the European market has stagnated China continues to boom or that goods for your business can probably be sourced from China at a lower cost than at home
Perhaps you have thought about the potential that China offers, either as new market or to cut your supply costs, but are worried about how to do business over there as an English speaker. You are not alone.
So, do you need to learn Mandarin to do business in China?
The case for learning Mandarin
1. Getting around China more easily
Landing in Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong you can easily be fooled into thinking that you can find you way around relatively easily using the odd English sign and helpful person that you occasionally come across.
It gets a lot harder once you move beyond the comfort of China’s tier 1 cities, and with costs in Beijing and Shanghai now comparable to New York, your best opportunities will be found much further afield where English signs and speakers are extremely rare.
Having a basic ability to read and speak Mandarin will not only make you feel more comfortable, it will also avoid you being over reliant on a translator in front of business partners for basic activities like ordering food and finding the bathroom.
2. Building relationships
More than anywhere, good business deals are based on personal relationships. No-one is going to pretend that you can quickly establish a good relationship with a Chinese business partner through basic Mandarin, but it will give you some level of mutual respect and raise your status with them.
A relationship need not be about language fluency, but about communicating feelings and how each perceives the other’s status. If you always have to interact through a third party, there will always be a barrier.
3. Avoiding basic contract pitfalls
It may come as a surprise but written legal Chinese is relatively easy to comprehend. Many expressions are common across contracts so once you know what to look for, you will be able to make a simple interpretation of a contract.
Without basic Mandarin reading skills you won’t be able to spot if someone has added a clause, missed out two pages or even accidentally sent you the contract for another company.
4. Avoiding bad translations
While you will inevitably need a translator during discussions, it is common for bad translations to change the meaning of a conversation or send the wrong impression when matters get delicate.
Having a working knowledge of Mandarin means you are more likely to be able to catch that bad translation early.
The case against
1. The time needed to learn
It takes longer for a native English speaker to achieve a useful level of Mandarin than it would for a European language like Spanish or French. For most people, time is a rare commodity and it isn’t hard to make an argument to oneself that time would be better invested elsewhere. Then again, the business rewards in China could transform your business or career, so think about the return on your time investment carefully.
2. The depth and breadth needed
Mandarin comes in many dialects. Think of how many different accents in Britain or America can be heard when travelling just a hundred miles. China is much larger, and consequently the language much more diverse.
“Standard Mandarin” is what is officially spoken in Beijing, but the further you stray from Beijing the more the language is mixed with local languages and dialects. Mandarin in Shanghai is generously mixed with Shanghainese. Most people from Beijing struggle to understand those from Hong Kong and Guangdong where the first language remains Cantonese.
You might ask yourself what hope has a foreigner? In a sense though, since Chinese people from Beijing and Hong Kong struggle to communicate well in Mandarin, perhaps the expectation that you will be fluent is lower too.
Our conclusion
There is little doubt that if you go to China to do business you are likely to need a translator whatever your fluency of Mandarin. You might ask yourself in that case, why bother?
However for the reasons outlined, if you want to establish a good business relationship that can deal with the rough as well as the smooth, and avoid basic embarrassing pitfalls, you have to invest time learning Mandarin.
The anecdotal evidence is clear too. Those people that have an enduring and mutually successful business relationship with the Chinese, also have some knowledge of Mandarin.
The post was written by Richard Blundell, editor of Asian Business Daily, an online news site for people doing business with Asia.
February 8, 2012
Filed under: Business Advice,Employees,Legal — admin @ 5:02 pm
A self-employed scaffolder from Hastings has been prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive because he was deemed to be a danger to himself and others.
Gareth Roser was working on a building in Hastings on the 14th October 2010 when a passer-by, who happened to be an inspector for the Health and Safety Executive, noticed that the scaffolder was not adhering to laws pertaining to work at height.
Mr Roser was seen balancing on scaffolding tubes approximately eight metres in the air without using a safety harness despite the fact that harnesses were readily available on-site. Considering that falls from height result in around 4,000 workers suffering accident at work injuries in the UK each year, the Health and Safety Executive inspector was quick to point out Mr Roser’s error.
At Hastings Magistrates’ Court, Mr Roser was fined £750 and ordered to pay costs of £643 after pleading guilty to breaching Regulation 4(1) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005, which states: “Every employer shall ensure that work at height is (a) properly planned; (b) appropriately supervised and (c) carried out in a manner which is so far as is reasonably practicable, safe.”
Contractors Giant Scaffolding Limited, of Battle, admitted breaching the same provision and also pleaded guilty to breaching Section 20(2)(j) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. Giant Scaffolding Limited was fined £15,000 and ordered to pay £5,000 in costs. Personal injury claims involving falls from height are nearly as common as whiplash claims in the UK
After the court hearing, Melvyn Stancliffe, an inspector for the Health and Safety Executive, said: “The simple measure of wearing a harness can save scaffolders from death or serious injury. A basic common sense approach to work is all that’s needed to prevent a possible tragedy.”
Mr Stancliffe added: “In many cases, harnesses are available but some workmen just cannot be bothered to wear them. They should take a moment to think about the consequences. It was reckless for Mr Roser to be working in this way. He was exposing himself and members of the public walking below to unnecessary risk. He was seen working in 2008 in similar circumstances and was warned about his future conduct.
“Giant Scaffolding Limited has also been warned about the dangerous working practices of those working for it. These prosecutions show that HSE will not tolerate poor working practices and will take firm action against individuals and contractors who ignore their health and safety obligations.”
February 4, 2012
Filed under: Business Advice,Small Business News — Alan @ 4:43 pm
Small businesses in the UK are going to get a helping hand, or rather a pair of them, as Lloyd’s Banking Group and the SSE (School for Social Entrepreneurs) team up to provide financial, educational and practical support for new businesses that focus on the community.
The initiative is designed to promote the social entrepreneur, defined as someone who comes up with a viable commercial approach to a particular social problem or need. That might be in the voluntary sector, or ethical businesses, social enterprises or the government or public sectors; the idea is they will be helping to improve the quality of life whilst creating jobs in local communities.
The SSE was founded in 1997 by Michael Young, a social activist from Manchester who was also a co-founder of Open University, Which? And the Consumers Association. According to an evaluation by thinktank New Philanthropy Capital, and based on the results of previous SSE programmes, the new partnership has the potential to create 2,500 new jobs and £11m in local income and revenues.
Lloyds Banking Group Social Entrepreneurs programme is set to commence in April 2012, with the goal of helping around 500 new businesses to start up and get running successfully. This will be accomplished with a combination of bank financing in the form of grants from £4,000 to £25,000 and SSE’s innovative business courses.
Since 1997, the SSE has recorded a survival rate 20% higher for new businesses supported by its programmes than have been seen in traditional start-ups. SSE is geared towards entrepreneurs who are attempting to address issues within their own communities with the businesses they create, and that is the path to economic recovery. Alastair Wilson, CEO of the School for Social Entrepreneurs, says that “. . .growth . . . will come from people working locally”; and it seems to be working.
The commitment from Lloyds Banking Group will be a great asset to these young enterprises, and Paul Turner, Community and Sustainable Business director for Lloyds, said, “SSE’s track record made them a partner of choice and we are incredibly proud to be able to support them in this way.”
The NPC evaluation reported that businesses started up by SSE fellows, on average, hired two employees full time plus three part-time workers. Those operations, as a whole, are benefiting around 80,000 people in a range from young children to the elderly and those physically and/or otherwise disadvantaged.
Over the next five years, Lloyds Banking Group Social Entrepreneurs will be supporting businesses like the SOS Gangs Project started up by Junior Smart, a former criminal. His business is now an award-winning organisation that helps young offenders to get their lives back on track.
Another example is The Brink, founded by SSE participant Jacquie Johnston Lynch, who said that SSE offered a crucial boost to the enterprise. The Brink is a non-alcoholic bar in Liverpool that in turn offers help to people recovering from alcohol and drug addictions. This business, like hundreds of others, will positively affect the lives of a wide range of people in a variety of ways.
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