Business strategy models can be put in place to prevent employee absence, as Matthew Haswell discusses in this TV show.

Absence prevention business strategy models

Well the first side, the first thing to do is try and import procedures that are actually going to prevent absence in the first place. Now that doesn’t necessarily relate to immediately spending money, that can be a kind of training and an approach basis. A lot of sickness is recurring, getting to the background of why that sickness is occurring, getting managers to be able to talk to their staff about sickness and absence and looking at patterns, the way sickness is recorded can actually throw up into light certain patterns of illness, it may be from a certain department has reoccurring illnesses, it may even be within a department those under a particular manager have certain recurring absences. That’s something that isn’t exactly a huge cost but it is just a procedural change. And also the culture and value system of the employer has a relation between that and sickness absence. Inside Finance is very interested in innovative business strategy models and will continue to bring you expert discussion on the subject.

Business communication methods within a family business are affected by very different circumstances to, say, a professional firm. In this TV show Charles Gowlland of Smith & Williamson discusses family meetings & the next generation.

Business communication methods in families

Another aspect that we thought was very interesting in the survey was the attitude to the degree of formality that family communications, family meetings had. We were surprised at the number of people who didn’t have regular meetings. Only about three quarters of the respondents had regular meetings. For our clients with whom we’re involved we always try to be mindful that some degree of formality is needed. Family education after all and family communication is a mixture of the formal and the informal. So the formal would usually take place in the form of a family meeting, typically annually but sometimes quarterly or semi-annually as well and the split between those three was roughly equal. But as I say about a quarter of the respondents didn’t have any meetings at all and generally the reason behind that was that most of them would have had minor children and so it wasn’t necessarily appropriate to have meetings with other members of the family, although it might have been with advisors. Equally and probably the other main surprising statistic to come out of the survey was the fact that a good number of the respondents felt that it was important for their children to have greater expertise in managing money and they were worried about whether their children had the right skills to cope with managing the family money and again about a quarter of the respondents felt into that category.

Inside Finance TV will continue to share examples of business communications methods across industries.

Social media policy should extend outside the marketing department, as Bob Barker explains in this TV show.

Social media policy - Companies need to leverage their employees.

So companies are just waking up to the fact that they need to leverage their employees.

There’s a terminology that says marketing is far too important to be left to the marketing department, and that is the terminology that’s becoming true now with social media.

So if you just do push only marketing you’re not you know, you’re back to your 2% response or less, or if you’ve just got that mind-set that is, it works but it’s not terribly efficient and people don’t trust that marketing anymore.

So what companies are beginning to realise is that the that sales people and individuals in the company represent a really good way of getting their content out there, the important content that people need to engage with, particularly in the business to business area.

And so people are beginning to realise that if their sales people and their key executives aren’t good online they need to do something about that because if they haven’t got.  For example, if they’ve got ten people on LinkedIn and they’ve got no picture of them.

They  may be brilliant, but anyone of a younger generation is gonna look them up and think well, I don’t want anything to do with them. They obviously don’t understand this new world.

So there’s the companies beginning to realise that. LinkedIn has gained huge momentum the last few years as a defacto platform for people connecting in business.

So companies are beginning to realise the power of LinkedIn, companies are beginning to realise the power of content and getting people to share that content through social channels.

And it’s very important that individuals are used to share that content. It’s much more easy these days.

You’ve got these share buttons on the bottom of all the content. But even people knowing that they can just click on that content and it will share it, people generally don’t know that.

So there is a big opportunity to educate people who haven’t had that education because nobody told you how to use a PC, nobody told you how to use social media to get that education and help the firm do its marketing.

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Inside Finance will have more TV shows about social media policy, usage and trends. Why not bookmark the page?

Progressive technology has allowed people to stay connected wherever they are. Stuff TV's Lucy Hedges discusses the Tablet.

Progressive technology from Apple

Well lets think about 5 or 6 years ago. Smart phones were good but they weren't incredible, which is what you're seeing now. Tablet was almost a foreign term. We had PDAs, we had Netbooks, so miniature laptops, but we didn't necessarily have this rectangle. This little slate that we can fling in our bags its effortless use, its effortless to carry around. That's what we've got now. We've progressed to a level, mainly bolstered by Apple and the iPad. Its completely carved out an entirely new category that's enabling us to get the most out of consumption on the move, be it retail, multimedia, general information or work based stuff. It's allowing us to, with a simple tap and a swipe, have access to online tools, emails and web-browsing. It's great for productivity. There's so much you can do now, and that's partly or mainly down to all of these new gadgets. _______________________________________________________________________________________Progressive technology and digital connectivity have huge implications for business and Inside Finance TV will continue to follow the effects.

Business growth strategy at Google involves developing social platforms alongside existing search functions. Nigel Huddleston explains:

Business growth strategy from Nigel Huddleston

We know that social is really important in travel. We can see from user behaviour that people do actually listen to and act upon the recommendations of people they in particular trust, but even people that they don’t know. So social’s huge, you know, people are actually changing hotels that they choose, they’re even changing which country they’re going to go on holiday based on these kind of social recommendations. So Google’s investing very heavily in it at the moment with Google Plus. But one of the key things there is, it’s not just a standalone, we’re trying to amalgamate it and bring it together with search, so it’s bringing together search and social in a really powerful way. There is more expert discussion about business growth strategy on Inside Finance TV.    

Business communication methods can be approached with a process.  Bob Barker takes us through the journey:

Business communication methods need adapting on several levels

We look at a journey that all companies have got to go on. So at the first level they need to understand, they need to think about the internet, they need to think how the internet works, so there’s a cultural thing. They need to start understanding that the digital world is going to impact them and it’s going to affect their culture, it’s going to affect how they do business. They’ve then got to have a look at how they operate online. So Cloud is really affecting the cost of IT, it’s affecting the capability of IT, you know, sensors that are providing data. There’s a whole sort of revolution there. Then there’s a revolution in the way you collaborate, so how you operate internally. There are lots of these systems that now help us to operate much more collaboratively within the company. People need to look at that area too and how they might use technology to cut down the amount of email people use and to do more video conferencing and all that kind of stuff, and use collaborative applications. Then we get into marketing, which is where we’re trying to use content and trying to get inbound marketing because people are interested in the people that are in your organisation and the content that you’ve got. So you’re trying to attract people inbound. And then finally there’s the area of community, so the new way of leading is forming around community as you know. Based on your own contact as individual because people are following you because you’re well known about what you do, or because the organisation has built a community and you’re trying to get people to join that community and become part of that community, and you’re trying to nurture those people in there. And they will do the marketing for you, and there's examples of people doing the servicing for you, and you’re trying to create a community around what you do. That’s a whole journey that companies have got to go on and it takes time. Hear more about business communication methods onInside Finance TV, where we also have more from Bob Barker.  

Geo-targeting is a stronger marketing strategy than ever before. Nigel Huddleston discusses how the hospitality sector is personalising offers.

Geo-targeting advances with technology

We’re in a really exciting phase of the hospitality sector when it comes to technology and the use of the mobile devices. There’s a whole host of opportunities that weren’t there before in terms of getting your messages out to the consumer. You can know for example if somebody’s getting off a plane at say Heathrow Airport. We can now target them and know that they’re at Heathrow Airport. We can probably put an offer to them that’s very relevant, you know, discount, 30% off for the hotel that’s just three miles away. So really using that geo-targeting in a way that was never possible before. We will be sharing more ideas about geo-targeting and marketing strategies on Inside Finance.

In our connected economy it is important for businesses to be social. Google has increased its connectivity with Google Plus, as Bob Barker discusses: So Google is beginning to go social itself. Its Google plus network is only two years old and it’s still working out how best to use that glue. But what they’ve done, if you look at the bar that Google has, when you look at the Google bar, the plus bar is right at the far left. It’s the first thing on the menu. It’s before search. So they see social as very, very important. The thing that Google Plus does, is it gives people an identity within the Google world and it allows people to share content within the Google world, and it allows people to connect with people in the Google world, and they’ve got a real tight integration with everything else that they do. So within Google Plus you have circles of friends. So they’ve been really thinking through how do you operate in the social world. So you can have circles of friends and those circles of friends can also reflect in your Google Mail, so if you want to look at, if you have a particular set of friends you can sort your email by those friends. They also have a free communities application, you can set up communities within that social area, so they’re bringing more and more functionality out. They’ve got hang outs, which is the video conferencing and it’s all integrated into every bit of the system.  So it becomes easier and easier and more integrated to use. So they’re putting a lot of time and effort into this and it’s early days with it, and people are beginning to go onto Google Plus more, because ultimate with all that effort, it’s collating all that content and it’s giving you better search results because it’s part of Google. So if you like, when you’ve used Google Plus and you put content on Google Plus, and you know You Tube is integrated with it too. It’s all that time giving you higher and higher potential to get higher search rankings and being found and being understood is what it’s all about.

In the connected economy online communities continue to grow.

Inside Finance TV will be following ideas about the connected economy and will have more videos from Bob Barker.

Graeme Codrington discusses his use of social media and why Facebook for CEOs is a great way of keeping in touch with the world while travelling:

All my friends and family are on Facebook.  But pretty much anybody and any audience who wants to connect with me can.

I once hit the 5,000 friend limit and then went through and did a massive purge and dropped it down to three and it’s now drifting up over four again.

So when you hit that 5,000 limit you maybe have to think differently.

But for me, Facebook is a place where people can get to know me, me as a person.  And I think some CEOs, some business leaders are starting to see the benefit in doing this as well, in just making yourself accessible.

I’m passionate about cricket and most other sports, but cricket in particular.

I am passionate about my family.  I enjoy travel, although I hate travelling, if you can see the distinction between those two things.

And for me, I just thought, well Facebook is the opportunity for me to just let that all hang out.

In the same step as I’m travelling, as I’m with my family, as I’m watching sport, as I’m engaging with my clients, I’m getting a sense of what’s changing in the world.

Facebook for CEOs is a great way to stay in touch with the world.

Inside Finance will continue to look at the uses of Facebook for CEOs and we will have more videos from Graeme Codrington.

 

 

When parties are involved in litigation, each party has an obligation to disclose the documents of relevance to the case.  And whether those documents are good for their side or bad, and so with each firm of any size now, having huge amounts of information it’s important to be able to easily digest that information and sift it for relevance to a particular matter.

It’s gone an incredible distance.

There are two types of reviews really, one is a traditional linear review where the lawyers and the clients will look at the documents and read the documents themselves and use their own eyes and understanding to make a categorisation of a particular email etc.

And they will sift those down by using keywords and date range parameters and so forth.

The big steps now are that computers are making those decisions for them, sometimes more successfully than others.

 

I don’t think it’s way too complex, I think it’s way too fast. You know, I was talking to a senior partner from an accounting firm now long since retired who was reminiscing about how he used to get instructions by letter. And you know, you’d get round to implementing them, whereas of course now it’s, you know, microseconds basically and it’s Twitter and it’s email and it’s everything, so it’s instant. The trouble is that because people can communicate instantly, they expect instant replies. And I think we’re in danger of doing everything too fast and not doing everything sensibly. You know, I think the hardest thing in business now is to find time to think, find time to stand back and give yourself space and not to react immediately, not to follow the crowd, just to stay calm and so, you know, most of what happens can be ignored. And that’s a very courageous thing to do, but I think that’s probably the most sensible thing that most people can do. Most news is noise, ignore it.

Cyber space is about the virtual world, it’s about the world of the internet, it’s about the world of soft intelligence and all the other intangibles which are not part of the fixed assets of an organisation. Cyber risk is the risk that those assets in cyber space are going to be manipulated or misused. Cyber crime is the use of those assets in cyber space by criminal activity. Cyber terrorism is the use of those assets in cyber space by terrorists. What we’re looking at is a very significant issue that increasingly our assets are invested in cyber space. How do we protect those assets from criminals, from terrorists and from any other people who want to misuse those assets for a purpose other than that which they were intended?

if you’re better governed you become more efficient. Secondly, that once you’re better governed and you’ve got all of those systems into place, that you are enjoying stronger stakeholder support for what you’re seeking to achieve, and that’s very important. But that said, we are acknowledged globally as one of the leaders, one of the proponents of good practice, governance. And that’s good feedback for us because we want to know that we are getting somewhere. However we still continue to encounter organisational collapse. We still continue to encounter cases of value destruction. And that tells us that we can’t be complacent about the systems we are putting into place. But certainly as far as the financial sector is concerned, despite the fact that we’ve had a double recession and people even talking about a third recession after that, most of our corporate world have survived intact and continues to perform well. And we will put that down to the fact that our companies are well run and well governed.

Cyber risk has become hugely topical now really because governments are starting to understand the importance of it. Someone said to me recently there are only two types of companies, those who know that they’ve had a cyber attack and those that don’t. But everybody’s had them in some form or other. It has become a very important to governments, including the UK government and it really needs to now come onto the agenda of boards. Boards need to be looking at it but it’s not just an IT issue. People have thought about it as an IT issue having a cyber attack. But it’s much more complex now and the old idea of corporate espionage, for want of a better term has moved into this space. Companies are very much at risk now of having their information stolen effectively, and that can be corporate secrets of any kind. So the risks are much higher than they ever were, and it’s not just corporates, we see it in other areas such as the forces, the concerns are growing there. But it’s certainly raising … the profiling of this is growing. It’s becoming more and more important and government is certainly concerned that this is where everybody’s at risk.

I’m not an IT expert. But there are certainly small changes that companies can do and there are specialist organisations out there that can help them to do that. There are a number of small changes companies can make that will effectively stop 80% of them. And that is an incredibly cost effective way to go. You can never stop it completely. The world of IT is such as we all know with computer viruses, as soon as you close one loophole or close one avenue then another one opens. So this is an ongoing struggle. People who are working in this area are developing new ways all the time. And like I say, sort of 80% of it can be dealt with in a very cost effective way which leaves you 20% exposed, which is probably always going to be the case. What is being stolen from companies can be as serious as their future strategy, detail, you know, through details of their customer base, all that kind of intelligence that is so important to companies in this competitive environment. If a competitor can get hold of it then obviously that’s very damaging for a company. But we’re not talking about competitors within the UK, this is a worldwide problem and the most cyber attacks are coming from overseas.

Peter Maher: "There is a degree of some of these benefits that are compulsory, for example, coming up very shortly and for the bigger employees it’s already started, the idea of auto-enrolment meaning employees must be enrolled in a pension plan whether they like it or not.  And employers and employees must contribute to that plan, whether they like it or like it not.  But, you know, the bigger picture for the more serious employer, if we can say that, is it’s attraction and retention of staff, you know, how many people are now more aware of everything other or rather than just their salary? It’s the bigger picture, what else do I get?  And as a consequence of which we look at total reward rather than just salary these days."

Inez Anderson: "I think there’s a need to speak to employees as part of the whole process.  If you’re doing anything with employees reward, you’ve got to talk to employees and get some input and not just, I think, impose it on them.  The second is that once that it has been done and the decisions have been made is making sure there’s still that communication process.  And I think employers can go to the...just asking for feedback or if it’s a large enough workforce is making availability sort of for online surveys every year, just asking people, “You know, we’ve done this, what do you think of it?  What more would you like?”  And that I can see is really quite important because if an employer has spent some time, effort, money in putting something in place I don’t think you can just stop it and say, “I’ve done it.”  You want to keep it fresh. You want to keep getting that input.  So communicating and asking for the feedback from employees is really important."