Category: Columns

When booking training for your organisation, what is it you are looking for? Competitive pricing, fulfilling a real need to boost staff skills, post course follow up, filling in the training requirements for your company? There are various reasons I’ve heard over the years from clients booking courses but it’s time to establish the real deal.

I nearly choked on my tea when I read a twitter link to a Daily Mail article about 64% of workers booking holidays online do so from their desks. How dare they even think it let alone actually do it. Apparently it is down to Monday Blues and in particular the Monday when everyone returns after the Christmas break.
Surely I am not the only person who finds it truly astonishing to think that employees, whilst supposedly working to earn the money to pay for their holidays, think it’s their right to do this without any recourse what so ever.

New year, new decade and so double the incentive to start 2010 with a clear vision and set of objectives for the next 12 months.

It seems that the competition between major airline operators is intensifying, perhaps as a result of losses sustained in the recession, and standards of comfort and convenience for customers are improving as a result.

As a new trading year approaches, it is going to be more important than ever for you and your business to be remembered by your customers for as long as possible. If you want to survive the coming months, remember that the key to REAL thought leadership is about how long you stay in people’s minds.

From 28th December 2009, a new regulation affecting almost every small service business in the country, from accountants to gardeners, will come into force, but many don’t even know about it yet…

As businesses tighten their belt in a recession, the need for properly documented contracts is even more important than usual– it is well known that disputes increase when money is tight, and if you are doing business without proper contracts, you are at risk.

Last night I, on behalf of Smarta, got my first close-hand look at Baron Alan Sugar of Clapton since he controversially assumed the position of ‘Enterprise Tsar’ – a title he rejects.

The recent strike action over pay and jobs at the Royal Mail is likely to cost the economy over £1 billion and many smaller businesses will bear the brunt.

The reason for the dispute centres on a pay and flexible working deal made in 2007, and which has since unraveled. The union wants reassurances over job security while the Royal Mail wants more flexible hours alongside more automated processes.