Olympic headache – or chance to engage staff?

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Barry Harvey

This is a guest post from 3103 HR – The people change specialists providing measurable value to clients through effective talent management.

2012 is a big year for events – the Queen’s Jubilee, Shakespeare, the sinking of the Titanic. England’s success at football’s Euro2012? We live in hope!

Of course, most employers are used to managing employee expectations, shall we call it, when it comes to allowing time off for football’s World Cup. And let’s face it, there is a huge amount of interest and good will that is achieved when employers take a flexible approach. Even those employees who do not like soccer appreciate – in my experience – the more relaxed atmosphere that such sporting events create, e.g. the chance of winning the office sweep stake.

The Olympics though create a different challenge for employers… but a great opportunity too. Whatever your attitude to sport, surely it is a chance to get your employees more engaged in the company and create a better working atmosphere – and some fun?

Olympic headache – or chance to engage staff?

There is a lot out there on the web on what employers and employees need to know about the Olympics. Employees will fall into two categories, namely: those who plan to take time off during the Games because they are either a spectator, or a volunteer if they have been lucky enough to be selected as a Games Maker, OR those who have no plans to take time off during the Games but may either: hope to watch some TV or internet coverage while at work or may wish to discuss some sort of temporary flexible working arrangement.

All of this means that you need to be aware of the impact it will have on your business for the two weeks in August but also on your staff. Do you have a policy or an approach that is understood by staff on access to internet, social media and so on? It is more likely now that employees will access events via internet feeds and smart phones and have Twitter / Facebook data sent to them. No different to what occurs now? Maybe so, but with such an event and general interest – every day for two weeks, rather than for 90 minutes every five or six days in the World Cup – the chances for business interruption and staff discontent increase!

And of course, the non-sporty employees may well be annoyed with all the fuss and any perceived favouritism shown to those with sporting interests. Equally, the event comes right in the middle of the school holidays!!

So – as an employer, how are you going to manage attendance, ensure you can still work flexibly, manage business performance or handle volunteers?

What plans do you have for your employees for the Olympics … will you bury your head in the sand, or treat it as a chance to get your staff over the finish line? Call us to discuss your questions and how we can help you get a Gold Medal from all your staff.

John Hepworth
3103HR Hub Associate
0844 579 3103

3103 HR Insights

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Do you know what you don’t know?

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Barry Harvey

Training is a commitment in terms of both time and money, which means it can easily be seen as a negative.

However, if we don’t spend time learning, acquiring new knowledge and ideas and feeding our brain, we tend to gat stuck in one mindset.

If this mindset says that we know all we need to know about a given subject, it is unlikely we will seek any further information. We will remain ignorant of developments in technology, regulation and environmental issues that may well affect our business.

When you know you are lacking information, you can decide that a) you don’t need that info, or b) that you do and will take action to learn.

If you only think you know what information you lack, then you can miss something that could be very important to you.

This happened to me only last night.

I thought I knew what I did and did not know about social media monitoring, but I had a rude awakening during a seminar on that very subject held here at the Colston Office Centre yesterday.

The seminar was given by Nigel Legg of Churnbar – they have developed monitoring models for social media activity to measure sentiment, brand references and social media engagement.

Now I use Hootsuite (albeit infrequently ) and Google Alerts (which come in daily). Both of these are free, as is Social Mention, Tweet Deck and Social Media Analysis. Two out of the last three, I had not heard of, but I did know there were more around – so I knew what I didn’t know.

However, the revelation for me was the different types of analysis between the free and paid-for versions. One assumes that paid for is just a bit more focussed and bespoke version of the freebies. But there is more to it than that.

The free sites don’t use anything like the sophisticated algorithms and checks that the paid-for models use. They are also less likely to be updated as frequently.

So what do the paid-for’s give you? For a start, much more work will be done to hone in on really accurate keywords for your business and these would be developed over time. With the free sites, there is no help. You just put in what you think is right.

Secondly, part of the initial sifting is also done by hand – the process is not entirely automated. This is because, in order to properly qualify the various mentions, context is important.

Say someone says ‘I like the new HTC phone, it is brilliant’? The meaning here is pretty clear.

What if they said ‘I like the new HTC, but it is not as good as the iPhone’? This would be counted as positive, even though it is qualified.

What about ‘I don’t like the new HTC, but it is better than anything else on the market’? This is a negative, but again, qualified.

And finally ‘I hate the new HTC because I can’t have it yet – I’m still in contract on my old phone’. This would read as negative, when in fact it is a positive.

Only an element of manual sifting would have any chance of returning an accurate measurement of sentiment. Of course, you can sit at your desk all day monitoring every blog, tweet or status update yourself. This would be the most accurate method, assuming you could find every comment, though highly impractical.

So that is what I didn’t know I didn’t know.

Because I was co-hosting the event, I sat down to listen. But had the event been somewhere else, I would not have thought I needed to attend. How wrong can you be?

Now I know I need to avail myself of Nigel’s services.

Training and education is important for all sorts of reasons: because it broadens our horizons, makes us more effective and increases productivity, it increases our worth and prospects. It also helps us identify the areas we need to improve and which can move our business forward; it helps us identify what we don’t know.

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We are not at war with Eurasia – we have never been at war with Eurasia.

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Barry Harvey

With apologies to George Orwell – if you change the story and enough people believe it, can it become the truth? Can we ignore the latest ONS figures?

OK, so technically we are in recession. It is not what I was expecting and I know one or two others also see this as something of a surprise.

However, despite the government cleverly doubling sales of petrol in March*, and despite the spell of good weather increasing sales of summer clothing, and despite business confidence increasing this year, we have a double dip.

So how much is perception and how much reality?

Obviously, there were a few problems that sparked all this off: Robert Peston appeared to create a self-fulfilling prophecy for Northern Rock by telling people to queue round the block and take their money out; then the law of gravity suddenly woke up to the fact that many in the finance industry were building large and weighty products on a foundation of thin air; then Pareto’s Law dictated that 80% of the Eurozone were fiddling while only 20% were burning the midnight oil to actually produce anything of worth.

Have I missed anything out?

Now, there is no question that very real problems exist, but surely a large part of any recession is loss of confidence. Unlike our wonderful governments, we have to worry about things like jobs, mortgages, savings and where the next order is coming from.

This leads people and businesses to cut costs, hoard what money they have and reassess their plans for growth. Which, of course, though understandable and often necessary behaviour, makes things worse.

Not only are these problems real, but there could be more to come from the Eurozone. Not to mention unemployment, the struggling construction industry, rising petrol prices and inflation generally – which may well put pressure on interest rates. Nevertheless, we could have been forgiven for thinking things were getting better.

I do not accept this recession

One answer might be to focus on the positive and encouraging signs. We have been rubbing along the bottom for a while now and, arguably, should not let a few tenth of one percentage points either way steer us from, albeit slow, recovery. There are too many exciting things happening, too many innovators and too many highly skilled people around for us not to believe and invest in the future.

I see companies in Bristol leading the way in cutting edge technology, evidence in my own building of successful product innovation and manufacturing and businesses getting to grips with their marketing to push forward. Not to mention numerous events, well attended by people eager to keep updated and network with their peers – last nights’ Tech Talks was a case in point.

Unlike Big Brother, I cannot say we were never in recession. But, if I want to believe it, I can say we are not are not in recession now.

 

What do you think? What influence can psychology have on reality?

 

*This time I think the conspiracy theorists must be right: this was a deliberate and ingenious ploy by the government to increase retail sales in first quarter to help avoid the double dip. I mean the alternative explanation is stupidity from our government ministers – which surely cannot be true.

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The benefits of working at home

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Barry Harvey

Working from home is a luxury that many people would relish and there is no doubt it has many benefits

Life-work balance

We will ignore for now this appalling phrase – of course work is part of life – but you know what I mean.

All of a sudden you have flexibility. Want to enjoy an afternoon in the rare English sun? Just get up earlier or put in a quick hour before you go to bed. Want to take the kids to school or pick them up? No problem.

You set your own hours – no-one breathing down your neck. In fact many studies have shown that home-workers are more productive than their office-based counterparts – they provide their own pressure to perform.

You can also integrate private and professional, without compromising your work – keep up with your social networks, organise domestic stuff, be around for deliveries, the plumber, etc.

And, of course, it has been scientifically proven that an afternoon nap can increase productivity – with no-one watching over you, you can conduct your own research.

No commuting

Home-working saves an awful lot of time and hassle in commuting – this alone could make you more productive, by saving a couple of hours a day. Not to mention the savings in petrol or fares.

Plus, you save on the stress of traffic jams, waiting in the rain for buses or wondering what variety of leaf/snow/rain will delay the train today.

Create your own environment

You also get to create the best working environment for you. Do you like music or radio in the background? Some people like the television on apparently. Maybe you like working in a more personalised environment – surrounded by the art you like, photos, furnishings, etc. that make it feel more comfortable.

Lighting to suit, with plenty of daylight, and the ability to walk around in peace – into the kitchen, garden, etc – are all things that help create the best environment for you rather than a homogenous one designed to the lowest common denominator.

How to make the best of your environment

Of course, this is a somewhat idealised picture, and there is no doubt that working at home has some problems, like isolation, discipline and distractions.

However, here are a few tips to help combat them.

- Try and introduce some discipline like getting up at a certain time, showering before you go into the ‘office’, setting the hours you will work.

- make sure you have a separate space to work in, preferably a separate room, but at least a cordoned/screened area

- ensure you do not get interruptions during the times you have set aside for working – with a partner and/or children at home, this can be difficult, but the discipline that you are working has to come from those around you as well as yourself.

- think about health and safety – now don’t run off scared. I am just talking about an ergonomic set-up with desk, chair, keyboard and screen; make sure you have space around you and that filing is easy to get to and you don’t have miles of cable across the floor; and that you rest regularly away from the screen.

And if you think heath and safety has gone too far and a whole load of fuss over nothing, you may be right. However, just bear in mind that in Britain, twenty people die every year just getting out of bed!

Professional Services

In addition, if you feel that you need back up, there are a whole range of services available to help. If you are employed, your company will obviously have this set up. If not, there are a variety of services available to help.

Cloud services will take care of documentation, email and web hosting, software for accounting, CRM, time management, etc. Unsurprisingly, use of cloud computing is on the rise in the South West.

Your local Business Centre can provide virtual office services to improve efficiency and credibility, secretarial and support services to save on time and staff, as well as meeting rooms, hot desks and other touch-down solutions.

And there are numerous resources like Business West, Business Link, IOF, FSB, etc. Follow this link for a whole range of, mostly free, business resources.

 

 

 

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Maths for Marketing – Not a sexy title?

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Barry Harvey

All human activity that requires quantifiable knowledge uses mathematical tools to generate understanding. Marketing is no different.

Increasingly, data is available that can be analysed for marketing purposes and used for business applications, to help in areas like market research, brand sentiment and customer profiling.

Market Research

Market research has always involved mathematics in terms of collecting data and analysing for trends, characteristics and shares and forecasting. Modern technology, however, makes this both easier and more complicated.

On the one hand, we can monitor our Twitter stream and subscribe to Google Alerts easily enough. It will give us a lot of information, though we may not get a full picture. On the other, analytics can give us chapter and verse, but it is increasingly complicated and specialist and requires a more mathematical focus.

Below is a link to an example of measuring sentiment between Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda on the run up to Christmas. Churnbar, a Bristol based Social Media Monitoring company, used their specialist modelling system in an experiment to show what can be achieved.

Churnbar Social Media Monitoring – Supermarket Comparative

Statistics in Marketing

Mark Schaeffer, a marketing and social media consultant, believes ‘We are entering the era of big data where marketing…will be ruled by math’. In his article, ‘Three careers that will dominate Social Media…’ he states that ‘Marketing success will come to those who will be able to tease the most insight from data…

Mark Schaeffer – Three careers that will dominate social media

When we start looking at Google Analytics, PPC, SEO, website ranking, etc., what we are seeing are programmes interpreting vast amounts of data and providing numbers, times, activity and behaviour.

This is the commodity the web deals in. This is the information that Google and Facebook use to sell their advertising. And this is what leads to you being better informed about your market, your customers and, ultimately, your business.

So, this is online media. It is not enough to have a profile and engage. You need to understand the effect you have on your market and vice versa. ‘Maths for Marketing’ may not be sexy… but it is the future.

Seminar

It just so happens that Churnbar is running a seminar at the Colston Office Centre on this very subject: Maths for Marketing – click on the link to find out what the numbers mean to your business.

 

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The Flexibility of Modern Work Space

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Barry Harvey

Time was, everyone had an office and worked there nine to five. Even sales people, who were travelling,came back to the office. Not many people worked from home.

Nowadays, what is normal? I guesss the majority still work from an office, but the dramatic swing away from this ‘norm’ shows little sign of slowing.

More people work from home, have flexible hours, work on the move, hot-desk, share space and however many other variations on a theme.

Business Centres

This is where Business Centres can play a major part. There are around 2,000 spread across the country and you can work for an hour, a day or so many days a week, with a workstation, Wi-Fi and your laptop and mobile.

You can hot-desk, rent shared space, meeting rooms, use their Wi-Fi, secretarial services, fax, photocopier, whatever you need.

So, if you are always on the move or have only temporary, part-time or ocassional requirements for work space; if you need a break from the distractions of working from home; if you are fed up with crowded, public and noisy cafe’s, then a Business Centre could be your answer.

The Cloud

Of course, the Centre’s are not single-handedly responsible for this change; they have just taken advantage of the situation.

The real change is in the technology. Cloud computing and mobile technology has meant it is now much easier to work on the move: remote software and data access; internet access via wireless and mobile networks; and email communication.

Your Office is where you are

So if you are often on the move, self-employed, setting up a new company or working on temporary contracts or projects, the flexibility of the Business Centre and the latest technology work well together to give you a business base, wherever you are.

Find out more about a hot-desk at the Colston Office Centre.

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Are your prices fair?

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Barry Harvey

There are numerous factors involved in setting prices: costs (obviously), value, supply and demand, competition, scarcity, branding, etc.

And whichever method you use to determine the final price – cost plus, marginal, market-based, value – what you end up with speaks volumes about your business.

Not just in terms of how profitable you are, or where you stand in relation to your competition, but how you are perceived by your customers and prospects. Are you seen as cheap, average, expensive, fair? And is this perception what you were aiming for? Does your audience think about price at all in relation to your product?

Removing price from the equation

It is a sound business goal to take price out of the equation in terms of the customer buying decision, but for most of us, this goal seems a long way off.

In the current economic climate, this seems especially difficult and it leaves us having to worry about price more than we want to. What will our customers pay? Should we start higher so that they can negotiate us down? How can we position ourselves – what value can we add – to reduce the importance of the price?

When it doesn’t work

It seems important to me at the moment for two reasons.

The first is an experience I had last weekend. We went to see Top Hat at the Bristol Hippodrome. We love the theatre and happily pay ticket prices because we feel they represent good value.

When going to see a play/show/concert, as a customer you have to cover the cost of putting on the show as well as the cost of the existence of the venue to facilitate the production. Top Hat was brilliant and we had no qualms about the ticket price.

Don’t get me wrong, it is an expensive hobby and we cannot afford to go as often as we would like, but we feel the exchange is fair.

However, it was a different story when we went to the bar. The receipt is sitting on the desk as I write this and just looking at it gets me agitated. All the prices were top end, but the piece de resistance was a medium glass of house wine (175ml, so four to a bottle) at £5.70.

Now the Hippodrome is a wonderful place and requires a great deal of upkeep and I know I am going to pay a lot for a drink or bag of sweets. This price, however, just seemed wrong: disproportionate and not relative to the actual product – the wine was not that great.

Value for money

Given that I have paid £80.00 for a bottle of wine in a restaurant before now (admittedly, not often), I don’t think I can be called stingy. But on those occasions it was for a reason – a celebration, I valued the wine I had chosen and the taste and experience matched the expectation.

The purchase at the Hippodrome was a shock, however, and it resonated. The upshot is that we will never buy drinks at the Hippodrome again. In future we will probably bring our own water and sweets (and maybe a hip flask).

It doesn’t really matter whether or not the Hippodrome can justify the price. What matters is that it doesn’t feel right to me.

The damage done

So what is the hippodrome’s strategy? Are they banking on a captive audience? Is that the price they need to charge in order to maintain the facility of serving drinks?

One bar was closed – I have no idea what the import of this is.

On the stairs going in (and in the snack bar behind the stalls) they were selling small glasses of wine for £4.00, in plastic, pre-packaged with peel-off lids. I did not need to think twice – I instinctively rejected this.

Are these things related? Will they phase out the bars completely to save wages? Are they trying to drive sales to the plastic? Have they asked their customers about any of this?

What are we supposed to think and how will it affect their reputation? We surely can’t be the only ones put off – there were certainly less people at the bars than I would normally expect.

What about my business?

The second reason is that, as far as my business is concerned, I am working in a price sensitive sector with a lot of competition. Our clients and prospects are, rightly, concerned about every cost and the value they get from any cost they do commit to.

My job is to show them that what I offer has value enough that price is not seen as a barrier. Of course a classic marketing conundrum and I am sure I am not the only business struggling with it at the moment.

Are our prices fair?

Well, naturally I think so. But is ‘fair’ enough?  Even if a prospect accepts your price as fair, a competitors’ price that undercuts yours, for the same service, is even fairer.

Whatever the scenario, I always try to take prospects with me on the journey of what we provide and what we charge, what relationship we want with our clients and what we are trying to achieve for our business and for theirs.

They can choose to buy into that or not. If not, maybe I haven’t explained it very well, or we are not a good fit or they got a better offer. I can only hope, however, that they at least think we are fair.

What about you? Are your prices fair? How do you ensure your customers think so?

 

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Are you scared of committing to office space?

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Barry Harvey

Let’s face it, in this day and age, who isn’t?

It really would be great to know what is round the corner, to know where your business will be next year, in three years or five.

A major part of any recession is confidence: not just about the here and now, but also in the future. Confidence means being able to commit to your business, investing in your future and making decisions that will last beyond tomorrow.

And what we are experiencing now, four years after it started, is still recession, in all but name. Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe we are over the worst and there seems a good chance that many businesses will grow again this year – my own and several of our clients included.

However, what no business needs in this climate is to commit to anything long term. What you need is flexibility, adaptability and cost control. This is available for many parts of your business: cloud for telecoms and software; online media for many aspects of marketing; and outsourcing for functions like HR, accounting, etc.

What some may be less aware of is that these features can be true for your office space.

Your Bristol office

If you thought office space out of the question, then a serviced office in Bristol may be the answer: a work-ready office; flexible terms (daily, monthly, annually); change to meet the needs of your business at short notice (whether to grow or contract); controllable monthly costs made affordable because they are shared with other small businesses.

Of course, you are not even restricted to dedicated office space. You might find a shared office suits you, at least to begin with. You even have options for virtual office services. The important point is that you wont incur large ingoing or exit costs, you can pick the services you need to suit your business and you need not commit to any tenure longer than you are comfortable with.

In addition, most business centres will provide support services and resources that could help your business: recommended suppliers; arranged discounts; free consultations; free business resources for information and advice; network events; training and more.

If you are looking for a base for your business, but do not want to over-commit your business in this difficult climate, then a serviced office could be just what you need.

For more information:

Business Centre Association

Factors affecting office space

Office space Comparison

Or call Barry Harvey on 0117 317 8090 for advice and costs, without obligation.

 

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Why Monitor Social Media?

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Barry Harvey

And is that even the right question?

The point of monitoring anything, surely, is to see whether it is working. Marketing is all about organising everything within your business to generate a profit via the fulfilment of customer needs.

This means that all your activity needs to prove itself, in terms of generating revenue, increasing profit or meeting some other previously defined strategic objective.

Social Media is not free

As we know, any activity costs money. And although social media sites are free to use, your engagement with them still takes up your time, which is patently not free. So, using social media for marketing and promotion is a business activity like any other, and as such, you need to ensure that it is meeting its targets and providing a return on the investment of your time.

If you are spending a couple of hours a week on Twitter, you need to know that it is generating sales or starting conversations – Social Media is a long term strategy and if you are happy with this then building a few new relationships may be all you are looking for at this stage.

As long as they are the right type of relationships with prospects and strategic partners that will benefit your business, then the initial investment may well be worth it.

However,  you need to monitor what they are saying to you and how they approach the relationship – hopefully there is mutual benefit and the relationship is not one sided. And you need, at some point, to know if any business or other value has come from it.

Your online media profile

Monitoring social media can also give you vital information about sentiment towards your brand and activity relating to sales.

Is anyone talking about you or your business? If so, what are they saying? Are there any negative comments out there that you need to deal with? How can you interact to show yourself and your business in the best light?

And the same goes for your sector. What are the hot topics and trends? If someone is moaning about or congratulating a competitor, how can you ensure you benefit? Are customers looking for something that is not currently provided by your industry, which would present you with an opportunity?

Market Research

Monitoring the activity will also give you a better feel for your target audience. What sites they use, how they express themselves, what their problems and issues are, something about their demographics and personality.

After all, to engage with your prospects you need to know where they are and how to talk to them, which is why it is so important to monitor their activity.

So, what was the question?

With all this valuable market research information to discover, the question really is, why would you not monitor social media?

Why Monitor Social Media?

Join us at the Centre in May, for a seminar given by Nigel Legg of Churnbar. Learn how to refine your marketing and get to know your customers better.

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The office is dead. Long live the office.

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Barry Harvey

‘…offices will face extinction…’ says new study.

According to a study, commissioned by Virgin Media Business, some 58% of the 1,000 office workers surveyed believe that, within 10 years, companies will no longer require offices in order to do business.

Other figures included over half of employees believe they will spend less time commuting and nearly two thirds believe they will need only one device to work effectively.

Of course, much of this is undoubtedly true. I have no doubt our workforce will become increasingly mobile, more companies will choose to work in the cloud, which helps with flexible working and we will certainly need less office space.

But the death of the office…?

I think not – at least not in my lifetime.

Practical limitations

For now, there are practical considerations. For every business happy to jump into the cloud, there are others who are far more sceptical, being concerned about lack of control and security, for example.

These issues may or may not be justified, but they are certainly prevalent.

Another consideration is that we do not yet have blanket wireless and mobile coverage to enable anyone to work from anywhere, anytime. And there is alwasy the issue fo battery life.

Additionally, whether you are in the cloud or on terra firma, the infrastructure to enable mobile working is more expensive and complex than most people imagine.

What about what we want?

However, let us assume that all these problems will fade or be overcome. There is still the issue of human psychology and how we like to work.

There seems to be a view that, because mobile and flexible working are possible, everyone will want to do it. Well, I for one, do not agree.

Many people love working from home or on the move: it gives them excitement, new challenges, flexibility, improves their productivity and suits their family life and personality.

And many people don’t.

Some people (and I confess, I am one) do not like the isolation, the lack of contact, and miss the buzz of a working environment. Some find they need the discipline of regular hours and a set place to go. Some, perhaps with young families, would find it far too distracting to work at home.

Even if it is mostly used as a temporary or part time hub, there will always be a need for some businesses to have office space.

Is the office dead?

Well, I don’t think so. Will our need for office space decrease? I am certain it will. Do we need to provide more choice in the way people work? Yes, absolutely.

I am sure that offices and how we use them will change. They may not contain the whole workforce, there will be more hot-desks and movement of employees. Workers will dip in and out. Software and files will be held centrally in more companies – either on site or in the cloud. And this will be true for all businesses, large or small.

So, we can’t write off the office just yet. Quite apart from being my livelihood, it can be a great place to work, engage and learn.

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