Kitty Bates is a MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions & Exhibitions) content creator at Foxhills club and resort in Surrey, looks at the latest trends in Teambuilding as we move forward into 2022. Now in 2022, our lives are still disrupted by pandemics and while progress has been made with vaccines and rapid testing, we still need to be mindful of others around us and their levels of comfort. Teambuilding, a huge part of company life, has unequivocally been affected by the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns. Even companies that were fully remote before lockdowns have been unable to meet for regular meetups…
Author: sme-admin
Mohamed Chaudry, Interim CFO Seajet Systems looks at the Pros and Cons for SMEToday. Outsourcing accounting and financial services is nothing new in business. But what about your CFO? The gut feeling is that any executive role within a company should – surely – be held in-house. But is the CFO different? If you can’t fill the position permanently, is it worth looking for other solutions? Could outsourced talent fill the gap on a temporary, or even ongoing basis? As someone who has carried the role of Chief Financial Officer on both a permanent and outsourced basis, I’m well-positioned to…
The pressures of today are conspiring to make teaming in our places of work exceptionally difficult, more so than any of us have ever experienced before. Understanding these current day dynamics will help us to equip ourselves to better deal with them. In our places of work, we are enduring digital transformation after digital transformation, each one taking us into unknown territories. Agile working, robotics, automation, and AI are all producing huge disruption as we are forced to innovate, migrate expensive architecture and shed thousands of jobs. Many organisations are now grappling with the cloud and how to best leverage…
Marketing expert Denise O’Leary, founder of Purpol Marketing based in Wiltshire, has been awarded an MBE for services to the construction sector in the New Year’s Honours List. Denise, who lives in Chippenham, Wiltshire, has had to keep tight-lipped about the award for several weeks. “I am honoured and humbled to be recognised with the award of an MBE in the 2022 New Year’s Honours list – made exceptionally special as it is the Platinum Jubilee year of Her Majesty The Queen. “When the letter came through I couldn’t believe it, it didn’t seem real. Today I’m so thrilled to…
Time is ticking down to the day that Amazon will stop accepting Visa credit cards in the UK. Come January 19th, the retailer is to scrap payments from Visa credit cards due to the high fees it says the card provider places on transactions. Whatever their opinion of Amazon, many retailers of all sizes will no doubt be keeping a close watch. Card processing fees can make a sizeable dent in earnings and with Amazon questioning Visa’s rates, many others will be thinking about what this could mean for payments more widely. Recovering from lost earnings during the pandemic, and…
John Edwards begins his new role as UK Information Commissioner today (Tuesday 4 January). Mr Edwards, who joins on a five year term, spent the past eight years as New Zealand Privacy Commissioner, and before that worked as a barrister. He succeeds Elizabeth Denham CBE, whose term as UK Information Commissioner ended last year. Mr Edwards said: “Privacy is a right not a privilege. In a world where our personal data can drive everything from the healthcare we receive to the job opportunities we see, we all deserve to have our data treated with respect. “My role is to work with…
Leadership specialists Caroline Esterson and Wendy Gannaway are launching a new programme to help leaders navigate and succeed in the new world of business. The pair, who co-founded Genius Learning almost ten years ago, believe 2022 will require leaders in business, charities and public service organisations to step up as never before. Caroline said: “Organisations have faced seismic challenges over the past two years which place increasing demands on leaders – and that’s not going away. We are in a new world. “The pandemic, rising customer expectations and COP26 are challenging strategic goals and the way people relate to their…
It’s been a difficult year for most businesses, dealing with the fallout from Brexit and the disruption from the covid restrictions. Some business have thrived while many others have struggled to deal with the consequences of lockdown. As we now enter another period of restrictions the hope is we can quickly move back to normality. A New Year is just around the corner and though UK SMEs will continue to face uncertainties for a while, the general consensus by economists worldwide is that the global economy is well on track to recover to where it would have been had the…
Swindon journalist and media consultant Fiona Scott has launched a podcast to dispel the myths and mysteries around the dark arts of PR. Her PR Not BS podcast went live this month and features advice and tips to business owners, charities, social enterprises, company directors as well as public service organisations and other PR professionals. “During the pandemic I’ve spent a lot more time training people in business and in the charitable sector to be visible and present when we were locked down tight for weeks at a time,” Fiona said. “This led me to plan a podcast with the…
Richard Osborne, is the founder and CEO of UK Business Forums and Business Data Group. This week, in the run up to Christmas, he spoke to SME Today offering some tips and advice for UK SMEs. “As we come to the end of 2021 and look back at the year that was, it’s difficult to know exactly where to begin. What’s for sure, as we fast approach the second anniversary of Covid-19, being part of our lives, is that SMEs have yet again had to navigate a relentless succession of catastrophic events throughout the year. In the week before Christmas, founders…