The work from home trend looks set to continue well into the New Year. But while most of us have become used to this new way of working, in many instances company culture has begun to flounder. Maintaining that set of shared principles that can be so integral to the productivity of an office seems less important when your workforce is dispersed. The methods of maintaining it also become more difficult. But company culture is as important now as it has ever been – if not more so. And instilling it in your remote workforce is easier than you might…
Author: sme-admin
Innovate Design, the UK’s leading invention development company, today announces that it helped The Apprentice candidates with one of the challenges in the new series episode 2. With Innovate Design’s support, each team had to create a brand-new electric toothbrush aimed at children between six and eight, along with an accompanying app to further encourage teeth brushing. Alastair Swanwick, founder of Innovate Design, said: “20 years ago, when I set up the company, Lord Sugar wrote an article recommending us in his newspaper column. That article gave us the credibility we needed to launch a successful business and with our…
According to the Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2021, 39 per cent of UK businesses experienced a cybersecurity attack last year. For business owners, this statistic is worrying — risking reputation, integrity and ultimately commercial success. As we move towards an increasingly technology-centric working world, what should businesses be doing to protect their digital assets? Here, Kristian Torode, Director and Co-Founder of mobile device management software provider Crystaline, explains how technology can keep business mobiles safe. As remote working has become commonplace, mobile devices for business are no longer just desirable, but essential to communication. However, their popularity is not…
Rebalancing the supply chain post pandemic The past two years have been turbulent for online retailers. From surging demand to supply chain disruption and now soaring prices, fulfilment models remain under unprecedented pressure. With environmental commitments likely to be required by governments in response to COP26, what are the key supply chain trends for 2022? Emma Dempsey, CEO, James and James Fulfilment takes a look at the likely changes over the next 12 months. Now the peak 2021 season is over there will be a significant rebalancing of the supply chain. The frailties of just-in-time models have been exposed over the past two…
Workplace diversity is a common topic of conversation among employers, hiring managers and recruitment professionals. But diversity and inclusion in the workplace isn’t just a hiring fad; and over the years it has become less a case of simply factoring in age, gender and race, and more about hiring a wider range of people to add value to businesses. Increasingly, business leaders are seeing that encouraging diversity in the workplace has several tangible benefits, for the company and for its employees. What is workplace diversity? Workplace diversity is a term used for a workplace composed of employees with varying characteristics.These…
Glen Foster, Director, Small Business and Accounting Partners at Xero looks at why MTD (Making Tax Digital) compliance could be an opportunity for business success in 2022 As we enter a New Year, small businesses in the UK will be hoping that their fortunes improve. The promise of a recovery from the stagnant pandemic economy in 2021 has been partly realised, only for new variants and looming restrictions to bring us all back down to earth. Like most businesses, SME owners have entered 2022 with an uncertain future. Given the challenges they have faced, they would be forgiven for focusing…
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…
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…