News Archives - Page 34 of 53

Mediablaze hires Sarah Batters as Growth Marketing Director to head up in-house Growth Team

Posted on May 23, 2019 | by root

Following a number of new business client wins with a CRO* focus, digital marketing agency Mediablaze has appointed Sarah Batters in the newly created role of Growth Marketing Director, underscoring the agency’s ongoing commitment to bringing concrete, measurable ROI to its content, platform and performance services.

Sarah has been consulting with Mediablaze since 2018, co-creating a Growth Marketing Programme with a CRO focus, which has seen initial clients grow their topline revenue by up to 45%. This success has prompted new and existing clients to kick off their own programmes with Mediablaze, leading to the establishment of an in-house Growth Team.

Click here to find out more about Mediablaze’s Growth Marketing Programme

Sarah brings 13 years of financial analysis & marketing experience to Mediablaze, including seven years at Procter & Gamble across Europe & Asia and her role as Head of Marketing at media start-up, Beamly Australia. For the last four years, Sarah has been consulting with CEOs and boards on unlocking online growth across a wide range of industries such as FinTech, Media, Food and Consumer Goods.

Joining Mediablaze’s Management Team, Sarah will help develop, launch and lead growth marketing services to new and existing clients.

Mediablaze’s CEO Paul Button comments: “We’re obsessed with creating customer experiences that help brands grow. As a key growth partner to our clients, we use data to identify growth opportunities throughout the path to purchase and activate them using our award-winning platform design and build, content, and performance marketing teams”.

“Sarah brings the right balance of creativity and data-based analysis to help uncover, test and scale these opportunities. Our first clients to engage with our CRO programme have quickly seen double-digit growth and we can’t wait to see what’s possible under Sarah’s leadership.”

* CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) focuses on both website traffic and on-site customer journeys, looking for ways to improve conversion and create growth using rapid, hypothesis-based experimentation.

Lookers apprenticeship programme picks up national award for diversity

Posted on May 21, 2019 | by root

Lookers, who provide car servicing plans, is celebrating after its apprenticeship programme was acknowledged as the most diverse in the country at the annual AAC Apprenticeship Awards, held in Birmingham recently.

Organised by FE Week and the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, the newly introduced Apprenticeship Diversity Award recognised Lookers’ efforts to increase diversity in apprenticeships, as well as work with apprentices who have special educational needs.

Last year saw Lookers welcome 150 apprentices to its apprenticeship programme, matching the previous year’s number of inductees, bringing its total up to 500.

The group also has 17 female apprentices among its ranks, a number that compares favourably within the motor retail sector and a number that the retailer is focussed on increasing in the near future.

The retailer was also commended at the ceremony for its commitment to sourcing talent from diverse backgrounds, including recently launching a 12-week traineeship at the Lookers Audi Group Paint & Body Preparation Centre in North Tyneside, which aims to give young people out of work and education the opportunity to gain full time employment.

Steve Maule, Group Head of Qualifications and Diversity at Lookers, said: “For a motor retailer like Lookers to have won the Apprenticeship Diversity Award is a huge leap forward for an industry that hasn’t traditionally been seen as employing a diverse mix of people. We are immensely proud of this and have further plans in place to ensure that we remain at the forefront of employment diversity.

“The motor industry is moving forward at an unprecedented pace, whether it’s technology or the customer experience, and it’s critical that we have the right mix of people, from all corners of society, to help us stay one step ahead.”

The Lookers Apprenticeship programme was recently named as Regional Macro Apprentice Employer of the Year for the second year running and was also ‘Highly Commended’ at the National Apprenticeship Awards.

Adam Carney, Group Diversity Manager at Lookers, said: “Increasing diversity within Lookers is one of our strategic focuses and was one of the main messages from our recent Annual Conference. We very much see the apprenticeship levy as an opportunity to diversify our work force and create a sustainable talent pipeline.”

In Conversation with Maplewave CEO Matthew Brannon: Q&A

Posted on May 21, 2019 | by root

Maplewave CEO, Matthew Brannon, sat down with Tech & Beer to discuss how advances in technology will affect the future of retail.

What does Maplewave do?
Maplewave at its core is a retail transformation organisation that offers a combination of both technology and services. On the technology side of our business, we’re involved in a customer’s greet-to-pay experience across all channels whilst supporting the need for in-store and self-care interactions such as online using e-commerce. Within that, you can also look at the standard point-of-sale transaction which allows us to offer supply chain inventory and logistics.

For example, most of the clients that we work with have contracts — mostly telecommunications and end-carriers — so we have a digital contract product in place that can help take the friction out of the consumer experience. Telcos often have a back-end system and these can include different things that have to be orchestrated and managed in order to facilitate the consumers’ interactions, but we provide a single interface to create a more simple process from the consumer’s perspective.

Whether you’re transacting online or in-store, everything will look and feel the same and that is where Maplewave focuses itself — particularly in the telco space. So, we don’t have a lot of deviation into other verticals and there are a lot of unique challenges on the telco side, so that is why we focus around that area.

How big is the team?
As an organisation, we’re just north of a hundred people. Most of our people are based in Halifax — including our research and development team which accounts for around 30% of our entity, as well as developers and product managers which has allowed us to build strong relationships between the product team and sales organisation. So, prospecting customers is something we heavily focus on to ensure we’re gaining the right insights from customers. We also have an office in Johannesburg, as well as resources in the UK.

How long have you been in retail?
Personally, I’ve been involved in retail itself for my entire professional life. I came from an entire family of entrepreneurs who had a chain of around ten musical instrument stores throughout the Atlantic provinces, so it was a fairly big operation. I was involved in almost everything — from supply chain and warehouse to sales and management. So, I’ve got a long background in retail and it pivoted to the technology side about ten years ago, which has led me to focus on the system side of managing retail.

Has there been a big change in retail you’ve witnessed from a technology perspective?
Big time. I remember shortly before we got out of the music business, which was around the dawn of ecommerce and the amount of fear and disruption that it brought upon different businesses was really interesting to see.

One of the things that I’ve learnt about being in this industry as long as I have is that things never happen or change as quickly as a lot of the futurists or prognosticators would have you believe — it’s usually a slower burn and it takes a longer time for certain technologies to be adopted because ultimately you want to have a positive impact and ensure that consumers embrace the technology, which can sometimes take a while.

What technology is available to small retailers?
I think the big thing that’s happening in the industry for smaller retailers is, back in the day, it was very difficult for them to get a retail system that was kind of robust and could manage a lot of their business which was reputable and provided by a big organisation that could keep up with upcoming trends.

Now you’re seeing companies like Shopify democratise retail systems so that you can have everything from that in-store experience to the e-commerce experience all integrated. You can see that it is something that’s been made completely from a customer perspective. That’s just one big thing that I’ve seen that’s very different from what was available ten years ago.

A lot of stores are beginning to use wireless AP technology and it’s something that’s starting to get a lot more legs as it’s becoming a lot more useful and applicable in retail. There’s lot more technology now to use such as advanced cameras that are able to do heat mapping work and I think that’s really interesting — especially when you start integrating that with your retail systems.

You can even monitor the traffic outside of the store and see how much traffic is going by the store on a daily basis and even gain information on the peak hours. Using this, you can decide on when to better market your storefront and make it more attractive to customers.

From displaying certain customer interactions for a period of time and see the amount of conversions your business gets to seeing where your customers go in the store and how much time they are spending in specific sections which will begin to give you data to make more informative decisions on how you merchandise different products — such as their location in the store. Depending on what you’re doing from a qualification perspective, there are a lot of technologies out there now where you can qualify a customer and use queueing features which can enhance the user experience.

From then, customers that come into a store can tell a salesperson holding a tablet what their needs are and then you can begin to measure conversion. For example, if a person came in for some type of an accessory but you ended up selling them a service or a core product. This really starts to help you improve your sales people’s interaction and better understand the customer.

What do you expect to see next in the near-future for retail?
It’s easy to get excited with a lot of the new technology that’s coming out now and I think the biggest trends that we are going to see are the investments in harmonization between all of the different channels.

You can still go into really successful retailers and see that their different channels are still very siloed. They might have a corporate channel with corporate stores and could even have a dealer channel where they have privately run stores or an e-commerce channel or self-care, but from a customer experience standpoint, I can do business in one channel then go to a different channel and this channel has no idea who I am or they don’t have my experience. So, from a consumer perspective, it’s incredibly frustrating. You know the amount of times regardless of the vertical when I’ve called a customer support and they’ve maybe had to pivot me to another part of the company in order to help me?

Because of this, a lot of retailers are making big investments, replacing legacy systems and getting to a point where they truly get that 360-degree view of the customer, which allows customers to feel like they’re being looked after in the same way as when they signed up.

The Creative Industry Is Dying’ — How A Career In Art Could Still Be Viable

Posted on May 20, 2019 | by root

Despite what most people think, the creative industry is thriving. So much so, that in 2017, the value of the sector stood at £101.5bn — which was a significant increase from its £94.8bn valuation back in 2016.

The field itself is extremely viable too. There were around 80,000 jobs created in 2017, and that figure doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

However, there are many different sub-industries that make up this sector. This includes: advertising and marketing, architecture, crafts, design (product, graphic and fashion), film, television, video, radio and photography, IT, software and computer services, publishing, museums, galleries and libraries, music, performing and visual arts, animation and visual effects, video games and heritage.

With so many diverse entities, they all require someone creative. However, one area (or talent) that can relate to all of these diversified roles is art. People are interested in this too, as the phrase ‘art jobs’ has around 40,500 searches per month on Google, which has notably increased over time. This highlights that there is an interest for paid work, and for many, that means transforming their current hobby into an actual income.

It takes passion

If you’ve got the passion and drive to excel your career in the arts, you’re already ahead of the competition. If you love what you do, you’ll welcome mass appreciation from others in the same field.

When it comes to unleashing your creativity, you need to offer a message in everything that you do. You need to tell a story, sell an experience, and be thought provoking while offering some sort of vulnerability in your work. Art is all about empowering every emotive feeling in your body and is definitely not about getting the perfect shot in the gallery for social media.

Studying for a job

For any industry, you should always strive to do well in school. It wouldn’t be fair to say that grades aren’t important and can open up a lot of doors, but it’s important to understand that they don’t determine your future.

Your first step will likely be taking Art as a GCSE in high school. Following the grade that they receive, this will determine whether they can then continue the subject as an A-Level, or at college where they will likely complete a Level 3. Students may have to sit a Level 2 at college if they failed their GCSE — however, this will be determined by the course leaders and a strong portfolio could push you straight onto Level 3.

During this time, you’ll likely host your own exhibition with other students and showcase your work to the public. This is an amazing thing to include on your CV and personal statement when it comes to the next academic step… university!

Some people don’t believe that you need to go to university to have a career in art, but some people do want to have that degree and as a community, we must respect that. However, in the last five years, there has been an evident decrease in the number of UCAS applications for Creative Arts and Design. The deadline analysis from January 2019 found that only 215,330 applied, in comparison to the 224,630 that applied the same time last year.

If you’re studying a history of art degree, your course will be heavily theory-based with a lot of written work. However, if you’re studying a subject such as fine art, expect this to be more practical with workshop-led lessons and tasks that may contribute to your final grade. Most undergraduate art courses last for three years in the UK — however, if you study abroad, this could be up to four years.

Best universities for the arts:

1. Royal College of Art

2. University College London

3. University of the Arts London

4. Goldsmiths, London

5. The Glasgow School of Art

6. Loughborough University

7. University of Oxford

8. University of Brighton

9. Edinburgh College of Arts

10. Lancaster University

Although a lot of people do go to university, some choose apprenticeships which can begin at the age of 16. This is for the artists who know exactly what they want to get into — whether this is costume design, graphics, visual effects, animation, product development or even resin art. The number of apprenticeships available are endless, and the stigma around getting them has finally been removed.

The great thing about these courses are that you learn in the job. You’ll likely be working full time and 100% be earning a wage too. From this experience, you’ll be able to work on real-life projects and familiarise yourself with the working environment of your respected field.

Whatever entry route you take, we’re looking forward to seeing your own framed art on our walls!

Sources:

https://www.creativeindustriesfederation.com/statistics

https://www.ucas.com/file/213911/download?token=MLJTV7GH

https://www.studying-in-uk.org/top-art-universities-in-uk/

Best UK Regions to Start a Business

Posted on May 20, 2019 | by root

Did you know that 1 in 5 businesses fail within the first year? With this in mind, it’s important to consider all aspects of a start-up, including where you decide to base your business.

Some locations are better equipped for start-ups than others, no matter what industry you’re starting your business in. analysing seven booming business sectors, Workwear Giant have uncovered the top region for each start-up industry, based on competition and turnover share.

Construction – Best Region: North East

The north-east has the smallest amount of construction companies – 15% of businesses. What’s more, just 6% of the region are employed in this sector – 2% lower than the UK average.

However, despite the north-east’s construction industry being considerably smaller than other regions, it shares 12% of the area’s turnover.

From a wider outlook, it also contributes 3% to the British construction turnover, showing the area is the best place for a construction start-up with plenty of room to grow.

Real Estate – Best Region: London

If you live in London and want to start a real estate business, great news – a whopping 43% of the UK’s real estate is generated in the capital.

The odds should be against London too – real estate companies make up just 2% of the city’s business – which is line with the national average.

This is likely due to London’s house prices, with the average property costing £472,230. London has the highest house prices across the UK meaning there’s more profit potential than other regions.

I.C.T. – Best Region: Northern Ireland

The information and communication industry has seen a spate of advancements in recent years, which has helped make the UK one of world’s largest ICT markets.

If the advancement of 5G is urging you to set up an ICT business, then setting base in Northern Ireland will give you the fairest chance.

The country has an abundance of talent, and is home to both Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University which are renowned for their ICT and computer science courses.

Manufacturing – Best Region: London

Manufacturing only accounts for 3% of business within the capital, making for very little competition.

Despite, London’s manufacturing companies account for a significant 8% of the industry’s turnover.

What’s more is that manufacturing businesses amount to 3% of London’s workforce, suggesting potential. The city also has a huge working age population of over 4.8 million.

Transport & Storage – Best Region: Northern Ireland

Did you know that the transport and storage sector has the higher number of start-ups on a yearly basis? This is no surprise as last year, the industry generated a profit of £200 billion?

If you’re thinking about starting a transport and storage company, then setting up in Northern Ireland is your best bet.

The country is home to just 3% of companies within this sector, which is less than half the UK’s average.

They also have considerably higher success rate for businesses with 92%.

Arts, Entertainment & Recreation – Best Region: Yorkshire & the Humber

If you’re thinking of opening up a yoga studio, Yorkshire and the Humber is the hotspot.

This region is the least competitive place for an arts, entertainment or recreation company – with only 3% of businesses in this area being in this sector, and 2% of the industry’s turnover coming from Yorkshire, there’s room to grow here.

Kingston-upon-Hull was named the UK’s city of culture in 2017, and will hold the title until 2020.

Hospitality – Best Region: East Midlands

Instagram-worthy food has boosted the food service sector 6% to a massive £100bn, since 2013 – making it an incredibly profitable option for entrepreneurs.

The east midlands make up 3% of the accommodation and food service sector – the UK average. However, it only employs 5% of people – well below the average of 9%.

A big concern for hospitality operators is rising rent costs with 39% of hospitality owners identifying this as their worry. However, the east midlands has the lowest office rent out of all the regions in the study at just £18.17 per sq ft.

Teleopti Reimagines Workforce Management with Launch of Grant the Chatbot

Posted on May 17, 2019 | by root

Developed with Microsoft Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, Teleopti’s WFM chatbot, Grant, is the next recruit for intraday automation and enhanced employee self-service

Teleopti today launched Grant, the workforce management (WFM) chatbot, developed to help companies revolutionize their intraday automation with AI-optimized employee self-service. Teleopti’s bot assistant leverages Microsoft Azure Bot Service to deliver a more agile, efficient process for internal communication and customer service staffing. Driving intraday operations with AI technology allows companies to improve every aspect of their customer service organization from their business processes to how their employees work.

Meet Grant
Teleopti’s incorporation of chatbot technology into WFM processes offers a next step for many companies looking to evolve both their intraday operations and employee empowerment. Available to Teleopti Azure cloud customers, Grant is an organization’s own WFM concierge, handling all processes related to schedule requests. Grant analyzes current staffing alongside employees’ unique skills and schedules to provide chat notifications when voluntary time off is available. If additional support is needed, Grant will soon be able to provide notifications when overtime hours are on offer. Infused with natural language processing, staff can chat with Grant and let him know if they wish to accept the schedule options. Grant then automatically submits the schedule request for them.

“Employee engagement has always been at the core of our development focus, but it isn’t a static, one-size-fits-all matter, which is why Teleopti is constantly innovating around how to push the boundaries of WFM and employee-engagement functionality,” says Olle Düring, CEO at Teleopti.

Recruiting Grant as a WFM assistant helps not just frontline employees to achieve a better work-life balance with more freedom in their schedule, but it also means management and the WFM team can achieve flexible intraday planning. Staffing can be adjusted to meet incoming demand without exhaustive manual monitoring, all while lowering HR costs. The organizations’ overall customer experience is also enhanced as Grant helps the company meet customers in the right place, at the right time, with skilled people who feel empowered in their working day.

Olle Düring continues, “New technological opportunities, such as chatbots, offer clear benefits for automating customer communication. With our 100% focus on WFM we’re taking these innovations into workforce management. Developing WFM embedded with machine learning and bot technology helps our customers improve their planning and operations aswell as create empowering self-service for their teams.”

Built with Microsoft Cognitive Services
Following workshops and bi-weekly check-in sessions with Microsoft’s AI Services team, Teleopti’s R&D team built Grant using Microsoft Cognitive Services. Azure Bot Framework was a natural fit with its acceleration of intelligent bot creation, ability to scale on demand and integration of Teleopti’s cloud WFM solution with Microsoft Azure. Microsoft’s LUIS Language Understanding has also been crucial as the machine-learning based service enables Teleopti to build natural language chat conversations between Grant and the employee.

“We’re excited to see Teleopti using Microsoft Azure to transform their business with AI,” said Eric Boyd, corporate vice president, Azure AI, Microsoft. “By infusing their apps with Azure Cognitive Services, Teleopti has built an intelligent Workforce Management chatbot that can interact with employees in a natural way, helping drive better workforce management and stronger employee engagement.”

Grant’s Growth & Competence Development
Mattias Engblom, CTO at Teleopti concludes, “Like all new recruits, we are excited for Grant’s development and growth. The joy of AI is that Grant’s conversations will continue to become more complex as he learns from his chats with employees. Just like all our iterative development processes, we will also listen to the input from customers to develop the areas where they have the greatest need for Grant’s assistance.”

Get to know Grant

Evolving employee engagement with Workforce Management (WFM)

Posted on May 16, 2019 | by root

From experience Teleopti believes successful companies start with inspired people and here CEO, Olle Dűring outlines 7 winning strategies to make your organization a great place to work.

At Teleopti we agree with the saying “to win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace “¹. This is especially relevant as employees often spend more waking hours with their colleagues than they do with their own partners or families so keeping them happy and engaged should be a top priority. We have found to achieve this, people need to work in a positive environment where they can continue to grow, remain engaged and be productive. However, the reality is many companies are experiencing a crisis of employee engagement and are simply not aware of it.

It’s time to apply the principles of Workforce Management (WFM) and here is our 7-step guide:

7 ways to raise the bar for employee engagement

1.Change the leadership culture – good leaders instinctively know how to inspire their workforce and reward their efforts. They have a systematic way to measure the results of their actions and they are committed to making engagement not just a thing you do, but an intrinsic part of what it means to be a successful company. Larger organizations might even seek to hire a dedicated person with engagement written into their job description, a new form of CEO or “Chief Engagement Officer”.

2.Communicate the strategic value of the individual – engaged people go above and beyond what is expected of them because they feel part of a purpose larger than themselves. For example, today’s customer service departments have a powerful role to play in sharing best-practice principles with the rest of the organization. Communicate corporate goals or business changes and demonstrate the strategic value each individual can bring to the overall success of the company. Next, use automated WFM technology to allocate quiet time with team members to exchange ideas and explore innovative ways of working in a relaxed, collaborative environment away from the pressures of serving customers.

3. Re-consider the benefits of flexible working – flexible working has come a long way since traditional full-time and part-time contracts or job-sharing. Career breaks, sabbaticals, Pay-as-you-go arrangements in the form of zero-hour contracts, compressed, annualized working hours and even Time Off Without Pay (TOWP) – why not test some or all of these options? Then use advanced WFM technology to balance and schedule different contract types and see the difference flexible working makes to employee satisfaction.

4.Empower employees with self-service – allowing people to take control of their work-life balance boosts engagement levels by reducing stress and absences. Liberate employees with a greater sense of independence, involvement and satisfaction by way of self-service options for preferred shifts, holiday requests and time off for medical appointments.

5. Think about infusing AI into the employee experience – consider deploying artificial intelligence methods such as Chatbots to enhance internal communication and employee morale. Cut back on time-consuming staff monitoring and instead use bots that learn from existing data to help people manage their work-life balance. These bots can hold conversational chats to quickly notify staff of potential time off or overtime and create an easy balance between optimized customer service operations and greater employee freedom.

6.Introduce fairness and transparency – automation promotes consistency and greater visibility of all WFM processes. High degrees of transparency and openness create a sense of fairness that appeals to staff while satisfying organizations with a strong Union or Works Council presence. Managers have the information they need to ensure all employees take it in turns to do the more unpopular shifts and plan vacation time equitably while employees have total visibility of each other’s schedules and time off through self-service.

7. Effective Change Management – organizational change can be traumatic for employees but recently, Teleopti customers like Germany’s biggest online retailer OTTO, have cited the strategic impact that WFM technology has on actively advancing corporate Change Management programs. The flexibility, transparency and collaborative nature of WFM technology have helped OTTO to strike a good balance between achieving high productivity levels (1,600 agents working 2 million shifts and 4,500 shift rotations – handling over 24 million enquiries per year) and transferring the program’s core values of empowerment and fairness into 15 virtual contact centers.

Make your company a great place to work. Learn how to power employee engagement with WFM. To find out more, download Teleopti’s latest white paper aimed at senior executives: “A Guide to Sustainable Business Success: Powering CX and Employee Engagement with Workforce Management”

Olle Dűring is CEO at Teleopti (1) Doug Conant, former president and CEO of Campbell Soup Company

Addiction: Assessing Corporate Risk

Posted on May 15, 2019 | by root

By Dr Michael McCann MB BCh MA DIH MD MFOM, occupational health expert and speaker at iCAAD London 2019; Europe’s leading conference on Behavioural, mental and Emotional Health.

The use or abuse of alcohol and/or drugs may not be perceived as a significant risk factor in some organisations but it should always be considered good governance in any company to undertake a Risk Assessment to identify any such potential organisational vulnerability. The probability of an event happening, or the magnitude of such an event, should be risk assessed to ensure that any problems arising can be effectively managed.

Risk Assessment procedures are used for identifying and managing the vulnerability of an organisation to external threats – such as the potential technological melt down caused by the New Year of 2000 or the impact of Brexit – or internal causes. Vulnerabilities can be due to possible economic impacts, accidents harming plant and/or people, human behaviour or health issues. With the rapid dissemination of global news the corporate reputation of an organisation subject to any of the above can be severely and quickly impacted. To cite one recent example, human behaviour had a considerable impact on the reputation of American Airlines when a security officer forcibly removed a doctor from an overbooked flight.

Events can impact on an organisation in dramatic ways. Share prices can plummet and make a company vulnerable to a takeover. A catastrophic event such as when the Exxon Valdez struck a reef off Alaska and the resultant catastrophic oil spill with severe environmental damage – possibly alcohol induced – or more recently the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia and the deaths that resulted – induced by human frailty – can turn a hostile spotlight on the reputation of companies once thought impregnable.

Human frailty is always with us. But Alcohol and Drug problems may not immediately appear to head the list of significant risks to an organisation – however they may be the trigger for a major economic, accident- or safety-related event. It is often the accumulation of small factors and their interaction that results in a calamity.

There are three elements that should be the cornerstones of any corporate alcohol and drug strategy: Risk Management; a Taking Care Alcohol and Drug Policy; and Rehabilitation back into the workplace. There are also many legal traps to be aware of, particularly in relation to testing and disciplinary procedures.

In relation to risk management addiction is too often not considered a disability nor suitable for ill-health retirement, and yet for the medical profession addiction is increasingly considered an illness. The WHO, International Classification of Diseases (ICD 10), and DSM5 use the term dependency since 1975. To align with the Human Rights Act it may be important to consider using the term dependency as well as addiction.

Abuse often infers misconduct, and corporate alcohol and drug policies invariably focus on misconduct, but dependency may not necessarily be abuse if it is considered an illness. If dependency were considered a disability under The Human Rights Act it would provide some protection for an employee coming forward to declare a problem.

I also believe, under an alcohol and drug policy, alcohol needs to be considered separately from drugs; alcohol is a legal substance and drugs are invariably illegal substances and there may be legal and organisational responsibilities if the use of drugs at work is identified.

Furthermore, there needs to be a differentiation between intoxication at work and dependency, as dependency is not categorically linked to intoxication at work. The latter is classed as misconduct, whereas dependency should be considered as a possible performance issue affecting work. All the above have legal implications.

What is the value in developing a ‘caring approach’ to dependency? Employees should feel that management can be trusted to support them in their illness either via Occupational Health or by their own line manager and should feel safe to declare they have a dependency problem. Confidentiality is paramount and it is important a procedure is in place where managers and Occupational Health can liaise to perform a work-place risk assessment on an individual. Risk assessing the employee’s work would identify tasks that should be restricted if these tasks are considered at risk of causing accidents, damage or economic or reputational impact to the individual and/or the organisation. If this approach is applied employees will feel safer in coming forward and a significant problem may be avoided.

Lastly, if the organisation, via Occupational Health, can provide a suitable rehabilitation programme for dependency that should lead to more employees coming forward and a confidential declaration of the problem would then trigger a formal risk assessment followed by a suitable rehabilitation programme within a caring environment.

Is providing treatment for an alcohol or drug dependent employee good for both the organisation and for the employee? I believe yes to both. Why? Because providing support for an employee with a dependency problem gives someone a chance to rehabilitate and return to being a productive employee. In my experience employees given this opportunity are invariably grateful for the support they have been given by both the organisation and their line manager and usually become loyal employees – if the treatment has been successful.

The process for rehabilitation back into work is important and should involve Occupational Health monitoring the treatment programme. At appropriate stages meetings should be held with the line manager to progress towards a phased return to work. This needs to be based on a risk-assessment protocol which will include regular reviews by Occupational Health and on-going therapeutic meetings such as AA.

Relapses do occur and if properly managed these can be incorporated as part of the therapeutic process. Two important rules that must be adhered to: the employee must not turn up for work intoxicated and must immediately disclose to their line manager and/or Occupational Health that they have relapsed. The employee will not therefore attend work with the potential for incurring the penalties for intoxication at work and any possibility of denial is removed by the declaration they have relapsed. If a relapse is addressed immediately in this way it can provide negative reinforcement to strengthen the rehabilitation process.

What dependency rehabilitation treatment works? Best of all is residential care because it cuts off the individual completely from the social and work environment triggers that were part of the problem. This invariably also involves removing the employee’s mobile phone! And it always provides the most successful outcome. Too often day care treatment does not address the many factors that are contributing to the dependency such as dual pathology, family or work-related issues. Too often detoxification is the first and only treatment – and as a result, relapses are, in my experience, much more likely to happen (and continue happening).

The value to the organisation in retaining a valued experienced employee without the costs of re-hiring and retraining is obvious. Employees will acknowledge and be fully aware of such a caring approach, recognise the implications of intoxication at work that could potentially drive them down the misconduct route. Lastly, and most importantly, colleagues are also more likely to be supportive and encourage an employee to go forward to discuss any problem with their line manager or Occupational Health.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Michael McCann MB BCh MA DIH MD MFOM is a Member of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine, and received a Doctorate in Medicine for his work on alcohol problems in the workplace. His latest book, “Alcohol, Drugs and Employment”, is designed to be a reference book for health professionals as well as management and human resources to assist them in dealing with the often-challenging cases of substance abuse which they may be faced with. Dr McCann will be speaking at iCAAD London 2019; Europe’s leading conference on Behavioural, mental and Emotional Health. https://www.icaad.com/icaad-london-2019

Demand Soars for Business Systems’ Wordwatch as Regulatory Requirements Rise

Posted on May 14, 2019 | by root

Business Systems, a leader in voice recording and enterprise workforce optimisation solutions, has announced a sharp rise in demand for Wordwatch, its unique multi-vendor call recording management portal. This brings together recording data from multiple call recording systems from multiple systems all in one place, for easy access, management, extraction and reporting.

In particular a number of major global investment banks have adopted Wordwatch, as they attempt to improve access to and management of live and legacy call data for regulatory compliance purposes. The surge in demand follows a new wave of requirements affecting the financial services industry, including those under MiFID II, which are designed to ensure greater transparency and process auditability, and make financial institutions more accountable for their advice and actions.

“All of this presents a significant and costly challenge,” notes Richard Mill, Business Systems (UK)’s Managing Director. “Organisations must account for every deal and be able to produce records or address queries at short notice; Dodd-Frank specifies within 72 hours.”

Ideally suited to investment banks, insurance companies, emergency services and any other contact centre-based organisation that needs to be able to access and reproduce call records on demand, Wordwatch is unique in its ability to curate and provide access to call data from legacy, live, cloud based or on-premise call recording systems, from any vendor. All records are presented via a single portal through which users can easily manage, replay, store, extract and report on.

Already used by some of the world’s biggest banks, Wordwatch is attracting increasing market attention because of its ability to locate, replay or report on any call content, whatever the format or original recording system. This is a substantial aid to productivity, while contributing directly to regulatory compliance.
In particular, Wordwatch solves the very real problem of legacy call recording systems – such as NICE, Verint, Redbox and Witness systems – becoming costly to support, and the very real risk of historic call content being rendered inaccessible once the original recording and playback technology reaches its end of life. Via Wordwatch, all call data remains readily accessible.

In the case of a major US investment bank, the need was to consolidate its call recording and call data management across 12 sites. Using Wordwatch has enabled the organisation to decommission its ageing voice recorders, saving hundreds of thousands a year on legacy support. In the process of bringing all of the data together in one place, it was able to fulfil its regulatory obligations while streamlining its archives. It was also able to delete call data outside of the required retention period: amounting to 40 per cent of its archive, and save its people time in trying to locate call records. The project was so transformative it has been recognised with an FStech Award.

The compliance team at another major investment bank, headquartered in Europe, turned to Wordwatch to extract all voice recording data across 1,800 traders’ client activity across a combination of fixed-line, mobile and internet/Skype calls, so they can be analysed consistently alongside email content and other data in Bloomberg Vault.

Another European bank will now make savings of £600,000 annually having identified via Wordwatch that 30 per cent of the private wires it was paying for were not being used.

“And these benefits are in addition to the potential fines we’ve helped banks avoid, because they can now replay and extract all calls when the regulator comes knocking,” Richard Mill adds.

A further facet to Wordwatch’s appeal is its modular and highly scalable make-up, he notes. This means organisations can start by rolling out the immediate functionality they need, and then expand the scope over time as required.

“Our market is exploding, as organisations understand the difference Wordwatch can make,” he says. “We’re essentially providing them with a single pane of glass across multi-vendor systems, and one single point of access for all data, with centralised management over all data for a whole range of purposes such as compliance, policy administration, and business intelligence/analytics. In this litigious and strictly-regulated age, that’s a very valuable capability.”

Gary Keating to Host Six Steps to Increase the Value of Your Business

Posted on May 13, 2019 | by root

Award-winning business growth coach Gary Keating is offering a free seminar at the end of May https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/build-to-sell-tickets-60922440660
to help business owners in the South-West learn how to increase the value of their company.

This power-packed seminar will focus on building a business to sell. It will be hosted by award-winning business growth coach Gary Keating and the top UK Engage and Grow coach Jane Carvell.

Gary explains “We want to share proven ideas on how to improve the profits, productivity and potential of your business. Whether it’s building your business to sell, franchise or simply increase your profits, you will learn the steps to increase the value of your business”

Gary is well known for his ability to help business owners step away from their business and get more balance in their lives.
Gary is Principle Coach at ActionCOACH Bristol. https://actioncoach.co.uk/coaches/gary-keating/

As the only senior ActionCOACH partner in Bristol and the South West, they are passionate about business and the livelihoods of their clients.

Wazoku raises £2.5M to expand global reach for idea management platform

Posted on May 10, 2019 | by root

London-based SaaS eyes global expansion and product enhancement, as demand for idea management set to reach £1.17bn by 2022

Idea management firm Wazoku has announced that it has raised £2.5M, led by Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trust (VCT) specialist, Calculus Capital and backed by existing investors. With the funding, Wazoku intends to continue its recent global expansion, further refine and improve its technology and to make good on its core objective, to ‘change the world one idea at a time’.

The past 12 months has seen Wazoku add major new customers all over the world, including a significant win in late 2018 to supply its services to the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD). Wazoku also achieved more than 50% year-on-year revenue growth last financial year. Tech Nation named Wazoku one of the UK’s 30 leading tech scaleups in Upscale 4.0.

This latest investment, which brings the total amount raised by Wazoku to £6.1M, is both a recognition of that growth, and also the increasing size and potential of the global idea management market. Recent Markets and Markets research has forecast that to reach £1.17bn in 2022, a compound annual growth rate of 29.2%.

“It really feels like the time is now for idea management and we want to be the company leading the market as it grows, matures and becomes even more mainstream,” said Simon Hill, CEO, Wazoku. “All organisations need to innovate, solve problems and generate new ideas to meet their objectives. Engaging with, and crowdsourcing ideas from different groups provides an exciting opportunity to radically rethink the way organisations collaborate and innovate.”

“The funding from Calculus will enable Wazoku to further expand our reach by investing to strengthen our sales and marketing capability. It will also allow us to continue to deliver a market leading product through further investment in product development and data science capability.”

Alexander Crawford, Co-Head of New Investments at Calculus Capital, said: “Innovation starts with an idea to solve a problem or improve a process. These ideas need to be captured, collated, analysed and successfully implemented. Wazoku helps organisations do this very effectively, transforming raw ideas into actionable innovation.”

“The company is a leader in a high-growth business area and already has an impressive roster of clients. Our investment will help them move into the next stage of their growth story.”

Wazoku’s core platform, Idea Spotlight, is used by businesses such as John Lewis & Partners, HSBC and Aviva, to uncover opportunities, highlight areas for business improvement and drive significant savings or boost revenues. It is used to capture, evaluate, improve and implement ideas from across any audience, whether that’s employees, customers, partners, the general public or another group of stakeholders altogether, to embed innovation led change or transformation as a core, strategic, everyday capability.

Hill commented: “The past 12 months have been a period of sustained and strong growth for Wazoku and I am hugely optimistic about this next phase for the business. Our market is showing strong growth globally and Wazoku is growing even faster. We have continued to deliver against our global ambitions with key client wins across Europe, APAC, North America, LatAm and Africa. I am particularly excited by our expansion into Germany and the Nordics, where we have signed a number of key strategic partnerships and are already starting to see strong growth.”

In 2018, Wazoku signed a strategic reseller agreement with Sopra Steria ISS in Germany, who delivered Die Alter Leipziger, one of the oldest insurance companies in Germany, as a new Wazoku client in 2018 and have a very strong pipeline of opportunity for the rest of 2019.

As an innovation company, Wazoku continues to invest significantly in R&D, to ensure product development continues to drive the market forward and maintain product differentiation for Wazoku’s core product, Idea Spotlight. In 2018, Wazoku launched Spotlight.AI, which is based on proprietary Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, to connect people, ideas and problems. Spotlight.AI achieves this by highlighting key relationships between content, promoting transparency, engagement and visibility.

The success of the product continues to be evidenced through its long-standing and broad reaching customer roster, noteworthy successes include:

• Sopra Steria Connected Limited (SSCL)
o Thanks to its work with Wazoku SSCL was awarded ‘Best Business Transformation Strategy’ at the Engage Awards 2018 and the ‘People and Organisation’ category at Ideas UK ‘Idea of the Year’ competition. The firm has engaged more than 67% of its workforce in its ideas scheme and generated 400% ROI in its first year alone.

• Direct Line Group
o 2018 saw Direct Line Group recognised as a leader in garnering employee ideas, being awarded ‘Best Use of Innovation in Employee Engagement at the 2018 Engage Awards.
o Direct Line’s Idea Lab has now engaged more 11,000 staff and generated Direct Line Group £3.5 million in savings, making it one of Wazoku’s most successful customers.

• Waitrose
o In early 2019 the supermarket chain renewed its contract with Wazoku, expanding its use within 350 stores to run a number of focused campaigns in areas such as IT. Since 2015, Waitrose has engaged more than 60,000 employees in its Partner Ideas scheme and driven £millions of benefit to the business.

CACI and Huq Industries Partner to Bring On-demand Geo-behavioural Insight to Research

Posted on May 9, 2019 | by root

CACI, the leading marketing technology and location planning specialist, has partnered with Huq Industries, provider of in-depth behavioural measurement data. The partnership brings new location planning and insight capabilities to CACI’s clients, drawing on Huq’s mobile panel of 60+ million participants worldwide.

The detail and reliability in the data that Huq provides enables CACI to survey how consumers engage with the physical environment at the retail unit level, over time. These unique qualities provide valuable insights into the evolving role of commercial centres and destinations, and what motivates consumers to visit them.

Alex McCulloch, CACI Director said “Location Planning has been at the core of our business for 45 years, and so the opportunity that Huq’s behavioural data brings is clear for CACI. The observational quality and reporting detail available through Huq’s dataset allows us to develop powerful new insights across fast-changing and hard-to-measure domains. This allows us to advise our clients on how to maximise the opportunity for their retail spaces and to create destinations that truly engage, surprise and delight the consumer.”

Conrad Poulson, CEO of Huq Industries said “We’re delighted to work with CACI to bring our unique dataset into new domains through their impressive analyses and applications. This partnership validates our investment in data quality and reporting granularity, and the benefit this represents for researchers working within the geo-behavioural space.”