The widest-read business publication in the South East
PLATINUM
SUSSEX EDITION . ISSUE 28. 2016
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DMH Stallard
FOCUS ON RECRUITMENT EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
PLATINUM THE BIG STORY
Richard Aspinall VODAFONE
PARIS Business Travel
PLATINUM EXPANSION
Major Announcement
How Steve Jobs changed the world
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Welcome
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THE BIG STORY STEVE JOBS The man who changed the world
PLATINUM
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BUSY TIMES AT PLATINUM BUSINESS PUBLICATIONS
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BREXIT - THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
46
BUSINESS IN PARIS
53
FOCUS ON RECRUITMENT
84
THE FUTURE OF THE WORKPLACE
PUBLICATIONS
Read about our exciting new publication launches
Geoff Meade MBE was the Press Association’s man in Brussels for 35 years. He reveals the reaction from the EU
After horrific terrorist attacks Paris is fighting back
Nothing is more important than finding the right people
At a Glance 6 Big News from Platinum 8 Local News 12 NatWest 15 Entrepreneurial Spark 16 Brighton & Hove Business Awards 18 Sussex Business Awards 19 National News 22 DMH Stallard 24 Steve Jobs 30 Kreston Reeves 32 Rawlison Butler 34 Gatwick Diamond Business Awards 36 Gatwick Diamond Speakers Conference 38 Carpenter Box 41 Brighton Expo 43 Business Travel 44 Uniglobe 46 Travel - Paris 53 How to Recruit 54 Recruitment - Ten2Two 56 Recruitment - Harvey John 58 Recruitment - Pier Recruitment 62 Coast to Capital 64 Anger Management 66 Motoring News 68 Motoring - Vauxhall GTC 70 Motoring - Golf GTI 73 IT News 74 Table Talk - And so to Food 76 Review - @isaac 79 Wine Masterclass 80 Brighton Hotel Awards - Jeremy Ogden 82 Digital Marketing - Identity 84 Richard Aspinall - Vodafone 87 The Platinum Club 88 Chambers of Commerce 97 Women in Business 98 Brighton Summit 100 Platinum Style 102 Institute of Directors
Interview with Vodafone’s Richard Aspinall
All rights reserved. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher. The publisher cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions relating to advertising or editorial. The publisher reserves the right to change or amend any competitions or prizes offered. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior written consent from the publisher. No responsibility is taken for unsolicited materials or the return of these materials whilst in transit. Platinum Business Magazine is published and owned by Platinum Business Publications Limited.
4
Issue 28 - 2016
A word from the Editors Summer has faded into the chill and wafting leaves of Autumn and following Brexit, we are all still alive and the boogie man has not come to get us yet. This month we are delighted to make the long-awaited announcement of the expansion of Platinum into every corner of the South East with our launch of various official Chamber of Commerce publications. Not content with only 86% penetration of the business community, our new titles will afford us close to 100% penetration. See all the news on page 6 In this issue we take a look over the life of Steve Jobs to fully understand how this one man changed our lives, we take a look at the world of Recruitment in a special feature and we bring you further news of the launch of the 2017 Gatwick Diamond Business Awards. DMH Stallard bring you the latest on protecting your personal information and quite apt in light of the Yahoo debacle and Kreston Reeves talk about ostriches! We shine a light on the world of Recruitment with profiles of three of the regions leading recruitment agencies and a word from one of the leading HR Directors in the region - who also happens to be our Food and Drink Editor, the multi-talented Amanda Menahem. Maarten goes looby lou in the new Golf GTi and we might further investigate, in a future issue, quite how he still has an unblemished driving licence and whilst he was at it, he got hot and bothered about Brexit in Anger Management. Rose was packed off to Paris to get the scoop on business travel to that famous City and we bring you the runners and riders in the Brighton & Hove Business Awards. Our expansion means that we have moved into larger offices with lots of new staff and even more vans that will be flying around the region with an ever increasing load of copies to keep up with demand. Upwards and onwards.
Maarten & Ian Platinum Business Magazine October 2016
The Team
Maarten Hoffmann – Director maarten@platinumbusinessmagazine.com
07966 244046
Ian Trevett – Director ian@platinumbusinessmagazine.com
07989 970804
Lesley Alcock
Amanda Menahem
Kate Morton
Business Development Director
Food & Drink Editor
Copy Editor
Rose Dykins
Julia Trevett
Lauren Psyk
Amanda Spicer
Travel Editor
Accounts Manager
Event Photographer
Head of Design
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Platinum News
PLATINUM GOES FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH At Platinum Towers, we are delighted to announce the expansion of the Platinum Empire with the publication of three new titles on behalf of the regional Chambers of Commerce.
ACE S for the The official magazine of Chambers in East Sussex
Alliance
ussex
Issue 1. 2016
SURREY CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE The Official Surrey Cham
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WHAT CAN THE CHAMBER DO FOR ME?
Z
zine
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LOUISE PUNTER on Business in Surrey
UNIVERSITY OF SURREY
Profile of
Business working with Education
SOVEREIGN HARBOUR
FOXHILLS
AMSTERDAM
Reviewed
What’s in store for business travel
WILKINS KENNEDY
PROFILE:
Tim Cobb PR
PUBLICATIONS
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Exclusive profile of the Weybridge Entrepreneur
Christina Ewbank explains
PLATINUM
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bers of Commerce Maga
THEO PAPHITIS
AMBER RUDD Hastings’ own Secretary of State
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ACES
for the Alliance The official magazine of Chambers in East Sussex
PLATINUM
Focus on Corporate Finance
PUBLICATIONS
The official publication for the Alliance of Chambers in East Sussex.
The official publication for the Surrey Chambers of Commerce.
ACE Magazine will be the members publication for all 18 Chambers within East Sussex and will bring all the news, views and opinion of the region with informative editorial features, company profi les, start-ups and new businesses and a raft of fascinating news from across East Sussex. ACE will also bring you all the Chamber news, event schedules and new members details. ACE launches in November 2016 and will be available to all ACES members and generally available at a wide range of retail and business outlets across the region including Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda and Morrisons.
Surrey Business will cover all the business news from across the county and will be an exciting mix of news and views. Topics covered include fi nance, education, technology, business travel, food and drink, commercial property, motoring and all the news from the Chamber. With signifi cant editorial content, Surrey Business will be the only magazine you will ever need to learn everything about business in Surrey. The publication will be direct mailed to every Chamber member along with general availability across the county at a wide array of outlets including all the major supermarkets, retail outlets and transportation hubs and launches in January 2017.
Any company can get involved in the magazine and there are special discounted advertising rates for Chamber members. For further information and a Media Pack, please contact lesley@platinumbusinessmagazine.com.
Any company can get involved in the magazine and there are special discounted advertising rates for Chamber members. For further information and a Media Pack, please contact maarten@platinumbusinessmagazine.com.
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Platinum News
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The official publication for the Worthing & Adur Chamber of Commerce
e Chamber of Commerc for the Worthing & Adur The official magazine
TIM LOUGHTON MP
Chamber Business will offer a unique look at the business scene of this fast growing region. Packed with fascinating start-ups and niche businesses, along with some household names, the Worthing area is one to watch. Direct mailed to every Chamber member, the magazine will be a mix of local news, business events, exhibitions, conferences and networking along with regular features and profi les on the businesses of the area and all the Chamber news and events. Chamber Business will be available across the region at a wide array of business and retail outlets and all the leading supermarkets.
New Committee Chair
WHAT CAN THE CHAMBER DO FOR ME? CEO Tina Tilley Explains Profile:
RICARDO ENGINEERING AMSTERDAM
Any company can get involved in the magazine and there are special discounted advertising rates for Chamber members. For further information and a Media Pack, please contact ian@platinumbusinessmagazine.com.
What’s in store for business travel
PROFILE:
Shoreham Airport’s new business centre
PLATINUM PUBLICATIONS
7 1 0 2 n i g And comin PLATINUM B
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PUBLICATIONS The official magazine for the Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerc e
BRIGHTON MARINA
Development at last
THE BENEFITS OF MEMBERSHIP
Sarah Springfield
WIRED SUSSEX
Brighton’s digital revolution
THE BAHBAS
How to win an award
INTERVIEW
LUKE JOHNSON Why did he purchased the Pier
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
DEBRA HUMPHRIS Vice-Chancellor University of Brighton
The official publication for the Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce Brighton Business will bring you all the news of this fascinating and vibrant City. An eclectic mix of news and views, we will also feature some of the leading and up-and-coming companies in the City along with a regular feature on the digital industry as Brighton has rapidly become the home of some of the country’s leading companies in the sector. One of the start-up capitals of the country, Brighton Business will scour the City to seek out those niche businesses that make Brighton what it is - vibrant, forward looking and exciting. The magazine will be direct mailed to every Chamber member and available across the City - everywhere. Profi les, features, interviews and more, Brighton Business will be everything you will ever need to do business in Brighton & Hove.
PLATINUM PUBLICATIONS
New offices, new staff, new delivery vehicles and an exciting future as the largest distribution business publication in the UK - and we haven’t finished there. Watch this space for exciting news about further expansion in 2017 !
7
Local News
LOCAL NEWS KRESTON REEVES SHORTLISTED FOR TWO NATIONAL AWARDS
Kreston Reeves has been shortlisted in the ‘Mid-tier Firm of the Year’ and ‘Top 50 Audit Team of the Year’ categories for the British Accountancy Awards. The awards presentation will be taking place in the City of London on the 29th November. This is not the fi rst time that Kreston Reeves have been recognised at these awards. In 2014, they won ‘Training Team of the Year’ and were declared fi nalists in the ‘Top 50 Audit Team of the Year’. In 2013 they were fi nalists in the ‘Best Employers’ category, in 2012 fi nalists in the ‘Mid Tier Firm’ and ‘Tax Award of the Year, Non-Global Firm’ categories, and in 2011 they also won the title of ‘Best Employer’ in a category backed by Accountancy Age and the Best Companies Group. Nigel Fright, Managing Partner at Kreston Reeves, commented: “I am delighted that Kreston Reeves has been shortlisted in both categories at the British Accountancy Awards. Our fundamental core value is quality client relationships and service, so to be shortlisted using criteria that judges this value means a lot to us. We look forward to attending the awards ceremony and hearing the results.”
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Life is like a dogsled team.
If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.
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BRITISH SCIENCE FESTIVAL - 2017
The British Science Association (BSA) has announced that the British Science Festival 2017 will take place in Brighton. The University of Brighton and the University of Sussex will co-host the Festival, which will run from 5th – 9th September. The annual event is one of Europe’s leading and longest-established science festivals. Ivvet Modinou, Head of Engagement at the British Science Association, said: “We are delighted to bring the British Science Festival to Brighton next year. It will be different from the previous festivals we have run, in that it is being co-hosted by two amazing universities and will take place in venues all over the city over the course of fi ve days.” Visitors should expect to fi nd talks, debates, workshops and performances about cutting-edge science from world-leading academics. Topics will cover the whole scientifi c spectrum, including technology, engineering and social sciences. Professor Debra Humphris, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Brighton, said: “I am delighted that the University of Brighton will be co-hosting the British Science Festival next year. We were keen to grasp this wonderful opportunity to showcase our world-leading research alongside cutting-edge science from around the globe in an accessible and engaging way. The city of Brighton & Hove is world-renowned for its Art Festival. By hosting the British Science Festival, we can throw open the doors of our facilities to the wider community, including our new state-of-the-art Advanced Engineering Building that is currently under construction.” Professor Michael Davies, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Sussex, added: “We are thrilled to welcome the festival back to our city. Many staff still connected to the University of Sussex remember fondly the impact of the event when we hosted it back in 1983. The ethos of scientifi c teaching, learning and research at Sussex hasn’t changed since then; we are as passionate today about cutting-edge innovation that spans across the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines to address themes such as neuroscience, digital humanities and sustainability. We look forward to a fantastic festival in September 2017.” www.britishscienceassociation.org/british-science-festival
8
Local News
OUTSTANDING SARAH
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Early to bed and early to rise probably indicates unskilled labour
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Sarah Springford was named this year’s Outstanding Brightonian at the Brighton & Hove Business Awards. Sarah has been the Brighton Chamber Director since 2008, and since then the Chamber has developed into a vibrant, exciting and supportive business community with around 600 member businesses. The Chamber has been recognised for the work it does for local businesses, for example, delivering the Ride the Wave business support events for Brighton Council for the last four years, developing a new project Recruit Ability helping disabled people into real job vacancies and leading the Brighton & Hove Living Wage Campaign, which has signed up nearly 300 local businesses since it started in 2012. Sarah said, “It is such an honour and an accolade to have received this award from the BAHBAs judges. And brilliant that the Living Wage and Brighton Chamber have been recognised in this way by the business community.” See page 16 for more winners at this year’s BAHBAs
EXPORT HUB ON THE ROAD The Export Hub West Sussex will be at Crawley Town Football Club on 19th October, when a range of experts, including experienced International Trade Advisers (ITAs), will be on hand with practical guidance, advice and bite-sized top tips for businesses of all sizes who wish to expand into new international markets. Key speakers will include: • Department for International Trade – Export Savvy: the online tool for your business • Department for International Trade – Introduction to agents & distributors • Rawlison Butler LLP – Agents & distributors • UK Export Finance – First-time or experienced exporter? How UK Export Finance can assist • Creative Pod – Getting your marketing into gear for export • Barclays - Unlocking international opportunities • Coast to Capital – Support for Exporters • Gatwick Diamond Business – Why is the World important to the Gatwick Diamond? The demand is out there; you should be too. The event starts at 10am and is free to attend.
COBB LEAPFROGGS AHEAD Two digital powerhouses have agreed a landmark deal that will see Cobb Digital nearly double in size and Leapfrogg re-focus its energies on top-end strategic advice to the retail sector. The deal sees six digital professionals and a fantastic group of retail clients move from Leapfrogg to Cobb Digital. James Dempster, Managing Director of Cobb Digital, said: “Thanks to the great work provided by my team, we’ve recently moved into larger premises at New England House, Brighton, with room for growth over the coming years. As soon as we were approached about a possible link-up with Leapfrogg, we knew this was the right deal for us. “It is a perfect match for our company and the combined skill sets of the team are already delivering even better results and consultancy for our combined portfolio.” Rosie Freshwater, Managing Director of Leapfrogg, said: “It has fasttracked our opportunity to not only deliver a fantastic multi-channel offering to our combined portfolio of existing clients, but it’s also freeing up our Insight & Strategy team to be more nimble in delivering the research and strategy projects we are becoming famous for.” The deal underlines the Cobb Group’s desire to become the numberone full-service media group in the South East. The whole deal was made possible by EMC, who have advised both companies for many years. EMC’s Nik Askaroff said: “Both companies are at the top of their game in the digital marketing sector and we felt that the deal would bring great benefi ts to both sides,” Cobb Digital was given comprehensive legal support by DMH Stallard, and Leapfrogg was supported by Coole Bevis LLP.
exporthubwestsussex. eventbrite.co.uk
9
Local News
LOCAL NEWS NEW PARTNER FOR DMH STALLARD
Mark Harden has joined DMH Stallard as a partner in the corporate team. He joined from the London offi ce of Thrings and specialises in corporate and commercial transactions, with particular emphasis on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, corporate and project fi nance and all manner of commercial agreements. DMH Stallard now employs 300 people, including more than 60 partners, across offi ces in Gatwick, Guildford, Brighton and London. Richard Pollins, Managing Partner of DMH Stallard, said: “Mark is an exceptional individual. We’re all delighted that he has joined our London operation. “His commercial experience and background in engineering make him an obvious choice for advanced manufacturing and high-tech companies, large and small, embarking upon corporate or commercial transactions.” Mark spent 10 years at The Marconi Company, including two years in a commercial management role before he qualifi ed as a solicitor. After leaving the industry and gaining his law degree, Mark completed his legal training and spent seven years at the magic circle fi rm, Linklaters. He then spent four years at Ernst & Young’s associated law fi rm. Mark has now been a partner for 12 years and has experience in a range of industry sectors, including manufacturing, railways, aerospace, defence, telecommunications, leisure and fi nancial services.
KNOCK-OUT NIGHT FOR CHARITY
The business community responded in typical fashion to a charity’s call for help by raising an incredible £81,000 in just one evening. Skerritts Chartered Financial Planners organised and hosted a boxing night and auction at The Grand Brighton to raise funds for Action Medical Research. And to spice up the evening, boss Richard Skerritt put on his boxing gloves and stepped up for the fi rst fi ght of the evening in front of a 400-strong audience. The 6’ 5” wealth manager, who has been training hard for the match, took just 90 seconds to win his bout. World champion hopeful Chris Eubank Junior was in the audience and helped boost the coffers by donating a pair of boxing gloves for the auction. Richard Skerritt praised the generosity of the Brighton & Hove community and his clients who had come to see the fi ghts. “A lot of people were here to see me get my lights punched out, so I apologise for letting them down,” he joked. “But there were fi ve other excellent amateur fi ghts at the Underground Gym to entertain them. “Most importantly, the evening was to raise funds for the wonderful work carried out by Action Medical Research. They do not have a particularly high profi le in the area, but they do fantastic work all around the UK and I am delighted to be supporting them.” Chris Eubank Jnr.
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We must remember to love people and use things, rather than to love things and use people.
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10
Local Newz
LOVING BEING SIX
GROWING FAST
It was during the recession of 2010, when Sussex businessman Gary Peters set up Lovelocaljobs.com. The company has since been recognised in European, national and regional awards and have just recently been highly commended in the National Recruiter Awards for the best jobs/careers board. This year has seen the growth of Be the Change, a ground-breaking, inspirational programme which is usually aimed at year 9 students who, for one reason or another, have become disengaged with school or lack confidence in their own abilities. Delivered in partnership with social enterprise humautopia, the programme focusses on happiness, confidence, hope, relationships and employability and encourages students to identify their personal barriers to success, helping them to find ways of overcoming them so they can be successful. “I am so proud of what LoveLocalJobs.com has achieved in six years,” said Gary. “We have built a strong, recognisable brand is Sussex, which is getting stronger, and we are looking forward to what happens next. At the moment, we’re just scratching the surface.”
BRIGHTON and Hove will see one of the biggest rises across the country in small business growth over the next four years. Research by Capital Economics which was commissioned by energy firm npower, says the city will have the fifth-highest increase in the UK, only behind London, Bristol, Leeds and Birmingham, The report shows that small and medium sized businesses will generate £16 billion for the UK economy each year by 2020 - despite fears over an economic slowdown in the wake of the EU referendum. Carol Lewis, President of Brighton Chamber of Commerce, said: “This is great news for small businesses across Brighton and Hove and is an encouraging indicator of what is to come. We know this is a vibrant City and it is wonderful to have that recognised.” Dale Murray, CBE & Board Advisor at the Centre for Entrepreneurs, said: “Growth of SMEs will be crucial to the British economy over the next five years, as they create tens of thousands of jobs”. “Policy-makers must recognise how vital business rates, living conditions and workforce skills are to attracting SMEs and do everything they can to support them.”
CHARLES STEPS IN
APPARENTLY, PASSENGERS MATTER!
Due to ill-health, Lord Adonis is no longer able to speak at the gdb Speakers Conference, but his replacement is well-known to many. Charles Clarke served as both Home Secretary and Education Secretary. Having left Westminster, he remains involved in politics, and retains a particular interest in education policy and on broader areas of longterm planning and strategy in public and private sectors. Charles remains involved in Labour politics and regularly comments in the media on events in Westminster and beyond. His book, The Too Difficult Box refers to politics’ aversion to long-term decision-making and the necessity for a political consensus on key areas of national importance. A lesson that can just as easily apply to businesses and other organisations.
After months of endless delays, cancellations, strikes and misery for commuters in Surrey and Sussex, Southern Railway has been shortlisted for a ‘Passengers Matter’ award. The company, which is embroiled in the long-running fight with the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), still plans to change the role of guards on their trains. However, the Association of Community Rail (ACORP) Awards have named Southern Rail as finalists in three categories. Presumably, the awards will be cancelled at the last minute.
K2, Crawley, 20th October. www.gatwickdiamondbusiness.com
11
Business Survey
SELF EMPLOYMENT POWERS UK’S JOBS RECOVERY Gary Chown ACIB MCIBS Chartered Banker Director, Commercial Banking, NatWest Bank E-mail: gary.chown@natwest.com NORTH WEST Self-employed Employee jobs
SCOTLAND
2.5% 4.5% 2.3%
Self-employed Employee jobs
WEST MIDLANDS 0.6% Self-employed Employee jobs
WALES Self-employed Employee jobs
SOUTH WEST Self-employed Employee jobs
SOUTH EAST Self-employed Employee jobs
6.6% -0.3 % 2.9% 1.4% 3.3%
NORTH EAST
Regional Economic Tracker
Employee jobs
Q1 2016
YORKS & HUMBER 2.6%
6.3% 1.8%
Self-employed Employee jobs
EAST MIDLANDS Self-employed Employee jobs
LONDON Self-employed Employee jobs
T
hink about job growth and most people picture big employers hoovering up extra workers, but it’s the plucky start-ups that are the heroes of the UK’s jobs recovery. The number of people working for themselves has grown by over 20% since 2008, far outpacing the 4% rise in employee jobs. Their contribution to falling unemployment has been massive and the rising phenomenon of people starting out on their own has been overlooked for too long. Self-employment played a critical role early on in the teeth of the crisis. Firms shed over half a million jobs between 2008 and 2010 as the recession hit. Yet selfemployment expanded by 150,000 as people took their future into their own hands. That counter-cyclical role is part of the reason unemployment rose less than had been feared.
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1.7% 0.2% 1.7%
Self-employed
2.2% 2.2% 2.4% 1.3% 2.5% 1.3%
0.1% -4.0% 0.7%
3.1% 1.2% 3.7%
1.6% 0.3% 1.8%
EAST OF ENGLAND 1.9% Self-employed Employee jobs
-0.8% 2.5%
But its impact didn’t end there. As growth returned and fi rms started hiring again you might have expected selfemployment to fall away. Instead we’ve seen continued increases, even as the unemployment rate falls to pre-recession levels. So who are these new wave of entrepreneurs and why are they shunning the traditional ways of working?
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Self-employment amongst women has grown three times as fast as men since 2008, rising by over 40%.
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Self-employment amongst women has grown three times as fast as men since 2008, rising by over 40%. Today, 1 in 10 working women are self employed, closing the gap to men who historically have been much more likely to work for themselves. Flexibility over working arrangements is likely to be playing a role in this trend as the self-employed can gain greater control over when and where they work. Flexibility is an increasingly important theme in the labour market and lies at the heart of much of the increase in male self-employment too. Here, particularly strong growth amongst men over the age of 65 shows how many people are using self-employment to smooth the transition to retirement. That can be a very positive thing, exploiting the skills and networks that a lifetime of employment has built up. But it can also be a sign of supplementing disappointing retirement income. With annuity rates at record lows that effect will increasingly be felt. London is the centre of the UK’s selfemployment boom, seeing a staggering 40% increase since 2008. This performance has helped mean 1 in 3 of the net new jobs created since 2008 has been in the capital. Sussex leads the way in the self-employment revolution. In the index of UK major towns and cities, Sussex has an incredible six entries in the top ten, with Eastbourne leading the way with 21.5 % classifi ed as being self-employed. This is also a genuinely national phenomenon. Self-employment growth has outstripped employee job growth in every region across the UK since 2008. It is a response to economic conditions and to changing demands from workers. Without it, the UK’s record-breaking job recovery would have been a lot weaker.
Business Survey SOUTH EAST Employment growth, year to Q1 2016
1.3%
Employment growth, 2008 - Q1 2016
5.3% SELF EMPLOYED 2.5% 25.0% 16.4%
EMPLOYEE JOBS 1.3% 2.2%
SELF EMPLOYMENT SHARE 21.5% 21.3% 19.5% 18.6% 18.4% 17.8%
RANK IN AMONGST UK MAJOR TOWNS & CITIES 1 2 5 6 7 10
Growth of jobs, year to Q1 2016 Growth of jobs, 2008 - Q1 2016 Self employment share Eastbourne Worthing Hastings Brighton and Hove Woking Crawley
Employment growth
Rise of self-employment since 2008
Source: Office for National Statistics
Source: Office for National Statistics
1,200,000
450,000
Self-employed
1,000,000
400,000
Employees
350,000
800,000
300,000
600,000
250,000
400,000
150,000
200,000 100,000
200,000
50,000
0
Last 12 months
0
Since 2008
Men
Women
Annual employment growth, year to Q1 2016
Employment growth, 2008 to Q1 2016
Source: Office for National Statistics
Source: Office for National Statistics
London
London
Wales
East of England
Yorks & Humber
South West
North West
South East
South West
Wales
East of England
East Midlands
North East
North West
East Midlands
Yorks & Humber
South East
West Midlands
West Midlands
North East
Scotland
Scotland
0.0%
0.5%
1.0%
1.5%
2.0%
2.5%
3.0%
3.5%
0%
3%
6%
9%
12%
15%
18%
Self-employment share in major towns & cities, by region Source: Office for N ational St atistics 25%
20%
15%
10%
South East
Midlands
South West
East
Yorks & Humber
North West
North East
E Mids
Cardiff
Swansea
Newport
Leicester
Northampton
Nottingham
Gateshead
South Shields
Stockton-on-Tees
Bolton
Southport
Blackpool
Huddersfield
Rotherham
Harrogate
Watford
Southend-on-Sea
Stevenage
Bournemouth
Cheltenham
Bath
Walsall
Nuneaton
Sutton Coldfield
Hastings
Worthing
Eastbourne
0%
London
5%
Wales
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Entrepreneurial Spark
FREE TRADE SPARKS GROWTH
Tim Farron, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, used his visit to Brighton’s Entrepreneurial Spark to express his support for the single market.
T
im Farron rejected Jeremy Corbyn’s suggestions that supporting continued membership of the single market is ‘Free Trade Dogma’, saying that free trade is vital to our economy and to millions of jobs. He also called on Liam Fox to apologise for calling businesses too ‘lazy’ to export, and said that neither Labour not the Conservatives are now willing to stand up for business. His comments came during a visit to the Entrepreneurial Spark in Brighton, an ‘accelerator’ for new businesses run by
Tim Farron at Brighton’s Entrepreneurial Spark
NatWest. The Accelerator has recently started a course helping businesses get to grips with exporting their goods. Tim met with a number of businesses, including OMGTea and Simply VAT.com – who help other businesses trade online. Commenting on the Entrepreneurial Spark Accelerator itself, Tim said: “This is a fantastic example of how fi nancial institutions can help to nurture the next generation of businesses. The work being done here is helping entrepreneurs and business people contribute to their community and to the economy, and I look forward to seeing these companies grow and succeed in the future. “The businesses I’ve met here are the model for what is great about the UK: entrepreneurs and innovators. Yet Labour seems now content
to reject free trade, while Liam Fox, who is supposed to be promoting businesses, is calling them lazy. It seems neither the Conservatives or Labour are prepared to fi ght for the open, tolerant and united country that will create the environment for businesses to succeed. “Let’s be clear: free trade is a good thing. It creates jobs, increases prosperity and helps pay for things like the NHS, schools and public services. “Suggesting that supporting free trade is about some right-wing ‘dogma’ simply ignores the fact that all of our livelihoods are improved because of free trade - including through our membership of the single market.” Tim Farron also made clear that any Brexit deal which does not include full membership of the single market would be a disaster for businesses, saying: “Despite endlessly parroting ‘Brexit means Brexit’, the Government seems increasingly to favour ‘hard Brexit’ with withdrawal from both the single market and even the EU customs union. “There would be no better way to clip the wings of business than to create additional red tape when trading with our single largest export market. Such a decision would be unacceptable to business and deeply damaging to our economy.”
15
Business Awards
BIG LEMON WINS BIG AWARD The winners of the 11th annual Brighton & Hove Business Awards (BAHBAs), presented in association with The Argus, were announced at All Saints Church, Hove in September. Sarah Springford
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Big Lemon
he sell-out event was attended by over 300 guests from around 100 different Brighton businesses and included the MPs from Hove and Pavilion, as well as the Deputy Mayor and the Lord Lieutenant of East Sussex, Peter Field.
behalf of businesses in the city.”
Murphy Electrical Services.
The big winner on the night was The Big Lemon, winner of the Best Place to Work, as
This year’s Outstanding Brightonian was named as Sarah Springford, Director of the Chamber of Commerce since 2008.
Jeremy Burbidge, the Managing Director of Ticketmedia which made the shortlist three times, was named Managing Director of the Year.
Other big Brighton names who took home gongs on the night included Brighton Gin which won awards for Business Beyond the City and New Kids on the Block. The gin distiller was also highly commended as the one of the best businesses in Brighton.
Presenting Sarah with her award, Editor of The Argus, Mike Gilson cited Sarah’s terrific work with the Living Wage: “Thanks to her hard work and dedication almost 300 businesses in Brighton & Hove have signed up to the Living Wage. “Sarah has transformed the Chamber and delivered some really amazing results on
well as the Judges’ Award for the Business of the year. Managing Director, Tom Druitt, received his award from Caroline Lucas MP.
Peter Kyle MP presented the Creative Industries Award to The Chinese Room which was also highly commended as the one of the best businesses in Brighton. Mike Gilson, editor of The Argus introduced a new Chair’s Award which went to Matthew
Sponsors for 2016 included Allied Irish Bank, Brighton and Hove Buses, Cardens Accountants, City Cabs, Dental Health Spa, Gatwick Airport, Gemini Print, Graves Jenkins, Martin Searle Solicitors, RBS, Robinson Low Francis, TSS Facilities and Yelo Architects. Platinum Business Magazine, Title Sussex and Juice 107.2FM were media sponsors.
www.bahba.co.uk
The Managing Director of the Year Winner: Jeremy Burbidge, Ticketmedia
The Chairman’s Award Winner: Matthew Murphy Electrical Services
The Business in the Community Winner: Bevendean Community Pub
The Best Place to Visit Winner: The Sewer Tours, organised by Southern Water
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Business Awards
The Best Event in the City Winner: Carousel’s Oska Bright Film Festival
The Green Business Award Winner: The Big Lemon
The Best New Kids on the Block Winner: Brighton Gin
The Award for Best Customer Service Winner: Blanch House
The Award for Best Place to Work Winner: The Big Lemon
The Award for Business Beyond the City Winner: Brighton Gin
The Award for Best Independent Retailer Winner: Small Batch Coffee Roasters
The Creative Industries Award Winner: The Chinese Room
The Professional Services Award Winner: Magenta Associates
The Fastest Growing Business Award Winner: Ellie Ellie
17
Buisness Awards
TOP COMEDIAN TO HOST SUSSEX BUSINESS AWARDS Simon Evans, TV comedian and resident of Hove, has been announced as MC for the 28th Sussex Business Awards.
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elebrating business excellence across Sussex, this is the longest established Award scheme of its kind in the county. The Awards night has a tradition of attracting high profi le presenters. Last year Paul Sinha of Channel 4’s The Chase lead the proceedings at a sell-out event whilst previous presenters have included Rachel Riley, of Channel 4’s long-running quiz show Countdown, rugby star Martin Bayfi eld and BBC news reader Nicholas Owen. This year stand-up comedian Evans, star of television shows such as Live at the Apollo and The Michael McIntyre Comedy Road Show and a regular at the Edinburgh Festival will bring his dry wit to the party. Commenting on his role as MC for the evening Simon said: “I am delighted to have been asked to host this year’s Sussex Business Awards - especially as it will be such a short walk home! “There are so many business success stories from across Sussex. I look forward to hearing more about the shortlist and to announcing the winners on the night.”
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There are so many business success stories from across Sussex. Simon Evans
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Tickets for the awards night at The Grand, Brighton on 1st December, cost £90 each (plus VAT) or £850 (plus VAT) for a table of ten. This includes drinks reception, three course meal, two bottles of wine on each table, as well as entertainment and dancing. The 2016 Sussex Business Awards are sponsored by some of the best known names in the county including Mazars, Morgan Sindall, HSBC, Southern Railway, Vantage Professional Risks, University of Sussex, Checkatrade.com, Sussex Innovation Centre, Checkaprofessional.com, Wealden District Council, Sussex Chamber of Commerce, Nature’s Way Food, Coffi n Mew, The Argus, Heart FM, Platinum Business Magazine and Title Sussex.
To buy tickets visit www.sbawards.org.uk. Get all the latest news and updates on Twitter - @SussexBizAwards | #SBA16
18
NATIONAL NEWS HS2 DEPARTURE
National News
FORMULA 1 SOLD
The boss of the controversial HS2 rail link is leaving to take up a senior post at Rolls-Royce, the aerospace and engineering group has said. Simon Kirby will take up the role of chief operating offi cer, reporting to chief executive Warren East. Mr Kirby has earned a reported £750,000 salary at HS2, which will link London with the Midlands and northern England. He said it had been a “huge honour” to work on the project, which critics say threatens swathes of countryside. HS2 Ltd said it would miss Mr Kirby’s “experience and leadership”, while Rolls-Royce boss Mr East said the appointment would “strengthen management capability ahead of a period of signifi cant expansion”. But Stop HS2 campaign manager Joe Rukin accused Mr Kirby of “getting out before the true scale of the mess he has presided over is realised”. “The departure of Simon Kirby will be a serious blow to those who champion HS2, though many of us are at a complete loss to see just exactly what it is he has done to justify his three-quarter of a million pay packet.”
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Then you’ll be a mile away and have his shoes.
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The acquisition by the US media conglomerate Liberty Media of the Formula 1 racing business for $4.4bn (£3.3bn) opens a new chapter for the motor sport. The announcement may have ended the long-running saga over the future of the business, but it also raises some fresh questions. Some wonder if it will speed up the eventual exit of Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone. Under the terms of the deal he remains as chief executive but he has run the sport for nearly 40 years and is now 85. The new chairman of Formula 1 will be the elaborately moustachioed Chase Carey, the executive vice chairman of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox. “I see great opportunity to help Formula 1 continue to develop and prosper for the benefi t of the sport, fans, teams and investors alike,” said Mr Carey on the announcement of the deal. Liberty Media now takes over from the Luxembourg-based investment fund CVC Capital Partners as the new owner of Formula 1 - subject to approval by regulators. It may not be a household name outside of the United States, but it is a major media conglomerate with stakes in several sports and entertainment businesses. Most notably these include the Atlanta Braves baseball club. The fi rm also has stakes in US cable TV fi rms, entertainment and ticket sales fi rms, and the satellite and online radio company Sirius XM. And it is just one of a number of telecoms and media conglomerates that are owned and controlled by 75-year-old billionaire businessman John Malone. Mr Malone started his career at AT&T in the 1960s and was for 23 years the chief executive of the US cable giant TCI. Unlike other media moguls he shuns the limelight. He has a reputation for having a formidable intellect and for being a business executive who takes a long view.
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National News
NATIONAL NEWS THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD... ... for two days! Browsing the rails at Zara, you might not be aware of this but there’s an 80-year-old grandfather in northern Spain who helped pick out what you’re taking to the till. Amancio Ortega stepped down as chief executive at Zara’s owner, Inditex, five years ago. But he didn’t give up work. Even this week, when the company’s rising share price made him the richest man in the world for two days, he wasn’t ready to retire. Every day he still makes the 10km journey from his town centre house to the Inditex headquarters, based just outside the coastal town of A Coruna where he first launched the Zara brand. Sometimes he sits down with the Zara Woman design team and they kick around ideas for the coming weeks and months - the new layout for a store, a new design for the upcoming winter collection. Experts in estimating the bank balances of the world’s wealthiest, Mr Ortega’s fortune overtook that of Microsoft founder Bill Gates on Wednesday and Thursday this week, before fluctuating share prices pushed it back into second place.
CEO’S IN THE FIRING LINE Senior corporate executives could be prosecuted for offences including fraud and money laundering carried out by staff under an expansion of laws targeting so-called white-collar crime. Attorney General Jeremy Wright said the Government is to consult on plans to extend “failure to prevent” offences, currently only covering bribery and tax evasion, to a wider range of economic crimes committed by employees, also including false accounting. It comes after former prime minister David Cameron in May announced a consultation on plans for a new law as he held an anti-corruption summit in London. In a speech to the Cambridge Symposium on Economic Crime on 5 August, Mr Wright said: “When considering the question ‘where does the buck stop?’’and who is responsible for economic crime, it is clear that the answer is to be found at every level, from the boardroom down. Both corporations and individuals are responsible. ”The intention of the Government actions I have described is not only to prosecute and to fine for breaches of the law, but to promote a culture of corporate responsibility so that we are addressing the threat earlier on and not just reacting to it through investigation and prosecution.
LIONHEART RENAMED
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Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up but a comedy in a long-shot.
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Sir Philip Green has insisted that he is working every day to plug the £571 million hole he left in BHS’ pension fund and dismissed allegations that he is attempting to delay a settlement for 20,000 former workers. The billionaire retail magnate, who has been accused by MPs of the “systematic plunder” of the defunct high street chain, is believed to be holidaying in the Mediterranean on his 300ft super-yacht, Lionheart, when it was imaginatively re-named by protesters.
National News
GROWTH WARNING
TESCO EXECS IN COURT
The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has slashed its growth forecast for the UK in the light of the Brexit vote. It now expects the UK to grow 1.8% this year, down from its March estimate of 2.2%, and by 1% in 2017 compared with its original forecast of 2.3%. Uncertainty surrounding the UK’s negotiations over its EU exit would “dampen growth prospects”, it said, while consumer spending would weaken. It said the UK “would skirt with”, but avoid, a recession. However, a separate report on business conditions from accountancy and services group BDO said optimism was improving, after falling to a three-year low last month. “Although individual businesses continue to report strong trading conditions, the overall picture suggests a sharp slowdown in UK growth lies ahead,” said BCC acting director general, Dr Adam Marshall. He urged the government to set out “a clear timetable” for negotiations with the EU, and said it should push on with infrastructure projects such as a new airport runway and new nuclear investment to help encourage business spending.The BCC is a national body of 52 accredited chambers of commerce across the UK, representing over 100,000 businesses in total. During the EU referendum it decided not to campaign for either side because its membership was split.
Three former Tesco executives have been charged with fraud and false accounting as part of an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into a £263 million accounting scandal at the supermarket chain. Carl Rogberg, former finance director, Christopher Bush, former managing director, and John Scouler, the former commercial director for food have been charged with fraud by abuse of position relating to alleged activity that took place between February and September 2014, according to the SFO. The trio, who worked under former chief executive Philip Clarke, have been questioned over their role in the scandal, after it emerged that Tesco had overstated its profits by £263 million in 2014.
EUROPE’S LOSS Britain’s banks are adding a new angle to their campaign for special status in the Brexit negotiations by telling European governments that their companies risk being hurt too. Firms from France to Germany could lose access to the region’s biggest financial hub, making it harder for them to borrow money or buy derivatives to protect against currency swings and fluctuating interest rates, Anthony Browne, British Bankers’ Association chief executive, told a commons select committee on Wednesday. “It’s in the interest of a lot of customers across Europe to be able to continue to have access to the services that London offers. It’s not in the interest of either side to sever that.” Andrew Gray, UK regional financial services leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said that some of the wider costs that would affect the UK and Europe “should be more fully understood” before negotiating positions get too hard. “The failure of an investment bank to provide a German corporate with the right financial structuring would inevitably be a direct cost on the German corporate, as well as a loss of revenue for the English subsidiary of the particular institution.”
DATABASE CLEAN-UP? Nearly 50% of marketers are unconvinced of the quality of their marketing database and believe senior management should focus more on lead quality than lead volume. In a wide-ranging survey of 100 mid to senior level B2B marketers across the UK, respondents revealed anxiety about the sheer quantity of unqualified leads entering their CRMs and consuming valuable sales efforts. Over 50% of organisations admitted passing Automation Qualified Leads (AQLs) direct to sales with no further offline qualification. “The survey showed that a drive to increase the number of leads in the funnel, without sufficient consideration of whether these leads will actually progress towards a sale is dangerous to the overall productivity and effectiveness of the sales operation,” explained Clare Warren, Head of Sales and Marketing at The Telemarketing Company, which carried out the survey. “The fact that a whopping third of marketers (34%) rate themselves quite ineffective, or worse, at ensuring only the most appropriate leads progress, speaks volumes about the over reliance of marketing on technology to perform a qualification function, best achieved by a human. Despite this, only a handful (6%) sought help from external agency specialists to cleanse their data.”
21
Intellectual Property
PROTECTING IP AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION Sarah Cook, Associate in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications team at DMH Stallard, offers her top ten tips on protecting your intellectual property
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rotecting intellectual property and confidential information is a huge challenge for businesses. The recent data breach at French defence contractor DCNS, where over 20,000 pages of documents exposing the combat capabilities of submarines DCNS is building for the Indian Navy, highlights just how difficult it can be to keep IP safe in today’s world. Whilst most businesses do not have access to such sensitive information they will possess confidential information in one form or another and, in the 21st Century, all businesses are operating in an environment plagued with sophisticated attackers. IP and confidential information is notoriously difficult to protect so businesses should develop a security conscious culture and focus on raising and maintaining awareness of the changing threat landscape with its employees.
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Top 10 Tips to help you protect your business’ IP and confidential information: 1. Educate employees. Employees must understand the importance of information security and we recommend developing appropriate policies so that responsibilities are clear.
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Ensure that even if one layer of security is compromised there are still other layers to prevent unauthorised access.
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2. Implement an on-going awareness programme. The threat landscape changes constantly so it is important your employees understand new threats particularly when they can be targeted i.e. social engineering. 3. Implement and enforce a stringent password policy. This will help prevent unauthorised access to systems operated by the business. Ensure strong passwords are put in place by all employees which are of a reasonable length with varying characteristics, i.e. numbers, letters, and special characters, and do not permit employees to use personal information in their passwords to make them more difficult to guess. 4. Operate a clear desk and clear screen policy. Avoid the risk of sensitive documents containing confidential and
Intellectual Property sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands.
Sarah Cook
5. Implement “defence in depth”. Layer your security, particularly with your most sensitive or confidential data so that even if one layer of security is compromised there are still other layers to prevent unauthorised access. 6. Regularly review and investigate logs/alarms. Look for suspicious and unauthorised activity and consider implementing Security Incident Event Management (SIEM) software to automate the log analysis process. 7. Implement a data loss prevention solution”. One of the biggest threats to IP and confidential information are employees. Protect yourself from this insider threat by preventing users from sending certain data to an external source and which tracks and monitors data movement that is prohibited. 8. Only grant the minimum access required. Restrict access to sensitive and confidential files with access only to be authorised on the basis that it is essential for an employee’s role, reviewing access permissions regularly and removing access when it is no longer required.
9. Include appropriate IP and confidentiality terms in employees’ contracts. Protect your IP and data and outline the consequences of failing to do so.
Should you require any further information regarding protecting your IP and Confidential Information. please contact Sarah Cook on sarah.cook@dmhstallard.com.
10. Disable employee access to sensitive
To help you put in place a robust system to protect and enforce your Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and to ensure that the business is aware of, and complying with, applicable laws and regulations, we offer a free 30 minute IP Consultation for your business. The information you provide will enable us to consider potential areas of risk and enhance your business’ IP protection and enforcement strategy.
information upon resignation.
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One of the biggest threats to IP and confidential information are employees
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To find out further information, or to book your free consultation, please contact David Paling on 01293 663512 or david.paling@dmhstallard.com.
23
The Big Story
STEVE JOBS The man who changed the world By Maarten Hoffmann
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here are many things that could be said to have changed the way we live - penicillin, electricity, oil, the internal combustion engine, and I could go on, of course, but within this generation, it would have to be the Internet and Apple. The Internet, or World-Wide Web, was a British invention by Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, who implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in November 1989. Before then, we were mailing letters written on a typewriter, telephoning each other and getting a bit excited about telex.
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Things changed for Jobs in the 1970’s when he got stoned for the first time and discovered Bob Dylan, Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas.
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The Internet is a passive invention that sits there waiting to be utilised, and IBM, Amstrad and Microsoft all entered the race to be the machinery of choice for the generation that woke up to what the Internet could actually do. Only the visionaries Steve Jobs and Bill Gates really saw the power that could be unleashed, but only Jobs realised that there was much more besides the computer that could come on-stream and that would truly revolutionise our lives in the areas of personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablets and digital publishing.
Born in 1955, Jobs was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs and lived in Germantown, Wisconsin. His biological parents, Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Schieble gave Jobs up for adoption in 1954 and, later, Jobs would become upset when they were referred to as his ‘adoptive parents,’ and he would say that “they are my parents 1,000%” (demonstrating an odd misunderstanding of mathematic principles) and
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The Big Story referred to his biological parents as “my sperm and egg bank.” There has been much made of the fact that Abdulfattah was Syrian, from the town of Homs, and without immigration there would be no Steve Jobs and no Apple. Paul and Clara adopted Jobs’s sister Patricia in 1957 and the family moved to Mountain View, California in 1961. It was during this time that Paul built a workbench in his garage for his son in order to “pass along his love of mechanics.” Jobs, meanwhile, admired his father’s craftsmanship “because he knew how to build anything. If we needed a cabinet, he would build it. When he built our fence, he gave me a hammer so I could work with him ... I wasn’t that into fixing cars ... but I was eager to hang out with my dad.” By the time he was ten, Jobs was deeply involved in electronics and befriended many of the engineers who lived in the neighbourhood. He had difficulty making friends with children his own age, however, and was seen by his classmates as a loner. As Jobs had difficulty functioning in a traditional classroom and tended to resist authority figures, he frequently misbehaved and was suspended a few times. As Clara had taught him to read as a toddler, Jobs stated that he was “pretty bored in school and [had] turned into a little terror... you should have seen us in the third grade, we basically destroyed the teacher.” At Monta Loma Elementary school in Mountain View, he frequently played pranks on others. However, his father (who was abused as a child) never
reprimanded him, blaming the school instead for not challenging his brilliant son enough.
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Of all the inventions of humans, the computer is going to rank near or at the top as history unfolds and we look back. It is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented. I feel incredibly lucky to be at exactly the right place in Silicon Valley, at exactly the right time, historically, where this invention has taken form.
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Jobs would later credit his fourth grade teacher, Imogene ‘Teddy’ Hill, with turning him around: “She taught an advanced fourth grade class and it took her about a month to get hip to my situation. She bribed me into learning. She would say, ‘I really want you to finish this workbook. I’ll give you five bucks if you finish it.’ That really kindled a passion in me for learning things! I learned more that year than I think I learned in any other year in school. They wanted me to skip the next
two years in grade school and go straight to junior high to learn a foreign language, but my parents very wisely wouldn’t let it happen.” Jobs skipped the fifth grade and transferred to the sixth grade at Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View, where he became a “socially awkward loner.” Jobs “was often bullied” and gave his parents an ultimatum: they had to either take him out of Crittenden or he would drop out of school. Although the Jobs family was not well-off, they used all of their savings to buy a new home. Thus, in 1967, the Jobs family moved to a three-bedroom home on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California, which was in the better Cupertino School District, Cupertino, California (this home – the first site for Apple Computer – was declared an historic site). The new house was embedded in an environment that was even more heavily populated with engineering families, and Bill Fernandez, a fellow electronics hobbyist who was in the same grade as him at Cupertino Junior High, was his first friend after the move. Fernandez later commented that “for some reason the kids in the eighth grade didn’t like Steve, because they thought he was odd. I was one of his few friends.” Fernandez eventually introduced Jobs to 18-year-old electronics whiz and Homestead High alumn Steve Wozniak, (Apple co-Founder) who lived across the street from Fernandez. In mid-1968, when he was 13, Jobs was given a summer job by Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett Packard) after Jobs cold-called him to ask for parts for an electronics project: “He didn’t know me at all, but he ended up
The original home of Apple
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Call Worthing: 01903 234094 Call Gatwick: 01293 227670 Email: info@carpenterbox.com
XERO AWARD WINNER 2016
The Big Story
giving me some parts, and he got me a job that summer working at Hewlett-Packard on the line, assembling frequency counters...well, assembling may be too strong. I was putting in screws. It didn’t matter; I was in heaven.” Things changed for Jobs in the 1970’s when he got stoned for the first time and discovered Bob Dylan, Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas. Jobs was far too smart and intellectual to actually be a hippy, and most of the time too stoned to be an intellectual, and therefore didn’t fit into any group and remained an outsider. He was an individual, in a world where individuality was suspect. In 1973, Steve Wozniak designed his own version of the classic video game Pong. After finishing it, Wozniak gave the board to Jobs, who then took the game down to Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California. Atari thought that Jobs had built it and gave him a job as a technician. Atari’s co-founder Nolan Bushnell later described him as “difficult but valuable,” pointing out that “he was very often the smartest guy in the room, and he would let people know it.” Jobs traveled to India in mid-1974 to visit Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi ashram with his friend (and eventual Apple employee) Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment. Upon his return, Jobs had changed his appearance; his head was shaved
and he wore traditional Indian clothing. During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, later calling his LSD experiences “one of the two or three most important
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You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me in the past ten years. But it makes me feel old, sometimes, when I speak at a campus and I find that what students are most in awe of is the fact that I’m a millionaire.
❞ things l have done in my life.” He spent a period at the All One Farm, a commune in Oregon and Brennan joined him there
for a period where they continued their journey into LSD and became practitioners of Zen Buddhism. Jobs would later say that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking. Jobs then returned to Atari and was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each TTL chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little specialised knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimise the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari engineers, Wozniak reduced the TTL count to 46, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 instead of the $5,000 they actually paid, and that Wozniak’s share was thus $350. Wozniak didn’t learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and explained that he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him. Wozniak had designed a low-cost digital “blue box” to generate the necessary tones to manipulate the telephone network, allowing free long-distance calls. Jobs decided that they could make money selling it. The clandestine
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The Big Story sales of the illegal “blue boxes” went well and perhaps planted the seed in Jobs’s mind that electronics could be both fun and profitable. Jobs, in a 1994 interview, recalled that it took six months for him and Wozniak to figure out how to build the blue boxes. Jobs said that if not for the blue boxes, there would have been no Apple. He states it showed them that they could take on large companies and beat them.
hours on the phone trying to find investors for the company. In 1977, Jobs and Wozniak introduced the Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire. It was the first consumer product sold by Apple Computer and was one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed
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Jobs began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Wozniak, and in 1976 Wozniak invented the Apple I computer. After Wozniak showed it to Jobs, who suggested that they sell it, they and Ronald Wayne formed Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs’s Los Altos home. Wayne stayed only a short time, leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the active, primary co-founders of the company. A neighbour recalled Jobs as odd, an individual who would greet his clients “with his underwear hanging out, barefoot and hippie-like.” Another neighbour, Larry Waterland, who had just finished his PhD at Stanford in chemical engineering, recalled dismissing Jobs’s budding business: “You punched cards, put them in a big deck,” he said about the mainframe machines of that time. “Steve took me over to his garage, where he had a circuit board with a chip on it, a DuMont TV set, a Panasonic cassette tape deck and a keyboard. He said, ‘This is an Apple computer.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ I dismissed the whole idea.” Jobs’s friend from College and India, Daniel Kottke, recalled that he “was the only person who worked in the garage ... Woz would show up once a week with his latest code. Steve Jobs didn’t get his hands dirty in that sense.” Kottke also stated that much of the early work took place in Jobs’s kitchen, where he spent
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I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics … then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.
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primarily by Steve Wozniak, whilst Jobs oversaw the development of the Apple II’s unusual case and Rod Holt developed the unique power supply. By 1978, Jobs was worth a million dollars when he was 23, 10 million when he was 24, and over 100 million when he was 25. He was also one of the youngest people ever to make the Forbes list of the nation’s richest people – and one of only a handful to have done it themselves, without inherited wealth.
In early 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh, and the following year Apple aired a Super Bowl television commercial titled “1984.” At Apple’s annual shareholders meeting on January 24, 1984, an emotional Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly enthusiastic audience in a scene described as pandemonium. This explains the roots of his tendency to launch each new Apple product, standing centre stage with a wildly hyperactive audience. In 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO for what turned out to be several turbulent years. In 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple’s CEO, asking, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” Despite the fanfare, the expensive Macintosh was a hard sell. Shortly after its release in 1985, Bill Gates, then developing Microsoft, threatened to stop developing Mac applications unless it was granted a license for the Mac operating system software. Microsoft was developing its graphical user interface ... for DOS, which it was calling Windows and didn’t want Apple to sue over the similarities between the Windows GUI and the Mac interface. Sculley granted Microsoft the license, which later led to problems for Apple. In addition, cheap IBM PC clones that ran on Microsoft software and had a graphical user interface began to appear. Although the Macintosh preceded the clones, it was far more expensive, so through the late ‘80s, the Windows user interface was getting better and better and was thus taking increasingly more share from Apple. Windows-based
The Big Story IBM-PC clones also led to the development of additional GUIs, such as IBM’s TopView or Digital Research’s GEM, and thus the graphical user interface was beginning to be taken for granted, undermining the most apparent advantage of the Mac...it seemed clear as the ‘80s wound down that Apple couldn’t go it alone indefinitely against the whole IBM-clone market.
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There are people around here who start companies just to make money, but the great companies, well, that’s not what they’re about
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Sculley and Jobs’s visions for the company greatly differed. The former favoured open architecture computers like the Apple II, sold to education, small business, and home markets less vulnerable to IBM. Jobs wanted the company to focus on the closed architecture Macintosh as a business alternative to the IBM PC. President and CEO Sculley had little control over Chairman of the board Jobs’s Macintosh division; it and the Apple II division operated like separate companies, duplicating services. Although its products provided 85% of Apple’s sales in early 1985, the company’s January 1985 annual meeting did not mention the Apple II division or employees. Many left, including Wozniak, who stated that the company had “been going in the wrong direction for the last five years” and sold most of his stock. The Macintosh’s failure to defeat the PC strengthened Sculley’s position in the company. In May 1985, Sculley decided to reorganise Apple, and proposed a plan to the board that would remove Jobs from the Macintosh group and put him in charge of ‘New Product Development.’ This move would effectively render Jobs powerless within Apple. In response, Jobs developed a plan to get rid of Sculley and take over Apple. However, after the plan was leaked and Jobs confronted, he said that he would leave Apple. The Board declined his resignation and asked him to reconsider. Sculley also told Jobs that he had all of the votes needed to go ahead with the reorganisation. A few months later, on September 17, 1985, Jobs turned in a letter of resignation to the Apple Board. Five additional senior Apple employees also resigned and joined Jobs in his new venture, NeXT.
Jobs founded NeXT Inc. in 1985 with $7 million. A year later he was running out of money, and with no product on the horizon, he sought venture capital. Eventually, Jobs attracted the attention of billionaire Ross Perot, who invested heavily in the company. The NeXT computer was shown to the world at what was considered Jobs’s comeback event, a lavish gala launch event in 1988, and was described as a multimedia extravaganza. NeXT workstations were first released in 1990, priced at $9,999. The NeXT workstation was known for its technical strengths, chief among them its object-oriented software development system. Jobs marketed NeXT products to the financial, scientific, and academic community, highlighting its innovative, experimental new technologies, such as the Mach kernel, the digital signal processor chip, and the built-in Ethernet port. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web on a NeXT computer at CERN.
using the title “iCEO.” The company subsequently branched out, introducing and improving upon other digital appliances. With the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store, the company made forays into consumer electronics and music distribution. On June 29th, 2007, Apple entered the cellular phone business with the introduction of the iPhone, a multi-touch display cell phone, which also included the features of an iPod and, with its own mobile browser, revolutionised the mobile browsing scene. As I type this on my spiffy, and bloody expensive, 27” i-Mac, the papers are full of the latest Apple story. This, the largest corporation on the planet, with assets of $305 billion and a turnover in excess of the GDP of most small countries, is being accused of tax evasion. In August 2016, after a three-year investigation by the EU’s competition commissioner that concluded that Apple received illegal state aid from Ireland, the EU ordered Apple to pay 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion), plus interest, in unpaid taxes. They have as much chance of recouping this as I do of sprouting wings. Also, the i-Phone 7 is about to be released, no doubt to much fanfare accompanied by the nay sayers stating that this is finally the nail in the Apple coffin that will see the demise of the company. They have been saying this since Jobs and Wozniak sat in their garage and started work.
❝ After NeXT was acquired by Apple Inc. in 1997 for $427 million, WebObjects was used to build and run the Apple Store, MobileMe services and the iTunes Store, and Jobs returned to Apple as the interim CEO. With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company’s technology found its way into Apple products, most notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs’s guidance, the company increased sales significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products. Since then, appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the “interim” modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO. Jobs quipped at the time that he would be
Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?
❞
Demonstrating that money cannot buy you everything, and after many a year searching the world for a cure, Steve Jobs departed this world on October 5th, 2011 having succumbed to pancreatic cancer and respiratory arrest. If one can say a man changed the world, here he is. If one can say that immigration can be a hugely positive thing, here he is. If one can say that a genius was taken too early, here he is.
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Finance
INVESTMENT DECISIONS: Beware of the Ostrich By Tim Maakestad, Director of Financial Planning at Kreston Reeves
B
ank of England Governor Mark Carney intimated that individuals should consider more risk to get better financial returns from their savings. But investors should tread carefully. Mr Carney may find his use of monetary policy to prise people out of safe government bonds and savings accounts creates a climate where investors feel risk is some sort of sanctioned security, which could not be further from reality. In fact, the danger is that reckless decisions become mainstream. In other words, we may see rather more
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❝
Most of us want to be able to sleep at night without worrying that our entire financial future is at risk
❞
‘ostrich moments’: when it suddenly seems sensible to throw every spare penny at something, often for no other reason than reading about its promise. Why an ostrich? Apart from the obvious phrase of “not sticking your head in the sand, like an ostrich” which is still apt here, my reference is more to do with the actual ostrich. Not many years ago, farming the large flightless birds was going to be huge in Britain, at least according to excitable reports suggesting families would be routinely tucking in to the meat. Only they don’t. It remains a niche taste, and has grown accordingly with
Finance
â??
The danger is that reckless decisions
investors losing out badly. The ostrich lesson is particularly relevant today and whilst the pressure from policy makers to explore exotic options for returns may be persuasive, it should be treated with caution. The key to making investment decisions is not being told to be adventurous, but understanding the risks when you are. Saving for retirement, for example, is different to saving for the satisfaction of speculative gain. Every person is different, too, by age and circumstances. An investor in their seventies may have different needs to someone in their thirties, or to a self-employed entrepreneur.
Ready, steady, slow But one feature is often shared: caution. Most of us want to be able to sleep at night without worrying that our entire financial future is at risk in some nail-biting, permanent game of money roulette. We have other worries, too, so it makes sense to keep an amount in cash. This liquidity avoids the hazard of being forced by an
become mainstream.
emergency to sell an investment when its value is low. Unfortunately, cash gets outperformed by inflation. However low the headline inflation rate may be, the cost of goods and services in many areas will always rise, devaluing money as it goes. Consideration to some wider investing is crucial. Diversification is a must to spread risk. I have come across investors with their entire savings in three stocks. However good those individual companies may be, as an investment decision it is unwise. Shares are volatile, and sectors drift in and out of favour. Consideration should be given to a mix of investments which may include areas such as shares, Government bonds and property; in effect, a balanced portfolio without dependence on one sector or asset class.
â?ž
an adviser who is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. They are required to understand risk, and the best of them will establish, as we do, a personal risk profile to help their clients make decisions. These are complicated times for investors as they face the twin dangers of low savings rates and increasing personal inflation rates. But one piece of solid investment advice is to be very wary of pressure from policy makers. Their motives may not be the same as yours.
If you would like to discuss the issues raised in this article please contact Tim Maakestad, Partner and Director of Kreston Reeves Financial Planning at tim.maakestad@krestonreeves. com or on +44 (0)330 124 1399.
Caution is not a fixed measure. People with a great deal of money and experience may be able to take higher risks, of course, and be advised accordingly. But the best advice for anyone is still to get advice and only from
This material is for general information only and does not constitute investment, tax, legal or other form of advice. You should not rely on this information to make (or refrain from making) any decisions. Always obtain independent, professional advice for your own particular situation. Kreston Reeves LLP (Registered number in OC328775, registered office: 37 St Margaret's Street, Canterbury CT1 2TU) is registered to carry on audit work and is regulated for a range of investment business activities by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. A list of members’ names is available at our registered office and details of the licensing bodies for our insolvency practitioners can be found at our website. Kreston Reeves Financial Planning Limited (Registered number 3852054, registered office: 37 St Margaret's Street, Canterbury CT1 2TU) are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. All of the above addresses are registered in England.
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Employment Law Conference
1. Lying in the sun Join us on Thursday 17 November 2016, when we put the spotlight on topical employment law issues that employers have faced in 2016. For each topic a practical scenario is used, followed by an analysis of the law relating to each issue and ending with practical advice and tips on how you can deal with the problems and issues raised. Who should attend?
I’m sick...
2. Dress codes decoded
3. Office politics BREXIT
!
REMAIN!
Directors, Executives, Managers, HR professionals and other decision makers
When and where? Thursday 17 November 2016 9am - 3.30pm Denbies Wine Estate London Road Dorking Surrey, RH5 6AA
4. Maternity pay pitfalls
Maternity Leave
5. Keeping a private eye on employees
Prices £175 + VAT for one delegate £150 + VAT per person for two or more delegates
How to book
Cost includes a useful delegate pack, refreshments and lunch.
For further information Please contact Tony Hyams-Parish: ahyamsparish@rawlisonbutler.com
To find out all of our Top 10 issues join us at our seminar
Contact Chris Field: cfield@rawlisonbutler.com 01293 558569
Employment Law
ABSENT… Without Leave Many employees take the view that it is their absolute right to take their holiday whenever they choose. When they discover that this is not the case and have a request for time off turned down, naturally it can result in disappointment. Certain employees will then react by trying to take the time off a different way. RB’s Employment Team looks at how businesses should deal with that situation.
T
he most common ruse tried by employees looking for extra days off is to call in sick. In most workplaces, employees can self-certify absences of up to seven days, so an employee might try this excuse and if employers pay enhanced company sick pay, this could give further encouragement to those individuals to bend the rules. Other employees might try a more creative solution, if the time off is the issue for them rather than the right to pay. UK employment law contains an assortment of rights to time off work. An employee might, ask instead for parental leave. While an employer is allowed to reject a holiday request in most cases, the ability to refuse a request for parental leave is much more limited.
an employee asks for time off for holiday, is refused, then takes those exact days off for a different stated reason, it will of course be deeply suspicious. However coincidences can happen. Mere suspicions will not be enough to establish that misconduct has taken place.
❝
The common trap for employers is that they will assume that the employee is lying to them without conducting a proper investigation
❞
In all cases, giving a false reason for absence from work would be potential grounds for disciplinary action and possibly dismissal. A fabricated illness is a clear-cut example of dishonesty and an unauthorised absence from work. Even in the case of parental leave, the purpose of it must be to care for a child, so if the time taken off work is used for any other reason it would lead to the same issues.
The evidence an employer needs will depend on the reason given for the absence. If an employee claims to be sick, an employer can ask for medical evidence. While a doctor’s note is not required for absences of up to seven days for statutory sick pay, a disciplinary investigation is a different matter and it can be requested.
The common trap for employers is that they will assume that the employee is lying to them without conducting a proper investigation. If
Medical evidence is not the only avenue to explore, the employee can be interviewed, evidence of their whereabouts requested,
colleagues may have witness evidence to give and social media can be a source of information about an employee’s actual activities. As a final point, employers should remember that an employee who is genuinely sick does not necessarily have to be sat at home recovering. The issue is whether or not they are fit to work. Therefore it is possible for an employee to be at a holiday destination but still be off sick. In circumstances where an employee calls in sick after the holiday request is refused, this would be extremely dubious, but it could be that the employee is suffering from stress-related illness and they asked for the holiday as they needed the break from work to recover. Therefore employers should keep an open mind to all possibilities until they have investigated the matter fully. We will be taking a detailed look at this issue and the solutions available to employers at our Top 10 Big Issues for Employers seminar on 17 November 2016.
If you have any questions relating to this matter, please contact Will Walsh by emailing Will on wwalsh@rawlisonbutler.com or by calling him on +44 (0)1293 558540.
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SHINE BRIGHT LIKE A DIAMOND As we celebrate the best of business 2017
ENTER T HE GA T W I C K DI AM O ND BUSINESS A W ARD S Now in the ninth year, we have brought together a fantastic group of sponsors and judges to help us find and celebrate the very best businesses across the Gatwick Diamond. Any business in the Gatwick Diamond can enter and, with 14 categories, there will be at least one Award (if not more) that are relevant to you and your business. Entry period runs from 6th October to 18th November and judging visits will take place across December and January. The Awards will culminate in the spectacular Awards Ceremony on 16th March 2017 at the Effingham Park Hotel. Be sure to put the date in your diary for the business networking event of the year!
For more information and to download an entry form, visit:
WWW.GATWICKDIAMONDBUSINESSAWARDS.COM
Business Awards
SHINE BRIGHT LIKE A DIAMOND Jeremy Taylor, Chief Executive of Gatwick Diamond Business launches the The Gatwick Diamond Business Awards 2017
W
e are delighted to be announcing the 9th Gatwick Diamond Business Awards
Once again we have brought together a fantastic group of sponsors and judges to help us find and celebrate the very best businesses across the Gatwick Diamond.
Headline Sponsors to date: Gatwick Airport, NatWest, Nestle, Emirates Airline Pre-Dinner Reception: Irwin Mitchell
The Gatwick Diamond Business Awards give any business the opportunity to shine as brightly as they can ‌ like a Diamond.
SHINE BRIGHT LIKE A DIAMOND As we celebrate the best of business 2017
Award Categories & Sponsors (to date)
ENTER THE GATWICK DIAMOND BUSINESS AWARDS
Business Person of the Year - KPMG
International Business of the Year Gatwick Diamond Initiative
Now in the ninth year, we have brought together a fantastic group of sponsors and judges to help us find and celebrate the very best businesses across the Gatwick Diamond.
New Business of the Year - the FSB
Employer of the Year - Search
relevant to you and your business.
Green Business of the Year - Crawley Borough Council
The Award for Supply Chain Excellence University of Brighton
Business of the Year - NatWest
The Award for Developing People for Business Success - Central Sussex College Responsible Business of the Year – University of Sussex, School of Business, Management & Economics The Award for Customer Delight - Extech
Any business in the Gatwick Diamond can enter and, with 14 categories, there will be at least one Award (if not more) that are
Entry period runs from 6th October to 18th November and judging visits will take place across December and January. The Awards will culminate in the spectacular Awards Ceremony on 16th March 2017 at the Effingham Park Hotel. Be sure to put the date in your diary for the business networking event of the year!
For more information and to download an entry form, visit:
WWW.GATWICKDIAMONDBUSINESSAWARDS.COM
The Award for Innovation and Technology in Business - Rawlison Butler LLP Professional Services Firm of the Year - tbc The Award for the Place to Meet - Vines BMW & Mini
Our Partners (to date)
Key dates for your diary:
Design Partner: Storm Creative Partnership
6th October 2016
Venue Partner: Millennium & Copthorne Hotels
18th November 2016 Closing date for entries Dec 2016 - Jan 2017
Judging Period
Event Partner: Avensys Live
9th February 2017
Exclusive Media Partner: Platinum Business Magazine
Finalist announcement at the Sponsors and Media Breakfast
16th March 2017
The Gatwick Diamond Business Awards 2017
13th April 2017
Sponsors and 2017 Winners Celebration Breakfast
Launch of the Entry Period with Sponsors, Media and 2016 Winners
To find out more about the Awards and to be involved, visit www.GatwickDiamondBusinessAwards.com or follow the Awards on Twitter @gdbizawards
35
Interview
BREXIT - THE VIEW FROM EUROPE:
UTTER CONFUSION!
Geoff Meade MBE was Europe Editor of the Press Association for 35 years, covering Europe from its Brussels heart, reporting on the rise and fall of politicians, treaties, scandals, alliances and currencies. With his insider’s knowledge and contacts, few are better placed to comment on the view from Europe on Britain’s momentous decision to leave the EU. Don’t miss Geoff’s entertaining take on Brexit at the Gatwick Diamond Business Speakers Conference on 20th October at K2, Crawley. Interview by Ian Trevett. Have you spoken to your contacts in Brussels about their reaction to Brexit?
walk around for five minutes without someone asking for you to explain it to them.
There has been no other conversation in town!
And then there is the legendary Article 50. They say to us Brits, “You voted to leave, and you say Brexit is Brexit, and then you don’t want to trigger the exit?” They are just utterly bemused.
Just like this side of the Channel, the first reaction was surprise; there was an expectation that the status quo would remain in place. Europeans find it a very strange decision and can’t really work it out. Even looking from a British point of view, they can’t work out what the upside is. I would describe the mood as confusion and bemusement. Even now, in late September, no-one actually understands what Brexit actually means. Even when you get politicians such as Boris saying, “Brexit means Brexit”, noone knows what this actual translates to in reality. It is not a case of the EU politicians or commentators trying to be difficult, they are just confused. Do we British want to extract ourselves from the single market or not? Being British in Brussels means you can’t
36
How difficult will Brexit be in reality? David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, has said, ”This is likely to be the most complicated negotiation in modern times, maybe the most complicated negotiation of all time.” I agree. Aside from the actual mechanics, there is the emotional side, which is like excommunicating a family member. And the decision has to be made on how much of a break there will be. Will we just rip everything up and start again? Firstly, Britain has to come to a consensus about what it actually wants. Then we have
the mechanical process. We are currently in a phoney war, but it won’t stay this way. Once negotiations start, it will be a genuine problem. This could not be more difficult as no-one has ever faced anything like this before. The negotiations will inevitably run into the sand. And you wonder how much goodwill there will be on both sides to make this amicable. The EU negotiators will have to act in the best interests of the EU, which may not also suit Britain’s interests.
Why is there so much hostility to the EU? When EU politicians speak about the federal project, I don’t think they realise how much this puts people off in Britain. There was a complacency in Brussels which didn’t help. In fact, the move to federalism has slowed down due to increased Euro-sceptism across Germany, France and Italy. There are much better ways to stop the federal train than just leaving alltogether.
Interview
Being British in Brussels means you can’t walk around for five minutes without someone asking for you to explain it to them.
❞
❞
There is a view in Britain that the country has been run by Europe, but this is not true. There is already a two-tier Europe, and if you think of three of the main pillars of the EU, the single market, the single currency and a border-free Europe, we are only signed up to one of these. We have opted out of the big policies when it has suited us.
is no great, free world out there waiting for us. I know that there hasn’t been a dramatic impact as yet, but businesses are being affected, and the exit hasn’t started yet.
Then there is the image of all these bureaucratic Eurocrats. Leaving Europe won’t mean we are free of the bureaucrats; there are plenty of these in Whitehall.
Like many on the continent, I just can’t see what the upside is.
I think it is safe to say that you voted to remain? I don’t understand the argument put out by Brexiteers that Britain will be great again. I don’t see where the this utopia is. In fact, we weren’t doing badly as we were. There
I believe that we are better together, and there is strength in numbers when we are facing external threats such as global terrorism.
What can delegates expect to hear at the gdb Speakers Conference? I will try to explain what I think is going on in Brussels and how it affects Britain and our businesses. But a lot may well happen between now and then. Or maybe we will all still be just as confused.
THE GDB SPEAKERS CONFERENCE
TARGET BUSINESS EXPO
Gatwick Diamond Business have brought together three expert speakers to help you focus on what is important to your business. • Hear about entrepreneurial business success from Lara Morgan
The Speakers Conference coincides with the launch of the Target Business Expo at the K2. Entrance to the main exhibition is free, although tickets are available in advance to save you time on the day. You could get a head start on your networking and book to attend the gdb Networking Breakfast from 8.15am. Once the doors open, you will have the opportunity to meet with over 100 Exhibitors and see new products and services ‘up close and personal.’ Take the opportunity to have a coffee in the networking cafe to discuss your requirements further.
• Find out what the result of the EU Referendum means to you and your business from Geoff Meade • Charles Clarke, former Home Secretary, will discuss politics’ aversion to long-term decision-making and the necessity for a political consensus on key areas of national infrastructure Sponsored by Gatwick Airport, Reigate & Banstead Borough Council, Santander and University of Brighton, the inaugural gdb Speakers Conference is being held alongside the Target Business Expo at K2, Crawley on Thursday, 20th October, 2016, and will allow you to hear from three outstanding speakers, as well as benefiting from the opportunity to meet and discuss your business issues over lunch.
Throughout the day, why not take advantage of the free seminars - full of information and advice, they are a must for any business professional. www.targetbusinessexpo.co.uk
Tickets, including buffet lunch, are: £75 plus VAT: gdb Members, or £95 plus VAT: gdb non-members To book your place(s) at the gdb Speakers Conference, please call Sally Brown on 01293 440088.
BOTH EVENTS TAKE PLACE AT THE K2 CENTRE, CRAWLEY - 20TH OCTOBER, 2016
37
Buy to Let
BUY TO LET & THE IMPLICATIONS FOR LANDLORDS Part 2 Led by Robert Dowling at Carpenter Box, the MHA Construction & Real Estate team have worked together to provide a national outlook on the changes facing Buy to Let landlords over the course of the next 12 months. MHA is a national association of independent accountants which Carpenter Box helped to found in 2010. This is the second of two articles (see issue 27 of Platinum Business Magazine for the first) to help you better understand the changes that landlords now face and which looks at ways that landlords can reduce their tax burden. Changes to tax relief on finance costs
interest on loans to buy furnishings and bank arrangement fees and charges.
allowance and blind person’s allowance in the tax year.
Currently, individuals receiving rental income from residential properties can offset finance costs incurred in full against the rental incomes received. This results in reduced property profits that are subject to tax. These rules are broadly aligned with other businesses and self-employed individuals who are able to claim business costs against business incomes.
How the new rules will work:
Any excess finance costs may be carried forward to following years if the tax reduction has been limited to 20% of the profits of the property business in the tax year. See example 1 opposite.
Tax relief for finance costs on residential properties will start being restricted for landlords; this is a significant shift from the rules that apply to other businesses. Furthermore, the mechanics of how tax relief on finance costs on residential rental properties is obtained is also changing, which may have further financial consequences for the taxpayer. The restricted tax relief will be phased in from April 2017 and by 2020/21 landlords will only be able to claim basic rate tax relief on the financed costs incurred. Finance costs typically include mortgage interest, but also include
38
Deductions of finance costs from property income will be restricted to: • 75% for 2017 to 2018 • 50% for 2018 to 2019 • 25% for 2019 to 2020 • 0% for 2020 to 2021 Individuals will be able to claim a basic rate tax reduction from their income tax liability on the portion of finance costs not deducted in calculating the profit. In practice this tax reduction will be calculated as 20% of the lower of the: • Finance costs not deducted from income in the tax year (25% for 2017 to 2018, 50% for 2018 to 2019, 75% for 2019 to 2020 and 100% thereafter); • Profits of the property business in the year; • Total income (excluding savings income and dividend income) that exceeds the personal
Other financial consequences The new rules also change the reporting of rental profits within the constitution of what is regarded as an individual’s income. Before April 2017, profits from rental income, being rents received less interest and other property expenses, are reported as income. After April 2017, rental income before the deduction of finance costs will be regarded as an individual’s income. This change will result in an increase to the individual’s income being reported, which may in turn give rise to an increased High Income Child Benefit Tax (HICBT) charge and additional Child Maintenance costs, for
Buy to Let
Example 1: A landlord paying tax at the additional rate (45%) with rental income of £25,000 and mortgage interest of £20,000
Current Rules:
New Rules:
Rental income:
£25,000
Rental income:
£25,000
Mortgage interest:
(20,000)
Mortgage interest:
(20,000)
Tax liability @ 45%
(£2,250)
Tax liability @ 45%
(£7,250)*
Rental profit after tax:
£2,750
Rental loss after tax:
(£2,250)
*The tax relief under the new rules is calculated at 45% of the rental income (£11,250) less tax relief on the interest payments at only 20% (£4,000).
instance. It may also push the taxpayer into a higher tax bracket whereby the personal allowance available will be restricted or it may push the taxpayer from the higher rate 40% tax bracket into the additional 45% tax bracket. See Example 2 below.
Potential solutions: As the new rules only affect residential properties, if you have a mixture of residential and non-residential properties in your property portfolio, you may wish to consider moving borrowing away from the residential properties and borrow instead on the nonresidential properties. You will then be able to obtain full tax relief on the finance costs incurred. However, the change in borrowing may result in mortgage early redemption penalties and further bank arrangement fees, which you will need to consider and take into account. Alternatively, with careful exploration, incorporation may be advantageous with the rental properties being transferred into a corporate shell paying Corporation Tax at
18%. Corporation Tax rates are due to reduce over the coming years, but with the change of Chancellor this may be reviewed.
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This change will result in an increase to the individual’s income being reported… which may push the taxpayer into a higher tax bracket
❞
Careful consideration will need to be given to potentially significant Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) and Capital Gains Tax (CGT) charges, which may arise as a result of the transfers, but also how to efficiently extract the profits from the company.
However, recent case law indicates that it may be possible for incorporation relief to be claimed, allowing the capital gain arising from the transfer to the company to be deferred until the properties are onward sold by the company. This may only be possible where there is a strong argument that the properties are being actively managed and specific tax advice should be obtained before implementing such a strategy. The SDLT charge arising may also be reduced by claiming multiple dwellings relief where appropriate. This will have the effect of the rate of SDLT to be averaged down to the market value of each dwelling within a property.
Should you wish to talk about business or tax advice around the construction and the real estate sector, you can contact Robert on 01293 277670 or by email at robert.dowling@carpenterbox.com.
Example 2: The effect of the new rules on a taxpayer receiving child benefit on two children with rental income of £25,000 and mortgage interest of £20,000
Current Rules: Rental Profit:
New Rules: £5,000
(after deduction of interest)
Rental income:
£25,000
(before deduction of interest)
Employment income:
£40,000
Employment income:
£40,000
Total income:
£45,000
Total income:
£65,000
HICBT charge:
£NIL
HICBT charge:
£1,823
(Based on 2015/16 child benefit rates)
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Incorporating Spofforths
FINANCEFOCUS 2016
Up to date? Join us for one of our popular, free, half day Finance Focus seminars aimed at keeping company directors, business owners, financial controllers and others abreast of recent business, tax and wealth developments. This year we will pay particular attention to the anticipated impact of the Brexit vote for entrepreneurial businesses. Our half-day sessions will include updates and planning points for tax (both company and personal), accounting and VAT, as well as guidance on company valuations and alternative sources of finance. Dates and locations: • Thursday 6 October • Tuesday 11 October • Thursday 13 October • Tuesday 18 October • Thursday 20 October
London Arundel, Sussex Gatwick / Crawley, Sussex Maidstone, Kent Brighton, Sussex
For further information or to book your place at one of the above seminars, please visit the web address below, or contact our Marketing team on: E: events@krestonreeves.com T: +44 (0)330 124 1399 Offices across: London, Brighton, Canterbury, Chatham, Chichester, Discovery Park, Eastbourne, Gatwick, Horsham and Worthing
www.krestonreeves.com/events
Business Expo
THE FIRST BRIGHTON EXPO IS NEARLY HERE… Brighton Racecourse - 10am-4pm, 20th October 2016 Register now for free tickets: b2bexpos.co.uk/brighton-business-expo/
Events and Speakers 10.30am – Paul Samrah (Kingston Smith Accountants) Top Ten Tax Tips for Entrepreneurial Businesses 11am – Natalie Montagnani (Page Marketing) Removing the Barriers to Successful Marketing 11.10am – Julie Nicholds (Loch Employment Law) How to effectively recruit, retain and reward your staff 11.50am – Andrew Abaza (ActionCOACH) Improving your profits by 60% Andrew Abaza is a licensed business coach with ActionCOACH, the world’s biggest 2pm – Speed Networking Hosted by Network My Club 1pm – Emma Pearce
Exhibitors
(as at August 2016 - more to be confirmed)
40 Vexus Corporate Ltd 1 MailServe Ltd 41 Align - Doctors of Chiropractic 2 Federation of Small Business 42 Accelerated-Mail 3 ODM (UK) Ltd 43 Visit Brighton 4 Platinum Business Magazine 44 Rockinghorse 5 Brighton Racing & Events 45 Sussex County Cricket Club 6 Marvellous Sicily 46 Chandlers BMW 7 Mayo Wynne Baxter 47 Action Coach 8 Core Chiropractic 50 Safe C Corporate & Public Safety 9 Pearce Marketing 51 Sussex Copywriting Services 10 Lead Forensics 52 Polestar 11 Direct-Tec 53 Office Profile 15/16 Silver Lining Convergence Ltd 54 Hot Yoga South 18 Brighton Beautiful 55 Eagle Eye Networks 19 Entrepreneurial Spark/NatWest 56 Smart Aviation 22 Joosr Ltd 57 Brewers Paints 24 Chestnut Tree House 58 Laughton & Co Ltd 25 Brighton Video Production 59 Fresh Display 26 Sussex Chamber of Commerce 60 Loch Associates Group 27 Monk Marketing 61 Sussex Skills Solutions 28 Alkira Services 62 Your Business Community Ltd 29 Eight Wealth Management 63 Kingston Smith LLP 30 Dot Squares 64 Streamline Taxis 31 Beta Futures 65 Sussex HR Ltd 32 Limpio Storage Solutions 66 Mid Sussex Golf Club 33/34 Howlett Clarke 67 Sutton Winson Insurance Brokers 35 Lisa Halliwell Design 68 The Pensions Regulator 36 Grosvenor Casino 69 Sussex Pages 37 Worldpay BRIGHTON BUSINESS EXPO 2016 FLOOR PLAN BRIGHTON RACECOURSE (SET-UP DATE: 19 OCTOBER, LIVE DATE(S): 20 OCTOBER) B2B 70 Focus Group 38 Rivervale Leasing Main Exhibition Hall, Brighton Racecourse 39 University of Brighton - Brighton Business School
expos
EXHIBITOR ACCESS
Social Media Advertising Uncovered
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2.40pm – Martin Searle (FSB)
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What is behind business cost and profit?
REGISTRATION AREA
3.00pm – Sas Huntwood Fear of selling? Get over it! This floorplan is subject to change at the discretion of the event organisers NOT TO SCALE
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DELIVER BALANCED GROWTH FOR BRITAIN A second runway at Gatwick will give airports across the UK greater opportunity to grow, which means more competition and balanced growth for the whole country. Let’s make it happen so all of Britain can get the benefits.
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Rose pops across the channel to Gay Paree and finds style and substance in their availability of fascinating conference locations, meeting spots and exhibition space. As they fight for two major sporting events, the City is set to blossom. John Burroughes from Uniglobe offers some eye-watering statistics about international airlines.
PLATINUM THIS MONTH:
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Travel
FOUR STARBUCKS DOUBLE-ESPRESSOS the Average Profit per Passenger by John Burroughes Managing Director, Uniglobe Preferred Travel
cannot think of another industry where this would be tolerated. We all know from our own business experiences that we would long ago have been closed down. But this is true! Moreover, the aviation industry is in raptures over the projections for 2016 when the current return on invested capital (9.8%) will exceed the cost of capital (estimated to be 6.8%). This is the minimum expectation level for investors as the airline industry is beginning to generate profits that would be expected in any normal industry.
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Let’s not beat around the bush Airline travel is sexy, most of us love to get on an aircraft
W
e all read the media headlines concerning huge profits being made and massive multi-million pound bonuses being paid through dubious tax havens. By contrast, most of us fly at some time or other, many of us more than we would like for business, so let’s take a look at air travel as a global company. Let’s not beat around the bush. Airline travel is sexy, most of us love to get on an aircraft, most, if not all, would love to turn left or go up those stairs into the upper echelons of this beautiful, slimline beast, where only the chosen few get to go, or get on the 1st or 2nd door of an A380 as opposed to the 3rd door!
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The reason we love it is it’s the means of catapulting us away from what are sometimes our dreary, mundane lives. As you exit the door you can be on the other side of the world looking at iconic landmarks that you have never seen before, or at beautiful sun-kissed beaches full of hunky, healthy individuals that we wished we looked like. Of course, if it’s on business and you’ve got the short straw, it undoubtedly will be somewhere slightly less salubrious. However, if I told you that in 2015, for the very first time in the history of the global airline industry it made a return on invested capital, I am sure you would be shocked. I
❞
But this is where I need to strike a note of caution. If we consider the history of the aviation industry and the fact that it has never globally made a profit until 2015, we have to ask what changed? In a nutshell, it was 15 years ago when 9/11 happened. The airline industry has proved remarkably resilient through its short history, however, this event was a body blow and everybody could feel the shock waves. Things had to change, and quickly; wise heads immediately started to cut capacity whilst at the same time investing in new, expensive but very necessary safety measures.
Travel
What you might get nowadays It was the cutting of capacity that caught the attention of the business analysts and bean counters. By cutting capacity, when people did start to fly it was difficult to get on a plane as there were fewer seats. This in turn pushed up the air ticket price (cleverly, now being controlled with new algorithms) and this increased their load factors and yield per seat considerably. In my view this was the turning point of the aviation industry from loss into profit. Previously the focus was on flatbed versus a put-you-up-seat, plonk versus fine wines and champagne, red uniforms with high heels (optional for males) versus the more traditional classic style of British Airways, the latest culinary cuisine presided over by the most prestigious TV chef of the moment or a snack box with some marginally edible contents. Now the talk was of load factors, yields per seat, the advantages of overbooking a flight, the weight of luggage, both in the hold and the cabin, a focus on cargo capacity and the thought of ‘what else can we sell to our clients?’ Nowadays you have to pay for the privilege of being able to book a seat so you can travel together with your partner, extra legroom seats, exit aisle seats even more (this is where in case of emergency you take the place of the crew and open the aircraft door - good news that you’re first out), extra luggage etc. It may astonish you to know that on some scheduled airlines, even if you have booked and paid for a business-class flatbed seat for you and your partner, if you do not hold the appropriate
The 1960’s meal service. coloured airline loyalty card, you can still be charged a total of £220 extra to book the seats of your choice on a return flight.
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We need our airline industry to make a good profit so that it can reinvest in the products and services in which it has continually invested since its inception.
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The reduction in oil prices has clearly also been a factor in current profit projections. The average price of a barrel of Brent crude this year is $45 a barrel, the overall fuel costs of global airlines this year is expected to be 19.7% of the industry’s expenses, down from my recent high of 33.1% in 2012/13. Again, a note of caution: the markets predict over the coming years that oil prices will once again move upwards, so do not expect the airlines to absorb this cost as they have done before. Undoubtedly, ticket prices will rise broadly in line with the increased cost of fuel. As the saying goes, there is strength in numbers, airlines are merging and forming ever bigger and stronger alliances, they are working together in a
much more open fashion and they have been actively lobbying to get changes to legislation to allow them to share pricing information on more transparent platforms. You might well feel much of the above is not good news, but I would counter by saying it is exactly that! The airline industry that I enjoy so much working within is coming-of-age, but it is a business and must be treated as such. Profit must not be a dirty word. We need our airline industry to make a good profit so that it can reinvest in the products and services in which it has continually invested since its inception. Having already talked about the price of fuel, the airline industry is expected this year to take delivery of 1,900 new aircraft, about half of which are projected to replace less fuelefficient aircraft. So back to coffee. On average, airlines will make $10.42 for each passenger carried. That’s about enough to buy four double espressos in Starbucks. Looked at from a different angle, Starbucks will earn about $11 for every $100 in sales while airlines make $5.60. Setting taxation issues aside, we don’t begrudge Starbucks their profitability, and nor should we begrudge the airline industry their profits. If you need time to contemplate that statement I recommend you stand by any runway and watch the current marvels of the skies, the Airbus A380 or the Boeing Dreamliner, take off or land. One can only marvel at the sheer technical genius contained within this industry. So let’s keep enjoying flying and help push the airline industry’s profits way above a grande latte with an extra shot!
45
Travel - Paris
Shake hands in...
PARIS Despite a tough time, the French capital is very much open for business, with plenty of promising developments taking place. Rose Dykins reports
I
t’s a summery Saturday in Paris, and the French capital’s spellbinding architecture is baking in the 37-degree heat. As I schlep around the gentile Marais district, I pass empty boutiques glinting with impossibly delicate jewellery, their owners loitering outside chatting to friends. It’s a peaceful time of year; many Parisians have evacuated the city for the balmier temperatures by the coast. That afternoon, I dip my toes in the cool water of the Louvre’s fizzing fountain and make return visits to reviving gelato parlours, before heading for Jardin d’Acclimatation – a
The Louvre
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sprawling park complex 8km northwest of the city centre. At the park’s main gates, there is airportstyle security, complete with plastic trays and scanners. The same occurs at the at the Louis Vuitton Foundation art museum around the corner, my bag is scanned by a machine, and I’m asked to take my sunglasses off. Paris is taking no chances when it comes to safety. The atmosphere feels so benign that it’s almost surprising to see, until you remember what’s occurred here over the past eighteen months or so. Then, you understand this cautious approach.
With the perception that Paris is now suddenly a risky destination to visit, unfortunately, the city’s tourism industry has taken a hit. For example, Lena Le Goff, General Manager of the Grand Hotel du Palais Royal, a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World tells me hotel bookings from the Japanese market – normally a safe bet for Paris – were down 50% on the first quarter of this year compared to 2015. “The entire Parisian hotel market is down 11%, across all markets – and for the five-star market, it’s an average of 30%,” says Le Goff, “Generally the long-haul markets are the first to be affected. I think
Travel - Paris and Toronto, all known for their innovation and excellent facilities. But with its long history of hosting world fairs – the Eiffel Tower itself is a souvenir from the 1889 World Expo held here – Paris is an old hand at this.
Louis Vuitton Foundation
Paris suffered not only from the terrorist attacks we’ve had here, but also those that happened in Brussels in March. Then there was Nice….” On the other hand, it seems business travellers have been largely undeterred by the attacks. People are still coming to Paris to work, and hotel bookings relating to business travel are experiencing an upward curve. “Business travel hotel bookings have actually gone up by 14% in the first quarter of the year, which gives a lot of hope,” says Le Goff. Looking firmly forward, Paris is throwing itself into bidding to host the two largest global events – both the 2024 Olympics and Expo 2025. Bidding for just one of these is no mean feat, and it’s a testament to the city’s determination to enter a new chapter, and to show the world once again that it is open for visitors. And for British business travellers, having either of these world events on our doorstep would potentially be extremely advantageous – be it due to investment opportunities or for entertaining international clients.
international business,” said Nicholas Egloff, Director of Sales and Marketing at Small Luxury Hotels of the World property, Relais Christine Hotel. “Seine-Saint Denis – we call it Zone 93 – doesn’t have a good reputation, but it is close to the Stade de France and there are many company headquarters being built there. And Havas Worldwide, one of the world’s largest advertising companies, just opened up its headquarters in Pantin, in the northeast of Paris. So all these areas are being completely redone, and are developing a lot.”
Its plans include the redevelopment of Paris expo Porte de Versailles. Set 7km southwest of the city centre in Porte de Versailles, and currently the largest exhibition park in France, it was built for the 1900 World Expo. Its regeneration would transform it into “a model of sustainable development – a living space as much as a place of business.” Boasting a whopping seven pavilions for exhibitions, the current convention centre would also be transformed – judging by the renderings, it would do away with the current 1960s Brutalist structure, and replace it with a sleek undulating glass edifice. Impressively, despite the scale of the change, the plan is for the venue to continue to host events throughout the project. Next September, Paris will find out whether its Olympic 2024 dreams will be realised, while a decision on Expo 2025 will follow in 2018. If the French capital is successful in either or both of its bids, it will signify a restored faith in Paris, and an exciting, hopeful new era for France.
Should France be chosen for Expo 2025, the nation would receive eight million visitors over six months, visiting sites in both Paris and its surrounding region. Other cities likely to bid for the event are Manchester, Osaka
Grand Hotel Palais Royal
Stade de France
Paris’s €3.2 billion Olympic bid seems solid. Fending off competition from Budapest, Hamburg, Los Angeles and Rome with a theme of “The Power of Dreams”, its bid states that 95% of the Olympic infrastructure is already built, and the plan is to repurpose existing infrastructure and sports venues. There would be two “core zones” – the Paris Centre Zone and the Paris Saint-Denis Zone. The northern district of Saint-Denis is one of many Parisian suburbs currently undergoing a facelift – Olympics or no Olympics. “There are a few areas in the north of Paris that are investing a lot to attract both French and
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Travel - Paris
FIVE TOP PLACES FOR MEETINGS/EVENTS LOUIS VUITTON FOUNDATION
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A Frank Gehry creation, this eye-catching museum next to Jardin d’Acclimatation park is roughly modelled to look like a boat, with sweeping sections of curved glass mimicking billowing sails. There’s a stunning auditorium with a rainbow stripe feature wall, and the space has transparent sides offering views of the mesmerising waterfall feature that flanks the museum. fondationlouisvuitton.fr
PARIS EXPO PORTE DE VERSAILLES
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France’s largest venue for exhibitions is set in Paris’s southwestern Porte de Versailles district. It covers 227,000 sqm in total, and is usually the venue of choice for international trade shows. paris-expoportedeversailles.com
ELEPHANT PANAME
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This dance academy’s elegant foyer and galleries look like something out of a Degas painting, with intricately carved wall panels and huge arched windows. elephantpaname.com
CARREAU DU TEMPLE
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An atmospheric blank canvas, this repurposed covered market dates back to 1863. It can host cocktail receptions for 2,000 people. carreaudutemple.eu
GUSTAVE EIFFEL ROOM
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Located on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, and featuring 6.8-metre-high floor-to-ceiling window walls on two sides, this smart space was renovated a couple of years ago. It can seat 130 people for dinner. toureiffel.paris
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Travel - Paris
HIDEAWAY HOTELS Planning on extending your business trip for a weekend in Paris? Here are some luxurious boltholes with plenty of privacy:
LE PAVILLON DE LA REINE
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A thick forest of ivy trails down the stone walls of this boutique hotel, in the upscale Le Marais district. You enter via a peaceful courtyard with seating, drenched with sunlight in the late afternoon, where you can sit with a glass of champagne from the honesty bar and listen in on the busking opera singer outside the hotel’s walls. The 54 rooms feature neutral boudoir-style decor, such as velvety fleur-de-lis wallpaper.
GRAND HOTEL DU PALAIS ROYAL
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Situated minutes from the Louvre, this chic 68-room property in a former Royal Palace building is well set-up for business travellers, with friendly staff and a smart yet comfortable bar. Le Lulli restaurant opens up onto a cobbled courtyard, and is perfect for a drinks reception. Meanwhile, its airy Panoramic suite has a terrace with a coveted view of Paris’s gothic rooftops – and would also work well for an intimate product launch.
HOTEL DU PETIT MOULIN
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Housed in a converted 17th-century boulangerie that maintains its original facade, this quirky hotel has just 17 rooms, with décor by Christian Lacroix that blends thick wooden beams with neon green work desks. It’s set in Le Marais district, and will appeal to those with an eccentric streak.
HOTEL RELAIS CHRISTINE
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Set in a former relais building in the Latin Quarter – and home to two adorable cats - this property will complete its ongoing refurbishment in February, with an indoor pool and new spa offering Guerlain products. The 48 rooms are furnished with carefully chosen antique pieces and decadent wallpaper, creating a real sense of place. These properties are all part of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World portfolio, visit slh.com or call 0800 0482 314
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Travel - Paris
DISTRICT DINING If you’re passing through either of these areas of Paris, stop for food at:
LATIN QUARTER: L’ATLAS Although it’s known for its generous seafood platters and Moroccan dishes, it’s the location of this bustling eatery on Rue de Buci that makes it. Grab two outward-facing chairs on the terrace to see street performers and musicians competing for your attention. latlas.fr
➠ Buskers outside L’Atlas
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LE MARAIS: CAFÉ DE L’INDUSTRIE Warm, vibrant and divided into two sections on opposite sides of Rue Saint Sabin, this excellent brasserie is a great place to sample French classics. I recommend the creamy potato gratin, and the tender steak tartare, which is served up with a selection of herbs and chives. cafedelindustrieparis.fr
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1ST ARRONDISSMENT: L'ESPANDON Fresh from its reopening this summer – after a $200 million facelift – the Ritz's Paris's signature restaurant is the epitome of elegance. Its refined menu features carefully crafted dishes such as John Dory fish with snow peas, enoki mushrooms, lime and coconut foam. ritzparis.com
MONTMARTRE: LES PETITES GOUTTES
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With its down-to-earth, industrial-chic decor, this informal option offers outdoor seating and well-done comfort food, from hamburgers to delectable chef's platters. It also regularly hosts live music. lespetitesgouttes.com
MONTPARNASSE: LA COUPOLE Formerly frequented by the likes of Picasso and Sartre, it's the striking Art Deco interior of this eatery that draw in the diners. Its seasonal menu is more varied than your typical Parisian brasserie, and features dishes such as fried phyllo-wrapped prawns with mango chutney. lacoupole-paris.com
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GETTING THERE
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Bringing 100% customer service back into the industry
Recruitment
CORPORATE RECRUITMENT by Amanda Menahem formerly, HR Director, Hastings Direct Insurance
R
ecruitment – it’s a love / hate thing isn’t it? As business owners and leaders we all know it’s the most important thing we do. After all, businesses are really just a collection of people and success dependent upon their skills and will. And so you have to get it right. Or at least try your best. But you don’t have time do you? It’s a self–defeating cycle that I’ve witnessed countless times in my career as a corporate HR Director; line managers swamped and desperately need to hire someone. But they’re too busy to focus sufficient time and attention to this important task…because they’re too swamped! This is when you need a trusted advisor to keep you focused and take some of the legwork out. Whether it be your HR partner or a trusted Recruitment consultant, here are my top tips: Be flexible. You are much more likely to find talented individuals if you can offer flexible work patterns or arrangements. This is increasingly common and is increasingly expected. Take a long term approach. Build networks with groups of people that are your target future employees. Become a ‘talent magnet’. You do this by engaging in activities that attract future employees. For instance, speak at industry conferences, publish articles on-line and in industry publications, mentor others
– get out there! People should want to come and work for you without you having to go out and find them Only use exceptional recruitment consultants, otherwise you’re better off doing it yourself. I have to admit, as an HR Director, my heart would sink when l’d get a cold call from a recruitment agent. I’ll go out on a controversial limb and say if an agent isn’t already within your network , then they’re probably not good enough - or you don’t have a good enough network. A good recruitment consultant will be immersed in your business industry and network and will be adept at building relationships. The best agents do not sell to you. They build relationships with you and become trusted advisors. Choose your agents wisely in this respect. I would say the top 3 qualities to look for are: 1. They don’t sell, they get to know you, challenge you and you genuinely like them as people 2. They are creative in how they find candidates (such as getting involved in some of the activities I’ve outlined above) in addition to using social media and technology in advanced ways. 3. They should do a proper interview with candidates and should only be putting people in front of you who are clearly suitable (including culture fit and personality)
and should pre-empt any obvious questions you may have about a candidate. Sadly, I have found these qualities quite rare amongst the agents I have come across but they are out there. Spend sufficient time getting a really good ‘feel’ for your preferred candidates. This means, getting to know them as people. Whilst an individual may have the competence/skill to do a certain task or job, this is not enough. They need to be motivated to use those skills and competencies. This comes down to personality (and the underlying drivers of their behaviour) and culture fit. These can be revealed by asking open, general questions. I often ask them to tell me about colleagues they’ve stayed in touch with, what they’ve enjoyed the most and the least from previous jobs, what puts them outside their comfort zone, what was their last piece of feedback (good and bad) – and many other questions to get them talking generally about themselves. The trick then is to LISTEN very carefully and look out for the attitude, ethos, values and decision making that will suit or not suit the job you’re hiring them for. Finally, trust your gut feel and intuition. If in doubt DO NOT HIRE.
Do you agree? What are your recruitment nightmares? Email me at amanda@platinumbusinessmagazine. com
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Recruitment
THE HIDDEN BRAIN DRAIN by Emma Cleary, Director , Ten2Two Sussex emma@ten2two.org www.ten2two.org
The UK is missing out on up to £170bn worth of economic benefits by not having enough women in employment.
T
he annual ‘Women in Work’ Index from accountants PWC shows that the UK could boost its GDP by 9% (£170bn) if it could increase the number of women in work to match that of Sweden, the highest performing country. There are significant opportunities for business to leverage the skills experience of women returning to work through flexible working. Part-time working and jobshare opportunities can encourage women who would prefer to work fewer hours, committing
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❝
Office of National Statistics data shows that there are over 1.5m women in the UK who want to work more hours than they currently do
❞
to a job alongside their family responsibilities, to return to work and increase female employment levels. It’s a big opportunity. Office of National Statistics data shows that there are over 1.5m women in the UK who want to work more hours than they currently do and a Government commission highlighted that the opportunity is significant amongst those with professional and managerial skills.
Recruitment
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Around 60% of candidates that register with Ten2Two are not otherwise active in the jobs market and do not register with other agencies.
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Conflict of Interests
A Compelling Business Case
Mothers with young children are a third less likely to be in work than fathers. Amongst the challenges women face is the availability of affordable childcare. In many cases full-time childcare can cost more than a parents’ posttax income, making work uneconomical.
There is a clear business case for employers offering greater flexibility. Reducing working hours of a role from a standard five day week to three days a week or to five hours a day reduces the salary requirement by 40% or more without compromise on the experience or abilities on offer. And if you’re clear about what you want this person to achieve, a lot can be done in 20-25 hours a week by an experienced person.
Ten2Two research also shows that women working full-time with young children in full-time childcare experience real challenges in managing and balancing work and family. They often feel they have to compromise on both fronts and therefore don’t do either job as well as they could. Around 75% of working women with children are the primary carers so until the recent shared parental leave legislation matures and workplace attitudes change, it’s a female issue. However, the situation can change when children start full-time education. Women who have taken a career break to start and care for their family often turn their attention to returning to the workplace when their children start school. The predictable hours, boosted by the range of breakfast and after-school activities, creates space for work.
Flexible Solution For over six million women in the UK, flexible working is the solution and for women with professional skills and experience, a part-time role allows them to re-enter the workplace, continue their career, use and maintain their hard-won skills and experience and care for their families, a situation many didn’t think possible. Basing working hours around the school day hours or working several full-days a week with less childcare support makes work a viable option. Women in this situation also prefer to work locally. Long commutes and the unpredictability of travel can make balancing childcare and work problematic so working close to home or school completes the solution.
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For over six million women in the UK, flexible working is the solution
❞ Research has also shown that offering flexibility increases business efficiency by more closely matching hours and salary to the requirements of a job and increases business effectiveness through supporting seasonal or business peaks and troughs. Increases in employee satisfaction and retention has also been proven. Employers’ attitudes about flexibility are important for women returning to the workplace. In a 2015 Ten2Two survey conducted amongst 650 women returning to work, 80% of respondents felt an employer’s attitude towards flexible work was an important factor in their decision to work for a company.
Finding the Win-Win Ten2Two was established ten years ago with a single purpose: To connect local businesses of all sizes with local professionals in their area seeking professional part-time and flexible work. Based in local areas with real teams of
business professionals, Ten2Two has built a community of thousands of professionals who have asked for Ten2Two’s support in their flexible job-hunting. In exclusively specialising in flexible working and supporting candidates with free professional development events in areas such as working flexibly, CV writing, presentation skills, social media and networking, Ten2Two has privileged access to a community often invisible to other recruitment agencies. Around 60% of candidates that register with Ten2Two are not otherwise active in the jobs market and do not register with other agencies. Candidates feel the recruitment industry is not interested in them as part-time professionals and that quality professional part-time and flexible opportunities are not easily visible to them. Ten2Two has introduced flexible working to hundreds of businesses, many of whom have returned to find more talented people time and time again. They provide a full end to end service, handling every step of the recruitment process on behalf of their client and often consult on refining job descriptions, identifying the right part-time working pattern for the job and even on-boarding job-share partners. Flexible working has no boundaries. Sectors have ranged from Advertising and Digital Media to Pharma and Manufacturing, professional services to not for profit. Roles ranges from HR and Finance to Marketing and Sales. Even Surveyors and Food Scientists have been sourced.
The Future’s Flexible New generations of employees think flexibility is a natural aspect of their job. They can connect and work from anywhere and expect a balance between work and play. UK businesses still have some way to go to achieve this position but in the meantime Ten2Two is playing a part in bringing people and businesses together, flexibly.
www.ten2two.org
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Recruitment
THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF RECRUITMENT By Stephen Barham Director, Harvey John Recruitment
I
believe, with advances in science, big data and technology, we are at a tipping point of change in the world of hiring and getting people to be happy and perform in their new roles. I have been in recruitment for over 15 years and have seen many changes, but I have never been as excited about the opportunity that lies ahead. Most people think that doing things the same way they always have done works.
Sorry, it does not! If people are so accurate in hiring and retaining the right people, why are 75% disengaging from their work? We all know people who are not happy in a job or company and they often are the candidates who are most active in the market place. In my view, hiring managers and applicants find it hard to have the confidence to hire or be hired without mitigating the risk of the things that are making them unhappy today. Recruiting is often done on gut feel, with hiring people being based on competency and skills. The job does not work, and the data does not support that. Look no further than the chemistry group’s YouTube channel. www. thechemistrygroup.com With a world full of ‘high potentials’ and with the on-demand society that has been driven by big data and social media connecting everybody, social channels are nevertheless often just filled with white noise. People can
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get what they want, when they want, how they want. Applying for a job has never been easier, but I would argue that candidate experience has never been so poor! Hiring people based on “fit” or gut feel works because your brain is complex and runs lots of different criteria at once, which gives you your outcome. The difficulty is that much of the time people have conflicting agendas. For example, the boss who is intimidated by a super-strong candidate and fears “they will want my job.” And there is the hiring manager who thinks that because a candidate went to the same school as himself, they must be a good fit. Hiring in your own shadow is always dangerous, and when overlaid by the need to devise your attraction strategy, that is one of the biggest blockers. So I have come up with three paradigms that, in my view, will change the recruitment industry forever; the three things you need to
Recruitment
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Most people think that doing things the same way they always have done works.
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Sorry, it does not!
do to make the most of the changing world we live in. THREE PARADIGMS .... THAT ARE CHANGING THE WORLD OF RECRUITMENT: 1. Quality Data, not Big Data . Data is everywhere and Big Data is the fad, but as Dr Gorkan Ahmetoglu from UCL suggests, it is not Big Data but Quality Data which provide the interesting insights. He has found that IQ, online profiles and psychometric testing are all better correlated to performance as the measure of future success than are CVs or interviews! Traditional interviews DON’T work, neither does CV selection. Even Facebook likes are a better measure of future success than the CV. 2. Complex and layered assessment, including reliable and valid testing That leads me to think about a conversation I had with Ron Tanner from Shirlaws about The Chemistry Group and how they see a lower correlation than expected of skills versus talent/success and ‘how previous performance is the least good predictor of future performance.’ GMA (General Mental Ability) and alignment to vision and values rank much higher as correlations. Ron suggested to me that a company is developing a system to test your drivers correlated to future performance. Now, is this a brave new world? As drivers are hard to change and are socially imprinted at a very young age, how does that align to diversity and equal opportunities? 3. More and more technology Technology has been changing with agile working and ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD). Read The Shift by Lynda Gratton and you will have a scare looking into what the world of work will look like in the future: PAs who work on algorithms. Google is nearly there already, and two years ago, when I read the book, I would not believe that it could happen within ten years. Social media is everywhere, and access to anything, anytime through mobile
system that includes alignment to your true, authentic value base. As a council leader once said to me, “I don’t believe the marketing-led values that are on our website have one value that underpins everything we do: To be fabulous!” If you can’t measure it, don’t assess people on it. Making data-based decisions will always be fairer and more consistent.
technology means that people are consumed by technology: Emails, LinkedIn, databases, PPC, SEO, SaaS, SIP phone system apps that measure your activity and productivity. No wonder we are seeing the emergence of fitness, health camps and mindfulness, just to get some time away from the four to five screens that rule our lives!
3.
THE THREE SHIFTS .... YOU NEED TO MAKE: 1.
2.
Hire with vision Without looking at vision, the danger is that you recruit somebody who could be too close a match for the role from a skills perspective and therefore lose the critical element of personal development and stretch in a role that drives motivation for many people. Or worse, somebody who does not share the same vision or values as the team. Both can be costly mistakes. With “80% of employee turnover due to bad hiring decisions” (The Harvard Business Review), the average cost of hiring being over twice the first year’s salary and 67% of individuals, once hired, not fully engaged in the workplace all definitely give food for thought and reflection! Have a system that works, is measurable against engagement and performance in your hiring strategy If performance is your measure of success and engagement and happiness at work drive success, then these two measures should be your focus. Have a recruitment
Value the experiential side of the process I have seen many changes in technology and communication channels, moving from the fax and phones to having communications across multiple channels, including Twitter, LinkedIn, email, SMS, Google+, to name but a few. What drew my attention is that all these ‘bells and whistles’ have detracted from the service that recruitment agencies should offer.
That is making sure that everybody gets the best possible experience they can. That starts at reading the advert through to ongoing engagement and talent management. So what is the solution? As with many things in life, it is back to basics! Simplify, know what you can do well and do it brilliantly! Communicate in the way that the applicants, customers and stakeholders will respond to best, but ONLY if you can use these systems efficiently and effectively. Don’t overcomplicate things and focus on keeping people engaged in what is normally a delicate process. Big Data has made this more difficult as we all operate in an environment of countless emails, calls and interruptions and things that fall outside of our control, but the art is ensuring the candidate’s experience is paramount.
Harvey John Recruitment stephenbarham@harveyjohn.com www.harveyjohn.com Tel: 01273 827472
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Recruitment
TIMES ARE CHANGING by Katie Gibson Founder and Director, Pier Recruitment
P
ier Recruitment was founded in 2012 by myself and other industry experts who decided it was time for a change.
As I’m sure many will appreciate, recruitment is a very fast-paced and often cutthroat industry and it therefore becomes easy to succumb to the demons of the sector; you become driven by figures, meeting targets, making sales calls and hitting your KPIs. Of course, there is no doubt that this is important and comes with the territory, however it is easy to forget other crucial components of being a recruitment consultant. First and foremost, you are there to provide a service; finding candidates’ jobs and helping businesses grow and retain their workforce. Sadly, the ‘service’ aspect of the industry
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is often neglected, leaving clients with a bad taste in their mouth and placing candidates in jobs they dislike. Indeed, there are numerous consultants who provide an excellent service to
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we fill approximately 80% of all vacancies given to us when the industry average is just 33%.
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everyone they work with, but their reputations are sometimes tarnished. This is why I decided
to make a stand and open Pier. Pier Recruitment is a bespoke Recruitment Agency designed to diverge from the large corporate agencies who are generally only interested in how many candidates are on the books, the number of jobs consultants are working on and how many CVs have been sent to a client. We want to ensure that we aren’t labelled as just ‘another recruitment agency’ but are appreciated as a dedicated group of professionals who will deliver the service all clients and candidates deserve. The core of our ethos is to provide 100% customer service to both clients and candidates by offering a consultative, honest and transparent approach. My consultants only work with a maximum of five clients at
Recruitment a time, which ensures that they offer the best service possible. We also have consultants who specialise in specific industry divisions such as Property, Travel, Finance, Marketing and Legal (to name a few) which means that they have an in-depth knowledge of vacancy details and jargon found within those sectors. Consequently, we are able to find suitable candidates more effectively and efficiently than our more generalist counterparts. In cases where we need to find an incredibly ‘rare’ candidate for a notoriously difficult-to-fill job, we have an executive search consultant who is adept at sourcing for such vacancies. Where we also differ from other agencies is that we endeavour to meet every single candidate and client which solidifies our ability to successfully match candidates to their perfect role. This simple solution means that we can assess how our clients work, what their ethics are and how their team operates, meaning that we can place candidates in vacancies by gauging both their skill set and team fit. However, our thoughts are also very much with our candidates. We meet everyone to make sure we get their requirements correct. If we understand candidates career paths, ambitions and basic requirements, we can ensure they are satisfied with the job opportunities we approach them with. Our commitment seems to have struck a chord across the board, outlined by our numerous testimonials and reviews which can be found on Google, our social media sites and new website. Furthermore, recent statistics also suggest that our service driven approach seems to work as we fill approximately 80% of all vacancies given to us (both temporary and permanent), when the industry average is just 33%. I am confident that the business will
continue to grow from strength to strength as in just 4 years we have expanded from two to fifteen, and we now have two branches, having opened our Crawley branch in the summer of 2016. We are so grateful that the demand for our services has enabled us to
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As I’m sure many will appreciate, recruitment is a very fast-paced and often cut-throat industry and it therefore becomes easy to succumb to the demons of the sector
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expand so quickly, as we can now register more and more candidates, resulting in more and more local jobs being filled. Knowing that we are helping people find work whilst growing the local economy really makes the tough days so much easier – and trust me, we have our fair share of tough days! As I’m sure many in the industry will
agree, recruitment is highly temperamental as the market is driven either by scarcity of candidates, or scarcity of vacancies. Depending on the economic environment, there is usually a shift in the volume of jobs available verses the candidates looking for work. With this in mind, our job becomes a balancing act to ensure we work to what the industry demands of us. Our team’s experience of working through recessions and booms means we understand the changing market. We are interested in working with clients’ long term, helping them retain their best staff as well as attracting excellent new recruits. We are not a company to rest on our laurels and I am keen to keep pushing the company forward. Our next goal is to open a local branch in the Worthing area to support our growing client portfolio and candidate pool, in Sussex.
If you wish to contact Pier Recruitment, please email info@pierrecruitment.co.uk or call 01273 874154 (Brighton) or 01293 223800 (Crawley). We look forward to hearing from you!
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Coast to Capital lep
ENTERPRISE ADVISER NETWORK Preparing the workforce of the future by Georgina Angele Enterprise Coordinator
I
n last month’s edition of Platinum Business, Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) and the Enterprise Adviser Network was introduced as having launched in the Coast to Capital region. The Careers & Enterprise Company is an employer-led organisation that has been set up to inspire and prepare young people for the fast-changing world of work. The role of the CEC is to act as a catalyst in the fragmented landscape of careers and enterprise, supporting programmes that work, filling gaps in education and training provision and ensuring tailored coverage across the country. Over the course of the past 2 academic years, 37 of the 39 Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England have embarked on a national initiative to recruit, support and coordinate a regional volunteer network of senior business leaders – Enterprise Advisers (EA’s) - from local private, public and voluntary organisations, to work strategically with school and college leaders on the creation of careers education plans and meaningful, quality encounters for students and teachers with local, regional and national employers, training providers and apprentices. Our schools and colleges work with dedication to inspire and prepare young people for the fast-changing world of work. Across all employment sectors and sizes of organisations, employers are eager to help and support. They want to make sure that people leave education and seek employment, they
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Over the past 10 months, 20 schools and colleges in the Coast to Capital region have already engaged in the creation of an Enterprise Adviser Network
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are confident about what they want to do and are as ready as they can be for what is ahead. Employers look for effective national and regional recruitment strategies and growing pipelines of local talent directly from our schools, colleges and universities is critical to the success of these strategies. Our young people have no shortage of aspiration, ambition and desire to succeed. However, whilst there are excellent, local examples of engagement between education and business; we are still some way from ensuring that all young people are given the inspiration, information and support they need to enter the world of employment.
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Most young people do not expect to have jobs like their parents. They are right.
❞ Academic attainment is improving; many of our regional schools, academies and colleges recently publishing the fantastic GCSE and A level results of their students. Yet, employers remain concerned about young people’s readiness for the workplace. Although, national unemployment is declining, young people are three times more likely to be unemployed than the rest of the population. Most young people do not expect to have jobs like their parents. They are right. The workplace and the skills employers need are changing… and in most sectors they are changing fast due to the advances and increased use of technology in business. Small and medium sized companies now account for the majority of employment opportunities in the UK. In the Coast to Capital region, 99% of registered businesses are SME’s.
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Research conducted shows “More encounters with employers whilst at schools means young people are significantly less likely to be unemployed and will earn up to 18% more” *Source ‘Percy, C & A Mann, A, 2014 Understanding Employer Engagement in Education.
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Over the past 10 months, 20 schools and colleges in the Coast to Capital region have already engaged in the creation of an Enterprise Adviser Network. Funding to upscale the EAN across the entire region is in place and therefore Coast to Capital LEP is now actively recruiting senior business leaders and employers to join the local EAN and become an essential part of a national Enterprise Adviser Network that is already over 850 people strong across the country. The EAN will have a priority sector focus in line with those of Coast to Capital Skills Strategy, including Advanced Manufacturing & Engineering, Creative Digital & IT, Construction, Health & Social Care and Visitor & Rural Economies. In this first phase of the EAN, Coast to Capital are thrilled to have been supported by volunteer Enterprise Advisers in the following organisations: Amplicon, Bowers & Wilkins Group, Business in the Community, Cap Gemini, Chichester College, Glaxo SmithKline, Go Crimson, Hayden Consulting, John Young Media, Kingsley Group, Parafix Holdings Ltd, Parsons Brinckerhoff, RiiG Ltd, RARE Business, Saga Healthcare, Southern Water, STEMSussex, Sussex County Cricket Club, The Body Shop, URT Group Ltd, Work & Learning Opportunities C.I.C and Young Enterprise.
To find out how you and your organisation can be involved, contact Georgina directly on georgina.angele@coast2capital.org. uk or 07879 980444.
Coast to Capital lep COAST TO CAPITAL LEP is working with the Careers & Enterprise Company to establish a network to make it easier for schools and colleges to connect with employers and education providers and vice versa. At the heart of this network is a set of full-time Enterprise Coordinators, each of whom works with a cluster of 20 schools and colleges. Part of their role is to recruit organisations and individuals into the network, either as Enterprise Advisers or to deliver activities or encounters in a school or workplace setting that can strength the Careers Education strategy being delivered to students. At full coverage there will be 175 Enterprise Coordinators working with the 3500+ secondary schools and colleges across England. Coast to Capital are recruiting a number of Enterprise Coordinators to support the upscale of the EAN across West Sussex, Brighton & Hove, East Surrey and Croydon. In addition to the Enterprise Coordinators, each school or college is supported by a senior and strategic volunteer – their Enterprise Adviser. Their role is provide strategic counsel to the Head Teacher and/or Principal and their senior team, unlocking relationships with other businesses and providing guidance on the how best to connect with employers so that activities can be built into the school or colleges careers plans for their teachers and students. This is how the world of work is shaping the careers education delivered locally in our schools and fuelling the aspirations of young people for local jobs and apprentices. Organisations are able to showcase and promote routes into their organisations directly to young people who are attaining skills and qualifications that business needs
OAK GROVE COLLEGE In the first year of the EAN, Oak Grove College was identified as the SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disability) college to be invited to join the network. Rebecca Tonks is the Enterprise Adviser for the college and has been working with them for the last few months. Rebecca has recently sold her music business and has also done some business education delivery with Young Enterprise as well as having a background in recruitment, training and sales. She has worked with a number of SEND groups and individuals as part of her music business. “I was delighted to be asked to be Enterprise Adviser for Oak Grove College. I am passionate about giving all young people the very best opportunities in life and being able to use my experience and provide support for the college is a real privilege.”
The journey so far.. Georgina introduced Rebecca to Philip Potter, Head of the College, and his team Carol, David and Laura. They talked through the work of the Careers and Enterprise
Company and how that could translate to provide the best support for young people with SEND. Rebecca and the Senior Leadership Team at the college worked together to audit the current enterprise provision in the college in order to scope the creation of a careers education strategy that would provide the most value for their students and teachers. The college is already doing some great work including their Plant Sale which runs for two weeks every year and involves many of the students in different roles. Some help to grow the plants in the college nursery, some help to sell them and many of the students work in the café. The café is a great resource that is open to the public during the sale. The young people prepare and serve the food which gives them great experience in dealing with others as well as helping with their numeracy skills. Building on this, the college have signed up to do the Team Programme with Young Enterprise. The programme is aimed at 14 – 19 year olds who have mild to moderate learning difficulties or are studying for Entry Level or Level 1 qualifications. A team of students form their own company and run it for one or two years under the guidance of
their teacher, local business volunteer and Young Enterprise Manager. Each student takes on a job role and works as part of a team to be responsible for an area of business such as Finance, Sales or Marketing. Philip Potter is delighted with the work so far and says “Being involved with the Coast to Capital EAN and Rebecca is giving our students a greater range of choices in preparation for the world of work and independent living. The activities planned will have a huge impact on their ability to get work in an industry where they can really excel.” Rebecca is also supporting the excellent work being done by David Alderton who is responsible for organising the work placement opportunities for the students. Together they are planning to expand on the number of placement opportunities. “We would love to speak with local employers to discuss how a young person with SEND would be a real asset to their business”.
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Anger Management
ANGER MANAGEMENT
WE ARE ALL DOOMED by Maarten Hoffmann
I
t was not so long ago that we were warned that if the British public had the temerity to vote to leave the EU, the world would end, our houses would be worth squat, our economy would shrink to the size of the Isle of Wight and the boogie man would come and get us. The British public stuck two fingers up to that and voted leave, as you might have noticed. There is no doubt that some sectors are suffering; equally, we do not really know what is round the corner, but the signs today are that the Project Fear stormtroopers were talking out of their collective arses out of selfinterest and the political imperative of clinging onto as much personal power for as long as possible, regardless of the consequences for the country.
How tunes have changed: • JP Morgan, June 3rd: “Brexit is a terrible deal for the British economy and jobs.” • JP Morgan, Sept 5th: “The rebound in August takes out the risk of recession.” • Goldman Sachs, June 26th: “We now expect the economy to enter a mild recession by early 2017.” • Goldman Sachs, Sept 5th: “We now expect the UK economy to avoid even the technical recession that we had foreseen immediately after the referendum.” • Credit Suisse, Jan 5th: “If the UK votes to leave the EU it is likely to entail an immediate and simultaneous economic and financial shock for the UK.” • Credit Suisse, Sept 6th: “The impact on
the UK economy of the UK’s vote to leave the EU seems to be materially less negative than we expected.” The Swiss banking giant UBS issued shrill warnings that up to £350 billion could be wiped off the value of the FTSE100. Since the vote, it has risen by more than 11%. Morgan Stanley, who donated £250,000 to the Remain camp, said that there would be a sharp recession and recently stated that since then ‘performance has been much better than expected.’ Sterling has risen above £1.34 against the dollar for the first time since mid-July, having fallen from $1.50 to $1.28 following the Brexit vote. The two doom-peddlers-in-chief were David Cameron and George Osborne. Two gentlemen who are now unemployed and unemployable. Cameron stated that to leave would be to “put a bomb under the economy” and Osborne stated that it would cause a “DIY recession.” If l had another 30 pages to write, l could list all the other doom mongers, but suffice it to say there were lots of them, and they were all wrong. Were they wrong or were they lying for their own self-interest? The banks and investment houses have history here. If we recall the 2008 recession (the next person l hear call it a ‘credit crunch’ will get hit with a wet kipper), this was caused by US banks sticking their heads in the sand, giving money away like confetti and then being as surprised as the rest of us when it all went tits up. On that occasion, they were as wrong as Michael Fish in 1987, when he stated there was no hurricane coming, but regarding Brexit, l feel
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Anger Management
they lied out of self-interest and the thirst for power. The power that comes from being at the EU table; the power that comes from keeping the UK in the EU so that they can flog goods and services to a wider range of people and the health of the UK can go hang. There was no thought of what was best for the country, just what was best for them and how they could make another couple of billion. It was best for them that we stayed, not for us.
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The EU is a bungling, overloaded train full of lightweights, incompetents, illiterates and wasters who, outside of the Brussels bubble, would struggle to get a job saying ‘would you like fries with that?’
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So who the hell do we listen to now?
That’s the problem. We need leaders, both corporate and political, who can be trusted to lead in the best interest of the country. Corporates will always have only their shareholders’ interests at heart, but politicians should be bound by a moral code to carry out their duty to the country. The erosion of trust is, ultimately, the erosion of civilised society. If we cannot trust our leaders, then who the hell can we trust? I think the vote to pop Theresa May into Downing Street was an excellent move, and l
have high hopes, but this is tinged with a small piece of me that says ‘watch out, they are all at it.’ We trusted Blair, we trusted Cameron and now we are to trust May. The EU is a bungling, overloaded train full of lightweights, incompetents, illiterates and wasters who, outside of the Brussels bubble, would struggle to get a job saying ‘would you like fries with that?’ or cleaning windows, and it is, in my humble opinion, heading for the buffers at breakout speed.
Now, wouldn’t that be a novelty? This piece could be seen as a tad rash as we have little true understanding off what will occure once Article 50 is triggered but to date, many august bodies have been plain wrong and l believe the future of the UK economy is in OUR hands. Work even harder, export more and be creative and above all, let’s stop talking the country down. The power of positive thinking is a mighty thing and we are really quite good at it.
The subject of immigration alone will likely see the demise of Merkel, Rutte (Holland), Renzi (Italy) and Rajoy (Spain) and will usher in hard-right parties that will lead the continent closer to war, not further away. This, of course, was the EU’s founding principle, and one they have handled so spectacularly incompetently that it quite beggars belief. The UK can stand alone as we are a nation that have always punched well above our weight and perform best when our backs are against the wall. What we deserve are leaders who put the country first, before their own self-interests, and who are right more often than they are wrong.
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Motoring
MOTORING NEWS MOST POWERFUL AUDI TT The much-loved Audi TT has a new family member - the 2.5 TFSI RS with a sevenspeed S tronic transmission producing 400PS, a 0-62 of 3.7 seconds and a top speed of 174 mph. It comes with the fabulous ‘virtual cockpit’ and Google earth street view and earth mapping. Its a lot of car for £51,800. Available late September
ELECTRIC VEHICLES ARE TAKING OVER With the UK EV market currently at around 80,000 vehicles and rising rapidly, the UK’s leading EV charging platform Zap-Map passed a significant milestone in August by attracting over 40,000 users. These figures cement Zap-Map’s position as the UK’s number one EV charging platform, covering all charging networks and providing EV drivers with key charge point information. Integral with the mapping service is ZapChat, a real-time peer-to-peer comms channel allowing users to provide status updates and last-mile information.
CUSHTY MOTOR
BACK TO THE 60’S
A very special 1973 Jaguar E-Type Series III Roadster, that starred in the second ever episode of legendary BBC sitcom Only Fools & Horses, sold for an impressive £115,875 recently at auction. Invited to appear in the episode titled “Go West Young Man“, and forever since been known as “Boycie’s E-Type” the car was hard fought over by several buyers in the room. The largely original and one owner car, sold for more than £40,000 over its lower estimate.
Caterham Cars has built a variant of its iconic Seven that was seemingly planned in the mid-1960s but never launched – the Caterham Seven Sprint. As though dug up in a time capsule, the retro detailing of the Caterham Seven Sprint will delight Seven purists and provides the perfect scene-setter to the brand’s ‘60 Years of the Seven’ anniversary, which will be celebrated next year. The Sprint, priced from £27,995, will finally be available to order from September 9th, when the car will be launched at the Goodwood Revival, a fittingly retro setting for a car with one wheel firmly planted in the ‘60s. Remember The Prisoner TV show? The balloon is an optional extra.
SCOOTER SATNAV TomTom has created the world’s first scooter smartphone-connected satnav called TomTom VIO. The VIO is highly functional but makes a strong visual statement - once you’ve seen it on a scooter the bike looks naked without it. The circular glove-friendly touchscreen device acts as an extension to a connected smartphone, which uses the well-developed app as the brains. No more taking a phone out of the pocket while riding, finally.
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LET MINI DRIVE YOUR BUSINESS. If you run a business, MINI has a range to suit your needs. With compelling monthly rentals, unrivalled design and first-class performance, it’s time to find out which MINI works for you. To find out more please contact our Local Business Development Manager, Dean Eaton, on 0800 915 47500 or visit www.vinesofgatwickbmw.co.uk/business
MINI Business Partnership Official Fuel Economy Figures for the MINI Range: Urban 27.2-72.4 mpg (10.4-3.9 l/100km). Extra Urban 47.9-91.1 mpg (5.9-3.1 l/100km). Combined 37.7-83.1 mpg (7.5-3.4 l/100km). CO2 Emissions 175-89 g/km. Figures may vary depending on driving style and conditions.
Motoring
VAUXHALL GTC By Motoring Editor, Maarten Hoffmann
T
he Astra sells like hotcakes but is not, to my eye, a particularly inspiring design although l must say it is getting better and better every time they offer a re-design. Wait no longer if you are a Luton fan as the GTC is here with bags of style and a clean, perfectly proportioned body. Although it is based on the Astra’s Delta platform that is where the sharing of the parts bins stops as the door handles and and roof aerial are the only two body items shared between the models. It also gets the front suspension from
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the Insignia VXR which is what makes this a nifty little mover. The stiffer suspension makes it ride well and the HiPerStrut front suspension reduces the dreaded torque steer and helps it glide and gives a responsive feel through the wheel. Power plant choice is quite important here as the turbocharged 1.4 and 1.6 are pretty good but it is the preferred 2-litre that does the job and gets you up the road at a good lick. What you do notice is the accuracy and crispness of the steering and the agile chassis giving the
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This really is endlessly annoying and one would presume can be fixed with a tenner and a bit of ingenuity from the design team.
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Motoring
car a purposeful drive that matches the stylish rake of the exterior.
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It also gets the front suspension from the Insignia VXR which is what makes this a nifty little mover.
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The interior is very much Astra and not very inspiring but it has all the gizmos you need and has a very logical and well-planned layout. The coupe feel is further imprinted with a lower seating position and there is a surprising amount of room in the back for a coupe although your rear seat passengers will suffer from a slight lack of anything to look at. As with all such stylish coupes, there are
come sacrifices you will have to make. A small rear window, large and heavy doors and a surprisingly small turning circle. On the plus side is the look of the thing. It really is good looking and try as l might as l circled the thing like a ravenous vulture seeking out a weakness, l couldn’t find one. It looks damn good from every angle. What is surprising for a coupe is the size of the boot. It really is quite cavernous and will take three full size suitcases with ease. What is also surprising are the front seats. Tilt and slide them forward to allow passengers to climb aboard and they don’t then return to the same position leaving you to re-set them every time. This really is endlessly annoying and one would presume can be fixed with a tenner and a bit of ingenuity from the design team. In this sector and price range, the competition will come from the the Scirocco,
Mégane Coupe, Audi A3 and BMW 1 Series and l must say that the GTC stands up really well. It will never be a Germanic piece of clockwork engineering and you might be somewhat disappointed at the re-sale value after a year or two but all in all, Luton has turned out a little corker.
TECHNICAL STUFF Model tested: GTC Limited Edition 1.6 CDTi ecoFlex Engine: 1.6-litre Power: 136 bhp Performance: 0-60mph 9.5 seconds Top Speed: 123 mph Economy: 65.7 mpg combined Price: £25,860.00 As tested: £28,140.00
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Motoring
GOLF GTI By Motoring Editor, Maarten Hoffmann
W
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ho hasn’t had a GTl? Well, those of you with your hands down have missed a lark.It was the first affordable hot hatch we could get hands on that did 0-60mph in 9 seconds. There was also an excellent wheeze whereby it was cheaper to buy it from Germany in RHD, go collect it and get a tour of the factory for less than you could buy it in the UK. We did it in our thousands before they slammed that loophole shut.
The GTl was groundbreaking in many respects and therefore it was with great trepidation that l took delivery of the first one l have driven for over 20 years.
The GTl was groundbreaking in many respects and therefore it was with great trepidation that l took delivery of the first one l have driven for over 20 years.
This Mk 7 version is punchy and powerful
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with a chassis that’s smooth in everyday mode and grips like a leech in the corners. And it’s German, so that bullet proof quality leeks through every pore. It hasn’t changed,
in the main, since launch in 1974. It rides flat and smooth, departs the lights like a startled greyhound and will last a lifetime - or more likely see you out if you look after it. It ain’t cheap but then quality never is. Its competition would be the Megane Sport, Astra VXR, Ford Focus ST and BMW135i and you would need to be certified if you went for the Renault or Vauxhall. The BMW is a different type of car and the Ford, although very good, doesn’t quite carry the badge cache so, in short, it’s in a class of its own. The Focus RS would give it a run for its money. As standard, the GTI gets a strong turbocharged 2.0 litre petrol engine but you
Motoring
can add VW’s performance pack which boosts power and adds performance-orientated features such as a front differential. It’s an expensive option though, so l might just stick with the standard car given it’s so capable. A twin-clutch automatic is also available but again, unless you’re dead determined, l’d go for the six-speed manual. One thing that annoys me of modern midrange fast cars is that first gear is a waste of space. You need it but the legs are so short that you are grabbing second in a jiffy, and, with front wheel drive, suffering detestable tire scrabble. Not so the GTl. It has great first gear stretch and feels smooth through the power band - all the way to 153 mph. It is firm and that has been a characteristic of the GTl
since time began but the trade off is the great handling, secure in any hands, and great rate of acceleration. Inside, l chuckle to see the Jacara check cloth interior. I hate non-leather interiors but here, it would of been a travesty to change it. Everything in here is as it should be (they’re Germans), the layout is superb (they’re Germans) and the quality is top notch (they’re …oh, you get the idea!) The other novelty back in 1974, was the hatch concept that didn’t make the profile of the car look like a Zephyr estate yet provided this yawning chasm at the back. This one will take a huge load and with a 40/60 rear seats split and a low loading lip, it fits the bill.
Being a very immature speed freak, l would plump for the R variant and with 296bhp and four-wheel drive - it’s a barnstormer. For you mere mortals, the GTl is every thing you will need to be stylish, fast, safe and cool, in whatever order you so desire, all in one automobile. A place in my fantasy 7-car garage? Probably.
TECHNICAL STUFF Model tested: 2.0-litre TSI 220PS Engine: 2.0-litre Power: 220 PS Performance: 0-62mph 6.5 seconds Top Speed: 152 mph Economy: 47.10 mpg Price from: £27,495.00
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FORD IS A SMART WHY EVERY
SUV
UTILITY VEHICLE
When you choose a Ford SUV you get a Sports Utility Vehicle that’s also a Smart Utility Vehicle. Why? Because Ford SUVs are intelligently designed to make them as practical and capable as they are innovative and stylish. These vehicles are packed with remarkable technologies too. Plus, these SUVs are available with fuel efficient engines.
Birchwood Ford
Lottbridge Drove, Eastbourne, BN23 6PX 01323 407099 Eastbourne Road (Nr Uckfield), Halland, BN8 6PS 01825 700737 Sedlescombe Road North, St. Leonards-on-Sea, TN37 7SQ 01424 230865 www.birchwoodford.co.uk
Technology News
CLOUD TALK WHAT IPHONE MODEL ARE YOU USING?
WINDOWS 10 SAFE MODE
Ever looked at your iPhone and wondered exactly what model it is you are using, or been asked in a phone shop what model you have? Sure it maybe an iPhone 5 but which model? It may sound like a stupid question but it is not easy to identify which by looking at the iPhone itself. Including the new iPhone 7 there are 15 models in the series. In the 5 series alone you have the iPhone 5, iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s. The best way to identify your iPhone model is to visit Apple website at https://support.apple.com/ en-gb/HT201296 .
In previous versions of Windows you simply pressed the F8 key at startup to enter safe mode. In Window 10 it’s different and this is one (with the most options) of two ways to access safe mode. Click the START button, click POWER, hold down the SHIFT key and click RESTART. A new screen will appear asking you to CHOOSE AN OPTION. click TROUBLESHOOT, click ADVANCED OPTIONS and then click STARTUP SETTINGS. In the startup settings windows click RESTART and then select option 4, ENABLE SAFE MODE. Your computer will now restart. Login as usual and in the bottom left hand corner you will see SAFE MODE displayed. It’s simple once you know how but is not exactly straightforward. To get out of safe mode repeat this process but don’t click option 4, just press your ENTER key to restart.
SMB’S LACK CONFIDENCE IN NETWORK ABILITY A new study by Computing magazine reveals a quarter of SMB’s (Small and Midsize businesses) have little or no confidence that their existing network infrastructure will be able to support future business-critical workloads. The study seems to identify a need for SMBs to take a careful look at their technology compared to the demands that will soon be placed on it as we enter a future of increased need for cloud, big data and other trends that are refusing to go away.At the very least, it appears SMBs should seek consultation about what the future may actually bring, and how well their hardware is currently positioned to weather the storm.
EMBRACE THE CLOUD Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Accenture have joined forces to create The Accenture AWS Business Group. The groups aim is to help businesses migrate to the cloud and get the most from AWS and Accenture’s cloud services. The group will operate in two divisions. One will offer advice and help businesses setup their cloud strategies and help with organisational / architectural design to accommodate changes. The other division will automate app development and migration processes to make them run smoothly on AWS.
OFFICE 365 GENEE Microsoft has bought the digital assistant start-up Genee and will roll it into Office 365. Billed by Microsoft as an “artificialintelligence-powered scheduling service,” Genee uses natural-language queries to set up tasks.Genee works across email and calendar so users can request and set-up meetings supposedly without engaging in several rounds of email tennis and calendar opening. It works with Microsoft’s Outlook and Exchange, Google and Apple’s iCloud calendars.
The Cloud Consultancy Europe are authorised Office 365 resellers
If you would like help and advice with your IT infrastructure call me. t: 00 (44) 1342 716873 e: jamie.shaw@thecloudconsultancy.eu w: www.thecloudconsultancy.eu
uk.linkedin.com/in/shawjamie
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Table Talk
And so to Food By Amanda Menahem
W
ell what a wonderful sunny August
the highly-regarded Hoffmann and Rathbone,
anything about the menu) but food-wise
we’ve had! I’ve realised that where
another Sussex sparkler. I found it too acidic,
they rarely put a foot wrong. Their early
most people fancy a nice cold beer
austere and one dimensional.
inconsistency seems to have been ironed out.
when its hot, I fancy a nice cold glass of fizz. Which I then proceed to guzzle as if it were beer. I have been trying out quite a few different bottles over the month. Highlights were the excellent rose La Vida al Camp Cava from Fourth and Church which was the star of the show in an impromptu gathering on my roof terrace one sunny Friday afternoon. I also cracked open a bottle I brought back from Puglia, a sparkling wine made from the Negromaro grape – usually reserved for dark, sumptuous reds but working brilliantly here as a sparkling rose. Look out for it (they have it at Polpo) if you like smooth big reds and structured rich Rose. My only disappointment was a bottle of
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Away from sparkling I also discovered what
On this day, accompanied by an immensely
has become my favourite still Rose; Pasquiers -
fascinating and fun companion, our meal was
a Grenache/Cinsault blend from the Langedoc
faultless. We created our own tasting menu by
available from Butlers and Fourth and Church.
ordering four starters. We started with a dish
And so to food. Highlights were; an amazing peanut butter cake at Café Salvage on
of Salmon, Verjus, Pickled Grapes, Celeriac, and Cob Nuts , followed by Octopus with
Western Road (and it did salvage an otherwise
Nduja, Almonds, Dill, and Cucumber. Third
dire coffee date), and a great curry with my
up was King Oyster Mushroom, Artichokes,
old boss at The Raipur in Pevensey Bay.
Iberico Ham, Crispy Egg, and Truffle (seriously
But two events really stand out. First, a boozy lunch at the Saltroom. I
impressive) and finally Coal-Roasted Ox Cheek, Garlic, Beetroot, and Mushroom Ketchup. I don’t have the word count to describe each
used to go all the time until an unfortunate
dish, but every part of each dish was cooked to
interaction with the owner. But I love the place
perfection with the accompanying elements all
too much to stay away. Service can be patchy
adding flavour, texture and working in perfect
(and on this day the waitress announced
harmony. Presentation was also Michelin
she was ‘new’ as a reason for not knowing
standard. We followed all this with cheese
Table Talk
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I also cracked open a bottle I brought back from Puglia, a sparkling wine made from the Negromaro grape – usually reserved for dark, sumptuous reds but working brilliantly here as a sparkling rose.
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and then a Chocolate Ganache, with Frozen Blackcurrant Meringue,
Jetty. While the service was excellent, the food was not. However I
Compote, Liquorice Ice Cream, and their famous chocolate ‘pebbles’.
am confident that this was just teething problems, after all they have
For drinks we started with Champagne, then Pinot Noir and finally Espresso Martinis (which were overly sweet and were definitely the cause of drunken texting to an ex-boyfriend – don’t judge). We were
a great team. All good restaurants need time to bed in and I look forward to returning in the Autumn. Im really looking forward to autumn food and wine, bring on the
there for five glorious hours while the rain pelted down outside. I can’t
game and pinot noir! Read about how to do it properly in Jonny’s
think of a better way to spend a wet Friday afternoon.
article on page 79.
The second main highlight was dinner at Drakes. I took my wonderful parents who also both love their food and wine. Here we had excellent service from Kevin who was extremely knowledgeable and friendly but not intrusive. He kept an eye on us (and he was easy on the eye) all evening from a distance, approaching at exactly the right times to enquire if we needed things. After a generous and delicious salmon amuse bouche and freshly made bread, I tucked into a starter of Selsey Crab with Avocado and Heritage Tomato Salsa Topped with a Gazpacho Sorbet. Inspired. Beautifully fresh and light yet full of flavour. I followed this with Locally Caught Red Mullet, Samphire, Saffron Potato Gnocchi, Mussels and Bouillabaisse Sauce, a well thought through dish and perfectly executed. An exquisite pre-dessert arrived – impressively complex. And then the finale, a Rose Soufflé, Lychee Sorbet Served on a Bed of Almond Crumbs and Poached Lychee. Rose is an unusual choice for a soufflé but it worked well – like a cloud of Turkish delight. My parents chose the beef and lamb dishes as their mains and a beetroot ravioli starter. They could not fault it. The décor and ambience have improved since my last visit, less airport lounge and more intimate bistro. Head Chef Andy Vitex has been recognised in the 2017 Good Food Guide, achieving the highest rating for cooking amongst their Brighton listings. A fantastic and deserved achievement. The only surprise disappointment in the month was dinner at the
75
Table Talk REVIEW
Isaac@ By Amanda Menahem and Luca Bercelli
D
ear Readers, this month we have a
His Highness... or whatever it is Alan calls
is appropriate, the paintings on the wall hit
guest contributor who accompanied
himself these days delivers his verdict in the
the spot, the tables and presentation are
me to the re-launch of Isaac@ in
boardroom, this one gets delivered at the foot
all well thought out and executed, and the
of the page.
food mileage chart is a winner (even if it does
Gloucester Road Brighton, one of the growing ‘set menu fine dining’ concept restaurants that are popping up here and there. My friend Luca is not obsessed with food like me (but is obsessed with wine like me) but he has written professionally and so when he offered to do this piece, I happily agreed….. Here’s what he had to say. A visit to new ‘Fine Dining’ restaurant Isaac@ is similar to sitting through an
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contain a couple of errors). But....and there
Stumbling block number one, however, is describing your eatery as a fine dining establishment.
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An episode of The Apprentice in which
are a few buts. The kitchen is almost as big as the dining room, the plastic chairs would be an embarrassment in a comprehensive dining hall, there are no prices on the food menu at table
episode of The Apprentice’. Lots of youthful
the contestants were tasked with knocking
or online (always
enthusiasm, embarrassing situations, stress,
up a ‘fine dining’ room within a week would
disturbing), and
and the odd triumph along the way. In both
result in an end product similar to this (with
there are one or
cases, a verdict is delivered that can make
less complex food). Don’t get me wrong,
two staff who,
or break a team and/or individual. Sir, Lord,
some things are done really well; the music
how can
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Table Talk
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When I was barely out of my teens making cheese on toast without calling the fire brigade was a major achievement.
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I put this nicely, may have greater strengths in non-customer facing capacities. A tip....when someone asks you a question, they don’t want the answer to be everything you have ever known about a certain subject, they want a brief explanation so they can get back to the person they really want to talk to...their dining partner. Lets get something straight, however. This venture is brave, because lets face it, ‘Fine Dining’ is not easy...it’s a very tough gig to pull off, especially if you can still remember the days when you were in short trousers (which appears to be the case for the entire Isaac’s workforce). Stumbling block number one, however, is describing your eatery as a fine dining establishment. Most fine dining outfits don’t call themselves that...they don’t need to. That’s what we, the customers do...if we feel it is warranted.
The thing about Isaacs is this: it seems as if they are running before they’ve even taken a stroll. If they didn’t aim at fine dining and just
The main problem, I’m afraid to say is that this is not fine dining. It’s
learnt their trade (all aspects of the restaurant business - not just the
close, but no cigar. Food is about taste, and taste is about flavour, and
cooking) in a more relaxed atmosphere with lower expectations, they’d
that unfortunately is lacking in too many of the dishes on offer here.
be on to a winner and everyone would be pulling for them. It’s very
And no, we’re not talking about subtlety or delicate nuances here,
difficult to go into any business sector and think that you can start
we’re talking about good old-fashioned blandness.
at the top. Experience needs to be gained, skills honed and lessons
So - in a nutshell: the Butternut Squash dish was bland, and without the excellent seeds would have been a complete washout. The Monkfish was overcooked and pretty much tasteless. The Pork Belly
learned. Lesson number one - drop the ‘fine’ mess you’ve got yourselves into and earn the label via the journey, not self-proclamation. When I was barely out of my teens making cheese on toast without
was excellent. The roast chicken was lacking punch, and the desserts
calling the fire brigade was a major achievement, so I salute these
were uninspiring. Every dish looked like a work of art... but I go to art
ambitious upstarts and have to think that His Royal Alan would have
galleries, not restaurants for that.
seen the potential and concluded: ‘Isaac, you’re hired’.
ISAAC @ 2 Gloucester Street, Brighton, BN1 4EW Tel: 07765934740 EMAIL: info@isaac-at.com TWITTER: @isaac_at_
OPENING TIMES Tuesday to Saturday 6.00pm to 10.30pm Saturday lunch 12.30pm to 2.30pm
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E N G L I S H
WI N E
D I N N E R
B O L N E Y E S TAT E At Hotel du Vin Brighton
The evening will begin with sparkling wine and canapés on arrival, followed by a three course dinner accompanied by three wines. Making wine since 1976 at Bolney in West Sussex, winning many international and national awards along the way. Try some of Bolney’s English wines and experience what others are already enjoying. 27 TH OC TOB E R 2 0 1 6 7 PM
£70.00 per person
HOTELDUVIN.com HOTEL DU VIN& BISTRO BRIGHTON events.brighton@hotelduvin.com 0127 385 5221
Table Talk
Wine Masterclass AUTUMN WINES FOR MUSHROOMS AND GAME by Jonny Gibson
I
love the subtle shift of the seasons as we
and Yarra Valley. Something to do with a
Room at The Grand Brighton was the perfect
move from summer into autumn. There
large percentage of current plantings being
setting for a get together of wine lovers,
never seems to be any consensus on exactly
able to trace the parentage back to an intrepid
wine merchants and wine producers from
when autumn starts but for me something
Aussie who charmed his way around the Cote
Brighton & Hove and the Sussex countryside
changes around the September equinox.
de Nuits in the 1880s and took lots of cuttings
beyond. My personal highlights from a hugely
Blackberries are giving way to sloes in the
back home with him.
enjoyable afternoon tasting around the room
hedgerows and it’s harvest time again at my secret mushroom spots. On that note, a friend from France has promised to take me truffle hunting but says the best time of year is December. Apparently he can do it by sight alone. No trained snuffling pigs or dogs for him. We shall see. Mushrooms are perfect with pinot noir.
If you like game then this is the time of year to think about buying wines that go well with partridge, pheasant, wild duck and venison. If you are searing your duck or venison in a pan and then cooking it through in the oven then try Cabernet Sauvignon or a red from SW France like Madiran or Cahors. These wines go particularly well when you add a bit
If you haven’t experienced the joy of a
of pan fried fruit or sweet fruit based jelly or
mushroom omelette with flat leaf parsley
condiment on the side.
and a glass of red Burgundy or a pinot noir from Oregon, Martinborough or Otago then you need to sort that out straight away this weekend. Add some bacon or pancetta too if you want to go all out. There is a real buzz around pinot noir wines from Australia at the moment too. They chaired the annual get together of winemakers and lovers of all things pinot in Oregon this year and I have read some very complimentary quotes from respected
and talking to producers and owners included the sparkling wines from Court Garden and Ridgeview, the still whites from Albourne Estate, Ten Green Bottles’ cheeses and south of France reds, the interesting Eastern European wines from Pacta Conect and the wines from Seven Cellars and Twenty One wines. Make sure you book tickets for next September at www.brightonwinefair.com as soon as they come out.
If you are pot roasting a bird then you need
Jonny Gibson is the head tutor and owner of Sussex Wine School, an independent company that runs regular tastings and courses including WSET Levels 1-3 in Brighton, Lewes and Tunbridge Wells.
to keep things moist with the lid on with a couple of veggies like celery or carrot and a glass or two of Marsala or Vermouth in the pot. The game can be local but I’d go for a northern or central Italian red like Barbera d’Alba or Chianti Classico here or maybe a northern Rhone Syrah. Talking of Sussex produce, the 2016
American winemakers about the high quality
Brighton Wine Fair earlier in September was
of the pinot noirs from Mornington Peninsula
the best one yet. The high ceilinged Albert
www.sussexwineschool.com
SOME SUGGESTED WINES FOR AUTUMN FOOD: Wither Hills Marlborough Pinot Noir 2012 – The Wine Society £10.50 Domaine Treloar Cotes du Roussillon Three Peaks Red 2014 – Ten Green Bottles £12.50 Barbera d’Alba Sucule Lo Zoccolaio 2013– Majestic £10.49 Madiran Odé d’Aydie 2013 – The Wine Society £9.95 And if you are looking to celebrate ... Court Garden Blanc de Blancs 2010 – Quaff Wines Fiveways £30.99 Ridgeview Fitzrovia Rose 2014 – Butlers Wine Cellar £25.99
79
Hospitality Awards
RAISING THE GAME
Jeremy Ogden, Chair of Brighton and Hove Hoteliers Association, explains why the Brighton & Hove Hoteliers Awards are such an important addition to the city’s calendar. Interview by Ian Trevett
T
the profile of Brighton’s hotels. Due to their popularity, we have a broader spectrum of businesses who want to sponsor the awards and get involved.”
“The night is a mix of serious business-style awards and an opportunity to have a great night out, with time for people to have a dance at the end.” Although the event started out as a laidback night out, where the hotel community could let their hair down, the awards have become increasingly important.
Jeremy Ogden, Chair of BHHA and a former General Counsel for one of the world’s largest banks, has no doubts about the impact of the awards: “The awards have been an opportunity for the local hotel sector to recognise the successes of its peer group; it is independently judged and it has raised
Now in its third year, the awards have grown rapidly. “This year I think we will see the attendance break the 400 mark,” predicts Jeremy. “It is a quiet mid-week night in November and it is a chance for people who work in the hospitality industry to celebrate the end of a busy season. We are keen to encourage support from the business community, but it also has to be an affordable event so hotels can bring their staff members along. Many consider it an early Christmas treat for their teams. We very much appreciate the way that the Metropole and The Grand have hosted the events and kept the pricing low for the tables.
he choice of accommodation for tourists and the conference trade is broad and diverse, from tiny Kemptown guesthouses to iconic seaside institutions such as The Grand. Despite the vast differences in sizes, budgets and facilities, the hotel community in Brighton and Hove has become increasingly close-knit, due to the hard work of the Brighton and Hove Hoteliers Association (BHHA) and the success of the Hotel Awards, which takes place this year on Tuesday, November 15th at The Grand.
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Jeremy says, “The awards have become more competitive, which is a good thing, though Brighton is always far more laid-back than they would be in London. The actual process of submitting the award application is a good exercise. When you have to explain why you should be awarded the Property of the Year, it forces you to think about your offering. “There’s no doubt that the winners have been very proud of the awards, and you will
Hospitality Awards see the plinths in the lobbies of the winning hotels. It is an independent recognition, and people have been delighted to win. “Most of the sponsors and judges are from local companies, and it is great to get this appreciation of the hotels we have in the city. The awards have definitely helped people to raise their game. It is important as we need to be promoting our city, and it’s not always easy for the council to take on this role with the budget cuts they have been experiencing. We should have someone shouting about Brighton all the time.” Jeremy is now in his third year as Chair of the BHHA, although he had firmly intended to take on the role on a short-term basis. In fact, Jeremy is still a relative newcomer to the hotel trade; he is a former partner in a City law firm and was General Counsel for one of the world’s largest banks. The move from the pressurised, fast-moving Square Mile to the more relaxed vibe of Brighton’s New Steine was quite a cultural shift, but one Jeremy is enjoying. He recalls, “My wife and I bought a business called Strawberry Fields back in 2006, though I was still working in London at the time. My wife was invited to join the executive of the BHHA and has been involved for a long time. The Association was chaired by Mark Jones, who did a great deal for the association, but since he stood down there have been a few interim people.
“In 2012, we bought LimeHouse Hotel and my wife suggested I should get involved. I had been the Vice-Chair of the Tourism Advisory Board, so I agreed to get involved on a shortterm basis, but I am still here!”
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When you have to explain why you should be awarded the Property of the Year, it forces you to think about your offering
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As well as being an opportunity for hoteliers to network and work together, the BHHA has been able to establish itself as an important voice in the city, as Jeremy explains: “The main attraction of the BHHA is the fact that it represents such a wide spectrum of businesses, from small B&Bs and guesthouses, boutique hotels, to The Grand and the Metropole. We now have 50-60 members. It is more a trade association than a trade union. What we do depends on what issues need to be addressed. “We have worked with East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service to make sure that the appropriate standards they require
THE BRIGHTON AND HOVE HOTEL AWARDS Organised and hosted this year by The Grand Brighton, the awards aim to celebrate all levels of the industry, from the smallest and cosiest of independent guesthouses to the city’s big-hitting branded and luxury hotels. Auction house Christie’s is the headline sponsor. Other sponsors include The Argus, Midnight Communications, Brighton Visitor, British Airways i360, Handelsbanken, RBS, Platinum Business Magazine, City Cabs, Visit Brighton, lastminute.com, Booking.com and HIT Training. The Grand’s General Manager, Andrew Mosley, said: “This is a celebration of the success and camaraderie within the hospitality industry. We want to raise the quality of the industry through friendly competition and show that everyone is raising standards.” The awards will be held on Tuesday, November 15th at The Grand, with a drinks reception, 3 course dinner and the ceremony. Tickets are £20 for BHHA members or £35 for non-members with a dress-to-impress dress code.
Andrew Mosley
are proportionate. We have many beautiful Georgian buildings in the city that weren’t necessarily built to 21st Century fire and safety standards. Being forced to install lobby doors or sprinkler systems could ruin the appearance of the hotels, and many of our members wouldn’t necessarily be able to afford them. My concern was that smaller businesses would just ignore the requirements. So the BHHA has been successful in having a proper dialogue in order to arrive at a sensible compromise. “We also work very closely with the council to represent the industry. One of the big issues is planning. We want to keep our independents and not have so many chains that the city loses its identity. It is the same debate with the independent shops. “I am very proud of the fact that the Association supported the campaign to introduce defibrillators in to hotels and guesthouses and we now have a number around the City in our members premises, and we have helped organise the proper training with the ambulance service. It is a known fact that if a defibrillator is used on a patient within the first few minutes, there is a far better chance of survival. This was a great example of the association working together. “We have also sponsored a Martlets Snow Dog, and I am pleased that the BHHA are supporting a local charity. It is the hotels doing the right thing for the city.”
Award Categories Best Breakfast Ambassador for Customer Experience Cleanliness Award Outstanding Manager of the Year Warmest Welcome (Branded) Property of The Year (Branded) Warmest Welcome (Small/Independent) Property of The Year (Small/Independent) Unsung Hero / Heroine Charity and Community
81
Digital Marketing
WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING (and Why Does Your Business Need It)?
by Shea Bennett, Head of Digital Marketing at Identity
C
ontent marketing is a strategic marketing approach that is focused on the creation and distribution of relevant, consistent and valuable content to target, attract and retain a clearly-defined audience, looking to drive profitable customer activity. To look at it another way, traditional marketing sells a product, while content marketing sells the idea of a product. It plants a seed in the mind of the consumer, so when they come to make a decision about a purchase, are thinking about changing suppliers or are looking for a business solution to a specific problem As they like to say: content is king. But the reality is good content is king. A lacklustre approach to content marketing can actually damage your brand. In this article, I will look at six of the most important content marketing tools for brands.
Blogs Blogging is the number one most used content marketing tactic by both business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) marketers. Blogs have tremendous value in building authority, particularly with search engines. Google loves blogs, and a well-structured, regularly-updated blog on your website will quickly become a highly-prized source of traffic from search
queries, boosting your SEO (and ranking) accordingly. Blogs also build authority with your website visitors, too. By showing that you are an expert in your field and knowledgeable enough to be publishing content on a consistent basis you will quickly start to be seen as a thought leader.
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Content is king. But the reality is good content is king.
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Blogs are owned media – the content is yours, and yours alone. But through social sharing, comments and guest posts, blogs can become an important component of your broader social marketing strategy, enabling you to build a loyal, online community. For best results, use a consistent brand voice in your blog articles and try to be personable (and never personal). Don’t use the platform as a sales tool – talk about brand vision, industry trends, offer analysis and predictions, publish “how to” guides and deliver value to readers. Blogs are a commitment – at Identity we recommend a minimum of one blog post per week to maximise return on investment – but it absolutely pays off. Indeed, the “long tail”
value of blogging is such that over time the collective weight of all of your blog content will establish itself as the primary source of interest in your business website.
Images Visual content is a key component in both B2B and B2C marketing, and 70% of marketers planned to increase their use of original visual assets in the past year. When you look at the statistics it’s easy to understand why. Blog posts with images receive 94% more views than those without. On Twitter, tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favourites and 150% more retweets. And a whopping 87% of all interactions on Facebook include a photo. For brands, it’s essential that bespoke, tailored imagery plays a key role in all content marketing. Don’t rely on product shots and stock photography, and be sure to master the specifications of each platform.
Video Two to three years from now you probably won’t be reading this article – you’ll be watching it. Like mobile, video is enjoying a massive uptrend that is showing no signs of slowing down. Indeed, it’s accelerating: by 2017 video is expected to account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic, and a recent Nielsen study indicated that 64% of marketers expect video to dominate their strategies in the near future. YouTube receives more than one billion unique visitors every month, and last year the amount of video from people and brands in Facebook’s News feed increased by a factor of 3.6 year-over-year. Snapchat has used video in its Stories tool to rapidly grow its global audience to over 150 million daily users who consume (wait for it) 10 billion video clips each and every day. One in three Britons now watch at least one online video a week – that’s 20 million people in the UK alone.
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Digital Marketing
And it’s not just B2C – in 2014 the use of video content for B2B marketing increased by 8% to 58%
Infographics A recent study found that two out of five B2B marketers share infographics on social media frequently, and here’s why: the average person is now exposed to the equivalent of 174 newspapers full of information every day, but 99% of all this sensory information is filtered out by the brain almost immediately. Which means that just 1% is retained, and infographics are in this 1%. In just over two years, infographic search volumes have increased by 800%, and publishers who use these tools grow in traffic by an average of more than 12% (compared to those who do not). Infographics can quickly become a very powerful tool in your content marketing arsenal, driving relevant, highly-targeted visitors to your website and social media outposts. They also have a tremendous “shareability” value, and good, well-produced informative infographics will often be used by other publishers to drive referral traffic back to your website.
Podcasts Since its launch in 2003, podcasting has seen incredible growth around
the world. Back in 2008 there were just 10,000 podcasts on iTunes, and today there are more than 60,000. Podcast listening grew 23% between 2015 and 2016, and approximately the same number of people listen to podcasts who use Twitter. About two thirds of podcasts are being listened to on a smartphone or tablet, and the average person listens to about five different podcasts per week. Podcasting has been tipped to explode in
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64% of marketers expect video to dominate their strategies in the near future
Lead Magnets In digital marketing a lead magnet is a (usually) free incentive that offers value to a prospect in exchange for their contact information (at a minimum, their email address). This could be a report or a white paper, access to a webinar, a discount, video or infographic. The best lead magnets are highly-targeted and give the recipient just enough of an introduction to your products and services to get them interested in taking the next step.
Conclusion
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popularity in 2016, but it’s still young and fresh enough for the most innovative brands to get involved. Setting up and committing to your own weekly podcast involves a lot of work (and a bit of steep learning curve), but you can still generate a return from the space by proactively looking to appear on podcasts related to your interest. Business and marketing is one of the most popular podcast topics, and many of the top-rated shows favour the interview format. They’re always looking to record shows with new and unique voices – why couldn’t this be someone from your company?
For many businesses, investing in content marketing will ultimately become one of the best decisions they have made. Content marketing has incredible long-term value, with benefits in SEO, branding, reputation, trust building, cross-channel marketing, traffic generation and conversion. Evergreen content can last forever, and while the types of content required by the different platforms might change, the demand for content will always be there. Content marketing will have an influence on your online strategy, and businesses that excel at delivering rich content will almost always out-perform those that don’t. It takes time and resources, and absolutely demands a commitment, but for those willing to take the extra steps it will always pay off.
Biography: Shéa has managed the digital campaigns and marketing solutions for both B2B and B2C brands across a variety of industries, including retail, finance, education, healthcare, charity, sports and events. A recognised authority within the digital space, he has published two books and written thousands of articles about social media, and his work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the BBC. Identity specialises in the manufacture and implementation of corporate branding, with over 30 years’ experience in the industry. A major supplier of digital marketing, events management and commercial signage across the UK and Europe, Identity is a multi-award-winning company with a very experienced team of industry-respected individuals. Email: sb@identitygroup.co.uk, Web: www.identitygroup.co.uk
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Interview
THE FUTURE OF THE WORKPLACE Vodafone’s Newbury headquarters
Among the most popular events at the recent Brighton Digital Festival was a panel discussion around the Future of the Workplace. One of the companies involved was Vodafone UK, who, like many tech/mobile companies, are evolving and developing new ideas at the speed of light. Richard Aspinall, Regional Director of the South East at Vodafone UK, spoke to Ian Trevett about how the workplace is evolving and how companies such as Vodafone are adapting. You are in Brighton as Vodafone, involved in the Future of the Workplace debate. What is the Vodafone perception of where we are going? Our focus is on technology, as an enabler. Technology will always evolve. Five years ago we didn’t have iPads and we didn’t have our kids spending their whole lives on devices. Technology will continue to advance at a rapid pace. We’ll be part of that in terms of an organisation that can deliver that technology. The key to the future of work is: How do you change to take advantage of new technologies?
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We’re talking about people, processes and space. Flexible working used to be spending a day out of the office a week when somebody had a mobile phone. Now you can often be as effective if you’re sitting in a coffee shop, in the office or on a customer site. The key is the cultural change within an organisation and what that requires. A classic example would be at 4 o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and there’s nobody in the office. Do you believe people are actually working at home? Having that trust at management level and managing people by what they deliver as opposed to presentee-ism is a big part of the cultural change and cultural journey that
organisations will go through.
Will companies actually need premises? There is still something about a place for people to come to meet colleagues and to collaborate. I think all of those things are important, especially as organisations grow. What you don’t want to lose is the human engagement. You can do a lot of that remotely as there are the tools and the collaborations for us to do that. Equally, within the workplace people bounce off each other, create ideas and create energy.
Interview Inclusion is important. One of the challenges, which is well documented, is how people get jobs today by applying online. If you can’t get access to the internet, does that leave you digitally excluded? I think that’s a major challenge, and the industry as a whole is obviously being challenged to address that. Clearly, there’ll be a need for everyone to become increasingly IT savvy. As education evolves, children are probably getting more and more training in that space. Again, I think this is something that employers will look at and will have to support their employees.
Has Vodafone embraced the idea of flexible working?
What innovations should we be looking out for? I’m interested to see what happens as we move into virtual or augmented reality; it will be fascinating from a corporate point of view, but also from a private and public sector point of view, to see how it can help members of the community. The Internet of Things enhancements will continue, and the whole idea of being connected any time, anywhere, with all devices being connected. The information that’ll end up transferring around will be very interesting going forward.
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Our objective is not to be known not just for our mobile expertise but for our ability to provide businesses with new platforms for growth
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Is there a danger, then, that people would never switch off? The workleisure boundary is already blurred for many of us.
I guess all that would then come down to how people are managed and what expectations are set by a leadership function. If you’re running a company, you don’t want people to be thinking they have to work all the time. It’s a big part of the leadership transition.
As business becomes more global and more interconnected, do people get left behind? Will the future workplace be a risk for people who aren’t so skilled?
A significant element of our workforce work from home; they’re flexible workers. From that point of view, we can utilise our space well. But we do have the tools and the equipment to ensure that people can collaborate and make decisions as quickly as possible, even in the context of a bigger organisation.
How is Vodafone evolving as a company in this time of constant change? Vodafone has a team focussed on technology, on R&D, on development, and we work closely with partners, both in Silicon Valley and the UK. We invest in the tools to enable our people to be as agile as possible. And we continue to evolve to try and ensure that their time to decision is as swift as possible. Our objective is not to be known as just selling mobiles, which is what everyone knows us for, but for our offering in the whole digital space. In the UK we acquired Cable & Wireless three or four years ago with all their fixed heritage, and that’s very much been part of the effort to improve our capability in that fixed and mobile space. When we’re talking to our customers or potential customers, our role as a sales community is to really be able to articulate that we are more than mobiles. And even in the mobile space it’s not just about mobiles; it’s about mobility and agility and what that can do for an organisation.
A significant part of your role is in engaging with the business community. How are you developing this market? We support the regional business community by providing specialist local support, by providing businesses with account management, customer services and network teams. Our goal is to get closer to our customers and to build relationships.
In an ideal world, the way we would engage with a customer or a prospect would be to have a conversation around what they are trying to achieve what their business objectives are, and map that back to our capabilities. It might be mobile technology, it might be fixed technology, it could be cloud and hosting.
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The key to the future of work is: How do you change to take advantage of new technologies?
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We almost perform a consultancy role. We can discuss with an organisation how they can change the way they work, the way they operate, how they attract talent and take advantage of all that digital brings.
Convergence is the next major step, bringing the mobile and the fixed worlds together, demonstrating what that can do for our customers, whether they be companies or individuals. This is a massive part of our focus. Our goal is to be on the cutting edge of bringing the technology, but also helping organisations get the most out of it, because technology is just technology: it’s what you do with it that’s important.
For further information please contact RegionalBusiness@vodafone.com Vodafone UK’s South East regional team works closely with businesses of all sizes to support their growth, digital readiness and the development of smart working practices. Vodafone is giving businesses the chance to assess their own organisations with its Ready Business Indicator (www.readybusiness.vodafone.co.uk). Using this free online assessment, businesses can put their organisation’s strengths and weaknesses under the microscope to see where they are today, how they compare to other similar organisations and how prepared they are for the future. Businesses can take the test at www.readybusiness.vodafone.co.uk. For further information on Vodafone UK’s business support please contact regionalbusiness@vodafone.com
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Direct Debit Processing Donor Development Campaign Planning Marketing Resources
www.charityline.org.uk
Call us on: 0800 368 9701 or email: info@charityline.org.uk
Business Scene
THE PLATINUM BUSINESS CLUB BRIGHTON
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he Platinum Business Club has been running now for 7 years and has been proven to be the most effective networking group in the South East.
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Comprising many of the leading companies in the UK, with the majority represented by the CEO, MD or Managing Partner, the monthly Platinum Club events are one of the highlights of many a calendar. EfďŹ cient, enjoyable networking is not about selling but rather they should be about developing long-term relationships and this is the platform that Platinum provides. For 2017, the Platinum Club is accepting new members in a number of sectors and if you are interested in increasing business, and your high level network, get in touch without delay as new memberships are limited. Contact: info@platinumbusinessmagazine.com.
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Andrew Mosley (GM, The Grand Hotel), The former Mayor of Brighton; Lynne East (MD, East PR)
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Dave Samuel (Founder, Paddle Round the Pier), Paula Seabourne (Mind Matters Now), Richard Skerritt (CEO, Skerritt Wealth Management)
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Karim Mohamed (Partner, Mayo Wynne Baxter), Julie Frith (Director, Mishon Mackay)
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Keith Jackman (Mercedes-Benz), Gemma King (MD, Vivid Marketing), Michael Wilkins (Allied Irish Bank)
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Mary Steadman (Head of Centurion, American Express), Stephen Bucher (American Express)
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Amanda Menahem (Board Member, Coast2Capital LEP), Richard Pollins (Managing Partner, DMH Stallard), Lee Hills (Partner, Mayo Wynne Baxter)
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David Bywater (Partner, KPMG), Stephanie Kirkley (Brighton Racecourse)
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Iain Lindsay (GM, Mercure Hotel), David Sheppard (Chairman, Sussex Chamber of Commerce)
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Kevin Smyth (Partner, Burt Brill & Cardens), John Burroughes (CEO, Uniglobe Travel), Imelda Glackin (CEO, Martlets)
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10. Laurence Elphick (MD, Juice 107.2FM) Nick Jenner and Hannah Flack (Square One Financial)
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Flo Powell (Midnight), Alison Addy (Gatwick Airport), Caraline Brown (CEO, Midnight)
12. Brian Quinton (Director, Metro Bank), Val Kaye (Castle Fine Art)
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BRIGHTON & HOVE
LAUNCHING A STARTUP? Try these Brighton events
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rom the moment you decide to start a business – regardless of however many times you’ve done it before – you start ‘the journey’ again. The journey of an entrepreneur is fraught with danger, challenge and excitement. Everything is uncertain and up for grabs. So where do you turn for support and guidance? That’s why at Brighton Chamber we’ve launched The Startup Series. It’s a series of small-group, two-hour events aimed at entrepreneurs – covering topics from understanding your market to crunching your numbers to developing a marketing strategy. The events will be facilitated by Si Conroy, CEO and founder of Scarlet Monday and ConstantMentor.com. Si specialises in guiding owners through the entrepreneur’s journey and helping them grow their businesses. To make sure everyone gets the time to focus on their own business, there will be places for just four startups at each event, with time devoted evenly to each business.
CHAMBER NEWS
You can come to as many events as you like – mixing and matching to suit your needs.
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To find out more, see the session topics, and book your place – see
www.businessinbrighton.org.uk/businesssupport/startup-series Sessions include: 1. Know your market When you’re launching a startup, it’s essential to understand the marketplace in which you’ll be operating. Who are your competitors? What are the market trends? And how do you make a start researching it? 2. Find your business “Why” In business, purpose gives competitive advantage. So ask yourself: why does your business exist? What customer problems do you address - and how do you solve them? Ask questions about customer needs and wants, and then create a clear value proposition that can help your business succeed. 3. What makes your business unique? What makes your startup unique – and where is your niche? Learn how to discover the differentiators that set your startup apart from the rest. 4. Where do you want to be in 10yrs+? What does the future hold for your business? How far can you predict how markets will develop – and what your competitive advantage might be in years to come?
5. Discover your business model As a startup, you’ve discovered a great way to solve your customers’ needs. But how do you go about turning that customer insight into value? What will be your pricing, business terms or delivery methods, and how will you use these to attract clients? 6. Create a financial plan Every successful startup needs a finance plan to support growth. It’s important to be conscious of your budget and cashflow if you want your business to thrive – you need absolute clarity about how you’re going to raise money. 7. Take your business to market To achieve success as a startup, you need a sales and marketing strategy that can help you hit your target revenues. But this requires detailed planning. Outline a clear and focused strategy for your marketing and sales. 8. Get the most from your people From outsource partners to business partners, from employees to freelancers, people are everything to a successful startup. Learn how to get more from the people who make things happen.
Contact Brighton Chamber for more information www.businessinbrighton.org.uk Photo by Simon Callaghan www.simoncallaghanphotography.com
SUSSEX
BROADBAND - A MIXED PICTURE Connectivity is still an issue, says Ana Christie, Chief Executive of Sussex Chamber of Commerce
This is not an isolated problem; despite £1.7bn of taxpayers’ cash being put towards high-speed broadband, there’s still 5.7 million people across the whole of Britain who are unable to access the internet at Ofcom’s standard of 10 megabits per second. However, there are currently multiple bids for Government funding for regeneration in Sussex. Arun, Adur, Brighton & Hove and Worthing councils have all revealed ambitious proposals to revive their seafronts as part of the national Coastal Communities Fund.
Brighton & Hove may be choosing to use the money for something other than
Wealden in East Sussex suffers considerably from poor connectivity; sitting within 20% of the UK’s worst affected areas
❞ broadband connectivity as it is reported that the fastest 25% of the city are getting speeds of around 36Mbps, with the average speed at 17.3Mbps. Graham Somerville of bhi Ltd commented, “bhi ltd have recently been upgraded to fibre
broadband. This has been an improvement over the standard broadband service we previously had. However, from time to time our broadband stops or runs very slow, this can be incredibly frustrating when you are trying to use the internet or make VoiP calls to overseas customers. “Our business relies on the internet to transfer and download large documents, we also use a franking machine and if the broadband is down we cannot print off any stamps and so orders cannot be despatched.’ Antony Etheridge from Structured Communications said, “Connectivity and broadband speeds are varied throughout the whole of Sussex. Areas that are more densely populated and/or have more businesses will typically have faster speeds. This is due to it being more commercially viable for the fibre infrastructure to be installed in these areas. Here at Structured Communications, we understand that businesses can’t be in a situation where there is a loss of business caused by internet speeds. In order to provide fast speeds in areas without the fibre infrastructure, we provide customised bonded broadband solutions.”
CHAMBER NEWS
The patchwork of broadband connectivity and super-fast broadband speeds across Sussex means that many businesses are suffering from downtime. It is reported that Wealden in East Sussex suffers considerably from poor connectivity; sitting within 20% of the UK’s worst affected areas; understandably having an adverse affect on businesses and homes within the district.
Currently, Adur appears to be the only area looking to develop ultra fast broadband infrastructure, bidding £1.2million for that purpose.
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nconsistent broadband and connectivity speeds have long been an issue for businesses across Sussex. With grants and funding applications continuing to be submitted to Government, disrupted and slow speeds may soon be a problem of the past.
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Charity News
CHESTNUT TREE HOUSE AT BRITISH AIRWAYS i360
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hestnut Tree House, the children’s hospice for East and West Sussex and South East Hampshire, was delighted to welcome around 160 guests to Brighton’s British Airways i360 to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the charity’s Pay for a Day initiative. Pay for a Day was originally suggested by local businessman, Mike Holland, giving donors the opportunity to pay for a whole day of Chestnut Tree House’s care services, both at the hospice and in the community in families’ own homes, a total of £6,850. Over the last five years, this has raised a staggering £1,980,000 which equates to enough money to pay for 280 days of care. The initiative also includes Pay for an Hour, currently £285. As well as celebrating the success of Pay for a Day, the charity launched this year’s Ball which will take place on 3rd December at the Hilton Brighton Metropole.
Sarah Arnold and David Pegler
Hugh Lowson and Patricia Woolgar
Eleanor Harris and Juliette MacPherson
Linda Perry, Louise Exall and Caroline Fleetwood
Michael and Maureen Chowen, Wendy Carter and Mike Holland
Michele Purse with Richard and Becky Pickett
Alex and Debbie Smallman
Chestnut Tree House team
Sarah Charlesworth
Robbie Raggio, Ambrose Harcourt and Nguven Viet Luong
Headline sponsors for the Snowman Spectacular were also announced – Bloc Hotels and Irwin Mitchell solicitors. Other sponsors include Creative Pod, E3, ECE Architecture, Green People, Gusto Wines, Hilton Brighton Metropole, Juice 107.2, Oliver & Graimes, Platinum Business Magazine, Signature Flights, Sussex Life, and West Sussex Print Ltd.
For the latest news about the Snowman Spectacular Fundraising Ball visit www. thesnowmanspectacular.org.uk. For more information about Chestnut Tree House visit www.chestnut–tree-house.org.uk
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CHICHESTER
IS TOP TALENT KNOCKING ON YOUR DOOR? Asks Dianne Lambdin, Board Director, Chichester Chamber of Commerce and Director of Sussex HR Hub
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n my line of work I see the difficulties businesses face in recruiting. While the ‘skills gap’ is often cited as the main reason, business leaders I talk to are more concerned about lack of ambition, drive and commitment among candidates. So it appears it’s not just skills but the right attitude that’s in short supply.
to contend with; while London attracts commuters from across the region with the promise of high salaries, prestigious brands and careers that are going places.
There’s no question that in Sussex there are a range of factors that impact on recruitment and skills, for example, along the coast from Hastings to Chichester we lose a lot of skilled people due to the lack of high value jobs.
The obvious way to beat the competition is to offer more than your competitors in terms of salary, employee benefits and working conditions. However, this won’t necessarily mean you’ve found the best person for the job and, if they’re not the right fit, you’ll soon regret your hiring decision.
In the digital sector, I’m told that unless you’re in London or Brighton you’ve less chance of attracting good candidates and STEM industries (science, technology, engineering and maths) just don’t have the numbers coming through the education system. With our backs to the sea wall, companies on the coast have 50% less catchment area than those inland; rural areas have lower population and poor transport links
Faced with these challenges, what can businesses in Sussex do to increase their chances of attracting and retaining great talent?
Be a great place to work
It’s worth remembering that it doesn’t matter how technologically savvy your business is, how in demand your products are, or how ‘cool’ your brand looks from the outside, if the culture isn’t right, people won’t want to work for you. Many businesses already know this and we know about them because their employees and customers talk about them. Their culture isn’t an after-thought; it’s central to their growth plan and has been from the outset. Everything they do exemplifies their culture and values - and their staff are their best ambassadors.
It’s all about attitude As business leaders we all need to be clear on the attitudes that define our best people (and the behaviours we don’t want). When we’re recruiting it’s essential to focus, not only on skills, but on attitude and in this way we can gauge a candidate’s fit with our company culture. Employees with a positive attitude epitomise our company’s desire to be a great place to work and it’s commitment to recruit only the best talent - which is a great recruiting tool in itself. Without this approach, recruiting the right people with the right attitudes, if it happens at all, will tend to be through luck not judgement. With so much at stake, what’s your business doing about it?
For information about Chichester Chamber of Commerce and Industry, or any of the above initiatives, please visit www. chichestercci.org.uk or contact office@chichestercci.org.uk www.sussexhrhub.co.uk
CHAMBER NEWS
The best strategy is to make your business a great place to work - then people really will want to work for you. This means aligning your culture, reputation and employer brand - often intangible characteristics and qualities that make your business distinctive. What does it mean to work in your business? What does the employment experience promise?
Does this appeal to people who will thrive and perform best in your culture?
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ACES
THE FASTEST WAY TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS James Bowker, Export Finance Adviser for Kent, East Sussex and West Sussex explains how impartial guidance from UK Export Finance can help companies access the finance and insurance they need to export.
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That’s real, tangible support for exporters in the South East that can help where they most need it.
xporting can help companies grow – and grow fast. Research shows that companies that start exporting on average grow by a third in just two years. Exporters can achieve levels of growth that may not be possible domestically, spread business risk, increase revenues and profits and extend the commercial lifespan of their products and services. But it is not just manufacturers that can grow by export. You can sell your service and expertise abroad too. There is a world of opportunity for businesses in Kent and Sussex. Even a cursory search using the “Exporting is GREAT” site will illustrate the scale of the demand that is out there. Finding customers outside the UK is the key to growth for many firms as they seek to thrive in a global market place.
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Even a cursory search using the “Exporting is GREAT” site will illustrate the scale of the demand that is out there
CHAMBER NEWS
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But when a company is ready to sell overseas, it may find it needs specialist trade finance and insurance. This can help give overseas buyers time to pay while protecting cash flow. Or it might mean higher levels of finance compared to conventional lending. And exporters might want to protect themselves from any risk of not being paid. And that’s where UK Export Finance (UKEF) can help. UKEF is the UK’s export credit agency, working alongside the Department for International Trade to help make exports happen. Our mission is to ensure that no viable UK export fails for lack of finance or insurance from the private sector. To do this we provide tailored finance and insurance to help exporters win, fulfil and get paid for export contracts. In 2015-16 in the South East of England alone, we provided support valued at some £11 million to help over £60 million in overseas sales for the region’s exporters in 2015-16. Over the last five years, we’ve supported more than £500 million worth of export contracts for SMEs.
Battle Chamber of Commerce www.battlechamber.org.uk
Bexhill Chamber of Commerce 01424 842892 www.bexhillchamber.co.uk
Crowborough Chamber of Commerce www.crowboroughchamber.co.uk
Eastbourne UnLtd Chamber of Commerce 01323 641144 www.eastbournechamber.co.uk
UKEF can work with local companies to identify where they might need specialist trade finance, and impartial guidance about the support available, whether from HM Government, or from the private sector. The financial services landscape is changing fast, and with a wealth of alternative finance companies now available alongside traditional providers, information on what is available might be invaluable support.
Making sure you get paid “Take Horsham’s Bluebox London. For over 25 years, it has specialised in installing high-specification sound systems, mainly in the club industry in the UK and abroad. High-profile international contracts include Mezzanine in San Francisco, Space and Privilege in Ibiza and BCM in Majorca. The company won a contract to install a system in a hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, but the challenge was making sure it would get paid. I was able to work with Bluebox to find a bank that would accept a letter of credit from its Ethiopian buyer. This gave it the security to undertake the export contract.”
Fluctuating exchange rates Another area in which exporters might want to make sure they’re protected is mitigating exchange rate risk. If the contract with a buyer is in a currency other than GBP, exchange rate fluctuations might have an impact on the ultimate revenue from the sale. An exporter can choose to approach this in a number of ways: by opening a foreign currency “holding” account; by covering the risk with a forward contract with its bank; or by a combination of the two – either of which will be available from its bank. It might of course also decide that the risk is minimal and there is no need to take any action. But it’s important for any exporter to make sure that they have looked at their options and made an informed decision. And when the world needs a UK company’s expertise, it might find that it needs yours. UKEF can help you find the support and assurance you need in a complex market, making exports happen.
To find out more about how UKEF can help your business, contact James Bowker on +44 (0)7812 667 327 or james.bowker@ukexportfinance.gov.uk.
East Sussex County Council 01273 481570 www.eastsussex.gov.uk
Federation of Small Businesses 01424 754686 Reg Office: 01323 482018 www.fsb.org.uk/eastsussex
Hailsham Chamber of Commerce 01323 310531 www.hailshamchamberofcommerce.co.uk
Hastings Chamber of Commerce 01424 205500 www.hastingschamber.co.uk
Heathfield Chamber of Commerce 01435 865858 www.heathfieldchamber.co.uk
ACES
CYBER ATTACKS ON SMES
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yber attacks are currently one of the biggest threats facing businesses in the UK, with the UK economy losing £20 billion per year to security breaches. Small to medium sized businesses, that generally lack the required resources or knowledge to fight online fraudsters, are particularly vulnerable.
Jason Fry
“Cyber attacks pose one of the most immediate and serious threats to businesses and, in the worst cases, can cause irreparable damage to both their finances and reputation” said Jason Fry MD of PAV i.t. services. “We have produced an advice booklet with the government which is essential reading for any business that needs to know more about cyber security and how to implement protection policies. We urge companies to read the booklet and seek professional advice to ensure they have a robust cyber security policy in place.”
Businesses can download a free digital version of the booklet here www.pav.co.uk/cybersecurity
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Cyber attacks pose one of the most immediate and serious threats to businesses
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Priding themselves on a friendly and flexible approach with a keen emphasis on working closely with their clients to deliver relevant and reliable solutions, after nearly 30 years in the industry PAV i.t. still steadfastly retains the values they built their success on. In July PAV launched an initiative to raise awareness of cybercrime amongst SMEs by providing free cyber security advice and delivering 500 free booklets to companies across Sussex and the South East. For more information about PAV i.t. services and how they can help your business, please visit www.pav.co.uk
The Institute of Directors 0207 766 8866 www.iod.com
Lewes Chamber of Commerce 07919 382316 www.leweschamber.org.uk
Locate East Sussex 0844 415 9255 www.locateeastsussex.org.uk
Newhaven Chamber of Commerce 0800 107 0709 www.newhavenchamber.co.uk
Peacehaven Chamber of Commerce 01273 586222 www.peacehavenchamber.co.uk
Seaford Chamber of Commerce 0800 881 5331 www.seafordchamber.co.uk
South East Local Enterprise Partnership 01245 431469 www.southeastlep.com
Uckfield Chamber of Commerce 01825 722607 www.uckfieldchamber.co.uk
Wealden District Council 01323 443322 www.wealden.gov.uk
CHAMBER NEWS
Sussex based business PAV i.t. services has been delivering IT services and solutions to companies across the UK since 1988. From their humble beginnings located in a small office in Brighton they have grown to become one of the country’s leading IT specialists working with the government, multi-national businesses and homegrown SMEs.
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E k RE OW! co.u F e N s. rib line tion c n ca bs Su ead o ubli p d r olio n a rtf .po w ww
October 2016
Hotel cool interiors How to get the look
WEEKEND BREAK A luxury lodge in Norfolk
Floating apartment Stunning City solution
NEW HOMES NEWS
BEAR GRYLLS
His favourite experiences in Britain
OUT
NOW
+ River Cottage recipes
BIGGEST
ever issue!
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Home Leisure FREE
EASTBOURNE
GET A ROOM!
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aroline Ansell MP for Eastbourne and Willingdon officially opened “Get A Room Online Ltd” at their new lettings office at 5, Hyde Gardens in Eastbourne Town Centre on Friday 2nd September. Get a Room Online Ltd is a new and innovative Room and Property Letting Company, that provides a modern competitively priced internet based online Property Management Service. Having only launched in June this year, already success and growth has allowed them to expand the business by opening a new Lettings Office in Eastbourne town centre. This will run alongside their ever demanding online service. Director Laura Morrow said, “We were delighted that Caroline was available to officially open our new office and to take the time out of her busy schedule for us. It was great to discuss our future plans to
expand the business and to see her enthusiasm for what we believe in and what we want to achieve. She was very excited for what we have lined up.” The official opening was a huge success, with lots of people attending to show their support and to enquire about the range of services and tailor made packages that are offered. Caroline Ansell said “It was a pleasure to open this new lettings office and to support new business in Eastbourne. I very much hope Get a Room Online is a great success.” Get A Room online are proud to be members of the Eastbourne unLtd Chamber of Commerce, Federation of Small Businesses and the Property Ombudsman.
For more information go to www.getaroomonline.co.uk
CHAMBER NEWS
Join Eastbourne unLtd Chamber of Commerce from as little as £59.00 plus vat, per year! This will give you the opportunity to include news items on this page about your business without charge. You will also have access to 4,000 other members via ACES, the Alliance of Chambers in East Sussex which gives you a loud voice with policy makers locally, regionally and centrally. Can you afford not to join??!! www.eastbourneunltd.co.uk
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WORTHING
SOMETHING BIG IS COMING The Better Business Show is back for 2017!! After a fantastic exhibition last year we are delighted to announce that the Better Business show will be back for 2017 on Thursday 2nd February 2017. Stand bookings are now open. To secure your stand please book early and take advantage of the Early Bird offer running until 30th October 2016 Be part of the exhibition-don’t miss out, make sure you’re part of this exciting event. This year looks to be even bigger and better.
Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of the local business scene
• More stands for more local businesses • Showcase YOUR business, network with the best • Get involved and get noticed • Exhibit and promote your business • Share your success at this unmissable day • Increase your visibility
Visit our website for more details on this unmissable event. www.worthingandadurchamber.co.uk
SOCIAL AT THE SPHERE WITH GILL FIELDING
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orthing and Adur Chamber Patron Gill Fielding was joined by over 50 guests at the Sphere Business Centre for an evening of cheese, wine and knowledge!
Gill updated the guests on the success of newly opened Sphere Business Centre. She commented: “Many of us are in a unique position with fledgling businesses as they need and crave information and support which we must be mindful to provide to them in the best and most useful format we can to benefit them. So how can we help steer start-up businesses and what do they need? Overall, they need three things:
CHAMBER NEWS
“Firstly,information, secondly, operational guidance – And thirdly, support and that’s partly what the Sphere provides. A small business owner can come to the Sphere and feel like a proper business with like-minded people around them which enables their businesses to flourish. Even if they only come and sit here for one day each week – they then know that that day is the special one just for them and their future – and the day where they can just sit and think – without
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interruption or distraction about where they want the business to go. In addition they can chat to others who are in a similar position, share challenges and hopefully share solutions too. “The Sphere is a great stepping stone for that liberation of a new business as it enables them to take the first big step into a protected, safe – and affordable – business environment Here they can hold meetings, meet customers, have a proper desk, sit and think, have a coffee, chat to others, get advice from some, and most importantly feel part of and belong to - a solid business community. “In the Sphere no-one is ever alone – and that’s invaluable at a time before you have your own workers or supporters around you. They get connected to the Chamber and get a discount on membership and that opens another whole series of doors.”
Interested? Come along and give the Sphere a try on one of our free #tryittuesdays. Give us a call on 01903 681001 for more information.
FORTHCOMING EVENTS: 5th October – Meet the Chamber FREE networking 14th October – Chamber Hub – FREE networking 21st October – BREXIT – What’s next? An update from our local MP’s followed by Q&A’s More info www.worthingandadurchamber.co.uk
BUSINESS WOMEN EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2016 - SUSSEX EDITION
W
e now have our Semi-Finalists chosen from over 318 entries and third-party nominations. The judges included Katy Bourne, the Sussex Police Commission, Bruce Hayter of Rix & Kay Solicitors, Amanda Menahem, Board Member of Coast to Capital LEP and Platinum Business Magazine and Graham Prince of Neva Consultants. All the Judges were overwhelmed with the volume and high standard of the entries. All Semi-finalists are now looking forward to the black tie gala final which will be taking place on the 25th November at the Hilton Brighton Metropole Hotel. It will be a lavish event with great food, fabulous entertainment and of course huge celebrations once the overall winner is announce in each of the 16 categories. Penina Shepherd of Acumen Business Law, the Headline Sponsors for the Sussex Edition of these awards, said “Receiving an accolade for your outstanding work achievements brings your successes to light, opens doors to new opportunities and builds a positive path for other women to follow. Women have made so much progress in business over the years and an increasing number of awards programmes have been designed to highlight and recognise their exceptional skills and talents” Each of the Semi-Finalists received a signed copy of “The Freedom Revolution” written by Penina. It’s a clever, funny, inspirational and motivational read. It takes a refreshingly new and exciting approach to business and offers realistic and practical advice on how to achieve your business dreams. Available from Amazon.co.uk. We invite you to join in the celebration and festivities on the 25th November where you can support the semi-finalist, have a splendid evening and more importantly take the opportunity of the first class networking opportunities available. Tickets cost £85 including VAT and will include a welcome drink, a wonderful three course meal, the awards and super entertainment.
THE 2016 SPONSORS HEADLINE SPONSOR:
MEDIA SPONSORS:
PLATINUM MAGAZINE
CATEGORY SPONSORS: ACES, Anascom, Bartercard, Best of Brighton and Hove, Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce, Cavendish Hotel, Creative Pod, Duvacourt Group, Hilton Hotel, Identity Digital, Independent Heating & Cooling, Let’s Do Business Group, Metro Bank, Natwest Bank, Neva Consultants, Sussex Chamber of Commerce, On Line Ticket Seller, Pier Recruitment, Pro Star Services, Spofforths part of Keston Reeves, Sussex Downs College
To book tickets for the final, call Faiza Shafeek on 07540 406685 or visit business womeninexcellenceawards.co.uk. TheAwards Banquet takes place on November 25th at the Brighton Metropole Hotel.
Organised by Carrot Events
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Chamber Summit
THE BRIGHTON SUMMIT
Your desires, dreams & real business
E
very business starts with desire. At the Brighton Summit, you’ll explore those desires.
You’ll hear extraordinary speakers and join practical workshops. You’ll do things you never thought you’d do at a business conference. You’ll talk with us about vision and success, challenge and risk.
Learning from and with successful business leaders, you’ll be challenged to meet your existing dreams and inspired to create new ones.
You’ll leave with ideas, contacts and strategies for turning desire into growth. When you get back to your desk, you’ll be ready to
grow your business as you really want to. The Brighton Chamber has put together a line-up of brilliant speakers drawn from across the world of business for their annual conference, the Brighton Summit, as well as expert workshops, panel discussions and some surprises along the way.
THE PROGRAMME FOR THE BRIGHTON SUMMIT, FRIDAY 14TH OCTOBER 2016 08:30 - 09:15
Registration, breakfast, coffee and networking
09:15 - 10:00
Welcome and introduction, with MC Kathy Caton and Brighton Chamber President Carol Lewis Our opening keynote speakers: Camilla Stephens and Mark Campbell, Higgidy
10:10 - 11:30
Choose an expert workshop: Create a vision, create success with Susan Carroll, Scala Advance Double tap your way to a smarter social media strategy with James Dempster, Cobb Digital The science of goal setting with Si Conroy, Scarlet Monday How to be a Productivity Ninja with Hayley Watts, Think Productive
11:30 - 12:00
Nourishing snacks to feed your mind
12:00 - 13:00
Desire Hour- have fun exploring your dreams. Including: It’s virtually brilliant with Jon Malyon, Tilt Space to dance with Anne Colvin, South East Dance Duke of York’s exclusive screening West End workshop at Bird Studios with Michael Greco Storytelling by desire with Anne-Marie and Steve Creffield Yoga with Hot Yoga South
For tickets and further information, contact the Chamber on 01273 719097 or go to www.brightonsummit.com
13:00 - 14:00
A light networking lunch to keep you moving
14:00 - 14:40
Our second keynote speaker: Luke Johnson, serial investor and owner of Brighton Pier
14:50 - 15:50
Choose from a selection of thought provoking panels: The power of our mindset with Dr Lynda Shaw and Jay Cooper. Chaired by Susan Carroll Difficult decisions and how you make them with Claire Hopkins, Greig Holbrook and Nick Fettiplace. Facilitated by Miranda Birch Sharing your vision with your people with Imelda Glackin and Antony Ribot. Facilitated by Si Conroy How to write your business book and get it published with Adrian Swinscoe and Steve Bustin. Chaired by Sue Richardson.
15:50 - 16:25
Tea and cake
16:25 - 17:00
Our closing keynote speaker: Marc Koska OBE, inventor of the K1 auto-disabling syringe
17:00 18:00
Time to relax: drinks, entertainment and chat
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Chamber Summit
❝
The Summit is by far one of the most amazing (and fun) business events I have ever attended. A wealth of great speakers demonstrating how you can run a successful business by breaking rules whilst remaining honest and ethical is exactly how it should be. Thought-provoking, disruptive and inspirational.
❞
Dan Flanagan, Editor, Don’t Believe The Hype
EVENT ORGANISER
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❝
The Summit is a full day of brilliant networking, inspirational speakers, fun and challenging activities, and an opportunity to lose oneself in a maelstrom of positivity. It feels like bunking off school to take a whole day out of the office but it’s well worth it, as you get lots of practical take-away tips and techniques, fresh views and up-to-date news. What’s not to love?
❞
Jill Woolf Managing Director of Chimera Communications HEADLINE SPONSOR
An inspirational day bursting with creative and successful speakers and a great selection of seminars that really made you think, question and think outside the box. The atmosphere was brilliant, the food lovely and the people welcoming and hungry to learn.
❞
Anne Cooper, Assistant Marketing Manager, Let’s Do Business Group MEDIA PARTNER
PLATINUM MAGAZINE
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Style
SARTORIAL SUCCESS on the conference circuit Party conference season has just ended, which always puts me in a reflective mood. I spent a decade on the annual TUCLibDem-Labour-Conservative conference merry-go-round; not just the main ones, but also the regional sessions too. (Scottish Labour Party conference in Inverness, anyone?). The conferences were fun, although desperately unhealthy – late nights, bad food, not seeing the outside world for about four weeks – but they always presented a sartorial challenge.
S
pending long days in meetings and fringe events, then heading out for drinks receptions and dinners with MPs and clients, with barely five minutes to breathe, is not
conducive to looking your best. So whatever conferences or business trips you may have in your diary this autumn, how can you look great and meet every eventuality stylishly?
Pack as little as possible I know this is hard, but your aim should be to take as little as you possibly can, particularly if you are away for a week or less. Whether you’re travelling by plane, car or train, you do not want to be overburdened with luggage, and end up not wearing half of what you brought with you. And let’s face it, unless you’re heading to Outer Mongolia, there are very few places these days that you can’t buy a tie, a pair of socks or an extra shirt should the need arise. And you can, of course, make use of hotel laundry facilities. Your objective is to pack a ‘capsule’ version of what you would normally wear to work; one with several outfit combinations that will help you meet any occasion with
Samantha Wilding Tel: 07833 084864 Email: Samantha@styleandgrace.eu Website: www.styleandgrace.eu
aplomb. To achieve this, prioritise your most classic pieces
Twitter:
in neutral colours (grey, navy, white, black, tan), adding
@alwayschicUK
accessories that work across many of these. This will help ensure that everything works together, keeping your luggage light.
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Style Start with a suit The first item you may need, depending on the nature of your trip, is a suit. I would advise
for autumn/winter (but cotton or linen if you’re heading somewhere hot) • Wear slip-on shoes (loafers are great) for air
taking the Gallic approach (daring in these
travel and pack one pair of smart lace-ups
post-Brexit days, I know) of a crisp black or
(derbys or brogues). Add a pair of stylish
dark grey suit with a white shirt. The Financial
leather trainers, depending on how casual
Times recently described French business
your trip will be
leaders’ monochromatic attire as ‘understated, but elegant and brimming with confidence’. A great look to aspire to. You can either wear the suit jacket while travelling (ideally with dark jeans and a plain shirt or polo), or pack the suit and wear a smart-casual blazer. Wearing the suit jacket will mean it won’t get creased in your case. If you
• A few shirts in colours that go with the trousers and jackets you’re packing, along with a two or three ties • A neutral v-neck jumper is useful for chilly planes and in air-conditioned venues further afield • A pair of dark navy or black jeans for
do this, hang it on the jacket hook as soon as
informal meetings, downtime or the trip
you board the plane (or ask a crew member to
home
hang it up for you). In addition to your suit, you are likely to
Now, I know you’ll want to steer clear of the baggy, creased, ill-fitting suit look sported
need:
by so many of the MPs I used to see at the
• A pair of chinos (ideally beige, navy or grey)
party conferences. Whatever you wear on
that can be worn with your suit jacket for a
your business travels, please make sure that
formal meeting, or with a t-shirt and blazer
it fits. Not just jackets and trousers, but shirts
for an evening drink
too. The FT says it best: ‘if you remove an
• Another pair of more formal trousers, to
Englishman’s jacket you will probably discover
give you another option besides your suit
a spinnaker billowing under his arms’. Let’s
trousers. These should be in wool or flannel
change that.
style PLATINUM
HANDY HINTS FOR STRESS-FREE BUSINESS TRAVEL: • Make a list. Yes, really. Not just the clothes you’re going to pack, but also flight numbers, hotel addresses and work documents. This not only relieves pre-travel stress, it also gives you a useful record if anything goes wrong • Pack a few necessities in your carryon bag, in case your hold luggage goes astray (toothbrush, change of underwear, socks, clean shirt). Think of this as your wardrobe back-up • When travelling, wear something that can be worn again (perhaps in a different combination) when you arrive • Stick to natural fabrics (cotton, wool) or blends which will be comfortable to travel in, and crease-resistant too • Unpack as soon as you arrive. This is better for your clothes and you’ll feel more settled and ready to get on with business
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Institute of Directors
TALENT SPOTTING JUST A THOUGHT Can you identify the talents that you bring to your own business?
By Dean Orgill Chairman of Mayo Wynne Baxter www.mayowynnebaxter.co.uk • www.iod.com
I
n order to be successful the dedicated athletes (and business people) that I mentioned in my last column need to rely not just on their training but also their talent and often a healthy dose of luck (although we have probably all heard the maxim “the more I practice the luckier I get”). But what is “talent”? We can all spot it - or can we? Is it the ability to do something better than anyone else, or the ability to do things as they ought properly to be done. Alternatively is it someone being able to do something better than I can do it myself? A modern business needs people with all sorts of skills, and the skill sets needed seem to be evolving at an apparently ever-increasing speed. So someone who is brilliant at what you are doing now may well not be the right person for a role in a year or two’s time. Recruitment, and indeed retention, of the right people (i.e. with the right set of skills)
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is therefore becoming ever more important. But how often do we look at the vacancy we have now and look to simply “fill the gap” with the person who is nearest thing we can find to the person we had before? The pressing immediate need to get someone can sometimes lead us away from ensuring that we have the best person for the role going forward. To be able to avoid that continuation of the status quo we do of course need to identify exactly what we need in a role, and what we might need going forward too. Of course some roles will require someone to bring stability and continuation to them, and not merely to be stepping stones to further progression. But if that is the case then these do need to be clearly identified as such, and recruitment on that basis can be dealt with on an honest conscious appraisal rather than by default.
Another consideration is of course to look to bring together the best combination of skills within a business, department or team. How often does a leader look to recruit members of their teams in their own image, when what they actually need is precisely the opposite? Teams that can offer diversity of outlook and experiences will be able to consider so many more options than a homogenous group. That other group might be more harmonious (unless their common characteristics are argumentative and challenging!) but I would suggest a blend of various outlooks and abilities is likely to be more successful in the long run. So, what skills do you want now, what will you need in the future and do you have the right blend? I suggest that a conscious focus on these aspects before you pick up any CVs and find yourself impressed by a candidate who is hugely impressive, but not the right fit, will pay dividends in the long run.
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BMW Business Partnership
A FLEET OF BENEFITS. AWARD-WINNING, SIMPLE FLEET MANAGEMENT FOR SMALL BUSINESSES. If you manage a fleet of fewer than 50 company cars, the award-winning BMW Business Partnership has been designed specifically for you. The full range of BMW models are available to order, along with compelling contract hire rates and comprehensive service and maintenance packages. For more information, contact Dean Eaton, Local Business Development Manager, on 0800 915 4700. Vines of Gatwick, Stephenson Way, Three Bridges, Crawley RH10 1TN 0800 915 4700 www.vinesofgatwickbmw.co.uk/business
AWARD WINNING. • The BMW Business Partnership Programme voted ‘Best SME Company Car Programme’ at Business Car Manager Awards 2015
PROGRAMME BENEFITS. • Compelling contract hire rates • Your own dedicated Local Business Manager • Comprehensive service & maintenance packages available
Official fuel economy figures for the BMW range: Urban 13.8-72.4mpg (20.5-3.9l/100km). Extra Urban 30.4-91.3mpg (9.3-3.1l/100km). Combined 21.1-470.8mpg (13.4-0.06l/100km). CO2 Emissions 325-0g/km. Figures may vary depending on driving style and conditions.