Category: Opinion

Mary Clarke, CEO of Cognisco, a human capital risk solutions company comments on how the banking sector could minimise employee risk and help improve their damaged reputation.

Lots of people like the idea of investing in property – and that’s a good place to start, but it’s not enough to enable you to develop a profitable property business – one that will continue to make you money, provide cash flow, an easy retirement and a legacy for your family.

Many business coaches suggest we tell everyone our business goals – it makes them more real and it forces accountability. But according to Jessica McGregor Johnson author of ‘The Right T-Shirt’ this is not a good idea. In fact the exact opposite is true – don’t tell everyone your goals!

Success results not from adding things to your life but from letting go of them.

The way we as a society communicate has changed fundamentally in the last decade. The growth of social media and the internet has brought vast opportunities to businesses. In particular it has been a powerful and relatively inexpensive way for SME’s to increase awareness of their products and promote their brands on a global stage. It has also brought huge risks to brand reputation.

At some point in the recent past – was it when the utilities began treating complaints as a benchmark for consumer satisfaction? – the word sorry was entirely cut adrift from meaningful action. It became one of those vague expressions of regret, the emotion you experience when you tread on someone’s toe in a crowded lift, not quite unmeant but not actually meaning anything either.

Late payment has remained high on the SME agenda over the past 12 months. Against a backdrop of the European credit crisis, the banks still resolutely refusing to lend to business, and the economy contracting in the first two quarters of the year, the issue has remained firmly on the front burner.

Supply chain finance was announced with some fanfare by David Cameron last month. The latest in a long line of Government initiatives to put money in the hands of cash starved small businesses.

Have you ever given any thought to the fact that reciprocal agreement between employee and employer is not simply a case of trading hours or even performance for salary?

As Elton John’s iconic song goes, ‘sorry seems to be the hardest word’- and the higher you get up the company ladder the brighter the spotlight on you, not just from colleagues and clients but shareholders, the press and an increasingly global audience.