Monthly Archives: June 2020

Coronavirus, COVID-19, News, PPE

Bridgend charity making three-layer face masks using recycled materials

Washable three-layer face masks are available for the public to purchase from a local Bridgend charity to help ensure PPE is not taken away from healthcare and frontline workers.

Homelessness charity Emmaus South Wales is making sustainable face masks using donated clothing and fabrics. The charity is aiming to produce 100 masks per a week and orders can be placed by email while the Emmaus shops are temporarily closed.

The masks will cost £3 each and all funds generated from sales will go towards the charity’s work helping people to rebuild their lives following homelessness.

Emmaus, which has five shops that are temporarily closed due to retail restrictions, received funding from the Bridgend Association of Voluntary Organisations (BAVO) to help with the project.

Emmaus South Wales Chief Executive, Jemma Wray, said:

“Initially, we were making face masks on a much smaller scale for our residents and staff team, but thanks to the BAVO grant we have now been able to scale up the production of ethical, washable and sustainable face masks made entirely of donated materials. The funding from BAVO will be used to buy additional sewing machines and haberdashery equipment for our residents to use.

“When someone comes to Emmaus, we give them the opportunity to learn new skills by working in our shops or through specialised projects such as upcycling. This has always been an important part of our charity and goes a long way to help rebuild confidence and self-esteem.  While our shops are closed, we have been creating new projects to help our residents stay busy, and this project not only teaches them a new skill but will help to ensure face masks are not taken away from the NHS and frontline workers.”

Emmaus South Wales has not yet announced a date for re-opening any of its shops but is currently preparing by implementing new measures to ensure the safety of its team and customers.

Face masks are available to purchase in single or multiple quantities and postage and packaging is not included. To place an order, email info@emmaussouthwales.org.uk.

To keep up to date with the re-opening of the Emmaus shops in Bridgend, Cowbridge, Maesteg and Porthcawl, visit www.emmaus.org.uk/south-wales or follow the charity on Facebook @EmmausSWales.

News, Pay & Reward, Pay and Reward

Brand analysis – eBay, Apple and Facebook named the highest paying employers

Small Business Prices has revealed the top 10 best brands for customers and employees. The study highlights which brands offer the highest average salary, which companies are the most followed on social media, as well as how positively these companies have been reviewed by their customers and employees. You can view the full campaign here.

Across the globe are renowned brands that we all recognise and love, from Apple to McDonald’s. But how good are these brands according to their customers and employees?

The top five brands for customers and employees are:

Rank Best Companies for Customers Best Companies for Employees
1. Lego Google
2. Amazon Facebook
3 Lexus Microsoft
4. Nivea Mastercard
5. Sap Cisco

Analysing the data to find the world’s best brands for employees vs. customers, Facebook is the only brand appearing in both rankings. Despite Google being reviewed almost four times as much by their employees with 16.K reviews, Facebook comes a close second to them with just 4.8K reviews.

In terms of social following, Facebook leads the way with over 200M followers on Facebook, and Adobe ranks as the second most followed brand on Twitter.

The top ten brands for the average annual salary

A large part of employee satisfaction comes from the amount they are paid by their employers. All brands included in the research are known globally for being worth billions and yet some have an average salary of under 45K.

Here are ten of the brands that are the most generous with their pay and bonuses.

Brand Average Salary Avg Bonus
Ebay $124,000.00 $12,000.00
Apple $123,000.00 $4,000.00
Facebook $120,000.00 $13,000.00
Microsoft $119,000.00 $14,000.00
Google $115,000.00 $16,000.00
PayPal $111,000.00 $10,000.00
Oracle $109,000.00 $9,000.00
Visa $109,000.00 $11,000.00
Cisco $106,000.00 $12,000.00
Adobe $104,000.00 $10,000.00

Huawei ranks first for average annual salary, followed by Ebay and Apple. Cisco, one of the best companies for employees, ranks 10th amongst the companies paying the highest salary ($106K average). Microsoft is also one of the best brands to work for, with eight stars out of ten according to employees’ reviews.

Brands like McDonald’s, Zara and Budweiser appear amongst the companies with the lowest annual average salary (ranging between $50K and $56K).

According to the data analysing how women and men compare in terms of average salary, Adobe is the only company where women earn more than men 126K vs 105.5K.

The best paying company for men is Facebook (129K average annual salary).

The best company for gender equality in the workplace is Ebay, with men earning $199.5K, and women earning $114.5K, followed by Microsoft ($119K men vs. $113.5K). Facebook shows one of the highest inequality rates, with a gap of 17K between men and women’s salaries.

Ian Wright from Small Business Prices comments:

‘At Small Business Prices we help small businesses across the UK to find the best pricing information to compare the different products and services for them to acquire to grow their businesses. In a world where big brands leading the way, we want to make sure we build a better understanding of which specific assets to rely on to help businesses to grow.

But what specific characteristics make these big brands outstanding and where can their success be found? How important is customers’ satisfaction and employees’ happiness to them? We’ve measured the success of these companies analysing people’s reviews, for our customers to recognise what makes a company successful and loved .’

Home Working, News

Outsourcing company BYC Aqua share how to successfully transition to home working

Making the move to home working in the contact centre industry presents a range of unique challenges. BYC Aqua, a proudly South African market leader in Quality Assurance services, has recently completed a successful transition to a 100% remote working strategy for their colleagues, who are now safely working in the confines of their own homes.

To support other businesses considering such a venture, BYC Aqua now a part of the Woven group, share five of their tried and tested tips to minimise potential disruption to service delivery for employers making the move to remote working.

 

1)  Put safety first

 The health and safety of employees and their families should always come first, which is why it is essential to put safeguarding at the top of your list. Monitor all official guidelines in your area and ensure these are communicated with your teams as soon as possible. Create clear lines of communication so that any risks or concerns can be raised and addressed immediately.

 

2)  Communicate as much as possible

 It is vital for employers to be agile and flexible in their approach, plan meticulously and communicate with employees as often as possible through the WFH transition. As processes and guidelines change on a regular basis, ensure team communication is always a priority so any new messaging is provided to all relevant parties in a clear and consistent way. As face-to-face communication is lacking, make a conscious effort to check in with team members as often as you can.

 

3)  Provide effective technology

For remote working to be effective in keeping colleagues safe at home, whilst still being able to successfully service clients and customers, ensure employees have access to efficient hardware, software, telephone and internet access in their homes. There will inevitably be teething problems as teams get settled, so be prepared for these. The more advice and support you can offer throughout the process, the smoother the transition will be.

 

4)  Implement at home set ups in a timely manner

By enabling a quick and efficient shift to working from home, this allows colleagues to continue to demonstrate commitment to service delivery for clients and customers. Plan in very specific detail to ensure the WFH transition moves as quickly as possible to ensure minimal disruption to employees, the business and customers.

 

5)  Use technology to communicate with colleagues

To help create a sense of togetherness amongst colleagues, BYC Aqua utilised its technology to ensure morning huddles and coaching sessions still took place, as well as continuing to focus on colleagues’ quality in a self-motivated and empowered way. Routinely checking in with colleagues helps to forge a sense of belonging and may help to improve mental health during a difficult time.

 

Jackie Naughton, CEO at BYC Aqua said: “In the wake of the outbreak, a swift implementation of our working from home solution was absolutely imperative.

 “As with our parent company, Woven, a move to remote working had long been part of our strategy. We are proud to say that our transition to a remote working environment that simultaneously respects the safeguards expected by our colleagues and feels seamless for our clients has been successfully achieved.

 “In a matter of days, we now have 100% of our South African colleagues working from home. This is testament to the fact that BYC has once again demonstrated its absolute commitment to our service delivery to clients and customers.”

 

BYC Aqua was acquired by Woven Solutions, a UK-based leading outsourcing provider in February 2020. The acquisition helped build Woven’s global presence and capabilities in offering clients unique insights and solutions.

To find out more about Woven and BYC, please visit:
https://wearewoven.com/

https://www.byc.co.za/

News

Calls for new fund to help restart £14.2bn North Wales economy

Business leaders in North Wales are urging the Welsh and UK governments to set up a £700,000 fund to help reignite the region’s economy and overcome the huge slump caused by the coronavirus crisis.

More than 50 companies and organisations have put their names to a letter sent by the Business Council of North Wales to Economy Minister Ken Skates MS and Welsh Secretary Simon Hart MP calling on them to establish a pilot project which could be replicated in other parts of the UK.

Among the big name firms backing the plea for the North Wales Ignition Fund are Zip World, Pendine Park, Moneypenny and Rondo Media, along with Dr Roy Bichan, a former chair of CBI Wales and deputy chair of the Welsh Development Agency.

According to the Business Council, the umbrella body for the private sector in North Wales, many businesses have ground to a halt as a result of the pandemic.

They say the fund is necessary to help fire up the region’s £14.2 billion economy again.

The fund would provide financial support for freelancers, the self-employed and micro-businesses to work together to develop and offer new products and services, as well as helping to accelerate new major capital investments in North Wales.

The Ignition Fund proposal developed by the Business Council has the support of organisations from 11 different sectors, including manufacturing, tourism and hospitality, creative and digital, social care, energy and construction.

Ashley Rogers, the commercial director of the Business Council, says the stakes are high.

The region’s world class manufacturing sector generated 20 per cent of the North Wales economy which was double the UK average.

In normal times the booming tourism and hospitality sector brought in more than £3.2 billion a year and employed more than 40,000 people.

Meanwhile, there were 14,000 working in the creative and digital sector in North Wales which collectively had a turnover of £707 million.

Mr Rogers said: “This is a grass roots developed scheme for North Wales by the private sector and wider partners, with what we need to immediately help spark our economic growth after the main elements of the lockdown are lifted.

“We are committed to rolling up our sleeves and working with officials in the public sector at both national and regional level to see this fund developed and delivered.

“We are asking Welsh Government to fund half of the scheme and UK Government to match that.

“At a total of £700,000 this is excellent value for money, given the scheme could result in helping to deliver 20 new investment projects in North Wales and the development of more than 20 new consortia of local businesses across the region.

Jim Jones, chief executive of North Wales Tourism and chair of the Business Council, said: “The delivery of the Ignition Fund is vital for the North Wales economy moving forward, whether it’s supporting our tourism, manufacturing or creative and digital businesses to invest and grow or reinforcing the local supply chain for our social housing and social care sectors.

“What we need is a flexible fund that hits the right spot and delivers within the next few months.”

Debbie Bryce, chief executive of the West Cheshire & North Wales Chamber of Commerce, said: “Speaking to our members across North Wales it has been heartbreaking to hear the devastating impact that Covid-19 has had on their business since the lockdown was announced.

“Whilst the current financial support packages have been welcomed, it is extremely important to compliment this with additional support that businesses need to plan and invest for the future.

“The proposed North Wales Ignition Fund is key to putting some much needed momentum back into the economy as quickly as possible.

“It is vital that micro, small or medium sized businesses can access this fund to kick start their business and help maximise their potential growth.”

Mike Learmond, senior development manager for FSB Wales, added: “Enabling micro-businesses, the self-employed and freelancers in North Wales to grow, will be incredibly important for the regional economy once the lockdown is lifted.

“Encouraging and supporting them to work together and develop new products and services is key, given the importance of small businesses to our local communities. Regional schemes such as the proposed Ignition Fund, can help to add real value to North Wales, sitting alongside future national Welsh Government support.”

In April, the Business Council called for a £3 million Regional Hardship fund for North Wales to be established to help companies survive the immediate crisis.

Mr Rogers added: “The hardship fund was aimed at helping those businesses falling through the cracks on support or those organisations with special circumstances because they have substantial ongoing costs whilst closed.

“The Business Council hopes to see the main elements of the Regional Hardship Fund reflected in the next phase of Welsh Government’s Economic Resilience fund in June.”

Low Code, News, Software Development

Clearvision partners with Low-Code Leader Mendix to Offer Application Development Capabilities

Clearvision, an ISO 27001-certified AWS and Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, announced today that it has partnered with Siemens Digital Industries Software, to deliver its Mendix Low-Code Application Development Platform.

The partnership with the global leader in Low-Code and No-Code enterprise application development will allow Clearvision to supply and support existing and new customers with Mendix’s Low-Code platform.

The Mendix platform combines a low-code and a no-code approach, offering business users and developers with varying levels of experience the capability to collaborate and deliver applications that are perfectly aligned with the business. Mendix’s powerful set of integrated tools and services accelerate the application’s entire lifecycle, from Ideation to Development, Deployment and Operation  much faster than with traditional tools and methods.

Organisations can rapidly accelerate their software delivery and digital transformation projects, ranging from upgrading legacy applications to developing IoT-enabled smart applications. This will significantly increase productivity and its customers’ time-to-market.

“I’m really looking forward to what the future holds as a result of our partnership with Siemens and how Mendix will empower our existing – and new – customers everywhere to accelerate and optimise the delivery of business applications”, comments Gerry Tombs, CEO of Clearvision. “This is about bringing software development to the many, fostering collaboration between IT and the Business, and bringing those applications into the hands of users in a matter of days or weeks rather than months or years. This is a truly exciting time for us at Clearvision, our partners, and 1000+ strong client base.”

According to Gartner, the demand for applications is expected to grow 5x faster than the capacity and ability for IT teams to deliver these apps. This trend is exacerbated by the lack of developer talent; enterprises can’t find good developers fast enough, even if they are willing to make a bigger investment in IT. Furthermore, Gartner predicts that by 2024, Low-Code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity.

Clearvision’s partnership with Mendix will enable its customers to utilise Low-Code to meet this growing demand, and then some.

“We’re delighted to announce this strategic partnership with Clearvision; Gerry and the team have a clear strategy in the portfolio, products and services they offer to their customers, providing thought leadership in digital transformation,” adds Nick Farrall, UK Partner Director, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “Increasingly, businesses are differentiating themselves through software, the need to quickly develop scalable, production-ready applications often means the difference between success and failure. Clearvision will now be able to offer this capability to its customers, helping them to achieve their strategic objectives.”

Clearvision will become an official Solution Provider for Mendix, complementing its role as an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, whereby it already supports its customers’ software development with consultancy, training, contractors for medium to long term projects, and hosting for Atlassian tools, as well as a wide array of industry-leading solutions.

For more information on Clearvision’s partnership with Mendix, visit https://www.clearvision-cm.com/partners/mendix/.

News

Defeating Business Disruption in a Post-COVID-19 Era

Will Urban, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, iland, considers how business continuity will fare post-COVID-19

The prospect of an IT outage is one of the key issues that keeps IT professionals awake at night. From natural disasters to malicious cyber-attacks, organisations face an abundance of risks to business continuity that impact productivity, prosperity, financial stability and reputation. These worries have only been exacerbated in recent months as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have an unprecedented impact on worldwide economies, trade and the survival of individual businesses.

Therefore, it’s never been more important for these organisations to take the necessary steps to protect their business from any of the above scenarios, which have become increasingly prevalent. Despite these constant threats, customers want assurances that their day-to-day operations will not be impacted, should a partner business suffer a loss of data or significant business disruption.

IT resilience powering business continuity

With nearly every organisation on earth dependent on some form of technology and connectivity, the term ‘IT resilience’ is directly intertwined with the resilience of the business, in a time of crisis. The strength of an organisation’s cloud or on-premises infrastructure is the backbone of the organisation; therefore, if it fails or suffers an outage, many subsequent businesses could suffer significant business disruption.

Organisations develop business resilience plans so they can rapidly adapt when disruptions occur, helping them to maintain business operations, in addition to keeping data, staff and the company’s reputation safe. This should be teamed with IT resilience, to continue business system operation no matter the disruption.

Many organisations will instantly think of maintaining backups when they hear of business continuity. And to some degree they are correct. However, that’s only part of the problem; Disaster Recovery (DR) and Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) has been increasingly adopted to protect businesses against outages, through an infrastructure and strategy that deals with worst-case scenarios. Whilst many organisations align the term ‘Disaster Recovery’ with a natural disaster or potential meteorite strike that threatens human life, a software fault, malicious external hack, subsequent data breach, or a careless accident initiated by an insider can be equally disastrous from a business disruption perspective.

Moving from backups to Disaster Recovery

Business resiliency is all about the ability to bring your organisation online to another location as quickly as possible to continue to run your business and support your customers internally and externally. Whilst backups are key to protecting data, maintaining archives and compliance, they must be layered with a DR capability to reduce the chances of a business being disrupted.

The disadvantage of backups, especially when organisations try to recover quickly, is that they are prone to unacceptable Recovery Point Objectives (RPO). If a business is only backing up every night and something happens an hour before the backup, an entire day of workloads will be lost. In addition, backups can have painful Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). If it takes 17 hours to recover an organisation’s entire data centre from tapes, in addition to how long it has been down for, that’s a considerable amount of time.

Furthermore, local backups can be targeted by malicious software, which target backup applications and database backup files, proactively searching for them and fully encrypting the data. Backups also need something to restore to; if the power fails in the building where the business’ data is housed, backups are not going to help.

This is where a cloud based DRaaS solution fills the gaps. It is a flexible, cost-effective way to deliver essential DR capability without all the CAPEX costs and pains of managing a physical DR site. At the press of the button, a business can instantly switch to its DRaaS environment, with an isolated, production-ready copy of its entire infrastructure available in the event of unplanned downtime or data loss.

Furthermore, with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA increasing in popularity and becoming more stringent, DRaaS helps organisations to illustrate that they have taken all necessary steps to protect their customers’ data, giving them confidence that should the worst-case-scenario happen, their data – and business – will be protected.

With DRaaS, teams can run recovery tests in replica environments in a short time, providing full visibility into a business’ response during a ‘disaster’. This is much more effective than annual testing of on-premises systems, helping businesses develop a full disaster recovery plan with absolute confidence it will work when needed, minimising potential downtime.

Quickly enacting these DR plans will only increase this confidence. A quick and coordinated response in the midst of an outage will actually increase customer faith in the organisation that it can instantly switch to a cloud-based data centre if any of the primary equipment fails.

Downtime will be increasingly disruptive

In the world we currently occupy, many businesses are facing an unprecedented financial crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic that is driving them out of business. For example, in retail, many have shifted to, or quickly started to offer improved eCommerce channels, allowing them to deliver their services or goods to customers. Regardless, this has led to shrinking revenues and severe tightening of budgets.

Therefore, the last thing a business needs is any unscheduled periods of downtime due to IT systems going offline. This goes hand-in-hand with the online attack surface widening in many industries, as cyber criminals take advantage of the current global climate, ramping up their efforts to cause further disruption and distress.

This is why DR is increasingly critical. Customer experience rests upon IT systems; interruptions of service, inability to transact, and data loss can be frustrating, debilitating, or even life-threatening in certain industries. Organisations should also think about the costs of downtime and the perception of customers should a vital application be down, especially during a time when a global pandemic is having a knock-on effect throughout the supply chain.

Acceptable amounts of downtime and data loss are at an all-time low, and recovery features that were once considered ‘nice to have’ are now mandatory. With the emphasis of IT resilience on maintaining business processes and making a complete recovery as soon as possible, it’s no wonder that DR is becoming increasingly mission-critical to day-to-day operations. Taking the necessary steps to overcome business disruption when faced with a potential ‘disaster’ will easily outweigh the initial financial outlay of implementing an effective DRaaS solution.

Procurement, Supply Chain

Welsh procurement specialist launches innovative scheme to help churches, schools, charities and care homes secure the PPE they need

A Welsh procurement specialist has launched a unique service to help churches, charities, schools, healthcare providers and other businesses in Wales and England to secure personal protective equipment (PPE) and hygiene and cleaning products in preparation for the easing of lockdown.

The business, which was established in 2009 by chief executive Rob Kissick and operations director Russell Stables, is working with clients including the Church of England, Church in Wales and a range of charities, schools and care homes to ensure they can source the PPE supplies they need.

There is no other company in Wales or the UK offering procurement services for PPE on this scale. Demand for its services that help businesses meet the challenges of COVID-19 has also meant it is one of the biggest recruiters in Wales at present. Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, it has hired 20 new employees increasing the size of its workforce by more than 30 percent. While 2buy2 is a private sector, commercial company, it has a philosophy of making sustainable, but never excessive profits. It also gives 10 per cent of its net profits to charities chosen by its staff every year.

2buy2 will source and purchase PPE for organisations that sign up (by Wednesday June 17). Its innovative service will negotiate preferential prices by buying on behalf of all members (aggregation buying). It will also ensure equipment is quality-assured, ethically sourced and all procurement procedures are correctly followed.

2buy2’s procurement services and specialist advisers support many businesses in the procurement and negotiation of complex contracts as well as coordinating their procurement activities to generate greater buying power across a range of contracts and supplies including energy.

The COVID-19 crisis prompted 2buy2 to add PPE to its offering. It has partnered on the supply with Crown Agents, the well-respected UK-based international development company that helps governments around the world to increase prosperity, reduce poverty and improve health by providing consultancy, supply chain, financial services and training. Critically, this also means it can procure the PPE without impacting on the supply to the NHS.

2buy2 has a track record in this space. The company previously helped source PPE supplies for the UK Government as part of its role in the international response to the Ebola health crisis in West Africa in 2014-15. It also worked with Crown Agents on that project.

2buy2 will be making a range of PPE equipment as well as cleaning and hygiene products available to members. But because 2buy2 creates buying groups to get the best deals, it also works to firm deadlines on members signing up. The first deadline for this is 6pm on Wednesday June 17.

Rob Kissick, CEO, 2buy2, said:

“I am delighted that 2buy2 have been able to launch this response in order to help businesses and organisations of all types to support their collective needs for increased personal protective equipment (PPE) at this incredibly challenging time for everyone.

“Using our experience of running large procurement buying groups, and working in partnership with international procurement agents, Crown Agents, we are procuring supplies of PPE which support members without impacting on the supply to the NHS. Our buying group is available to churches, schools and colleges, charities, care homes, and the wider business sector as we seek to support the Welsh economy and cornerstones of society in preparing for re-opening in the coming weeks and months.

“2buy2 is supporting clients in the procurement of PPE by providing expertise in international sourcing and delivery of high quality, inspected goods.”

Businesses can sign up here: www.2buy2.com/covid-19-response

COVID-19, Health, Health and Safety

Be aware, be safe, be working facial recognition and temperature checks – all in one

A Cardiff workplace design company is offering technology that conducts facial recognition and temperature checks to help firms keep their staff safe as workplaces reopen

Work-place solutions company Office Visions is making its contribution to helping kick-start the UK economy as lockdown restrictions are lifted, by offering several innovative solutions designed to help firms bring employees back to work safely.

The South Wales family-run company, which specialises in creating stunning office environments, is offering clients a cutting-edge access control system for premises that combines facial recognition software with the ability to read the body temperature of the person seeking access.

The system has already been successfully installed at the company’s own premises as well as the wider Vision Court business park, which is home to five companies and 250 employees.

The system could be used to monitor the health status of employees or customers before they enter a building and potentially come into contact with other workers. The device could be useful at commercial offices, factories, multi-occupancy apartments or other places where people gather including schools and stadiums.

The equipment, which can be wall-mounted or free standing, has a temperature accuracy of plus or minus 0.3 degrees Celsius as long as the person is standing between 0.3 and 0.7 metres away. It can then sound an alarm of their temperature indicates they might be ill and carrying an infection.

Office Visions has also installed and is offering customers temporary screening and partitioning systems that can be quickly deployed and easily configured to help employees to work safely together. Made from wipe-clean anti-microbial vinyl, the solid material is available in a variety of translucent and transparent options.

Each partition can be assembled by two people in less than 60 seconds. It has many applications in a variety of sectors ranging from healthcare to events management to office environments.

The Office Visions showroom has been redesigned to illustrate how the clever use of partitions will make it possible for most offices to practice social distancing and safe working within the workplace. Its range of desktop clear screens are perfect where banks of desks exist in offices and staff cannot be easily spread out upon their return to work. The Office Visons design team can help redesign a workspace, where necessary, to enable the new screens to be incorporated within the areas affected.

Simon Gambarini, Managing Director of Office Visions, said: “These are unprecedented times and many companies are facing great challenges as a result if the Coronavirus pandemic. But as the restrictions start to be lifted and firms consider reopening workplaces, their first priority will be the safety of their staff. These innovations will help them be aware, be safe – and continue working.

“With this in mind, we have developed a range of products that will help our clients reopen their doors while keeping their staff safe. We are delighted with some of the ideas our

hard-working team have come up with and we believe the new products will make it easier for our clients in their efforts in  getting their business’s back on track, whilst ensuring they are compliant with the social distancing regulations brought in by the government.”

Benefits, News

Towergate Health & Protection is supporting businesses to put them in a good position to recover from the pandemic

As global health and wellbeing specialists, Towergate Health & Protection has been providing specialist support and guidance to help businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic, with a view to helping them recover more quickly.

Brett Hill, distribution director for Towergate Health & Protection said, ‘This is a challenging time for everyone, and our focus has been on supporting businesses with the very real and practical issues they’ve had to deal with. We know that the better companies are able to deal with this situation, the better position they’ll be in to recover.’

As companies need support now more than ever, the focus has been on providing tangible and practical support, and ensuring companies know what’s available.

Practical support

Support has included considerations on how to look after mothballed premises during the pandemic, such as ensuring valuables are secured or moved, that keyholder details for alarms are up to date, that mail is redirected and that CCTV cameras are unobscured and working effectively.

Guidance has been provided on how to make workplaces safe for employees as we start to prepare to come out of lockdown.

Cyber crime

It’s been reported that 42% of people have been the target of scammers since the Covid-19 outbreak. From fake calls to smishing texts, both businesses and employees can be vulnerable.

As well as issuing guidance on what to look out for and how to be protected, through their sister company, and their partner, CFC the business has also provided free access to CFC’s specialist Cyber Incident Response Helpline, which gives support, practical advice and steps to remediate attacks.

Financial support

Clients have been made aware of financial support that’s being offered by the Government, with a particular emphasis on how SMEs can access such support to help them keep their businesses running.

Health and wellbeing

The company has worked with specialist healthcare providers to promote health and wellbeing, specifically targeted to support people in the current situation. From maintaining good posture while working remotely, to specialist classes that can be done at home – such as HIIT and Pilates, the focus is on providing practical help to inspire and motivate.

With a reduction in GP referrals and claims authorisations, the company has encouraged employers to make full use of employee benefits that include access to virtual GPs and clinically safe environments for treatment when needed.

Online hub

An online hub has been set up that contains all the guidance that Towergate Health & Protection has provided, and it is continually updated.

Brett Hill continued, ‘At a time like this, practical support that’s clearly communicated is very important. We were quick to ensure that our staff were able to work from home and keep in touch with clients via video calls, and we’ve continued this focus to provide clients with up to date, practical support and guidance. Our own agility and resilience is helping our customers to also be agile and resilient. This tangible help during the pandemic helps put them in a good position for recovery.’

Marketing, PR and SEO, News

3 key tips for any marketing budget during the COVID-19 pandemic

The pandemic is taking its toll on business and now recession looms. Brand marketing is essential for businesses to flourish post-COVID, state experts Dr Omar Merlo and Dr Andreas Eisingerich, Co-Academic Directors of the MSc Strategic Marketing (online, part-time) programme at Imperial College Business School.

“Many businesses have had to assess how to survive while consumers are spending less. A question that’s often asked during an economic slump is where to make cuts. Misguidedly, marketing is often first on the chopping block,” says Merlo.

Merlo and Eisingerich outline three ways business leaders can optimise spending during the pandemic:

1. Avoid cutting the marketing budget

In March, a study by Marketing Week and Econsultancy of 900 UK brand managers showed more than half were delaying or reviewing their marketing campaigns.

But cuts for short-term benefit can have dangerous outcomes. Maintaining marketing spending at pre-COVID-19 levels may be the only way to survive, and even gain market share from cautious competitors. A business that spends wisely can succeed as communication clutter decreases, advertising cost drops, and share of voice increases. And it can stay ahead; research shows advertising aggressively in tough economic times increases sales as well as profits.

During the 2008 financial crisis, Audi’s decision to increase its marketing spend while other car makers were more cautious elevated the car maker from a niche brand to a global leader.

2. Use a “sniper” instead of a “shotgun” approach to cost cutting

If spending adjustments are unavoidable, indiscriminate cuts across the board should be avoided, as they can destroy value in the long term.

Coronavirus has affected demand for most products and services, reducing it for most, and creating two polarised opposites in others; first, industries that have experienced a huge drop in demand, like travel and leisure, and second, those that have seen an enormous spike, such as online groceries.

In either case, budget cuts can be attractive, whether due to lack of resources or for fear of creating demand above capacity – but companies should ultimately focus on protecting long-term spending.

3. Budget for innovation

After the 2008 recession, Amazon grew by 28%. This was partly down to innovative new products, such as the Kindle and e-books, which cemented Amazon in the minds of customers as an innovator that introduced a lower-cost alternative to traditional books at a time when they most needed one.

This is probably not the time for radical innovation and risky endeavours, but for relatively simple customer-centric differentiation. Brands should try to understand what customers need most and what problems they can solve for them with a view to winning customer loyalty in the long term.

These insights come from the lessons of Merlo and Eisingerich on the MSc Strategic Marketing (online, part-time) programme at Imperial College Business School, designed for ambitious graduates and motivated early-career professionals to level-up and solve the marketing challenges of tomorrow.