Best business podcasts: From Harvard’s HBR IdeaCast to Marketing Smarts and The Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders November 24, 2014 Listen to anything from Stanford lectures to coffee shop discussions If you're not a podcast listener, the chances are that you know someone who is. In 2013, subscriptions to these downloadable audio files (featuring everything from comedy to political debate) hit 1bn through iTunes. And according to podcast hosting company RawVoice, the number of [...]
How social media can land you a job November 23, 2014 Recruiters may be reining in their sharpest practices, but there are tricks to getting noticed. When the internet was still in its infancy 20 years ago, finding applicants for a job was all about placing an ad and waiting for the responses to come in. As recruiters, we’d then have the pain of sifting [...]
Flexible working: How it can boost women in work November 20, 2014 Companies underestimate the productivity benefits of the practice. The latest figures show that women are still under-represented in senior leadership positions, with only one in five FTSE 100 directorships and 7 per cent of executive directorships occupied by women. So it’s not surprising that we’ve seen a rise in the number of campaigns looking [...]
UN Universal Children’s Day: Why child rights are good for business – ACCA Comment November 19, 2014 If firms fail to protect children in the supply chain, they risk harm to their bottom line. Today is the UN’s Universal Children’s Day. Held on 20 November every year, this occasion recognises the welfare of children around the world and commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in [...]
Tips from the celebrities turned bosses: What Sean Combs, Jessica Alba and the Olsen twins can teach us about business November 19, 2014 Making sure you’ve got a product people will buy still matters. The “world's first global cannabis brand,” Marley Natural, was unveiled yesterday by Bob Marley’s family. It’ll sell cannabis-infused creams and accessories, marketed as medicinally beneficial. But however good the products turn out to be, no-one’s going to argue that much of the [...]
On the frontline: why the internet is a hindrance when it comes to moving house November 19, 2014 It may sound counterintuitive, but when it comes to moving I’d argue the internet has become a hindrance. Everyone thinks they’re a property expert; a plethora of dubious stats, endless subjective historic – and hysteric – online data and an ever more tempting set of search filters has created the impression that your perfect property [...]
Staying on track: The secrets to rebalancing your portfolio November 18, 2014 No financial adviser can stress enough that it is unwise to expect your portfolio, however carefully put together, to fulfil your investment goals automatically over the long term. Periodically reviewing the assets you hold is vital if you don’t want to fall victim to portfolio drift. “Rebalancing instills good investment habits, trimming the holdings that [...]
Why UK commercial real estate is still hot property November 18, 2014 But political risks are rising – whether the Conservative Party or Labour win next May. If we take the temperature of investors in commercial property right now, we would find warm support for the sector in the UK. In a low interest rate environment, and with returns from property far outstripping bond yields, [...]
Results Only Work Environment: How ending nine to five can banish wasted potential November 18, 2014 During the industrial age, it made sense, in terms of productivity and output, for employees to be at work for a set number of hours. The workday often revolved around static machinery and, for companies, broken or inefficient machines were the biggest costs. In today’s knowledge-based economy, for many firms, it is now human [...]
Hats off to our deficit-cutting bankers – CNBC Comment November 17, 2014 Nice work gents… I don my hat.” Those forex-rigging traders copped some decent lingo. But it could quite easily have been George Osborne. That’s not to suggest the chancellor was pleased about the manipulation of the $5.3 trillion a day market, of course, But rather that he’s made an even bigger turn than the numpty [...]