Wellbeing is the new health and safety January 28, 2020 A new decade focuses minds on the future and new strategies to encourage companies and individuals to thrive. And if there’s one commitment that the City should make in the 2020s, it’s to treat the mental health of staff as seriously as their physical health and safety. Everything from the harnesses used by window cleaners [...]
Take me to your leader: How to stop the spread of bad bosses January 27, 2020 Last week, the business and political elite gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum. Certainly, these men and women have achieved positions of prominent power, but you might wonder — how many of them are actually trained and competent leaders? There is a concept in management called the Peter Principle, which argues that in [...]
The new Downing Street team can’t afford to ignore business January 27, 2020 Political wisdom has it that the first hundred days of any new government is its most vital opportunity to set its agenda. Not so with this government. Having just racked up its first 50 days, it risks accusations of being coy by its lack of public visibility and the paucity of new policy proclamations since [...]
Suffering from choice paralysis? How to defeat the indecision epidemic January 24, 2020 A clearly important decision gets delayed multiple times — or not made at all — causing office-wide frustration. It’s a situation that will sound all too familiar for many of us. In the past, we used to suffer from too few options to choose from; today, we suffer from too many. Abundance of choices has [...]
Build it better: How the office of the future can help save the planet January 23, 2020 Climate change is the headline topic in Davos this week, where business leaders and politicians have gathered for the World Economic Forum. Activist Greta Thunberg told the gathered elite that their inaction over the climate was “fuelling the flames by the hour”. While many may dismiss her warnings (President Donald Trump earlier urged leaders to [...]
What motivates women to invest? Our survey results are in January 21, 2020 | City Talk What motivates women to invest? This was the question at the heart of a survey of more than 200 women across 24 countries undertaken to explore what shapes women’s attitudes to personal investment. I have been researching women and finance for a decade, and set out to bust several myths: that women didn’t invest because [...]
Spilling the beans: How coffee chain Grind has carved out its own London niche January 20, 2020 Given how busy life in the capital can get, and how hard the people here work, most Londoners must live on coffee. It’s the only plausible explanation for the explosion in coffee shops in recent years. Independent coffee houses are thriving alongside the big brands like Costa and Pret a Manger. According to research by [...]
Our fusty education system must embrace entrepreneurialism January 20, 2020 As we embark upon a decade of major change, with a new government racing towards Brexit, we must take a moment to consider how we are helping our next generation triumph in spite of all this upheaval. Our education sector has been stagnant for some time now and has failed to catch up with the [...]
How to start your own business in 2020 January 17, 2020 As many of us embark on our new year’s resolutions to eat less and get fit, a good 20 per cent of us will be making plans to start a business. According to Companies House, 2019 was a record year for UK company registrations. An incredible 678,288 new businesses were registered. This is part of [...]
Don’t let corporate governance turn into a box-ticking exercise January 16, 2020 Last week, some of the UK’s biggest businesses received a rap on the knuckles, as the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) published its annual review of how well companies lived up to the Corporate Governance Code. Some FTSE firms, the accounting and governance regulator argued, were simply “paying lip service to the spirit of the Code”, [...]