On Internet Business

Business Awards – in pursuit of excellence

Posted by Michael under awards, Business Growth, Entrepreneur Resources, Leadership, Social Media

From the Growing Business Awards through to the Queens Awards for Enterprise, taking in everything from awards for green business through to fast growth, social media use, family businesses or digital innovation, there are awards programmes that expose businesses to a rigorous analysis and reward those who ‘win’.

But what of those who don’t? Is it worth entering if you don’t scoop the top prize?

Yes, it is. For three reasons:

1.    The evaluation used by the judges helps a business to measure itself against the current and anticipated challenges in each category area. For a new enterprise in particular, but for businesses generally, this is an exposure to the likely threats to business growth as identified by international experts in that area of business – working through that assessment ‘future-proofs’ a business better than it could do alone.
2.    The scrutiny of your business will highlight weaknesses or areas of underdevelopment that could be holding the organisation back, so it gets a heavyweight consultancy on the impediments to business growth.
3.    Being exposed to a peer group of acknowledged leaders allows for sharing of information, networking and bench-marking – whether a business wins or loses the category, there are always new ideas, better systems or solutions to problems to absorb and utilise.

What’s also starting to emerge is that businesses that don’t get this kind of external competition may actually spin into hyper-competitive behaviour and poor decision-making. Donald C Langevoort’s study: Organizational Psychology of Hyper-Competition: Corporate Irresponsibility and the Lessons of Enron – suggests that when a culture of healthy competition isn’t properly established inside and outside an organisation, spiralling risk-taking can become ‘natural’ and, like subprime lending, it becomes normal for certain kinds of business to look at competition alone, not at the bottom line that being competitive delivers.

So the value of nominating your business for an award is not just about being the winner, it’s also an opportunity to learn from the best, to look at the future, and to see potential problems clearly and evidence from organisational psychology shows that a strong business thrives on organised, recognised and validated competitive structures.

Awards courtesy of Schipulites

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Managing appreciation in business

Posted by Michael under awards, Business Growth

An article by Gillian Hasley, eBusiness Manager at Monster UK, suggests some ways of demonstrating appreciation and support for staff without necessarily getting into classic incentive and bonus systems. It could be said that her solutions are somewhat simplistic but they do at least offer different ways of thinking and that’s vital in a recession when any organisation needs to balance the need to recruit and keep the best staff, while ensuring that spend on personnel issues is not excessive.

It’s a fact that incentives work: psychological studies have revealed that employees who receive a reward for their efforts will make continued future efforts and will tend to stay with their employer longer. Similarly, we’ve all heard staff who gripe and grumble about their employer and can’t wait to get away. Not only does the company lose those people, they infect others with their discontent and create a bad reputation for the organisation.

‘Thank you’ or ‘well done’?

Saying thank you is nice but saying well done is better. At a basic level, ‘well done’ encourages the individual, team or department to explore, explain and expand on what they did well – this makes them more likely to repeat the behaviour, makes others more likely to copy their actions and drives transferable skills through the organisation.

Match rewards to culture

In a formal business, having the CEO high-fiving the staff around the water cooler is not likely to boost company morale, while in the creative industries this is likely to create a warm fuzzy glow in all concerned! Getting the reward to fit with company culture is important or it can alienate key staff.

I happened to be at a charity fun-run recently and overhead a team from a major UK bank complaining about the thank you lunch that had been laid on for their department – some were women who were dieting for their summer holiday bikinis, others were undertaking a cultural fast day when the buffet was organised and another group were training for a marathon for charity and as a result were eating carefully as they were undertaking a long run that day. In all, from what they said, nearly a third of the hundred-strong department had felt that they were excluded in some way from enjoying the meal. From their grumbling they felt unrecognised and isolated, as if ‘they didn’t fit in’ or ‘weren’t part of the team’ – the opposite effect to the one intended.

Creativity can be its own reward

Asking your employees to suggest a reward system can be the best way to reward them! Designing their own rewards is an incentive in itself and gives those who don’t ‘win’ a feeling of being involved and included, as well as those who do. Be prepared for whacky suggestions and to explain why good ones are too expensive to fund: that too can build team spirit, because understanding why they can’t have what they want might encourage people to strive harder to improve business profits.

Explore IT

Many organisations fail to see what they already have in terms of incentive infrastructure. Risk can become endemic in businesses that run incentive packages for senior staff, as trying to ‘win’ the higher compensation levels leads to misconduct or risk-taking. Using IT systems like intranet and regular posting of returns from departments can allow everybody to scrutinise behaviour as well as results, allowing risky practices and potential frauds to be spotted by others working in the same area, who are most sensitised to unusual patterns in business.

For small scale rewards that improve business performance, consider setting up quizzes on the intranet or other work-based systems such as business apps for mobiles to ensure senior managers are up to speed on mandatory requirements and all staff are aware of changes to legislation or business practice. These little tests can have little rewards – a printable ‘free lunch’ ticket or an hour’s Time Off In Lieu: small gains that can really encourage people to invest in best practice.

Bilingual thank you cakes by clevercupcake

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Big Venture start-up funding

Posted by Michael under awards, Business Growth, Entrepreneur Resources

The Big Venture Challenge will reward 25 UK-based social entrepreneurs with up to £175,000 business funding.

The awards derive from the Big Lottery Fund and the Millennium Awards Trust, and will be the result of a nationwide ‘Dragons’ Den’ type contest. The chosen 25 will receive a £25,000 grant and then can obtain up to £150,000 of funding as they obtain matched funding in the form of loans or equity from other investors. They will also be given business support and mentoring to enable them to achieve their goals.

The idea behind the Big Venture Challenge is to help social entrepreneurs scale their enterprises up swiftly so that they can improve their social impact in communities where the public sector can or will no longer provide.

There’s going to be a panel of judges including investors, successful entrepreneurs and business leaders. Those taking part include Sinclair Beecham, co-founder of Pret A Manger, and former Dragon and serial entrepreneur Doug Richard. Applications are open now until 30th June and more details can be found here.

Dragon image courtesy of L2F1

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Gift-Giving as Business Growth Trigger

Posted by Michael under awards, Business Growth, customer service, Entrepreneur Resources, Leadership

John Ruhlin of Ruhlin Promotion Group may be unusual in this time of belt-tightening and cost-cutting. He’s just quadrupled his spend on gifts to employees (and their partners), clients and prospects because, he says, it brings rewards in greater productivity and higher profits. His tips for gift success are an interesting blend of common-sense and hard-earned experience.

1 – Don’t be cheap. He points out that team members may give up to 2,000 hours a year to their employer and to be given a trinket in return is hardly an adequate reward or evidence of thought or appreciation. If it can be found in a cut price store or a promotional catalogue, Ruhlin doesn’t want to know: his gifts are chosen with care to match the recipient and their role in the business.

2 – Make gifts or rewards, not catalogues. This is a point that is only just starting to impact UK businesses, although many have a ‘catalogue’ of options around flexi-time, further learning or selling back holidays to the company, not that many offer a catalogue of incentive items you can ‘earn’ and ‘choose’. Ruhlin’s point is that this throws the initiative back on the recipient, and that the whole point of a gift is that it’s chosen with care. He tries to select items that will match with the individual’s life and dreams, so that people know they are appreciated for who and what they are, as well as for their contribution to the company.

3 – Gift or Salary? Ruhlin suggests that if you pay a little less, and make up the difference in thoughtful and valued gifts, you’ll get more engaged employees because they feel appreciated. This is a very non-British approach, where salary has always been considered the determining factor to a ‘good’ job, and I can imagine it’s an idea that would meet some resistance from both employers and employees, but lots of psychological research into motivation shows that people are more motivated by feeling they are achieving that by monetary gain, so perhaps Ruhlin is right to suggest that higher productivity can be obtained through paying $1,000 a year less, but making up the difference with five or six gifts, totalling that amount, throughout the year.

4 – Partners Matter more. Perhaps the most ‘out there’ claim, to British ears, is the one that by spending more on a client’s partner or spouse than you do on a client, you get a better return. I don’t know if that would be true here, or how it would be measured, but he says that one Fortune 50 Executive claims to spend 3 times as much on gifts and events for partners as on clients themselves, because the spouses and partners ensure the client never moves their business away from the company that treats them so well. I can’t think of a British company that would admit to doing this, but it would be really interesting to compare the two cultures and to see if the same return on gift investment could be found in the UK.

Gift cake courtesy of Ken’s Oven

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Making the workplace fun

Posted by Michael under awards, Business Growth, customer service, Entrepreneur Resources, Leadership

An article in Director magazine highlights the importance of fun and creativity in the workplace. Happy team members take fewer sick days and work harder for longer

Define your differences and use them to achieve more

By offering a different kind of ‘perk’ and a clearly defined brand experience to your employees as well as your customers, you can help shape your employment policy and recruit the right people to grow your business. Competitive businesses like the Richmond Group really incentivise their teams by giving them capital to run with on new projects and acquisitions and pitting them against each other.

Do more for them, they’ll do for more for you

Ikea gave all their staff free bikes after the UK government gave companies a cycle to work tax break and several UK companies give their employees free mobiles or free minutes – all this might sound like freebie heaven but it’s a way of showing the quality of investment you have in your employees. In the same way, measuring stress and monitoring workplace issues can really help a company and its employees to manage what matters – which is performance in action. Pret a Manger uses a mystery shopping programme to measure performance and reward ALL staff in a shop, not just the manager, if the results are good.

Reward what matters

Some companies offer holidays in return for performance, others give bonuses and incentives for greener lifestyle choices. Whether it’s onsite gyms or having dry cleaning picked up by a concierge, knowing what your staff want and what they’ll really work for is a way of getting them to respond to challenges with a gusto rather than groans.

Offer choice

Shine Communications lets the employees design their own incentive packages – other companies let staff bid on what they want to achieve or opt out of benefits rather than opting in. It’s all part of empowering the employee and that produces a more satisfied and dynamic team

Reproduced image courtesy of daily sunny

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Entrepreneur ‘All Rounder’ award

Posted by Michael under awards, Business Growth, Entrepreneur Resources, Leadership

Together, the Standard Chartered Private Bank and the Entrepreneurs’ Organization have created an award for entrepreneurs who are not only successful at running their own enterprises, but active in supporting other entrepreneurs in their business development.

It’s called the Entrepreneur All Rounder and it’s a substantial test of entrepreneurial skills, passion and acumen. Those entering the award will need to demonstrate:

1.    success in their own business(es)
2.    passion and ability in building a community of entrepreneurs in the UK.

As the Entrepreneurs’ Organization said that it believed entrepreneurs would drive the engine of recovery for the UK and the government confirmed that it expected to see economic growth being driven by the small and new business sector, this award is timely. It means being able to demonstrate that not only can you increase market share and spearhead rapid growth, with excellent customer service, but support others in doing the same, and that can only be good for everybody.

The Entrepreneurs’ Organization is for entrepreneurs only: a dynamic, global network of more than 7,500 business owners in 38 countries, it is the catalyst that enables entrepreneurs to learn and grow from each other, leading to greater business success and an enriched personal life.

How To Enter

Entrants for the award can self-nominate or nominate others, you can find full details here and the deadline for entries is Friday 14th January 2011.  Shortlisted entrants will be invited to attend a ceremony at the Saatchi Gallery on January 26th 2011.

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10 reasons to enter business awards (and 4 reasons not to )

Posted by Michael under awards, Business Growth

Many businesses never enter themselves for a business award during their existence but putting your company forward for an award can have business-improving outcomes, whether you win or lose:

Positives

1. Free advertising through press coverage – especially if you’re proactive about promoting your company through trade and regional press
2. Boosts staff morale
3. Impresses shareholders and potential investors – being willing to put your business up for scrutiny is a real confidence generator in the wider marketplace
4. Gains prestige and recognition from peers
5. Networking with fellow entrepreneurs (assuming you are shortlisted). The Japanese call this ‘virtuous circles’ – the chance to mix with other dynamic and success-oriented business leaders can really improve your own business acumen
6. Raises your business profile – publicity is good, PR is good, and the general impression that your business is a success permeates out from entering for an award, even if you’re not the lucky winner
7. Helps attract new customers – recognition and positive exposure can bring new clients to your door that you wouldn’t have reached any other way
8. Increases respect from existing customers – everybody likes to work with a winner!
9. Helps attract high quality new staff. Wouldn’t you rather work for a growing business than a stagnant one? And so would the brightest people around, so award entry can also lead to applications for jobs from the most talented people in your industry.
10. Motivation to increase business growth – thinking like a winner can lead to working like a winner, and one spin-off can be that everybody in your business accepts responsibility to grow, improve and advance the company.

It’s not all sunshine and roses though, the path through an awards process can be quite demanding, not just of time and money, but of commitment to the award system itself. Being aware of the downsides of entering for an award can help you decide if this is the right time for your company to make the effort.

Negatives

1. Financial costs to enter and participate – if you are shortlisted – can run into thousands of pounds
2. Time costs – the amount of work spent on creating a worthwhile award proposal has to be measured against the same time that could have been spent on generating additional sales.
3. Disclosure of strategy and financial information – this is a really tricky one and many businesses have concerns about being asked to supply sensitive information to unknown parties
4. Disappointment if you don’t win – while you, personally, may cope well with this, bear in mind that others in the business may react badly or even see it as a negative reflection on the worth of the business.

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Business Leader profile: Askar Sheibani

Posted by Michael under awards, Leadership

Born in Azerbaijan, Iran, Askar Sheibani arrived in the UK in 1972 to study engineering. He had no spoken English but his intense competitive streak and willingness to take risks led him to qualify as an electronics engineer even though he could see that he wouldn’t achieve what he wanted in the electronics sector due to what he describes ‘… as a lot of discrimination back then.’ But it wasn’t just discrimination that made him want to strike out alone. His first years in electronics showed him that many organisations were caught up in ‘politics that stifle you rather than motivate you’ so when he spotted a gap in the market, he set out to fill it..

But his efforts to create an environmentally, swift and efficient hardware repair centre in the UK were not appreciated by the industry, the government or his bank!

Sheibani had recognised that the lack of a UK based hardware repair centre meant repairs cost more, took longer, and had to travel long distances. He thought that it was obvious that a local repair base would reduce cost and turnaround time, as well as cutting the environmental burden. The DTI did not agree – the adviser he spoke to said British businesses preferred sending products back to their manufacturer and that Sheibani should stick to his job and not take risks.

His bank also refused funding because they thought it too and unviable. But he was not deterred – he invested £50.00 in a second-hand shed which he installed in his back garden and turned into a tiny workshop. His friends and family felt his plans were insane particularly as he had a young family. Sheibani was also told that his business would be ‘destroyed’ by the big manufacturers who would object to him taking business away from them.

His business, Comtek, now has a £10 million turnover and units in Wales, Holland and Germany as well as England. It’s repaired more than 2 million items for customers like BT, Orange, Siemens and IBM. It was the winner of the 2010 Green Business of the Year award at the Fast Growth Business Awards.

And twelve years after he founded Comtek, the Secretary of State for the DTI asked him to join the Ministerial Advisory Board – advising the very department that had rejected his entrepreneurialism

And his advice for entrepreneurs? Very simple: ‘No matter how many barriers there are, how many people try to de-motivate you, how many people say it can’t be done, it can be done. If you’ve got the passion, go for it. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it.’

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Fast Growth Business Awards 2010 Winners

Posted by Michael under awards, Business Growth

I have now recovered from the Fast Growth Business Awards held at the London Marriot in Grosvenor Square last night. It was a lovely evening hosted by the financial journalist Adam Shaw.

I was proud to have my team with me when we (Quayside) were announced as finalists in the Online Business of Year. Unfortunately we didnt win this year and the award went to www.Parcel2go.com.

The winner of the Retail/Leisure business of the year went to Joules Ltd.

The winner of the Green business of the year was Comtek.

The winner of the New Business of the Year was Naked Wines.

International business of the year was won by Patersons HR and Payroll Solutions.

The Young Entrepreneur of the year award was won by two dynamic entrepreneurs, Warren Bennett and David Haithirarmani for www.asuitthatfits.com.

www.Wonga.com won two awards.

The judges included high profile entrepreneurs including Julie Meyer founder of Ariadne Capital and Will King  founder of King of Shaves.

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