Need information and help on business planning, training, staff motivation, competency assessment, business improvement and development?

Looking for quick and easy access to inspirational, innovative ideas, materials, exercises, tools and templates?

Fed up with trawling the internet for accurate, current and relevant information on how to improve, develop and sustain your business or workforce?

I have spent many, many hours over the years searching for, amending and adapting information from a multitude of different web sources to correctly inform my research and development work.   Finding excellent knowledge that can be trusted is no mean feat in the often overwhelming sea of data published on the internet. 

If you are a leader, manager, team member, trainer, professional or business owner, People Alchemy presents a solution to this problem.  It’s a new one-stop resource centre for state of the art business management information written by specialists in their field.  In fact, People Alchemy only use guru level authors and therefore I was honoured to be asked to contribute given the high standard of people who are authoring content.  I am currently working on a management guide to ‘staff motivation surveys’ as this is one of my key areas of expertise.

People Alchemy for Managers is a comprehensive and continuously updated on-line interactive reference tool that provides instant access to the practical information, tools, tips, methods and techniques that will enable you to ramp up performance and create concrete, bottom-line results for your business or organisation each and every day.  With prestigious companies including Audi and Argos using the system, you know you are in good company.

Discover for yourself how easily and instantly you can tap into the essential skills, knowledge and methods that every owner/manager needs to be successful with this special 14 day (no obligation) free trial - www.peoplealchemy.co.uk 

A new £4 million fund has been launched which will give grants to small and medium-sized businesses and local partnerships of trade unions, third sector groups, and public sector bodies, to carry out initiatives to boost staff health and welfare.

Administered by the Department for Work and Pensions, the two-year scheme will give grants ranging between £1,000 and £50,000 to deliver a range of activities such as reducing stress and improving other mental health conditions, providing healthy activities, ensuring work-life balance and supportive management.

The UK-wide programme is open to applications from organisations that have been trading for at least two years and employ less than 250 staff.

Organisations are asked to submit an expression of interest “as soon as possible” to determine eligibility – they will then have until 31 December 2009 to complete a full application.

A second round of funding is also expected to take place next September for grants during the 2011-12 financial year.

For further information about the programme, visit the Government’s dedicated Health Work and Wellbeing website

Mission - To help disadvantaged young people change their lives 

Values - Approachable, Inspiring, Enabling, Passionate, Committed

Business Plan Focus

·      Maximise young people entering/staying in education, employment, training 

·      Provide a voice for young people to influence public opinion/government policy

·      Grow private sector income, diversify supporter base, maximise unrestricted funds

·      Improve the mentoring support for young people

·      Implement a strategy/support engagement through improved communications

Success Story

·      Since 1983 helped over 70,000 young people to start their own business

·      60% still trading into their 3rd year

·      West Midlands aim to support 500 people into business/ongoing support to 800

·      Volunteers are critical to the success of The Prince's Trust

CALL TO ACTION

I was invited to become a Prince’s Trust mentor in 2007 and since then have been working closely with young clients who are starting out in business. I thoroughly enjoy this work, especially as my clients are making excellent progress having had no previous business experience. It is a delight to see them take on the challenge with such commitment and enthusiasm and I am very proud of their achievements so far. I believe that with my support they will continue to go from strength to strength which is most rewarding.

I would thoroughly recommend becoming a Prince’s Trust Mentor. The clients I work with are bright, intelligent, extremely dedicated and consistently appreciative of my support. These young people are most deserving and I cannot speak too highly of the work the Prince’s Trust does to help them create a brighter future.

My Profile – The Prince’s Charities

Become a Volunteer Business Mentor – The Prince's Trust 

New Consumer Values – Generation G

Sheila Moorcroft, Research Director of Shaping Tomorrow has written an interesting article about a new focus on doing things differently through Social Enterprise in the wake of the financial crisis.

Charitable giving in the UK (2008-9) is down by 11% in real terms, representing a fall of £1.3 billion.  A similar picture is emerging in the US where the fall is 9%. 2010 is likely to be little better.

A new Social Enterprise, Call Britannia, is an outsourcing call centre targeting major companies’ staffing needs.  The company aims to get long term unemployed people back to work, starting with 60 in the first year then rising rapidly.  Future plans are to establish a total of 10 call centres in deprived areas, each employing 200 people.  With a view to helping 10,000 disadvantaged or long term unemployed people get back to work, the company was the first to benefit from funding from Bridges Community Ventures’ new social enterprise fund.

The continued success of Fair-trade products, sales of which reached a total turnover of around £700 million in the UK in 2008, demonstrate consumer support for ‘business that does more than make profit’, with about 18 million families regularly using these products.  Research in the US in late 2008 indicated the potential backlash for companies ignoring ethical and fair-trade issues.  These new consumer values have been called Generation G – for Generosity.

The Changing Nature of Luxury, Wealth and Philanthropy

Public disillusion with pure profit, calls for greater financial transparency, greater business emphasis on Corporate Social Responsibility and an election coming up in the UK, provide an opportunity to do things very differently.   The need to establish greater clarity about the nature and location of social investments could result in greater tax incentives to encourage Social Enterprise.

Charities and non-profit organisations meanwhile are going to be squeezed between increasing demands for services and reduced income.  They are going to be hard placed to meet demand but the Third Sector is seen as an increasingly important provider of solutions to social problems.

Leading the way are new venture capitalists determined to find new solutions, save the planet and make money.  With the changing nature of luxury being less visible and more socially aware, the changing nature of wealth being more self-made and less inherited and the changing nature of philanthropy being more of a business approach, all of these changes come into play in the potential success of Social Enterprise.

www.shapingtomorrow.com

Blown away with feedback from business students who attended my workshop at Wolverhampton College’s ‘Take Control Today’ event yesterday.

‘Absolutely brilliant.  Short and snappy, it stuck in my mind.  Very well presented and I liked the fact that it presented a different approach to same old, same old.’  Kathryn Kimbley

‘I felt that the workshop was very interesting and inspiring.  I have information that I can take away and think about.’  Nicola Brown

‘The course was really helpful and gave me some useful information that I didn’t already know’.  Daniel Mayer

‘It was interesting and I believe that I have learned a lot about myself and the direction I want to go.’  Rachel

‘It is a good course to learn.  It evaluates our employability skills and we can improve this many ways as given in the course.’  Sunny Sapler

‘It’s a very interesting course and it has inspired me.’  Marion Kharnom

‘Very informative, useful information, good presentation.’  Kuljevan & Joginder Rai

‘It’s an interesting course and we can learn many things through this course.’ Namarjot Kane

This workshop is designed for anyone interested in developing, packaging and communicating their personal / business brand to their social and local networks, and the wider community. 

Venues and dates for the New Year will be available shortly.