Category: Freelancer Opinion & Insights

FairTrade™ is a hot topic at the moment. Businesses and consumers have an opportunity to make it a part of everyday life but are ethical products of equivalent quality to their non-ethical counterparts?

For several generations, corporate gifts have played a traditional role in business culture. Here Rick Lay looks at what the gift-wrapped chocolates sent by the printer to the staff incentive scheme, we are fast approaching the season which carries expectations of recognition for loyalty throughout the year.

As Google launches Google Instant, which displays search results immediately when starting to type a search phrase, is it becoming harder and harder for SMEs based online to appear at the top of the Google rankings?

And is this forcing some businesses to move from online to offline?

The highly-successful car scrappage scheme has now ended, prompting businesses around the UK to consider how they could implement a similar scheme to drive sales.

Marks & Spencer was the first company to jump on the scrappage scheme bandwagon and through a link-up with Oxfam manages to do its bit for charity at the same time.

l am going to discuss a topic that owners of rural businesses up and down the country will be familiar with. Wind turbines. – If you don’t live or work near a wind farm, you probably haven’t considered their impact beyond the benefit in terms of wind power being a renewable energy source!

So how much money has been invested within the television programme Dragons’ Den? Who has invested and which Dragon has been willing to take the biggest risks. The new infographic below answers all of these questions in a graphical easy-to-see way.

It struck me recently that some of the most watched TV programmes at the moment all have something in common.

I am thinking of shows like The Apprentice, The X Factor, Dragons’ Den, Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen, Mary Queen of Shops and The Hotel Inspector to name but a few.

They tell people the truth as they see it.

As the business world becomes increasingly fast paced, unrelenting and unforgiving, the solution to the myriad of problems that organisations face appears to become ever more complex.

There you go, what great news for a Friday morning! The people’s bank, RBS, the one which is 84% publicly owned, has just posted a half year profit of £1.1billion – that’s almost a billion quid we can cut off the deficit!

Hilary Briggs, London Chairman of the Academy of Chief Executives, talks about how in tough economic times lower sales trigger the need for cost reductions and why with a slimmed down workforce you can’t build your team the normal way.

“Where exactly is the ‘middle of nowhere’ please?”
With the latest figures on graduate recruitment showing that vacancies have dropped by nearly 7% in the year up to June 2010 following a fall of 8.9% in 2009, businesses might be forgiven for thinking that the lucky few to succeed in gaining employment would turn up on the first day with a strong work ethic.

The date is July 30th 1966: Imagine if Geoff Hurst had been sick on that summer’s day, history would be very different.

Entrepreneurs from around the country are gearing up to take part in the most business-focussed competition of 2010, competing against fellow start-ups and small business owners from their region and around the UK for the chance to be crowned Britain’s Best New Business.

A search to find the UK’s most inspirational men and women who have beaten the odds to succeed in business has got underway with the launch of the fifth annual Barclays Trading Places Awards.

Pressure is mounting among many business owners according to a survey which shows that 41% of private company bosses say their stress levels have increased compared to a year ago.