As a lecturer, nothing gives you more pleasure than to see your students shine. On Monday 19th March I could not have been prouder of our students, as we welcomed honorary doctor of Staffordshire University, Sarah Willingham to the Business School, as one of the judges of our Willingham’s Winners competition. Sarah has a string of accolades for her contributions to business and in 2016 was named one of the Sunday Times 500 most influential people in Britain. She is probably best known for her appearance on Dragon’s Den, but there is nothing dragon-like about her – a “Stokie” born and bred, Sarah is down-to-earth, full of good advice and a business role model for students.
Six teams were shortlisted to present their business ideas in the finals, pitching to a panel of four judges; Sarah Willingham, Ben Dyer from the Ryman National Enterprise Challenge, Mark Blackhurst CEO of DigitalNext and Professor Liz Boath from the School of Social Work, Allied and Public Health. The panel commended all students on the professionalism of their pitches, giving constructive feedback to support student development.
Following an enlightening conversation and Q&A session with Professor Rune By, Sarah announced the winners of the competition as Crafted. The winning team presented a business idea described by Sarah as “absolutely on trend”, with a flawless, professional pitch, offering a range of delicious cakes catering for the health and wellbeing needs of people with gluten intolerance.
It is not often that undergraduates have the opportunity to gain the advice of such an influential panel of judges and despite nerves, I’m proud to say that all the finalist teams represented Staffordshire Business School superbly – they most definitely did shine.
Angela Lawrence, Senior Lecturer
Staffordshire Business School
vehicles have certainly taken the brunt of adverse publicity – resulting in a very significant drop in purchase of both new and second-hand diesel-powered vehicles we must take note that their petrol-powered cousins are no angels. They might not emit harmful particulates, but they are very capable of emitting a noxious cocktail of other harmful agents which accumulate in the atmosphere with potential for adverse impact to health. Just this last week we have seen headlines posting the rise in incidence of lung cancer in non-smokers, overtaking other forms of the disease for the first time – where cigarette tobacco was always previously posted as a primary causal attribute.
not used for c.20 years! We know the oceans have become increasingly contaminated with micro-size plastic fragments. They have infiltrated the food chain in which we place so much reliance as the world population increases. The arctic region has now been highlighted as contaminated as has the deepest reaches of the oceans. 
those of the entire previous century and it is still increasing despite the rhetoric. We have now reached Co2 emissions of c.40bn tonnes/annum. In 2014 the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) stated that in order to reverse this trend our entire reliance on fossil fuels may need to cease by 2100 otherwise we could experience irreversible climate change such as sea-level rises of over 1m coupled with melting of the ice caps and ocean acidification affecting the food chain, crop failure affecting c.3 billion people, catastrophic extinction events and rising temperatures. The highest recorded temperature ever recorded was reported in Death Valley (appropriately named) – a staggering 57.6 degrees C on 10.07.13. We are also witnessing a hitherto unprecedented increase in world population where having reached c. 1bn around 1800 – just over 200 years ago we have grown to a staggering 7.5bn today adding the last 1bn in just over 10 years. We are on course for c.9-10bn by the middle of this century.
added 8.5 million women to the electoral roll but only those over 30 who owned property or were graduates were included. The Act also gave the vote to 5.6 million more men after their voting age was lowered to 21, and the property qualification abolished resulting in the general election in December 1918 consulting an electorate three times the size of the one before it.
surveyed claim that their organisation does not have a gender pay gap, even though the research found the average difference in pay between male and female managers to be 27%.
Hard work is nothing new of course, and jobs today are cleaner and safer, while technological advances and the digital age have removed some of the arduous aspects of work. However, employers also demand higher levels of commitment and loyalty from employees, even to the extent that they identify emotionally with business needs, embodying the organisational brand. This too contributes to work intensification as it requires employees to give more of themselves, often going ‘the extra mile’. Coupled with the pressure on organisations to continually ‘do more with less’, it is feasible to expect rising workloads and work pressure. Left unchecked, these can contribute to human resource management issues such as sickness absence and/or ‘presenteeism’. Presenteeism is the term used for when employees present for work, despite not being well enough, or when the workplace culture suggests that non-attendance, even when ill, may have negative implications for one’s career or job security. Under such regimes, employees may contribute to their own work intensification as they seek to demonstrate commitment while also worrying about burdening colleagues with additional work. However, ‘doing more with less’, while reflecting the harsh economic realities confronting private and public sector organisations, is not only bad for employees, it is not good for business or for service delivery.
There is only so much that employees can do. We are not machines, neither are we simply ‘human resources’. We are people and people can ‘break’ with adverse implications for health and the ability to meet expectations not only of managers and colleagues, but customers too. As a customer, I have often felt the urgency and speed of being served by employees under pressure – telephone enquiries ending prematurely when they seemed anxious to move on to the next call; leaving queues in banks, department stores, and coffee shops (because I ran out of time more often than patience). Fleeting conversations with fellow customers have included utterances of ‘not enough staff’ and ‘they should open another till’ along with a degree of sympathy for employees trying to do too much at once. Of course, under-staffing can be a consequence of recruitment and retention problems (the NHS being a clear example), rather than decisions designed specifically to reduce labour costs.
change the out-dated and entrenched semesterised academic calendar, academic culture and supporting infrastructure. Effectively, the resistance to such change by many well-known established universities has meant that two-year degrees are offered by only a handful of forward thinking and progressive universities.
conversations I’ve had with two-year students about why they chose a two-year degree and that is, at the end of the day studying a two-year degree saves them an immense amount of money – according to Jo Johnson, the ex-universities minister (aka brother of Boris), approximately £25,000.
However, this popularity comes with a cost. More connection does not imply more interaction. Having grown up with social media, the new generation prefers to communicate through an online platform than to have a face-to-face conversation. Real-life interactions, however, teach us aspects of non-verbal communication: being able to read and respond to facial expressions, eye-to-eye contact or changes in tone of voice. These abilities could easily be lost in digital communication. Besides, experts relate the rising occurrence of depression, anxiety and isolation among youngsters with their excessive exposure to social media.
So, while we are enjoying the benefits of social media, we need to remember that the real-life friendships and face-to-face interactions are equally valuable. A balanced use of digital and face-to-face interactions can immensely expand our communication capabilities and help us to utilise our full potential.
With more complicated systems, including adding Artificial Intelligence (AI) or additional support from humans, chatbots can be setup to be much smarter and chat with customers plus find out what they need. Where applicable, it can also learn from previous conversations and the more knowledge it gains, the better it is able to support customers. In addition, it can have lots of separate chats all at the same time, for example H&M can chat with lots of customers to make tailored recommendations to the customers taste (see 
SMM Marketing Platform reported that in just over six months chatbots, on Facebook alone, grew from 33,000 to 100,000 in April 2017 and some chatbots are getting great results, for example Adidas’s chatbot got 2000 new sign ups in two week and Just Eat chatbot created a conversion rate 266% higher than a simple advert.
You must be logged in to post a comment.