Angela Lawrence, Associate dean, staffordshire business school

For March 2020, Postgrad.com asked Angela Lawrence to be their ‘expert of the month’. Here she explains what the benefits are of studying a business-related masters program…

A business-related masters program is intended to develop a student’s thinking, skills and professionalism to an advanced and specialist level. Bachelor business degrees focus on giving students a broad range of knowledge around business operations, so that they understand the interactions between finance and marketing, operations and HR, and the important leadership and management skills required of a manager within a business environment. To support a more in-depth understanding of the complexities of the modern business environment, masters-level business degrees help students to develop strategic thinking skills that will drive a business forward in tune with fast emerging trends.

So, for me, postgraduate business study is about three things

1. Developing strategic leadership skills by learning how to bring together all elements of business performance, to drive an organisation forward to achieve positive outcomes. A good postgraduate business degree should challenge a student’s thinking and push them out of their comfort zone. It should demand research-based decision-making and equip them with the skills and confidence to drive those decisions through an organisation, harnessing the support of the management team along the way.

2. Gaining transferable skills at a high level. Postgraduate business programs teach transferable skills that are relevant for senior management positions whatever the industry sector. So, whilst there are a variety of masters-level subject-related degrees available, these could actually restrict employment outcomes to specific subject sectors. Studying for an MBA or similar postgraduate business qualification gives a graduate access to a multitude of senior positions that require a strategic thinker who can demonstrate a sound understanding of business environments. This experience is usually gained via project work that is built into the award program. Project modules provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate the full suite of management and leadership competencies that are derived from the program of study.

3. Proving yourself. Studying for a business-related masters program says something about an individual to me. It tells me that they have stamina and resilience in the business world, that they understand how to handle complex business challenges, that they have the confidence to make decisions that could change the direction of a business and that they are not afraid of that change. It tells me that they are a consummate professional and that they recognise the importance of evidence-based decision-making and the requirement to have their finger on the pulse of emerging business opportunities, which can only happen if an enquiring, inquisitive and entrepreneurial mindset is fostered.

In a post-Brexit business environment, more than ever before, businesses will need leaders who possess these attributes in order to survive and thrive.

Develop and master core competencies in support of your management and leadership ambitions. The Staffordshire University MBA is designed to accelerate your professional and personal development and to contribute to the journey of being the best you can be.

Storm Barratt, Lecturer, Staffordshire Business School

The world has turned upside down but for any University, it isn’t too soon to be thinking about a return to “normal” (in whatever guise that may be) and the young students who are (hopefully) excited to leave home, albeit temporarily, and join us for the new academic year come September. Many of our thoughts are not only about the academic guidance we shall be giving but also the extra-curricular support to help these young people transition from school children to University student.

But what about the Mums (and Dads and others) who are left behind feeling bereft at their child moving on without them?

The dreaded “Empty Nest” Syndrome.

This is a very real occurrence for many and whilst I would not want to make light of it, the following is a slightly irreverent piece I wrote when my boys moved out. Was I worried and anxious? Of course. Upset and tearful? For a while. Then, over time, sanity was restored, and a delicious feeling of freedom began to creep my way.

It was picking up yet another soggy towel from the bathroom floor that tipped me over the edge. That and looking forward to a biscuit with my cup of tea when, surprise! No biscuits. ‘That’s it!’ I shrieked to my husband, ‘It’s high time they moved out’. He raised one cynical eyebrow and replied: ‘You don’t mean that; look what happened last time’.

Three years ago, both of my children left home at the same time – one to work in America, the other to his first year at university. Suddenly after 22 years of nurturing, cherishing, catering for their every need and generally interfering, my life changed in an instant with a simple, ‘Bye Mom’ and a slam of the front door.

I remember how I felt. The first few weeks I was miserable; I couldn’t concentrate, thinking about all the bad things that would befall them in their new lives. They were obviously drawn into an underworld of sex, drugs and rock and roll. My imagination ran riot and I would lie awake at night in a hot sweat as I imagined the worst, a small voice in my head whispering over and over, ‘Come back boys, all is forgiven’.

A friend of mine was so distraught when her last child moved out, she felt compelled to invite foreign students from the local university to dinner on a regular basis, then to lunch as well and before her husband knew where he was, whole weekends. He eventually put his foot down when she invited two of her new-found “family” on holiday. An amusing tale but with serious undertones. Lynn simply could not cope with not being needed. Any mother knows that the first few weeks without their children, when they first leave home can be quite traumatic.

Empty Nest Syndrome is well documented with some women falling into a deep depression, no longer a full-time mum but not quite knowing who they are.

I’d heard of the empty nest syndrome. ‘Empty Nest?’ I’d scoffed. ‘What rubbish’. Personally, I couldn’t wait for the boys to leave. I would be able to reclaim some “me time”. I would be able to do all those things that had been put on hold while the children were growing up. I would be able to please myself about what time I went out and came home, instead of creeping in at midnight to find one of them sitting on the settee, tapping his watch and saying, ‘What time do you call this?’ (Erm, who is the parent here?)

Over the past 25 years, I had been the consummate mother, taking care of my boys’ every need. Taxi, cook, chambermaid, interfering mother, you name it, I was at their beck and call (mind you, also at the beck and call of the husband but that’s a whole other issue!), and I thoroughly enjoyed it most of the time. But three years ago, both of my children left home at the same time, albeit temporarily. One to work in America, the other to his first year at university.

I wasn’t prepared for the feelings of sadness when my boys moved out. The advice dished out by well-meaning friends was that I take up a new hobby to fill my time and give me something else to think about. Distraction therapy, I think it’s called. But I didn’t want to be distracted. I didn’t want to think about anything else. I wanted my boys back – I liked my children at home.

We would come back after a night out to a dark house and eerily quiet – when they lived at home, they would leave all of the lights on even if they went out. The neighbours nicknamed our house “The Lighthouse”. We didn’t trip over the sports bags or numerous pairs of shoes in the hallway. There were no dirty pots strewn around and the kitchen looked just how I had left it. All very peculiar.

Gradually, as the weeks passed, the feelings of sadness began to subside and I noticed that, actually, there were quite a few positives now that the boys weren’t there. Not least the dramatic reduction in our electricity, food and petrol bills. I’d stopped thinking for four people and could concentrate on me and my husband. Biscuits stayed in the tin; towels were not found on the bathroom floor. A sense of freedom had returned. Admittedly I had lost my way a bit, but the peace and quiet afforded me the time to sit and think about me and my needs. My husband and I could do what we wanted to do without restriction. For the first time in 25 years, I could put ME first without the guilt trip.

I was getting used to all of this, when, just like a boomerang, they came back. You would have thought my prayers had been answered, but these were not my babies anymore. These were young, independent adults, with their own opinions, ideas and ways of doing things. Admittedly, it was nice to have them around, but it was encroaching on my new way of life. I gradually found myself sliding back into the role of chief cook and bottle washer, laundry maid and housekeeper. And, do you know, I didn’t like it very much.

So, just as the pain of childbirth has long been erased from my memory, so have the feelings of sadness at being initially separated from my children. So here we are, all together again, one big happy family but boy, am I counting the days….. Selfish? Definitely. Guilty? Definitely not. Empty Nest? Bring it on…biscuit anyone?

Sohnia Butt, MSc Digital Marketing Management student

As of right now, there are a total of 2.9 billion social network users around the globe. Therefore, it is essential that businesses stay ahead of their competition by building up their social media presence to reach a wider audience. However, thanks to Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, live content is the fastest growing segment of internet video traffic in the past 3 years.

Instagram live gives you a perfect platform that will help businesses to engage with their customers. When doing this, you are establishing a relationship and building customer loyalty through the process of connecting with your audience in a quick and easy manner. However, like any relationship goes, engaging and having the ability to build a strong relationship with your audience and customer base can take some time.

Answering questions and queries through live videos are not enough to build customers trust in you, as a brand, you must make customers feel wanted by asking them what THEY want FROM YOU, instead of assuming that through appearing on live videos every now and then will make them stay loyal to your company.

Businesses can engage customers through their Live streaming options through adding them to their live videos with the “Add a guest” feature, this way businesses can add their audience to their live videos for a chat and to answer questions directly that customers will ask them.

This will have a significant impact on the business sales because it will make customers feel comfortable, through them having the ability to ask questions directly to business employees and owners, without feeling like they are being invasive or annoying.

Businesses making use of live streaming will help to boost popularity through building a hype for events the business might be holding. The business might decide to hold an event for a new product/service launch, what better way to promote the launch? Through Live streaming, of course!

People who do not follow the company page on social media sites will also be aware of the event, due to people sharing it and live videos and stories appearing on the Instagram explore page. This is the perfect tool for businesses to make use of so that once people are aware of the company and the events it holds, they will make sure to follow them on their social media pages for future reference.

To make sure that consumers are aware that you are about to go live, one of the things to do is turn on the “Send Notifications” toggle in your video settings, this will send a notification to your followers that you have started a live video, so that wherever you go they will be aware that you have started your live!

As well as making sure your audience can see your live video, in order to well and truly grab the attention of the audience, make sure to add a catchy title on the video so that customers will be interested in seeing your video, which will increase the popularity of the business as a whole!

Instagram and Facebook live have worked wonders for companies that initially began by operating via social media, this works out extremely well for clothing companies such as Pretty Little Thing, who operate heavily on their social media sites! They do this by getting social media influencers to take over their live videos for the day to promote their new, seasonal clothing and deals that they have available at that time.

A recent study found that 80% of people would much rather watch live videos from brands than read a blog, and 82% would prefer to watch live videos than looking at posts on social media. This tells us that businesses need must make sure that promoting through live streaming on their social media sites is something that they do on a regular basis.

Live streaming should be done at prime times of the day to ensure that their followers will more than likely be available to tune in to their lives at that time, certain times of the day people are more active on their social media times are Wednesday through to Saturday at 10am till 8pm; other prime times to post with high engagement include Wednesday at 11am, Friday from 11am, 12pm and 2pm, and Saturday at 6pm to 8pm.

Marzena Reszka, lecturer, Staffordshire Business School

Everyone is talking about technology and how it can suit nearly everything. Wherever there is a problem, there is the promise of a technological solution, using some combination of artificial intelligence or machine learning, big data, automation, and the Internet of Things.

There’s no doubt that technology is set to have a big impact on every part of supply-chain operations, from planning to logistics. By focusing so much attention on digital solutions, however, companies may inadvertently be ensuring their failure. That’s because the technology-first approach ignores an inconvenient truth: the intensely human nature of the supply chain.

Technological optimists paint a bold picture of supply chains that are so highly digitized that the function itself disappears. They envision a world in which forecasting, planning, and execution are fully automated and seamlessly integrated, where systems adapt to solve problems and respond to changes in supply or demand without human intervention. Can this be achieved?  In the future such supply chains might eventually become a reality, but today’s digital solutions must be integrated into today’s supply chains which can be a challenge.

Today’s supply chains are wrestling with the same problems they have faced for decades: poor visibility, uncertainty, mistrust among functions and stakeholders, biased behaviours, misaligned incentives, and slow decision making. Can technology fix that?

Problems like these won’t be solved by algorithms. Worse, left unaddressed, they could destroy much of the potential value of other digital solutions. The most sophisticated demand forecasting system is of little use if commercial teams and production planners ignore its outputs. And the value chain may be impacted.

Recognizing the critical role of people doesn’t invalidate the use of supply chain technology.

However, technology for sure may support supply chain operations. It can provide more data, and new insights from existing data. It can automate previously manual tasks, such as with electronic order-taking or robotic warehouse automation. And may help organisations address the human problems, by enabling greater trust, better communication, and enhanced collaboration across the organization. But we are far away from the dream.

References:

Bechtsis, D.; Tsolakis, N.; Vlachos, W.; Iakovou, E. (2017) . Sustainable supply chain management in the digitalisation era: The impact of Automated Guided Vehicles. h

Holmström, J. (2019). The digitalization of operations and supply chain management: Theoretical and methodological implications. Journal of operations management. https://doi-org.ezproxy.staffs.ac.uk/10.1002/joom.1073

LaBombard, M.; McArthur, S.;  Sankur, A.; Shah, K.; (2019). The Human side of digital supply chains. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/the-human-side-of-digital-supply-chains

Price, Ch. (2018). How can technology improve supply chain management? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/intelligent-business/supply-chain-management/

Charlotte Gooding, MSc Digital Marketing Management student

Google Analytics is known as the Internet’s leading website statistic monitoring program and is free to use from Google. Thomas Young states that Google provide Analytics free to use as once a digital marketer can see the data, it will then lead to them working on getting more traffic to their website through Google AdWords; then bring revenue in for Google.

Why use Google Analytics?

There are many different reasons why digital marketers should be using Google Analytics. Over the last four years many more bloggers have been looking into the positive effects that Google Analytics can have on a business, many of these overlap one another with the opinions on the positivity that it has. For instance, both Tanya Austin and Paul Koks mentions that Google Analytics is useful in order to be able to segment your customer base. This feature allows you to see if part or all your market is niche; with this you can then use it to come up with marketing that will target that segment within your market. This all in mind Nate Shivar backs up these thoughts by explaining Google Analytics tracks it’s data using a unique tracking code; collects information on a user’s activities on the site.

Market Leaders

Within Google analytics market leaders are not as common as other sectors of the Digital Marketing, Think with Google mentions how there is still 62% of executives are still relying more on experience and advice compared to looking at the data to make decisions. This all being said for those who are market leaders with Google Analytics there is several things that they need to know to be able to stay as market leaders. Thomas Young states that many business leaders do not regularly review their webs statistics, and this is a big mistake. By doing so it can then lead to poor decision making and an inability to notice market share losses or other major key business trends as they are occurring in real time.

Looking at who the market leaders within Google Analytics isn’t just the only thing that is involved to also involves looking at the market share for Analytics to understand Google Analytics. As it currently stands Datnyze research found Google Analytics has the highest market share of 39.74%, whereas Facebook Analytics has a 6.44% market share. This shows how Google Analytics can indicate the segmentation for customers.

Google Analytics Current Trends

As it stands there are several trends within Google Analytics that marketers need to know about. Himanshu mentions how the Google analytics trends tool has been around for a while yet not many people know what it is let alone how it works. For those who like me didn’t have a clue what the trend tool was at first is used to notice trends within your analytics. It moves in one direction, for example, if the trend is moving upwards it is known as ‘uptrend’ whereas if it is moving downwards it is known as a ‘downtrend’. Dr. Hannah Vogel looks at using averages to be able to identify trends within Google Analytics. This would then allow you to be able to look at the average time spent on your site for instance or the average number of visits in a week.

What about future trends?

There are many predictions on what the future holds for Google Analytics. Joe Christopher mentions that even though the market is constantly changing it is important to make sure that you are aware of the current google analytics and in particular where they are currently heading; to also still be aware that it is constantly changing and can go in any direction with little warning. Louis Columbus mentions that 66% of digital advertising spend will go to Google search, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram; as a result, this will be the way that people are finding business’ so Google Analytics will be a massive part of helping to see the trends of business searching. Furthermore, he mentions how in North America where using data isn’t very common there will be a 47% increase on third party data for advertises.

 Alok Soni, looks at trends which will shape the future of data analytics. They mention how it is predicted that one future trend is machine intelligence and that the theory behind this prediction comes from theory and development of computer systems is to be able to perform tasks which would normally require human intelligence. The idea is that the system can learn the structure of being able to stream data, make predictions and detect anomalies. This would then mean that humans are able to spend more time marketing the ideas that machine intelligence comes up with. In addition, Alok Soni also predicts augmented reality explaining that it will enable better performances of organisations with the help of available data. Also mentioning how the development and growth of Googles Analytics will help to further boost this idea of a future trend.  Overall, there are many different predictions of the future of Google Analytics, but with how rapidly the industry is changing it is unsure as to what direction Google Analytics will take.

Dr. Jenny Gale, Senior Lecturer in HRM, Staffordshire Business School

Globally, employee engagement has been documented as low, particularly so in the UK, and we can debate about why this is so.  However, frustratingly for practitioners (and those academics who are interested), there is a distinct lack of agreement about what engagement is and isn’t, partly because it is a multi-faceted concept, incorporating attitudes and behaviours that are not easily captured within simple definitions.  Consequently, engagement has been distilled into sub-categories to reflect physical, cognitive, and emotional dimensions, along with different levels of engagement such as ‘engaged’, ‘not-engaged’ and its opposite ‘disengagement’ (see Gallup 2006).  Then it might have a lot to do with employees’ personalities, or issues around what it is that they are supposed to be engaged with (such as work tasks and organisational goals) and/or who (managers, senior managers, colleagues, customers, etc.).  You can also find lots of free articles and blogs on how to improve engagement or, if you are feeling flushed, engage a consultancy firm on a lucrative contract.  You can also learn all about the ‘myths’ of engagement – you can take your pick about how many ‘myths’ there are (three, four, five, twelve, etc.) 

Despite all this noise about engagement, it is difficult to nail down. It is frustratingly nebulous because no-one can agree what it is, although we think we know it when we see it.  We might observe how someone goes about their job – putting in extra hours, ‘going the extra mile’, engaging in ‘discretionary behaviour’, demonstrating a high level of commitment, motivation, and high levels of performance, ‘living the brand’, ‘walking the walk’, etc.  All these are supposed to mean an employee is ‘engaged’.  On the other hand, they might just be working their socks off because they are afraid of losing their job or being over-looked for promotion.

All this has implications about whether we are ‘doing engagement right’ in terms of policy and practice.  Engagement surveys, for example, are supposed to provide employers with vital information about levels of engagement and the kind of things that either promote it or prevent it.  The key point about these surveys is to act on the information in order to avoid it becoming a ‘tick-box’ exercise, frustrating employees in the process.  ACAS once stated that engagement can potentially drive business success, providing it is genuinely sought and understood, rather than just about driving the intensification of work in disguise.

Finally, there is a view that engagement is an obsession that fails to produce lasting results because employee engagement isn’t really ‘a thing’ at all but another management fad, stimulated in part by the MacLeod Review, a government commissioned study in 2009.  Personally, I’m not convinced engagement is ‘a thing’, at least not in a way that really matters.  There are positive examples of what engagement has been argued to achieve, of course.  Maplin is an interesting one – once held up as a shining example of the link between engagement and business success.  Too bad it has since disappeared from the High Street!  Was employee engagement ever really the problem? Or the answer?

I confess that the more I read about employee engagement, the more confused I get.  What I am less confused about, though, is ‘good employee relations’ and the good old- fashioned principles that underpin it – trust, fairness, integrity, transparency, equality, equity, etc.  While these principles are arguably part of the engagement discourse, the pre-occupation with ‘engagement’ as a term and what it is and isn’t distracts from what really is important.  Instead of trying to increase employee engagement, what about simplifying things and putting trust and fairness centre stage?  Trust and fairness incorporate many aspects of human decency, respect and integrity and it would be nice to see new life breathed into these words in the workplace.  Engagement?  That is much less of ‘a thing’ in my book.