Member Blog

At Norwich Sunblinds we offer a superb range of interior design fabrics to choose from for when you order made to measure curtains, roman blinds, and soft furnishings.

Sourced from UK suppliers, these fabrics open up a world of creative possibilities for the interior design of your house. Beautiful fabrics allow you to create a unique style and put your personality into your home.

Our aim with these blog posts is to introduce you to all of our suppliers one by one so we can demonstrate the individuality and creativity of their superb collections, starting with Voyage fabrics.

Voyage have a reputation for innovative and stylish design; they create beautiful fabrics for interiors worldwide. Norwich Sunblinds are one of only four suppliers in Norfolk, and have recently increased the range of samples available in our Norwich Lanes showroom.

Voyage offers an extensive range of fabrics in a vast palette of designs suitable for every aspect of your house interior design schemes, which could include upholstery for furniture, cushions, floor cushions, throws, curtains, pelmets, blinds, lampshades, tablecloths… the possibilities are endless.

Curtains, blinds, and soft furnishings have the ability to pull together your decorative scheme and add colour, dimension and personality to your home.

The Voyage range is grouped into a number of collections that convey every imaginable mood for your design scheme.

There’s the Voyage Couture range which is said to have been influenced by the catwalk, a truly decadent collection that offers glamour and elegance including silk textured fabrics, chic silvers and golds, pretty beaded fabrics, appliqué, embroideries, and sequins.

Voyage Diffusion is described as contemporary country, and Voyage Boutique showcases unusual and contemporary florals that can add a hint of femininity to a decorative scheme.

The Voyage Country Collection & Natural Living Collection brings charm to a country cottage and gives a subtle country twist to a modern home. There are fun patterns amongst this range too, like welly boots and game birds, chickens, ducks and squirrels – perfect for a country kitchen look.

The Studio Line range, on the other hand, provides an explosion of colour and embroidered patterns, especially the Rashieka’s Garden designs.

And there’s even more to their collections, including a children’s range which has some fantastic designs to help you decorate your child’s room with all their favourite things.

Come into Norwich Sunblinds’ showroom on St Benedict’s Street and have a look at these delightful fabric samples or arrange a free consultation where we will visit you at your home, measure your windows, and discuss fabric choices. Your curtains or blinds are then made to order and fitted for you.

This article originally appeared on the Norwich Sunblinds website

Everyone’s talking about it now – being a thought leader, being an authority in your domain. We all want to speak and write with confidence and inspire trust. And we all see people every day who master it and people who fail at it.

But if you’re going to translate marketing content, this is a fundamental issue for you to consider. If your brochure is written to compel English-speaking readers from a specific industry and a focused demographic, how are you going to really make sure that the translated version does the same thing? This most fundamental acid-test for any piece of marketing collateral has to be summed up by one word – credibility.

Anyone who’s studied sales and persuasion techniques will know all about building rapport through shadowing, where people try and mimic your own tone of voice, rhythm of speech and even body language. Whether you think these things are nonsense or not, the point is, it pays to make people think you’re like them. In the classic book on persuasion, “Influence” (if you’ve not read it, I highly recommend it), the point is made abundantly clear. We are more receptive and more responsive to people who we consider to be like us. And not just slightly – the difference is staggering. Persuasive content needs to have the readers’ tone of voice, the readers’ language. They have to feel that they’re listening to someone who is just like them.

In translation, there’s no shortcut to this. The days of the generalist translator are numbered. Language providers need to accept that they are in the era of specialisation, intense research and a commitment to finding out all about you – and digging out the exact target language. It’s not enough to speak perfect Mandarin. If what you need is persuade an air charter buyer, you need to know how air charter is conducted in China, you need to know the jargon and the attitudes of Chinese air charter buyers.

When someone reads your documents, they should feel like they’re listening to someone who is just like them. Someone from their world and who understands their problems. Someone who talks like them and that gets them. That’s credibility.

That means the only real route to success is to work with specialists. The value of the generalist is, unfortunately, limited. Brain surgeons out-earn General Practitioners. Depth is more important than breadth when it comes to delivering perfection. It’s why we’re focused, for example, on marketing departments in growth phase businesses. And it’s why our translators are chosen not to be able to help as many clients as possible, but to be able to completely understand and delight one particular narrow client group.

We had a pretty good weekend; a house packed with three generations whose combined ability to strip a house bare of food and drink would give a swarm of locusts a run for their money. Sunday evening saw the younger members packed off to bed while their elders slumped in a postprandial torpor, trying to summon up the energy to finish off the cold bread and butter pudding.  This gave Mrs R the opportunity she had been waiting for. Their guard was down; it was the perfect moment to introduce The Talk – what would happen to both acres that comprise the vast Ross Estate when we were called to a higher, or at least different, place?

The cobbler’s children have no shoes; the Ross children have no financial plan and now seemed as good a time as any to begin to put things right.

It started out well. More by luck than judgement we seem to have produced a brood that, even into adulthood, I still like (I’ve always thought you have to love your children but liking them is a bonus) and their initial responses along the lines of ‘we’re not interested in your money’ were reassuring. Thankfully, none was cruel enough to point out that a third of what was left after we’d paid for our dotage wouldn’t buy much more than a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich over which to reflect on our passing.

We should have left it there, kept things simple. But Mrs R had to nudge them. Over the next twenty minutes a disturbing narrative developed. A casual observer could easily draw parallels with a wider post-truth zeitgeist; unfortunately I was not only a participant, I was the protagonist.

It goes without saying that Mrs R emerged as a paragon who could be relied upon completely. I, on the other hand, had barely waited for the flowers to fade on the late Mrs R’s grave before I was off with a floozy so obviously only after me for my money. It would all end in tears when she ran away with a boy nearer her own age – taking their inheritance with her. Her name was Michelle. That I can only think of one Michelle I know and he’s a French chef called Michel, didn’t matter – they weren’t coming to our wedding and that was that. The only answer was for me to make sure any money I had was protected from her grasp.

Hang on, I protested, I love your mother dearly but she might fall under a bus tomorrow. I could live another 30 years. I could be happily married to someone else for another 25. Do you really expect me to restrict myself for the rest of my life?

        Yes

   Why?

       We’ve told you – we don’t like Michelle

   THERE IS NO MICHELLE!!!  

It was all fairly light-hearted but it serves to illustrate just how easily family discussions can escalate to internecine warfare. Dicken’s fictional Jarndyce and Jarndyce lead a long and sorry line of real and fictional litigants who have seen their inheritance melt away. Examples are easy to find. Peter Ustinov’s family has been battling since his death over a decade ago to the extent that his son is close to bankruptcy and the estate pretty much exhausted by legal fees. More recently, Robin Williams’ widow and children locked horns over the terms of his will. And it’s not even about the money. In Robin Williams’ case they are arguing about his memorabilia, which you’d think would be worth little compared to his overall wealth.

When it comes to estate planning, Inheritance Tax and divorce protection are important, but it is when we encourage family discussions well in advance that we add most value. It is usually when people are hit with the unexpected that things start to turn nasty. As with so many things, communication is key.

A trend we’ve seen developing is the move towards a desire to create a legacy – wealth that will be handed down through many generations. Often it’s people who had expected to leave behind a business that could be this legacy, only to realise, late in the day, that their children really weren’t that interested in running the family firm. This is an increasingly familiar situation – the rates of familial business succession have been plummeting for years. When you put a business into the mix, the potential for misunderstanding increases exponentially, making early discussion vital.

Wealth management is usually about helping people build a pot of money and then spend it at a rate that means it doesn’t run out before they do. Because we expect people to use most of their money during their retirement we must invest in reasonably liquid assets – we need to know that when we need the money we’ll be able to get it.

Taking an intergenerational view fundamentally alters our approach. Rather than managing a portfolio to sustain an income through a retirement with perhaps a bit left over at the end for family and friends, legacy planning starts with the assumption that the portfolio will be invested to create an indefinite income that spans generations. Relieved of the burden of maintaining liquidity we can look at longer-term trends.

For example, investing in a basket of developed market shares for five years will give a better return than cash just two thirds of the time. Not bad but hardly compelling. Extend the investment period to fifteen years and your basket will outperform cash over 90% of the time.

Similarly, small companies outperform large companies in two out of every three years but 95% of the time over fifteen years. Having an indefinite investment horizon means we can take advantage of these persistent factor advantages. It also means we can, more or less, close our eyes to capital value volatility and concentrate instead on creating a rising income stream.

We can also look to other indefinite investors such as the endowment funds of Ivy League universities for examples of alternative approaches. The Yale endowment fund runs to $25bn. Its investment allocation looks very different to a typical individual portfolio. Up to 50% of the fund is held in illiquid assets (venture capital, leveraged buyouts, real estate and natural resources) with only 4% of the fund in domestic (US) equities.

We can think about investments that reflect underlying socio-economic, industrial and political trends such as an aging population, the rise in robotics or the increasing importance of clean, reliable water supplies, gaining exposure to these areas through a growing number of specialist thematic investment funds. Having a team of enthusiastic economists makes us well placed to assess these opportunities.

None of which should bother the Ross children – Michelle would have spent the money long before any of the trends play out…

In its first year of existence, Shared Parental Leave was accessed by less than 1% of families. An overnight success it was not. We were amongst the early adopters of the scheme and it was an absolute gift to our family. Long before the Government announced its new legislation, we had decided to share the childcare in the first year of our baby’s life, so, the announcement that we could, in effect, ‘share’ my maternity was absolutely timely – and welcome.

And for us, the process itself was relatively straightforward. We were the ‘guinea pigs’ in both our companies but this did not pose any issues with the actual procedure. Forms filled in, timescales agreed, maternity pay handover confirmed and we were on our way.

But whilst the law has changed, mindsets need to catch up. Our approach met with some surprised commentary from people we encountered, evidence then that societally, we still have some way to go before equality around parental leave becomes the norm.

And companies are in a great position to be able to help to normalise parental equity in their organisational culture and within their policies and procedures. The provision for women during maternity leave – such as Keeping In Touch days and regular communications – should also become the standard for fathers taking Shared Parental Leave. Businesses might also want to consider their processes for welcoming returning fathers; in the same way that companies may support a phased or flexible return for mothers, the same could apply for fathers. Consistency is the key so that whichever parent it is, they are treated equitably.

But it’s not just the practical steps which companies can take. There also needs to be an understanding and recognition of the emotional impact upon a father returning to work from parental leave. Just as it is widely understood and anticipated that mothers may feel conflicted and vulnerable during those first few days and weeks, the same might be true for the returning father. As such, we need to offer him just as much emotional support and care as we would a mother.

And this doesn’t just apply to fathers taking Shared Parental Leave. The whole process of having a child is mind-blowingly life-changing. It alters everything – our perceptions, our feelings, our concerns, our priorities. The same sensitivity we apply to new mothers should also be extended to new fathers. I have often wondered at how tough it must be for the father returning to work after the usual two weeks’ paternity leave to just ‘get back to normal.’ Because normal doesn’t exist anymore. And managers need to recognise this and pay consideration to this shift through caring inquiry and a focus on wellbeing.

Of course, we are all unique and becoming a parent will affect mothers and fathers differently. But by supporting parental parity through policies and management approaches, employers can help to empower their people to make the parental leave choices that are right for them and their families. And in doing so, increase employee satisfaction and impact positively upon wellbeing.

Holiday Park owners:  Have you rolled out  WiFi across your Holiday Park?

Does it consist of Access Points placed in strategic areas around the park?  Have you been shown heat-map and coverage maps showing how great the signal is?  And yet you still deal with complaints regarding how slow the internet is, that the signal is weak and a refund should be given?

Traditional WiFi systems consist of External Access Points dotted around the park, which provide a great signal outdoors, but this signal cannot adequately pass into the dwellings below show in the diagram below.  Dwellings within the repeater range can typically expect a 30dB drop in signal due to the construction materials, foil insulation and thermal bronzed glass resulting in difficulty connecting, slow speeds and frequent drop offs.

The above scenario is played out across pretty much every holiday park in the UK.  Wide Area coverage was suitable circa 4 years ago, but clients expectations have changed significantly, as has technology.  TV is now Catchup TV, Netfix, Amazon Prime and BBC Iplayer.  Even learning how to drain your Caravan down will now have a High Definition guide on YouTube.  MP3 music is now streaming Spotify, books are Kindles and even the telephone has been replaced with Skype and Facetime.

There is a solution that will allow you to meet these demands allowing you to provide fast internet, low latency and strong signal inside the caravan.  As a bonus, it also provides a secure network using WPA2 rather than the insecure, open networks found today.   Staff networks, CCTV and building links can also be ran across this network allowing for a long life-cycle, value for money solution that grows with you ( rather than being outgrown in a few years ).

Using a Fibre to the Cabinet style deployment consists of a fibre ring installed around the park which is broken out to Ethernet to feed to each dwelling that subscribes to the internet.  An internal router is installed that transmits both a secure SSID for the occupants to use, a Guest WiFi signal for those they opt for a PAYG service and even a staff network to allow housekeeping and maintenance staff access to management systems whilst working around site.

To find out more about our Fibre To the Cabinet and solutions, as well as our standard Holiday Park WiFi please get in touch.

Recently there have been some fantastic innovations when it comes to fabrics for made to measure blinds.

Motorisation is growing in popularity, but it is the treatment of fabrics that has become really cutting edge, including a fabric that can help with hayfever relief.

Around 16,000 people in the UK suffer from hayfever, which is essentially an allergy to pollen. The pollen season extends from March to October and hayfever not only affects people’s efficiency at work (92% of people say it affects their work capability), it also seems to strike at its worst during the exam season.

With exams coming up in a few months’ time, now is a great time to install these new blinds. The blinds are made from fabric that has been treated with Pollergen. Pollergen is a unique product created by Louvolite.

When a fabric is treated with Pollergen, it captures pollen and makes it harmless.

Louvolite says:

“Does it really work? Well, independent testing by the National Pollen and Aerobiology Research unit has concluded that a Pollergen-treated fabric shows over 50% reduction in grass pollen allergen when compared to an untreated control fabric. So simply put – yes, it does work.”

Because Pollergen is a coating for fabric, choosing these blinds won’t cramp your style; you will still have an amazing choice of Louvolite fabrics for your made to measure blinds. Pollergen is available for Roller blinds, Vertical blinds and Pleated blinds,  for the home and office.

Combine these blinds with the anti-pollen mesh on fly screens for your doors for even more protection.

So, with that exciting news, what else is new in the world of blinds?

Louvolite have excelled themselves this year. Their Vision blinds have already been popular for a few years but now they have introduced a three-dimensional version called Visage blinds.

Vision blinds are a mix of fabric and mesh which can be alternated to allow in partial light or pulled down for full privacy.

Visage blinds build on that by adding alternate sheer and opaque vanes to give an added dimension.

In essence, these blinds look sophisticated as well as giving you more choice in terms of light control and privacy than normal blinds.

For children, Louvolite has also this month introduced “Night Night Glow” a fabric which glows in the dark for half an hour, helping your child get to sleep.

All of these blinds are available from Norwich Sunblinds.

Pop into the shop in St Benedicts Street, Norwich, or book an appointment online. We will visit you to measure up and discuss the best fabrics and blinds for your needs. The blinds are made in Attleborough by local craftspeople to your exact requirements and are fitted for you.

Recently there have been some fantastic innovations when it comes to fabrics for made to measure blinds.

Motorisation is growing in popularity, but it is the treatment of fabrics that has become really cutting edge, including a fabric that can help with hayfever relief.

Around 16,000 people in the UK suffer from hayfever, which is essentially an allergy to pollen. The pollen season extends from March to October and hayfever not only affects people’s efficiency at work (92% of people say it affects their work capability), it also seems to strike at its worst during the exam season.

With exams coming up in a few months’ time, now is a great time to install these new blinds. The blinds are made from fabric that has been treated with Pollergen. Pollergen is a unique product created by Louvolite.

When a fabric is treated with Pollergen, it captures pollen and makes it harmless.

Louvolite says:

“Does it really work? Well, independent testing by the National Pollen and Aerobiology Research unit has concluded that a Pollergen-treated fabric shows over 50% reduction in grass pollen allergen when compared to an untreated control fabric. So simply put – yes, it does work.”

Because Pollergen is a coating for fabric, choosing these blinds won’t cramp your style; you will still have an amazing choice of Louvolite fabrics for your made to measure blinds. Pollergen is available for Roller blinds, Vertical blinds and Pleated blinds,  for the home and office.

Combine these blinds with the anti-pollen mesh on fly screens for your doors for even more protection.

So, with that exciting news, what else is new in the world of blinds?

Louvolite have excelled themselves this year. Their Vision blinds have already been popular for a few years but now they have introduced a three-dimensional version called Visage blinds.

Vision blinds are a mix of fabric and mesh which can be alternated to allow in partial light or pulled down for full privacy.

Visage blinds build on that by adding alternate sheer and opaque vanes to give an added dimension.

In essence, these blinds look sophisticated as well as giving you more choice in terms of light control and privacy than normal blinds.

For children, Louvolite has also this month introduced “Night Night Glow” a fabric which glows in the dark for half an hour, helping your child get to sleep.

All of these blinds are available from Norwich Sunblinds.

Pop into the shop in St Benedicts Street, Norwich, or book an appointment online. We will visit you to measure up and discuss the best fabrics and blinds for your needs. The blinds are made in Attleborough by local craftspeople to your exact requirements and are fitted for you.

Last year, a study found that just 40 per cent of employees are satisfied in their jobs.*

This is bad for business. And it’s bad for the individual.

An unhappy employee creates costs – financially, reputationally and in terms of morale. Dissatisfaction shows itself though reduced productivity, poor customer service and lack of innovation. An unhappy employee will not feel motivated to excel in their role or deliver continuous improvement. Indeed, this unhappiness may also lead to stress or depression – which can create absence, in some cases, long-term. And when a dissatisfied employee decides to leave a company, this not only creates financial loss – through recruitment costs or interim arrangements – but loss of skills and knowledge.

An unhappy employee can diminish a company’s reputation. A jaded remark or critical comment, in person or through the easily accessible social media route, will have a ripple effect, helping to shape a negative image. This can impact upon a whole range of existing and potential audiences including employees, customers, partners, and suppliers.

And unhappiness can be contagious within the workforce. A dissatisfied employee can lead to others questioning their own relationship with their employer. The result can be a serious dent in morale which could manifest itself in a range of ways, such as through performance and behaviours.

But aside from the very obvious business case for delivering employee satisfaction, morally, do we really want our people feeling dissatisfied? Whether full or part-time, our work consumes a huge amount of our time and energy – both doing it and thinking about it. To spend such an amount of precious life in discontentment to me is unethical. We all have the right to be happy – including in the workplace.

Which is why I feel so passionate about transformational engagement and the satisfaction it can bring. I believe in companies who engage – who ask, who listen, who recognise, who reward, who are open, who are authentic, who tell their employees ‘you make a difference.’ It is these companies which will thrive and grow and succeed because they are built around satisfied employees.

I have been fortunate to work for a company which empowered me through engagement and which valued me for the contribution I could make – and which allowed me to be me. I want this for everyone. Not least of all I want it for my daughter. One day she will be in the workplace and I want her to feel valued, supported, involved and empowered so her confidence grows and her happiness soars. And I am going to do all that I can to support this to happen.

*CIPD Employee Outlook Spring 2016 https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/employee-outlook-spring-2016_tcm18-10903.pdf

I’m not really sure if I like mazes.

Hampton Court was my nemesis – the grim realisation, as I found myself at yet another dead end, that although I knew there must be a way out there was no guarantee I’d find it. Around half an hour of being certain I’d trudged past the same spot for the fifth time the novelty started to wear off and I began to ponder the wisdom of going into something with no idea of how I was going to get out.

Which is pretty much how most of us approach our businesses. Speak to any business guru about the essential considerations for a start-up and an exit strategy will be high on the list yet it will be far from the minds of the majority of people setting up a new business.

Which is a shame, because it is often only when the time comes to sell the business that the lack of an exit strategy hits home. The Government estimates* that around 100,000 otherwise viable businesses close each year simply because no-one wants to take them on. With the average age of small business owners steadily increasing succession failure is a growing issue.

Here are five of the top causes of succession failure:

• Unclear business objectives – If the owner is more concerned with their lifestyle outside of the business, the likelihood is the goals and direction of the business may have been put on the back burner. Businesses with clearly formed objectives and evidence of working towards them are more attractive. This level of business focus also points towards the business having some form of succession plan in place.

• Poor business performance – For most, poor performing businesses are not attractive ventures. Looking to exit when your business isn’t doing well doesn’t give the best impression to a possible successor, especially if there’s no clear pre-existing exit plan.

• Business reliant on specialised knowledge –The more reliant your business is on you, the less stable the business is as a whole. If you can distance yourself from the core of the business’ processes, the better it will look to a potential successor. A successful and efficient business is far more attractive than one heavily reliant on a celebrated owner. Once that owner has transferred, what is there to say business will still thrive? Well established systems and processes can easily fall apart once you remove the vital operational knowhow. 

• Lack of transfer planning – There needs to be time for this knowhow to be passed on and retained in the business, so start early! Transfer plans are generally considered too late, or only when the survival of the business is relying on it. The longer the handover period the better, as it leaves a bigger window of opportunity for the specialised knowledge of the outgoing owner to be transferred.

• No suitable or willing succession candidate –  Sometimes the most adept candidate for succession is a third party, but there may be reservations in transferring your business over to someone you might not know so well. For this reason, family and internal transfers and are historically very common. Whilst you might trust a family member or current employee more than an external candidate, just because they are closer to you it doesn’t mean they will have the necessary skills… or even the want to do it. Recalling the issue about the lack of transfer planning, a longer transfer period provides the opportunity to build a rapport with the third party, or develop the employee’s/relative’s skills, resulting in the perfect succession candidate.

In short, when considering business succession, the earlier you start planning for exit the better. It’s inevitable, so do not put it off until it’s too late to plan adequately. An early, well formulated and ongoing development plan coupled with clear business objectives can be the key to ensuring the best possible outcome from a business transfer.

If you want to find out more about succession planning why not sign up for one of our masterclasses on 22nd February. More details here 

Free translation for most of us is a really great thing – I totally want to see it happen. And given that my entire business and livelihood rests on selling translation and language services, many people find that surprising. But, we need to make a distinction between what Machine Translation (MT) currently can and can’t be used for. I believe the point is summed up nicely by stories like this.

Without going into excessive detail, there’s a few things the world should know about how free translation engines work – or, more to the point, how they get fed with language in the first place.

Every time you create a webpage, as a developer you add a language code to it (whether you know it or not). Google can therefore detract, with some confidence, what language it is written in – without a person ever looking at it. They then begin matching up all the different sentences or phrases they find and assign meaning to it. So we essentially have language 1 and language 2. Machine Translation engines look at how a phrase in language 1 is written and check this text against all the millions of different sources they have in language 2.

So, when you go to Google Translate and ask it how to say a phrase in language 2, it will give you what it believes to be the most likely response. Often it’s right. Or, near enough. Some of what it’s looking at could be taken from parallel texts of a professionally translated document that the engine has accessed – so as you can imagine, that’s going to be pretty good.

But ultimately, this model depends on sourcing and taking in more and more data, evaluating more and more content based on the way we talk – it can access this information through your chat & social media apps, through blogs and webpages. The problem is that more data does not lead to better quality. In fact, it means the opposite. It simply means that it captures whatever is out there.

So, it scans a lot of content in the public sphere, such as content linking the idea of Daesh and Saudi Arabia, and therefore considers that one is the most likely translation of the other, or incorrectly maps those words to the corresponding words in other languages.

And it doesn’t stop there.

This undoubtedly wasn’t an intentional act by Google – but as it said in its defence, “…Our systems produce translations automatically based on existing translation on the web, so we appreciate when users point out issues such as this.” (Source, Business Insider UK)

To quantify that, their engines blindly scan content created and discussed amongst large numbers of people, in lots of different languages, and match up this content across these languages (without ever reading it). The billions of words that get poured into the web every day in every language are being constantly compared, lined up and matched against similar foreign versions.

This automatic process is not designed to focus on proper speech or what we know to be ‘right’, but simply by what’s more commonly used. The fundamental problem is that in many cases, what’s really happening is the inclusion of incorrect data, or short term trends in word usage. This may well not prevent most users from getting great value from MT, either as a conversation aid, assisting with basic travel and survival language or even as a learning tool, but this data acquisition method is very likely to cause damaging results if relied upon for business or professional purposes.

Unfortunately, the likelihood is that as social media grows, along with the amount of input and breadth of data being fed into machine translation, they’re actually going to get worse, before they get any better.

Technology is developing constantly; communication is becoming faster and the exchange of ideas and information easier. Considering how quickly things are evolving, it’s shocking to discover that the legislation protecting our data hasn’t been updated since 1998! That was the year that Apple introduced the first iMac, Google had its first Doodle and someone hit Bill Gates in the face with a pie (a dissatisfied Windows 98 user perhaps?). Our data protection laws are as out of date as Apple making desktop computers in see-through candy colours. The state of information is unrecognisable from that time and the laws protecting it have been in dire need of an update. Cue an intervention from the EU.   After four years of work the new ‘General Data Protection Regulation’ will detail how data should be stored, how it should be used and when it should be destroyed. The public will have more control over their personal data and businesses will have a more simple set of regulations to follow when using said data. ‘Data’ in this case, refers to anything that might be used to identify an individual, including cultural and economic information as well as mental health details and even IP addresses and other online identifiers. If information held under pseudonyms has the potential to identify an individual this could also be classed as personal data. The GDPR has widened the definition of ‘data’ significantly.   The fines for those who do not comply with the GDPR are hefty (£20 million is no trifling sum) but businesses have until 25th May 2018 to bring their systems into line. The new regulations also apply to companies who process data on behalf of businesses, so developers need to be aware of the legislation too.   The basic principles are:

• Data must be processed lawfully, transparently, and for a specific purpose
• Data must be deleted when no longer required or it has served its specific purpose
• Consent to keep and use data must be actively obtained and recorded
• The public have the right to request, update, rectify or move their data or have it destroyed altogether
• Data owners must also check the compliance of any processors they may use
• Data breaches should be reported to those affected immediately and to the Information Commissioner’s Office within 72 hours
• Companies outside of the EU are still subject to GDPR when processing or controlling data of individuals within the EU

Some of you may have already thought that as the UK is leaving the EU, their regulations don’t apply, but this isn’t the case. The UK will still be part of the European Union by the time the GDPR is in full force, and even after we leave the EU we still need to be able to work with them. Digital minister Matt Hancock said the GDPR should become part of UK law as it was a “decent piece of legislation”. He has emphasised the importance of uniform standards in order to maintain data exchanges with the likes of the EU and the US, and that the UK would meet the standards set out by the Union rather than asking them to meet ours.   For an in-depth guide on how to become GDPR compliant see the article below:

Brrringg brrringg…

You’ve had a great weekend, bought that new pair of trainers you wanted, been a little hungover on Sunday and then bam! It’s Monday morning.

You wake up, get ready and make your way to work.  Walk in, sit at your desk, take a sip of the much needed coffee and then it hits you like a tonne of bricks.

It doesn’t care if you aren’t ready, halfway through navigating a spreadsheet, deep in thought or just need a minute…it wants your attention and it wants it NOW.

Jade’s Experience

For more than 10 years, I have been managing people who, when they first start, have what I like to call ‘phone fear’ a little from incoming calls but the vast majority from outgoing calls.  It is a fear that people can’t put into words. They don’t want to pick the phone up and will do anything else to avoid making a call.

One of my colleagues Jade suffered with phone fear, and she has been kind enough to share her experiences.

“When I first started working at Indigo Swan almost three years ago I had terrible phone fear. The thought of picking up the phone and ringing someone absolutely terrified me.

My biggest apprehension about picking up the phone was being asked a question I didn’t know the answer to. What if a client asked me something really complicated and I said the wrong thing and sounded really unprofessional? I have learnt that it’s not unprofessional to not know the answer; it’s unprofessional to give information that is not accurate.

The biggest thing I have learnt is that it is another human being at the end of the line. We all have our flaws and weaknesses, and that other person is probably just as nervous as you. Being nervous about making calls is such a common fear but one that can be overcome.“

What I find most strange about phone fear is that all the people I speak to about it are people that have no problem talking in meetings, or speaking to strangers in a bar. It seems speaking to someone on the phone is more daunting than a person-to-person conversation and I believe it stems from two main places.

Lack of cues

It’s not inherently the actual words that can cause the issues but the gaps in between – without the aid of subtle facial expression changes or visual cues from the other person, we can’t tell what they’re thinking. Are they silent because we’ve confused them? Are they processing the information we’ve given them? Perhaps they’re nodding in agreement. All we hear is silence at the other end of the line, which can be awkward or feel damning.

So if you are suffering from phone fear it maybe because you are the sort of person that relies heavily on visual cues but have no idea that you do.

Anxiety

Everyone will get phone fear to a certain degree – new job, new product, change of job role, new person to speak to etc – but it’s making sure that it subsides with time. You should be mindful not to get stuck in it.

Because there is a lot more focus on just the two voices in a call, I think a lot of people worry that the person on the other end will hear in their voice how nervous they are. That leads to negative thoughts like “I’m going to look like an idiot” or “they all know I know nothing about what I am talking about”.

Which is no good and, as Jade mentioned, it is just another person at the end of the line.

Here are my top tips to help you overcome the fear

1. Know your stuff. If you have been trained well and given the right support, then you will be confident in what you are talking about. If not, find out.
2. Be honest. Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know the answer to a question. Being honest is so much better than having to ramble your way through an answer that doesn’t make any sense.
3. Get help. By putting someone on hold and asking a colleague to help you, you will give the caller more confidence in your proactive ability to get things done, and it’ll allow your confidence to grow for when you are faced with a similar question in the future.
4. Build up to it. If you are based in a quiet office, see if there is somewhere you can go that is more private when making your first few calls. Everyone around you wants you to do well and should be willing, where possible, to give you the support you need.
5. Practice, Practice, Practice. Set up some test calls with your colleagues. Let people know you struggle with this, do some role play on a tough call, the more practice you can do, the better you will become.

The most important thing to remember is you’ve got this. It’s just another skill to learn, practice and get better at, like any other. And, unless you have Telephonophobia (the irrational fear of phones), you will get better.

No one is expecting you to be 100% perfect all the time, just know what your outcome is before you pick up the phone, keep at it and before long I guarantee you’ll come off a call with a smile on your face.