Norfolk Community Foundation is currently helping to deliver a grants scheme for local businesses wanting to grow.
Norwich 4 New Enterprise (N4NE) grants programme is a scheme that has the support of a number of local organisations who make up the decision making panel including Aviva, Mills & Reeve, Norfolk County Council and Norwich City Council.
Up to £5,000 per grant is available for existing organisations based in Norwich, Broadland or South Norfolk, with at least 12 months trading accounts and employing up to 10 people. The panel would like to see evidence of 50% match funding towards the total cost. The funding must be used to support business growth, which will either create at least one new job or demonstrate that the business has growth potential within 12 months. The grant can be used to develop new products or services, procure professional services, undertake training and skills development, the acquisition of capital equipment, refurbishment of premises or the purchase of equipment or machinery.
You can find out more, including how to apply here: www.norfolkfoundation.com/funds/norwich-4-new-enterprise/
For an informal discussion, contact Anna Douglas, director of marketing and development at Norfolk Community Foundation on 01603 623958.
Norwich’s MIGSOLV enables tech firm to launch high-performance 2-hour disaster recovery service
Tech company Core DataCloud is today launching a high-performance cloud-based data backup and disaster recovery service run from the ultra-secure Norwich data centre operated by Norfolk Chamber Gold Patron MIGSOLV.
The new service is aimed at mid-market companies. It provides competitively-priced data backup and high-performance disaster recovery – enabling customers to get their systems fully up and running within two hours. It is based on specialised hardware from Nimble Storage.
Core DataCloud has already had IT systems within MIGSOLV’s Gatehouse data centre in Norwich for two years. The company is now extending its presence within the Gatehouse to deliver the new service.
Sharad Saggar, Core DataCloud’s CEO, explains: “Launching this service is a major step forward for us – enabling us to offer value for money backup and extremely fast, effective disaster recovery.”
Saggar continues: “Every organisation should know exactly how and where its data is being stored. Simply hoping it’s safe somewhere ‘in the cloud’ isn’t good enough, as a cloud service is only as reliable as the hardware and data centre that support it. We’ve selected Nimble’s hardware as the most flexible, scalable and cost-effective platform. And MIGSOLV’s data centre was an obvious choice as one of the most secure in the country, outside London and backed by an agile, customer-friendly team”.
David Manning, Managing Director of MIGSOLV, comments: “We’re proud that our data centre and bandwidth services are playing their part in enabling Core DataCloud to launch its new services. The company is already a valued customer and it’s a great testament to our relationship that it’s expanding its footprint within our facility to support this new development.”
Core DataCloud is an ISO 27001-accredited managed IT services provider which was founded in 1998. It specialises in providing UK and European organisations with backup, disaster recovery and cloud storage services. For more, see www.coredatacloud.com.
MIGSOLV provides IT colocation from its ultra-secure Gatehouse data centre in Norwich. It provides flexible rack space to public bodies and companies from small organisations to large enterprises, backed by an IT migration service and comprehensive, round-the-clock support. See www.migsolv.com.
Nimble Storage, with revenues exceeding $300 million, was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in California. It has more than 10,000 customers in over 50 countries and more than 1,000 employees. The company says its storage systems allow its customers to access data 10 times faster and protect five times more apps than competitor systems. See www.nimblestorage.com.
We are thrilled to announce that we are now working in association with Vaccoda Design with Radiant Kitchens, based in Enfield in North London; providing a multitude of different kitchens, designs and improvements to homes across London. Radiant Kitchens approached us through their development team as they needed search engine optimisation (SEO) work for their website.
In the past few months they have required a degree of work to ensure their site is found for potential clients and customers making relevant searches online. With a set budget in place for the coming months, Radiant Kitchens have been seeking a way to make their money go further and with a strong SEO strategy in place have already seen a number of improvements to their website, leading to increases in site traffic.
With their website using the very search engine-friendly WordPress content management system (CMS), it has been a seamless, getting their website up to speed and ensuring that Google and other search engines are able to better crawl their site.
Initially embarking upon cleaning up their existing site and making sure that the current offerings in their site are as SEO-friendly as possible, we have seen improvements to their site speed, internal link structure and have improved the user experience and user journeys for their website.
From the outset, we ensured that all pages on their site, including product pages, landing pages and their homepage and about us pages were ordered and organised to guide users through a journey; leading them to the point of contact or sale. This was achieved by making the offerings and information on site pages clearer and more prominent. By ensuring that contact information is appropriately placed and easily seen and making sure the focus of each page is clear, users are more inclined to enquire about their products and offerings.
We have cleaned up all of the meta data on the Radiant Kitchens website to make sure than all meta keywords are removed (as they are part of very outdated SEO practices) and that all meta titles and descriptions are fully optimised; taking target keywords into account and adhering to the strict character limits of search engines, whilst getting the brand’s message across to customers and prospective clients alike. By making sure all of their meta data is optimised has meant that their position and visibility as well as message have been greatly improved across search engines.
We have also applied alt-texts to all of the images on the Radiant Kitchens website. This ensures that Google and other search engines can ‘read’ the images and rank the pages appropriately. In addition it has allowed the site to see images of products ranked on Google Image Search, providing increased visibility.
We are in the process of implementing a comprehensive content strategy for Radiant Kitchens, to provide bespoke pages of content around each of their services, their areas covered and their range of products and we look forward to furthering our progress and our ongoing relationship with the team at Radiant Kitchens.
Finance Apprentice, Adam Newton and Director, Elizabeth Claxton, from Rostrons Accountants were asked by AAT (the UK’s leading qualifications and membership body for voactional accountants) to discuss their apprenticeship experiences.
Adam’s story highlights how difficult it can be for school leavers to secure the right opportunity and the benefits of working within a skilled and tight-knit team. Elizabeth discusses the challenge of finding and linking up with a high calibre apprentice provider.
When Sabah Meddings, former EDP Business features writer, researched the top 100 EDP businesses, she found that as few as 74 of the 526 board members were female and a startling 57 firms had male only boards. The benefits of having female representation on boards have been widely discussed and interestingly none of the FTSE 100 companies have male only boards. For Norfolk to keep pace with the rest of the country and respond to the growth opportunities in our region, we need to create opportunities for women at the highest level.
The concept of “We Can” emerged after talking with women in leadership roles in the region and reading about the EDP research. At Rostrons, we were becoming increasingly aware of the absence of a female forum at a top level to share ideas and experiences and to provide a support for future female talent in Norfolk.
Led by 3 female directors, at Rostrons we feel both privileged to have the opportunity to work at a senior level and motivated and responsible for supporting other women achieve their career ambitions. Historically some senior women have been criticised for “pulling up the drawbridge” once they have made it themselves. We believe that if you nurture and support your region, ultimately you and your business will develop and grow too.
Looking to our professional contacts and client base as a start point, we assembled a group of successful women to see if there was an appetite to create a forum or group and identify what we might all wish to gain from it. Our plans and thoughts were deliberately embryonic. We wanted the future steps to be shaped by those who joined us.
Our first meeting took place in November and as a group of 12, we represented some of the region’s top professional services firms and pressure groups. We quickly realised that as well as identifying a need for action, we had also linked up with a group of women similarly as motivated and excited about doing something to make a difference. At that initial meeting we agreed that to make a change, we needed to be action orientated and there were two key areas where we should focus on first:
· Creating a network to advertise and gain support for women to achieve target board positions in Norfolk
· Harnessing the wealth of skills within our group to offer an unparalleled mentoring opportunity for aspiring women.
Since then we have grown our support base as other high profile women in the region have become involved and our next steps are to organise a working session to translate ideas into action.
Naked Marketing was honoured to be involved in the 10th National Apprenticeship Week this March by volunteering to take part in mock interviews at Develop.
The purpose of the week is to encourage more people to choose apprenticeships as a fast-track to a great career. We sent Jodie along to interview students for a graphic design role which required a highly motivated individual with creative flair, good computer skills and a strong knowledge of the industry standard design software.
Jodie interviewed five students in total with 95% of them finding the process very useful and half of them said they would strongly consider an apprenticeship as their preferred progression following education. That sounds like great feedback in our eyes! Jodie comments: “We all know job interviews can be incredibly scary, especially to those yet to step into the world of employment. To be able to help the students learn and gain the skills required was a great privileged.”
Ellis, one of the students taking part commented: “I felt nervous going into the interview, but once I got into the interview and starting talking to Jodie it became more easier to be myself and to come out of my shell. The experience was great and I really enjoyed It. Overall, the interview has given me an insight into what an interview is like and has helped me for when I will have an interview for a job one day.”
Develop is a not-for-profit organisation which delivers a comprehensive range of education and training programmes across the Eastern region for young people from ages 14-19.
Staff who drive for work at greater risk of being involved in a collision. Statistics show that work related road crashes are the biggest cause of work related accidental deaths. Every year up to 600 deaths involve someone driving for work and approximately one in three crashes will involve an at-work driver.* With tough mobile phone legislation having recently been introduced it’s even more important employers consider the implications and potential risks of staff who drive for work. Norfolk County Council is launching a campaign to help businesses get the advice and training they need to keep staff who drive for work safe on the roads. Under current legislation employers are legally responsible for their employees’ safety whilst driving for work – even if employees are in their own cars. With new technology, in car distractions have never been higher so there are lots of opportunities for drivers to take their eyes off the road, even for a split second. Iain Temperton Casualty Reduction Education and Development manager said: “That split second of lost concentration could mean the difference between life and death. Our main priority within the Road Safety team at Norfolk County Council is to help make Norfolk roads safe. By providing bespoke advice and driver training to businesses across the region we can help minimise the risk facing their staff who drive for work. Employers have a corporate responsibility to their staff and we work with businesses from all over the county to help ensure they have a robust driving for work policy in place, and that their staff can drive smarter and safer on the roads.” Cllr Martin Wilby chair of the Environment, Development and Transport Committee said: ” The driving courses offered by Norfolk County Council are an extremely effective way of getting individuals who drive for work to be more aware of the distractions that exist on the road. I would urge any local businesses whose staff drive for work to evaluate their driving for work policy to ensure the risks to their staff are minimised.” HR Advisor Lisa from Brown & Co Business & Property Consultants realises just how important driving for business training is for Brown & Co.: “75% of our staff drive for work and with most of them driving long distance and on rural roads we were keen to ensure their safety by whichever means possible. We’ve now put 130 members of our staff through the training provided by Norfolk County Council. The course is run by professionals and covers the most up to date information as well as the most recent legislation and how that affects us as a business. By putting our staff through this training it has allowed us to feel as though we are actively doing something to protect the health and wellbeing of our staff members.” Lisa goes on to say just how much the staff have enjoyed the half day workshops “We’ve had great feedback from the staff attending the course, they found it interesting, useful and it made them stop and think about their own driving habits. ” “Norfolk County Council offered us a flexible approach to our training, with our staff being trained in groups it was a cost effective way of training staff from several branches at the same time. I would definitely recommend the driving for work training courses. We would much rather invest time up front to help minimise the risk of an accident on the road and I’d like to think it benefits the business by having happy, safe employees who know we go that ‘extra mile’ for them. Norfolk County Council offers hands-on training and driver assessment for employees who drive for work as well as theoretical learning and policy writing for fleet managers and health and safety staff. Courses range from 1.5 hours bitesize sessions to full day workshops and can be run at a company’s premises. For more information contact the road safety team at roadsafety@norfolk.gov.uk or visit www.driveforwork.co.uk -ENDS- Notes for Editors *Department for Transport (DfT) 2015
Staff who drive for work at greater risk of being involved in a collision. Statistics show that work related road crashes are the biggest cause of work related accidental deaths. Every year up to 600 deaths involve someone driving for work and approximately one in three crashes will involve an at-work driver.* With tough mobile phone legislation having recently been introduced it’s even more important employers consider the implications and potential risks of staff who drive for work. Norfolk County Council is launching a campaign to help businesses get the advice and training they need to keep staff who drive for work safe on the roads. Under current legislation employers are legally responsible for their employees’ safety whilst driving for work – even if employees are in their own cars. With new technology, in car distractions have never been higher so there are lots of opportunities for drivers to take their eyes off the road, even for a split second. Iain Temperton Casualty Reduction Education and Development manager said: “That split second of lost concentration could mean the difference between life and death. Our main priority within the Road Safety team at Norfolk County Council is to help make Norfolk roads safe. By providing bespoke advice and driver training to businesses across the region we can help minimise the risk facing their staff who drive for work. Employers have a corporate responsibility to their staff and we work with businesses from all over the county to help ensure they have a robust driving for work policy in place, and that their staff can drive smarter and safer on the roads.” Cllr Martin Wilby chair of the Environment, Development and Transport Committee said: ” The driving courses offered by Norfolk County Council are an extremely effective way of getting individuals who drive for work to be more aware of the distractions that exist on the road. I would urge any local businesses whose staff drive for work to evaluate their driving for work policy to ensure the risks to their staff are minimised.” HR Advisor Lisa from Brown & Co Business & Property Consultants realises just how important driving for business training is for Brown & Co.: “75% of our staff drive for work and with most of them driving long distance and on rural roads we were keen to ensure their safety by whichever means possible. We’ve now put 130 members of our staff through the training provided by Norfolk County Council. The course is run by professionals and covers the most up to date information as well as the most recent legislation and how that affects us as a business. By putting our staff through this training it has allowed us to feel as though we are actively doing something to protect the health and wellbeing of our staff members.” Lisa goes on to say just how much the staff have enjoyed the half day workshops “We’ve had great feedback from the staff attending the course, they found it interesting, useful and it made them stop and think about their own driving habits. ” “Norfolk County Council offered us a flexible approach to our training, with our staff being trained in groups it was a cost effective way of training staff from several branches at the same time. I would definitely recommend the driving for work training courses. We would much rather invest time up front to help minimise the risk of an accident on the road and I’d like to think it benefits the business by having happy, safe employees who know we go that ‘extra mile’ for them. Norfolk County Council offers hands-on training and driver assessment for employees who drive for work as well as theoretical learning and policy writing for fleet managers and health and safety staff. Courses range from 1.5 hours bitesize sessions to full day workshops and can be run at a company’s premises. For more information contact the road safety team at roadsafety@norfolk.gov.uk or visit www.driveforwork.co.uk -ENDS- Notes for Editors *Department for Transport (DfT) 2015
This year, Norwich-based Thurne High Speed Slicing Systems celebrate their 50th anniversary, looking back at fifty years of innovative engineering for the food industry. Founded as a general engineering company in 1967, the early years saw the company design and manufacture a diverse and intriguing range of products that spanned across industries, from industrial carrot toppers and egg peelers to book sawing and binding equipment for the printing industry. Thurne has come a long way since then, focusing on slicing technology and releasing a series of industry leading innovations, from the first slicers to use vision, scanning and microprocessor technologies to automatic high speed slicing and packing lines. Company President Peter Jongen explains: “The ‘Thurne’ name pretty much held ‘Hoover status’ in slicing technology in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The brand was renowned for pushing the boundaries and offering state-of-the-art equipment.” A large percentage of the slicers built are exported around the globe. Part of The Middleby Corporation’s Food Processing Group since 2015, Thurne continues to work closely with customers and suppliers to develop slicers that challenge the status quo. “There is always room for improvement”, knows Jongen, “Our dedication to continuous innovation has enabled us to flourish over the past fifty years, and we are looking to the future. We are investing strongly in developing talent in-house, working with local colleges offering apprenticeships to nurture the innovators of the future.” Innovators of the Future Five apprentices and trainees have joined Thurne over the last twelve months, working towards qualifications in electrical and mechanical engineering as well as CNC programming and operation. The apprentices attend classes at Great Yarmouth College and receive hands on training at Thurne’s Pinetrees Road factory, with experienced members of staff serving as mentors. The programme has been a great success. “We’re proud that three of our apprentices have been winners in this year’s Great Yarmouth College apprenticeship awards.” Thurne employs 72 engineering, assembly, service support and administration staff at their Pinetrees Road factory. Find out more about Thurne’s History of innovation at www.thurne.com/timeline.html
As part of their 2017 charity initiative supporting Break, a team of staff members from East Anglian recruitment company Cooper Lomaz will be participating in the National Three Peaks Challenge. The incredibly tough challenge, which is popular amongst charity fundraisers, will see the team attempting to climb the three highest mountains – Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike & Snowden – in the British Isles within 24 hours.
The team of 9, which is made up from a mixture of Directors, Recruitment Consultants and Support Staff, will commence the challenge on 30th June 2017 and complete it on the 2nd of July.
Cooper Lomaz is doing the National Three Peaks Challenge in order to raise money for Break, their chosen corporate charity of 2017. Cooper Lomaz chose Break as its charity because of their strong family values which are in line with the great work that Break does, supporting children and families within Norfolk.
Operations Director, Mark Fletcher says “We are excited to be putting ourselves through the paces, doing this incredibly tough challenge in order to raise money for those who need it most. As a father of four young children, I can really empathise with the work that Break is doing for families”
The National Three Peaks Challenge will see the team – Emma O’Brien, Matt Barber, Richard Beastall, Stuart Wilson, Alex Hall, Mark Fletcher, Phillip Watson, Simon Brown & Liam Flegg – walk a total of 27 miles and ascending a whopping 9,800ft.
Commercial Director, Simon Brown says “Teamwork is not just about what happens in the office, but also outside whether it’s social events or work within the community. As tough as it will be, it will also be a fun challenge and we’re incredibly excited to train and achieve this as a team”
This year Cooper Lomaz has set a target of raising £10,000 for Break through their many charity events such as a Firewalk, Dress Down Days and a Bake Sale amongst other events that are to be confirmed.