Five superpowers of strong customer facing teams

We’ve entered into one of our busiest periods at the moment, and we’ve worked hard on planning and preparation to ensure that we deliver the best possible experience, despite the volumes of work.  A key part of that preparation is thinking about the customer facing people, and how ready they are for the extra work.…

An open letter on Customer Service in Portugal

As someone with 25 years of customer service experience across 4 continents, delivering both B2B and B2C in various industries, I’m sad to say that generally in Portugal, the standard of customer service is amongst the poorest around the world.  This not only impacts my fellow residents in Portugal, who had to get used to…

“Overqualified for a role” – why recruiters overlook experienced candidates

The Covid-19 pandemic has driven lots of challenging situations in the workplace, and unfortunately it has resulted in many people being furloughed and retrenched / made redundant / laid off. With so much job hunting going on, we start to see some of the best and the worst behaviours from recruiting and sourcing teams within…

5 tips on succeeding with a new boss

In any work environment, change is inevitable, and invariably will happen when you least expect it.  One of the most challenging changes can be the departure of an old boss ad the arrival of a new boss.  Whether it’s due to organisational change, business restructuring, a departure of a familiar face or changes higher up the…

How to motivate your remote working team

Since my first “proper” full time job after university, many, MANY years ago, I happened to work in work environments where colleagues, suppliers and customers happened to be remote.  In fact, not just remote, but overseas, speaking languages I did not understand, in time zones very different to my own.  When I fast forward to…

Can you connect your brand to your values?

Before we go any further, of course you can, and we all know it, but whether your values have been gathering dust at the back of your office cupboard during Covid-19 crisis, or your mission and vision and brand and values and behaviours are all getting to be a bit too confusing, summer is a…

4 employer responsibilities to remote workers

Over the past few months, we’ve seen countless posts and articles on remote working / home working / teleworking from the perspective of the employer – focusing on the practicality of making it happen, how to manage your staff, how to keep staff engaged and delivering and how to leverage technology to create a seamless…

Annual review: genuine tool to motivate or tick box exercise?

Controversial title, perhaps, but those of you who have worked with me will know that I put a very, very high value on activities that support people growth and development.  Every large business I have worked in has missed opportunities to during the quarterly and annual appraisal processes to reward, motivate and define responsibilities for…

Values and behaviours – why they really matter at work.

In the process of speaking with businesses, whether to work for them or with them, one thing I always check out are their values.  It’s a great indicator of what they hold dear, how complicated they make the internal culture (and a handy indicator of where past cultural issues may have been!)  For some, they…

4 reasons bosses are struggling to accept remote working

In this week’s post, I wanted to address a topic that our cousins across the Atlantic have pretty well put to bed, but in Europe and Asia, remains a tricky and sensitive subject: remote working.  Wherever you chose to work right now, at some point in the near future, ALL roles and tasks delivered by…