Industry news

Teleperformance (Paris:TEP), the global leader in outsourced customer and citizen experience management and related digital services, was named to PEOPLE’s "100 Companies that Care" for 2022. This is the sixth year that PEOPLE has partnered with Great Places to Work® to spotlight employers that have gone above and beyond to create positive workplaces for their staff and the community at large. Companies That Care is the only company culture award in America that selects winners based on the level of care and concern for their employees, their communities, and the environment.

Read more on BusinessWire here.

As head of global ESG at KPMG International (and head of ESG, KPMG UK), John McCalla-Leacy is responsible for embedding ESG practices into KPMG’s global strategy – and its UK firm’s strategy. He also leads on the delivery of ESG solutions, products and services to KPMG’s clients.

Here he reveals his insights into the direction of travel for ESG and the sustainability skills challenge in conversation with Environment Analyst’s Steve Gilmore.

Read more on Environment Analyst here.

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain said on Wednesday it would strengthen its cybersecurity laws to better protect essential services like water, energy and transport by bringing outsourced information technology services under the scope of existing regulations.

"The services we rely on for healthcare, water, energy and computing must not be brought to a standstill by criminals and hostile states," cyber minister Julia Lopez said.

The government said it would update 2018 regulations which were designed to make sure companies providing critical services improved their cyber security.

Citing cyber attacks like 'CloudHopper', in which hackers targeted big tech companies, Britain's digital department said the rules needed to be updated to cover companies that provide services such as security monitoring and digital billing

Read more on Reuters here.

An outlook on the importance of building supply chain sustainability.

In brief

• Supply chain practitioners are increasingly adopting strategies to build a vigorous system.
• Cost reduction is not the only focus of organizations, as was earlier
• Technology can help digitize the supple chain and make it more transparent and resilient. 

Read the full article on EY here.

Unilever’s new chief procurement officer Willem Uijen has outlined how the company is using its sourcing strategy and supplier collaboration to “raise industry standards”.

Uijen, who started the role in September, said in a blog suppliers who demonstrated action taken on sustainability standards would be prioritised.

Read more on CIPS supply management here.

During the last International Business Matchmaking Forum, an event organized in Houston by the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Tourism of Colombia and ProColombia —the country's promotion agency— business appointments were made between 215 Colombian companies, of which 76% (164 companies) were MSMEs, and 118 international buyers from 15 countries, with the Americans being the true protagonists.

Read more on PR Newswire here.

More and more businesses are choosing to outsource their IT support to keep up with the rapidly changing landscape of technology. Outsourcing IT support can offer a wide range of benefits for any growing business, from cost savings to greater flexibility and access to expertise. This article will explore ways outsourcing your IT support can add value to your company. 

Read more on Flux here.

Tackling rising prices within the parameters of public procurement.

One of the main symptoms of the current economic crisis is rising prices, for individuals and businesses. Brexit and the Russian invasion of Ukraine are just two contributory factors in fuelling increases in prices across the supply chain in the UK, particularly the cost of raw materials, labour and transport.

Public-private sector contracts often have to be publicly procured and if you are involved in public procurement, whether as a procuring authority or a bidder, high inflation and rising prices only bring uncertainty. The question on the minds of suppliers and authorities alike is what this means for the successful delivery of projects, and whether the new Procurement Bill is likely to provide additional assistance?

Read more on Shoosmiths here.

No one can say they weren’t warned about the likelihood of a global pandemic or a war in Ukraine. And, in the light of President Xi Jinping’s recent comments at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, where he reaffirmed his government’s commitment to take control of Taiwan one day, no one can say that companies should not think about what comes next.

Indeed, most of the risks that a company will face do not fall into the category of what the mathematician and philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb termed “black swan” events: random, highly improbable events that have enormous impact. A trade dispute, a viral epidemic, a product failure, a cybersecurity breach, a tsunami — these are not “black swans” but, as the business writer Michele Wucker memorably puts it, “gray rhinos”: highly probable, highly predictable, high impact, but neglected threats that are charging toward the company like a crash of rhinos (who show visible signs of aggression and whose attacks can thus be predicted nearly 100% of the time).

Read more at Harvard Business Review here.

Five years ago, in 2017, a Harvard Business School Professor opined in the Harvard Business Review that neurodiversity is a competitive advantage which employers should embrace within their workforces1. The Review’s article identified that the sometimes extraordinary skills of many neurodiverse individuals were not being tapped into by employers because of the traditional way in which companies found and recruited talent and decided who to hire and promote.

Fast-forward to 2022 and this thinking is gradually becoming mainstream. Employers are increasingly recognising that the benefits of a neurodiverse workforce are considerable, including access to more of their employees’ talents and diverse perspectives that can help their business to increase competitiveness.

Read more on Lexology here.