Industry news

A Welsh health board has become the first NHS organisation to be issued a monetary penalty by the The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) following a serious data breach.

The Aneurin Bevan Health Board (ABHB) has been hit with a penalty of £70,000 after sensitive data - containing explicit details relating to a patient’s health - was sent to the wrong person in March last year.

The error occurred when a consultant emailed a letter to a secretary for formatting, but did not include enough information and also misspelt the patient name. The errors led to the report being sent to a former patient with a very similar name.

Stephen Eckersley, the ICO’s Head of Enforcement said: “The health service holds some of the most sensitive information available. The damage and distress caused by the loss of a patient’s medical record is obvious, therefore it is vital that organisations across this sector make sure their data protection practices are adequate.

“Aneurin Bevan Health Board failed to have suitable checks in place to keep the sensitive information they handled secure. This case could have been extremely distressing to the individual and their family and may have been prevented if the information had been checked prior to it being sent.

“We are pleased that the Health Board has now committed to taking action to address the problems highlighted by our investigation; however organisations across the health service must stand up and take notice of this decision if they want to avoid future enforcement action from the ICO.”

Microsoft has invested $300 million in eReader firm Barnes and Noble, ushering the beginning of a new ‘strategic partnership’. The partnership consists of a 17.6 percent equity stake for Microsoft and will 'accelerate the transition to e-reading'.

The investment will be primarily used to set up a new subsidiary currently known as Newco, aiming to bring together the digital and College businesses of Barnes & Noble. According to Microsoft, one of the first benefits for customers will be a NOOK application for Windows 8, which will extend the reach of Barnes & Noble’s digital bookstore by providing one of the world’s largest digital catalogues of e-Books, magazines and newspapers to hundreds of millions of Windows customers.

“The formation of Newco and our relationship with Microsoft are important parts of our strategy to capitalize on the rapid growth of the NOOK business, and to solidify our position as a leader in the exploding market for digital content in the consumer and education segments,” said William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble. “Microsoft’s investment in Newco, and our exciting collaboration to bring world-class digital reading technologies and content to the Windows platform and its hundreds of millions of users, will allow us to significantly expand the business.”

A new pension scheme for Britain’s civil servants has been launched today. My Civil Service Pension (MyCSP). MyCSP "the first 'John Lewis style' business created from a central government service", according to the Cabinet Office.

The scheme has been launched by Francis Maude MP and former Cabinet Minister Lord Hutton will become the first chairman of the scheme. MyCSP will provide employees with a 25% ownership stake, board level representation and profit share.

Maude said: "We no longer face a binary choice between public services delivered by state monopoly and straight privatisation. That is why I am a passionate supporter of mutual, which will help Britain grow a more diverse economy.

"As a mutual, MyCSP will deliver better services for its pension scheme members, millions of pounds of savings for the taxpayer and a real sense of ownership for employees over what they do.

"We are transforming a neglected back-office operation into a new competitive and responsible business - the rest of the world is watching.”

The first step in the successful management of outsourced multicultural teams is to establish a good level of understanding between members. This understanding is based on the strength of relationships which in-turn leads to trust. A good relationship and a high level of trust means when the pressure is on, team members will pull the stops out for one-and-other to keep the project on track when it really counts.

The ideal way to initially build such trust is through face-to-face meetings and informal interaction. This is important in British, American and Northern European cultures but critical in Middle Eastern, Asian, South European and South American cultures. This approach reduces suspicion, encourages openness and results in a better working relationship from the outset.

The initial investment in time at the team’s formation is important. Once trust has been established by initial face-to-face meetings, the team can continue to work successfully together remotely.

Beyond relationship building, the initial time together should be focused on acknowledging that there will be differences in the way the team members operate. Openness, tolerance, flexibility should be encouraged as should the need to adapt and elect working practices which all team members are comfortable with. A greater willingness to talk directly about differences helps build trust and confidence, facilitate decision making and open the way, where appropriate, to compromise and ultimately a better way of working together.

Cultural differences should also be addressed and viewed as what they are; potentially different values, assumptions, expectations and behaviour as a result of differing collective experiences. It should be understood that members of a team are not there to represent a 'culture' or particular ethnic group - they represent themselves however, their cultural background will influence behaviour. An understanding of cultural differences encourages some of the key skills required for the team to work well together.

On an ongoing basis, video conferences can be useful (although they have their own cross-cultural ‘rules’), as are encouraging a few simple enquiries to be made about a team member’s health or the weather on a call before getting down to business.

Nurturing the skills of tolerance and flexibility amongst individuals while ensuring all continue to cement working relationships by increasing social and informal interaction is key. In this way, the inevitable challenges of managing an outsourced team can be overcome through openness, with all team members being as cooperative as possible for the benefit of the project as a whole.

Farnham Castle is a world leader in Intercultural Business Skills training and Global Mobility Programmes and can help with more detailed briefings on individual cultures. For further information visit www.farnhamcastle.com

Accessing a vast pool of technical skills is one of the main attractions of working with outsourced project teams. However, when it comes to managing teams originating from a different culture, a host of challenges become apparent and effective communication is often one of the key issues.

Partly, this can be due to language, but less obviously, misinterpretation of instructions or general misunderstandings can be more deeply rooted and influenced heavily by different cultural perspectives. Successful communication across cultures is therefore, not about taking 3000 hours to perfect your language skills. A balanced approach to picking up key words, phrases and a relevant cultural context can and does make all the difference.

Take something as simple as handing a report in on time. For example, a manager used to working in a British business cultural environment might say: ‘please can you try and get me that report by Tuesday’. A co-worker from say India or Pakistan may understand that to mean: ‘If I have time I could try and finish that report by Tuesday but there is no need to prioritise this. Because I respect my manager I will naturally agree with his statement.’ When the report doesn’t arrive, the manager is frustrated and the co-worker is confused about why his manager is annoyed.

To attempt to bridge these differences, firstly we need to recognise that our own ingrained cultural values and beliefs are ‘invisible’ to us and that our own cultural preconceptions are very different to those of other parts of the world. Common phrases and words that we have grown up with may have a completely different meaning in another culture.

Defining the meaning of key words and phrases so that they are generally understood can help. This will result in commands and requests for information being more effective. A glossary of terms is one quick way of achieving this. In addition, laying down practical do’s and don’ts at the beginning of a project is helpful. It requires the UK manager to look at his or her team objectively and consider what the real code of conduct should be compared with the reality.

Working with people from different nationalities can create stress, uncertainty and doubt for the employees and managers. A successful outcome depends upon a manager’s sensitivity to diversity and the assistance provided to both groups to tackle their preconceptions and the gaps in knowledge and habits.

Farnham Castle is a world leader in Intercultural Business Skills training and Global Mobility Programmes and can help with more detailed briefings on individual cultures. For further information visit www.farnhamcastle.com

Having recently attended an event and heard some anecdotes about spotting holes and flaws within businesses and finding solutions to the problems, it occurred to me that quite often these problems need never have existed in the first place. Within all of the impressive business knowledge and jargon, ground breaking technologies, data, statistics and graphs and charts, there were two crucial ingredients missing: logic and a little common sense.

Throughout my childhood, and I am sure the same goes for most children raised by military fathers; there was one phrase that cropped up again and again: ‘K.I.S.S.’, which translates as ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid.’ How beautifully succinct. Even children can easily understand the message, so why can’t businesses?

Simplicity, for many, is the key to success. Projects based around simplicity generally have one thing in common, and that is that what they do, they do well. Better than well, they do the absolute best. If care and attention is made to get the basics right, then it’s pretty much foolproof. The simplicity of a plan allows it to be transparent; therefore common sense and logic prevail. Unfortunately, it is the human condition to make things as complicated as we possibly can, and things that should be glaringly obvious become clouded in the jargon-laden fog.

There is much evidence that the most successful ideas are the most simple. Way back when, a little known grocer in a little known town spotted that his customers only ever bought what they could easily carry. He introduced paper bags next to the till and his profits sky-rocketed, I’m fairly sure he also took early retirement. The more basic an idea or concept, the quicker the human brain can process and understand it, and the quicker people will get on board with it. Aside from having a crystal clear concept, and an idea of what the aims are and how you want to get there, simplicity is also crucial in the communication of the idea.

Another thing that cropped up more than once at the event was just how much time businesses can waste rectifying miscommunication. Whether this is from goal posts changing, language barriers, incomplete initial ideas, or ideas simply not being communicated in a clear and concise manner, it all could be avoided by just getting it right the first time around. Before moving onto the more complex aspects of the business, ensure that the basics are fully covered, or it could all crash and burn at your feet.

Of course, the K.I.S.S. principle cannot always de directly applied to situations, particularly as technology plays an increasingly important role. However, keeping it in mind is a great way of continuously re-assessing your actions – why am I doing this? Is this the best way of doing it? How much of this is superfluous? Hindsight is a wonderful thing, frustrating, but wonderful. Business could avoid many of those painful hindsight-induced realisations if they looked at problems from a distance, or looked at them as a consumer instead of a businessman.

In keeping with the principle, I’ll summarise thus: Simplicity is key.

In the past week the banking sector has been hit by a series of jobs cuts. The turbulent global economy, compounded by the news that the UK has entered once more into recession, has resulted in widespread banking redundancies as the financial sector reels from the faltering economy.

The recent news of job layoffs from HSBC, Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks come as economic pressures have led to cost cutting measures from within the finance sector. Banking and insurance firms have been hit by insolvencies and write-offs on corporate loans. Investment banking has been hit by setbacks as renewed focus is placed on industry practice. These recent job-losses follow on from 1,300 job losses from Lloyds and 464 losses from RBS.

National Australia Bank (NAB) owner of Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks has blamed the weakened UK economy for the cutting of 1,400 jobs from the two brands and closing of more than 30 offices. The two Banks have been hit by £25 million of debt between October 2011 and March 2012, in stark contrast with £77 million in profit from the same time last year as banks are hit by higher charges on bad debt and increased funding costs.

Banks are facing significant damages from bad debt, research published today by Ernst & Young ITEM Club show that corporate loan write-offs have reached their highest levels since the 1990s recession. Write-offs are predicted to rise to 1.9 percent of loans this year, ITEM senior economic adviser, Neil Blake, commented: “the more loans banks have to write off, the less money they will have to lend.”

HSBC announced earlier this month that 3,167 staff would lose their jobs in part of the company’s global initiative to reduce £2.3 billion in costs, in part from cutting 30,000 from its workforce. HSBC have stated that 950 employees would be redeployed to other departments within the business. The Unite union have stated that since the financial crisis RBS have cut approximately 28,600 workers and RBS 26,000.

HSBC announces 2,217 UK job losses

Increasing regulation and the economic downturn have been blamed for the pressure on the financial sector and the resulting job losses. Cameron Clyne, NAB chief executive, said: "In the last half year there has been a significant downgrade in the growth prospects of the UK economy, in part reflecting the drag on its recovery from heightened weakness in the eurozone.

While the banking sector has been clear to blame the economic downturn and increased regulation for forcing restructuring, pointed criticism has been levelled at business for using the rescission as an opportunity to enforce redundancies and employing cheap labour through offshoring.

The union Unite source claimed that there were no jobs for the 950 HSBC workers to be redeployed too, “They say there is alternative employment for people, but there isn't." The justification of a weakened economy given for redundancies by HSBC has been met by derision from within Unite, pointing to HSBC profits that totalled £13.8 billion last year.

China’s mobile market is expected to grow to be the largest in the world by 2012 according to research from Kapronasia. The research points to the Chinese market growing to reach 441 million users and worth over $80 billion.

China has already over grown the US to be the largest smartphone market globally, even though less than 10 percent of the domestic mobile market are currently using smartphones.

With the potential for strong growth in an under-saturated market and the release of new regulations, the Chinese m-payments market is set to rapidly accelerate in next year. Zennon Kapron, managing director at Kapronasia, said: “2012 will prove to be a crucial year for the mobile payments industry as Chinese authorities establish final technology standards.”

Apple has revealed in the release of second quarter earnings last week, that the icloud has reached over 125 million users.

The iCloud was launched back in October 2011 as a service to provide wireless backup and synchronisation of Apple products. The paid-for service has been used in increasing numbers as a platform for document and media storage as Apple seeks to increase customer satisfaction with the product.

Peter Oppenheimer, chief financial officer at Apple, said: “Customers are using all the features of iCloud, response has been terrific, feedback has been terrific.”

IT polices will need to adapt to the challenges and changes presented by the 2012 Olympics, from increased demands on IT infrastructure to outside factors such as travel.

Analyst group Forrester have advised that IT must be focus on social media as well as remote access in the run up to and arrival of the 2012 Olympics. Forrester also referred to the Beijing Olympics as an example of how social media must be harnessed in order to avoid disruption.

Andrew Rose, Forrester principal analyst, said: “The controls many firms will implement to mitigate the risks associated with the summer of 2012 will form a legacy that will remain for many years to come”.