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Real Business in Real Schools

“I want to live in the Arab states, working in Oil and driving a Ferarri”, was Alan’s answer to “ My dream Lifestyle” .  Alan is in year 9, at a school in Sussex that refreshingly encourages learning aside from academic intelligence.  This was just one small part of the day focused on’ Thinking about their future’.  As a volunteer, for the day, from a local business it was an amazing rewarding time to share my career experience with the children and it was a chance to support the teaching team. I was stunned into silence at the marketing pitches Alan and his classmates came up with when designing a new phone, next time we launch something new at Rickshaw Travel I will be sure to put a call into that class!

Watching the behaviour of the children, was fascinating, especially with the knowledge I have gained from my learning and development background of how adults interact in a team. Some children, wanted to get on with it, some spent most of the time discussing whether they wanted to be cheap or expensive, one group wanted to give a charitable donation and some spent most of the time working on a wonderful recording of a radio ad, there was no end to the children’s imagination.

Reflecting back on my time at school there was not enough learning in the classroom of emotional intelligence and let’s face it fellow business leaders we know if you cannot communicate and inspire your teams your job becomes a very hard one!

To take part in a similar day in your area have a look at http://www.young-enterprise.org.uk/  I cannot recommend it enough and I will certainly be putting my name down again!

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Flexible working - shifts in disguise

Different working hours our team requested, but what they meant was can we start earlier and finish earlier. Hmmn as Covey's seven habits would say is this a win/ win? well for a start the published opening hours of the travel business would be reduced and in a climate of customer first this is not a win win ! More a win for the staff and a lose for the business. So to change the benefits to be fair a later start time was suggested and people would stay later. Oh no the team lose and the business wins longer hours great! So how do we deal with this conundrum ah the later shift is a shorter working day. Most importantly this was suggested by the team. But suddenly the term flexible working has been swallowed up by that ole favourite shifts !

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Feeling it in your job

That dull term #staffengagement the theory goes the more your staff feel your company vibe the more productive they are and the higher the profits the business makes, sounds easy… Best thing I’ve ever seen for staff engagement was putting this together http://youtu.be/tVFIQ-tAI88 . Shown to the team with popcorn created by a super keen intern and owned by the team! Suddenly they are proud of where they work!