< Previous East Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk HEALTH AND SAFETY S lips, trips and falls. These are the common health and safety issues that almost every business will be used to keeping an eye on, and with good reason. The above are the kinds of workplace accidents that can result in big compensation payouts and even loss of contracts and employees. They’re also what a lot of checks form government bodies focus on, and failing those checks can lead to further problems. If a company works in public service, it can even be a loss of business from local councils. However, focusing on the physical health and safety risks is only useful when it comes to preventing physical accidents. There may well be other concerns that should be at the forefront of a manager’s mind. Mental wellbeing and mental health are sometimes seen as controversial by businesses. In the US, there are companies who lose their minds over the idea of a “work-life balance” and try to argue that’s woke or Gen Z or signs of lazy employees. However, stress in the workplace has been a factor for hundreds of years and is by no means nothing new. It’s just that recruitment has gotten a lot more difficult in the last few decades, and a shrinking labour market has meant that companies feel it a lot more when someone leaves due to mental wellbeing, as opposed to before when recruiting a replacement member of staff was easy. Stress and mental wellbeing don’t just result in employees leaving however, and that’s the issue. A lot of people who are suffering from it will stay at a company and keep working, but their performance and productivity will slowly begin to fall. This can lead to situations where employees that were normally excellent workers begin to drop off, and that forces employers to consider how best to replace them – which can be even tricker, given redundancies and employment law – than if they quit in the first place. Though it may be cynical, one can think of employees as machines in the sense that they need constant Protecting what’s important The crux of health and safety is not to avoid claims but to preserve the profitable asset that is an employee, and yet many companies are losing them by refusing to consider stress management. www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link HEALTH AND SAFETY maintenance. Machines and product lines need to be stress-tested, and they often need to be updated and modernised. You wouldn’t expect a company to run on equipment that’s ten years old as well as you would if it were new, as repeating the same task over and over will eventually cause gears to seize and machinery to become worn and tired. The same goes for employees, except that in many cases they can be harder to replace than a computer that’s running slow. In a factory, there is often a manager in charge of making sure the machinery is up-to-date and running properly, and there should be similar for staff in a business. This is what HR is supposed to be, but HR Departments instead end up being used as tools against employees in many cases, focusing not on helping employees deal with stress so they can be efficient and productive, but on monitoring and reporting on underperforming staff. As one might 32 Á © stock.adobe.com/relif East Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk HEALTH AND SAFETY expect, this only increases stress, giving staff yet more incentive to burn out and abandon a company. Human resources is supposed to be about supporting and looking after staff so that they can work harder and make a company more money, and the best way to do this is to treat them as one would an invaluable piece of equipment – with respect and care. The HSE lists six causes of stress in work, which include the inability to cope with a job’s demands, being overworked, but also a lack of control over how the work is done and a lack of appropriate information. The last is a hostile work environment and relationships. Many of these factors can be managed by a business, and the HSE makes no effort to suggest that businesses need to treat their staff with soft mittens as a lot of commentators accuse. Instead, focus should be on discussing with staff and seeing what they feel they are lacking. Some of these factors may not be in the control of the company to change, especially given the state of the economy, but if staff feel they are being forced to handle work in an inefficient manner that forces them to do more on a task they could do easier, then discussing with a team about that can not only ease their stress, but explore that option. Similarly, if employees feel that they are not being given enough information to do their jobs effectively, then that is a fault in business practice that should be rectified. In its studies, the HSE also found that the results of high stress among workforces were both subtle and dangerous. High turnover is the most obvious and noticeable change, but other results like increased sickness absence and lower rates of punctuality can be © stock.adobe.com/Jadon B/peopleimages.comwww.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link HEALTH AND SAFETY harder to spot. Worse yet, results in testing showed that productivity and worker efficiency dropped significantly, and this can be a death knell for many companies in difficult situations. Losing staff is tricky but having a best earner for the company suddenly start performing at 50% efficiency can be a huge problem, and if the same result is spread out over multiple staff it can mark the beginning of the end for a company. Mental wellbeing is not about coddling staff and wrapping them in bubble-wrap. It’s about understanding that, like a production line, the more worn your team is, the less effective it’s going to be. Businesses that complain about it and do their best to pretend it doesn’t exist are simply sticking their heads in the ground, because it’s an issue that is not going to go away. LIVES: No Night Is Silent While Lincolnshire sleeps, LIVES volunteers are out saving lives - attending 999 emergencies across the county. Our latest campaign, No Night Is Silent, showcases the incredible work of our volunteer responders at Christmas time, who answer calls for help no matter the hour. From cardiac arrests in remote villages to serious road accidents, LIVES ensures no one faces their darkest moment alone. We’re proud that No Night Is Silent has been accepted into the prestigious Smiley Charity Film Awards. This powerful film captures the resilience and dedication of our volunteers, offering a rare glimpse into the lifesaving moments that often go unseen. The support of the local business community is crucial to our mission. From corporate partnerships to hosting fundraising events - your support is crucial. In fact last December our volunteers responded to over 200 emergencies, 16 of those involving a child. By partnering with LIVES, you’re not just investing in lifesaving care—you’re investing in the well-being of your community. T: 01507 525 999 E: INFO@LIVES.ORG.UK LIVES.ORG.UK East Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk LOGISTICS AND TRANSPORT AI in logistics AI in logistics www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link LOGISTICS AND TRANSPORT © stock.adobe.com/ Ева Поликарпова I t seems inevitable now that AI will become a part of almost every industry in our lives, and logistics is no exception. There have been obvious fears as to AI and its capability to throw up incorrect information and, in people’s minds, this throws up images of an AI- powered sat-nav instructing a truck to plough into a school full of children, the reality is that this isn’t likely to be the way in which AI is utilised. Not only because of the risks associated with it, but because it’s not a very cost-effective adaptation. The usage of AI should be to save money or increase profitability, not to change something that already works just fine. Where AI can be used to great success is in route optimisation and hazard identification – not to spot someone in the road (a human can do that better) but to spot a potential traffic jam or road accident further on the journey, inform haulage teams, and plot out an alternative route to help fleets bypass the issue. While it’s true a human operator can do this as well, humans are limited by attention span and processing speed, whereas AI can watch hundreds of routes at once and parse information in the blink of an eye. In early stages, discrepancies in routes might be flagged for a human operator to assess, thus AI is still in its infancy and prone to mistakes, but that doesn’t mean the industry isn’t looking at how best to incorporate it. 36 Á East Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk LOGISTICS AND TRANSPORT removing the risk of mistakes and allowing humans to make the best decisions, but even this is a saving because it takes the onus of scouring hundreds of route maps to spot problems away from the human, allowing them to focus on other tasks. With machine learning, the potential for AI to improve over time is also something that could be exciting when it comes to route optimisation and could be the solution to the fears of incorrect data. At first, AI is bound to throw up sub-optimal suggestions and make mistakes, hence the need for human control, but a machine can simulate tens of thousands of routes in the time a human does one, and repetition and reinforcement of correct planning can help streamline it. This is already being seen in logistics and distribution in the form of warehouses, primarily for identifying and tracking stock and providing up-to-date details and planning for lorries delivering and receiving goods. The less time a lorry spends loading or unloading, the more time it spends on the road, so streamlining these operations via AI can be profitable. Surprisingly, they can also be better for the environment too. It’s not a huge change compared to say, decarbonising vehicles, but route optimisation reduces unnecessary travel time, meaning less road hours and far less Co2 released into the atmosphere. On an individual scale, this will be very small, but over a fleet of 100 vehicles over a full year of operating, www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link LOGISTICS AND TRANSPORT the reduction in Co2 would be far more significant. Of course, it’s the initial cost of AI models that many in the industry are finding prohibitive. This is compounded by the relative newness of the technology meaning there aren’t many that know how to code and use it, which results in AI software engineers having something of a captive market right now. At the same time, generative AI models are giving rise to many less-than-honest companies online who can masquerade as legitimate. This is giving rise to a “wait and see” approach within the industry that may, in time, lead to disaster. Though it may seem an exaggeration, there was also a time when combustion engines and vehicles were new technology, and many logistics companies were still using horsedrawn wagons. At that time, like now, a lot of companies made the decision to stick with horses, believing engines to be too new, too expensive, and too prone to errors or faults. Early adopters went on to become successful powerhouses within the industry while those who hung back were left trying to compete with vehicles using horses. Extreme as the example may be, it shows the potential for loss in those who are prepared to hang back and wait for technology to become more widely available. There are many who are investing with the hopes of becoming pioneers, and those pioneers will reap the benefits. © stock.adobe.com/Naknakhone East Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk PUBLIC RELATIONS I write this with a tricorne perched jauntily upon my head. This stylish hat covers that of a PR consultant of some two decades, that of a published author on PR and that of a former business journalist. Hat collecting aside, I’ve learned a LOT over two decades in the PR trenches in terms of how to do things the right way. Especially when it comes to pitching the media. Funnily enough, that bit is not actually what PR is. Not solely anyway. That bit of PR is what we term ‘Media Relations’ and is part of the toolkit we use. You can add in events, awards, thought leadership, blogs, white papers, stunts, partnerships, CSR, the list goes on. However, for MOST of the people reading this who are not PR specialists, Tess is nice. Tess tries to help. I say, try to help Tess. If you want a reporter to cover your news, at least find the time to get a photo done. Even if it is your LinkedIn pic that’s been doing a lot of heavy lifting content wise for years. It puts a face to a name and makes it far more likely that someone will want to read the article. You have to remember that it is Tess’s job to educate, inform and entertain her audience. Make it as simple as possible for her to do that and you will reap the benefits. I actually have a story in my drafts as this is being typed where my client is helping another organisation but the other organisation will not provide a photo. They “don’t have any.” Well, get one! It’s £100, maybe £150 and the reward will be 10x over. Greg Simpson, founder of Press For Attention PR, shares his media relations ‘don’ts’. this is the bit you will want to master pretty pronto to begin making headway - Media Relations. Hint, that word ‘RELATIONS’ crops up a lot in PR. You need to start thinking win/win and ensuring that you are both contributing. Anyway, rather than a list of DOs, I thought, why not flag up some DON’Ts? To aid my memory (2 decades is a fair old whack you know), I have asked some reporters who I know well and who will remain anonymous, barring one, the reporter of this very parish, Tess Egginton. Let’s start with Tess then shall we? “Not providing photos with their stories” really makes life tricky for Tess. This means that she has to go off and find a pretty dull stock photo to illustrate the article. Of course, her other option is to simply move on. www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link PUBLIC RELATIONS Until the photo comes, we can’t run the story. Well, we could but guess what, it is less likely to gain coverage and if it does, it is likely that the third party will barely feature. That would be a shame but it would be down to them. There’s plenty more, in fact, this might be my second book! Try blind copying a list of reporters and see how effective that is. I mean, how to make it look like you REALLY care about that relationship! Or pitching a reporter that has never covered the angle you have. Not because there’s been an editorial oversight but because you are asking an insurance reporter to write about diet hacks. Or a lifestyle specialist to cover the latest ‘insight’ on pensions. How about calling a journalist to pitch them when their X profile specifically says not to? Do your research folks! Or keenly flagging a story about Cambridge to a reporter who covers Derby - I have seen this first hand many, many times. Not always Derby, obviously! The “did you get my email” chase is never very welcome. If it didn’t bounce back, then yes, they did. Now, they might not have seen it. So, a better chase-up would be to send a different photo or an extra quote to see if you can add value. Most annoying of all? I would say one that us PRs and journos both despair of…failing to deliver before the deadline or going AWOL. If you are working with a reporter on something, don’t ghost them. If you can’t do something, tell them. Don’t fail to show up on the first date! Media RELATIONS remember. *There are NO guarantees in PR! Some won’t care one little bit. A former business journalist, Greg Simpson is the author of The Small Business Guide to PR and has been recognised as one of the UK’s top 5 PR consultants, having set up Press For Attention PR in 2008. He has worked for FTSE 100 firms, charities and start-ups and conducted press conferences with Sir Richard Branson and James Caan. His background ensures a deep understanding of every facet of a successful PR campaign – from a journalist’s, client’s, and consultant’s perspective. Next >