Buy a ticket; invest in Warrington

Warrington Town FC have recently appointed a new Chairman and Managing Director. The club which is flying high in the Evo-Stik league, has taken a decision to change roles and responsibilities whilst on the up. Frequently such decisions are only made in a downturn, giving the new management little room for manoeuvre.

Senior appointment concerns have been in the press recently, with the Co-op being held up for scrutiny. Looking at The Wire senior management they are certainly not short on business experience and the new senior roles are being occupied by people who have been working with the club for some time, so they know the operations well.  In addition they have a clear vision; progression to the Football League. To do this they will also need further investment.

Warrington as a whole should be firmly behind them.   Strong sports teams promote their home town and good sports people can make great ambassadors.  The Wolves are clear evidence of this. So whilst The Wire is currently only a small concern, they have large potential.  Additional supporters would help the club and in turn help Warrington with jobs and spending in the local economy.  Buy a ticket; invest in Warrington.

Professor Lawrence Bellamy is Associate Dean at the Warrington School of Management, University of Chester Warrington (Padgate) Campus.

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How do you make youth employable?

Database statistics (DORIC) comparing the numbers of unemployment benefit claimants in Warrington in October 2012 and in October 2013 show a reduction of 22%. Some of this may be down to counting methods and government initiatives, but overall it does show that unemployment is falling.

Using the same figures the rate of improvement in Warrington is also better than the rest of the North West and England overall. The country is in recovery. However for Warrington, like many other parts of the country, youth unemployment (ages 16-24) remains an issue. So how do you make youth employable?

Engineering and technology capabilities are in demand. These take time to learn. Construction is an obvious area, where once some basics are learnt people can become useful quite quickly and may move on to up-skill later. There are many jobs available however, that require only a basic education, not craft or technical skills. They require people with the right ‘attitude’.

A positive attitude can have many dimensions; being customer focused, showing initiative, enthusiasm, being enterprising and a positive work ethic. It may be harder to demonstrate than skills and requires confidence to display. Both together will make your employability much stronger.

Professor Lawrence Bellamy is Associate Dean at Warrington School of Management, University of Chester Warrington (Padgate) Campus, Crab Lane, Warrington WA2 0DB.

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A Premier League start for WSM students

The University of Chester, with campuses on either side of the Mersey at Chester and also Warrington, has a unique reputation for work-based learning initiatives which prepare students for work, placing great emphasis on connecting business theory to business practice.

 

An excellent example of this was a recent visit to Everton Football Club where some 50 Undergraduate students had first-hand commercial experience of business theory being applied in a dynamic, exciting environment.
 

Under the supervision of Senior Lecturers Andrea Harper, Jim Stockton and Terry Smith, the trip was part of the Warrington Campus Induction programme for Level 4 Business Management undergraduates and gave 50 students their first exposure to the University’s ‘transfer of knowledge’ ethos.

This is part of a programme of University/Industry co-operation which has featured similar trips to Wigan Athletic Football Club and Warrington Wolves Rugby League Club where evidence of a modern organisation in action is incorporated into student academic assessment.

 

The Goodison Park trip featured a comprehensive stadium tour, a 30-minute DVD viewing of “The Everton Experience” and a detailed presentation on the club’s outstanding community achievements, history and successes on and off the field given by Stephanie Kinsella, HRM Manager for Everton.





Students were treated to a unique 'speed dating-style' business induction session where each business function in the club was presented and discussed. Representatives from the club’s IT, Media, Fundraising, “Everton in the Community”, Everton Academy and Veteran’s teams gave a comprehensive talk on the roles and functions of their respective departments and students from a wide range of backgrounds were afforded time to question staff.

Michael Salla, Manager in charge of Everton’s excellent Health and Well Being initiatives said that “Hopefully it will help University of Chester students in giving them a good insight into our diverse area of work and open their eyes to different career paths out there”.

Andrea Harper, who organised the trip, claimed that “It was a great opportunity for our Business undergraduates to gain invaluable commercial exposure in a very dynamic and exciting context. The aim was to link business theory to business practice and this was hopefully the first of many co-operative projects such as placements and voluntary work as well as academic work such as case studies, research projects and dissertations”.

A great day and an excellent start to any Business undergraduate's university experience.  Thank you to everyone at Everton Football Club.
 

To find out more about our Undergraduate and Postgraduate courses, visit our website http://www.chester.ac.uk/warrington-school-of-management

Engage with your customers before someone else does!

A recently unveiled study by research consultancy Hall and Partners suggests that up to two-thirds of an organisation’s profits may rely on effective customer engagement.

Since the start of the current economic downturn, it’s never been more important for companies to communicate with its target audience. More power is in the hands of the customer and engagement has never been more difficult, more complex or more fragmented. What do we mean by engagement?

According to the Advertising Research Foundation in 2008, engagement is ‘Turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context’. In other words, customer engagement encompasses awareness, interest, and desire to purchase, customer retention, and brand loyalty. How can customer engagement be achieved and maintained?

Terry Smith, Senior Lecturer in Marketing,  Programme Leader for MSc Management courses at  Warrington School of Management, and author of Marketing Communications: A Brand Narrative Approach gives us some insights into how successful companies can sustain brand attachment through effective marketing communications by promoting intangible values.

Know Your Customer: Customer insight comes from findings, observation, analysis of sales figures, experience, and other internal and external information which help you to serve those customers better. As a result of research, Pampers unblocked sales inertia in Germany by changing to a more acceptable eco-friendly bio-degradable formulation of its product. Their ‘dry layers’ innovation came as a response to the customer need for better sleep than merely water capture.

Help Build a Brand Story Together: When consumers add their own experiences, associations, symbols and images to the brand, they ‘co-create’ meaning. It is fair to say that until this co-creation has happened that consumers are not truly engaged with the brand. Organisations like Unilever have helped co-create the Dove brand narrative or story by ‘widening the definition of beauty’. When company and customer are locked together in the creation of the brand’s story, this is a powerful way to maintain engagement.

Understand the New ‘Terms of Engagement’: Social Media is the all-pervasive route to connecting with your customers through communications. Following some simple rules of thumb will help you build valuable relationships, increase brand loyalty and encourage customer advocacy:

• What is the personality of your brand or organisation? What does your brand mean to your customers? What voice could it have?
• Listen to online conversations and learn about what they think of you. Monitor customer attitudes and perceptions. Search engine analytics like Spiral16, Google Blog Search and Analytic.ly can be an effective way to ‘listen in’.
• Follow the alert systems on these tools to optimise the opportunities to engage online.
• Where are your customers interacting online? Are positive engagement or negative impressions present on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or blogs?
•  Become part of the online community and its conversation. Monitor the responses and feedback to give insight and possible action.
• Recognise the ‘opinion leaders’ in these networks. Who are the most influential and can affect the purchase behaviour of others?

Ensure all communications and all company communicators speak with ‘one voice’: Integrating all messages across all media is critically important. This will avoid confusion of message, reinforce brand image and offer a more coherent identity to both customers and staff. Make sure all staff are fully briefed and ‘on the same page’ in order to project confidence and consistency.

Have a customer engagement plan:

The process of product purchase tends to be a cycle of activities: brand awareness, consideration, inquiry, purchase, and retention stages. Sashi (2012) promotes the idea of a ‘virtuous circle’ which comprises: connection, interaction, satisfaction, retention, commitment, advocacy, and engagement.

This brings us back to the most important question: how are you going to achieve and maintain engagement with your customers? This is an important question because if you don’t, your competitors will!

Terry Smith is Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Programme Leader for MSc Management courses at Warrington School of Management, University of Chester, Warrington Campus, Crab Lane, Warrington.

 
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How can you be more communication savvy?

Andrea Harper

The success of any firm, large or small, is based on relationships and the key to any relationship is communication. Even organisational systems, processes and guidelines are ineffective without effective communication. However, numerous employee surveys highlight communication issues as top of the list when it comes to employee complaints writes Andrea Harper, Senior Lecturer in Business Management.

Research in this area also highlights the link between poor communication management and motivation, satisfaction, recognition and the bottom line – profit and success. Therefore, communication and how it is valued and managed can be viewed as an enabler or a disabler; it can be the means to both motivate and demotivate staff, to produce satisfied or dissatisfied staff.

 

The big question business owners and managers need to ask themselves, is: ‘Do we disable or enable our staff to help make our organisation successful?’

One of the main problems of communication in the workplace is that communication is all too often not managed. Organisational communication, in many firms, tends to be an unconscious concept – yet human resources, marketing, finance and operations are all managed consciously.

They are all important functions in an organisation and time, effort and resources are used to ensure they function effectively. The process of communication in the workplace, however, is often left to its own devises; communication just ‘happens’, it ‘doesn’t need to be managed’.

Therefore, in order to create a more successful business, communication in the workplace needs to be managed consciously. Communication needs to take its place in the hierarchy of organisational functions and processes; it should no longer be the Cinderella of organisational life. Therefore, it needs to be made a central part of organisational strategy and be viewed as pivotal in not only getting things done but getting things done successfully.

How can you be more communication savvy?

1. Recognition

Managers, not just top management, but all managers need to see communication for what it is – an enabler, it’s not just a tool to be wheeled out from time to time.

Communication as a concept/process should be embraced and needs to be recognised for its ability to unite a team by creating and maintaining openness; encouraging true involvement of  all       employees and facilitating cooperation.

Informed and motivated employees are ones who will take your organisation to a new level.

 

2. Conscious management of communication in the workplace

This should naturally follow on from managers’ recognition that communication or, more to the point, effective communication, is an enabler.

If its importance is recognised, managers will naturally start to manage the process consciously. Therefore, put it at the top of your agenda, build strong relationships and encourage your team to do likewise. Create more openness with your communications, e.g. think about the channels of communication you use, could you be more innovative in how you disseminate information?

 

Could you encourage two-way communication – not just to obtain feedback but to use your staff and their experience, knowledge and skills to get involved, to contribute more?

 

Employees need to believe that their contribution and ideas are welcome; they could make a difference. Managers should keep asking themselves have I shared ideas sufficiently? Have I included enough/the right people? Have I encouraged contributions? Who have I spoken to today? Did I persuade or did I tell? Has my communication been effective?

3. Lead from the front

When the management of communication starts to become effective, communication in the workplace starts to become effective. It breeds; it spreads. Openness and collaboration become the norm. Furthermore, if communication is valued and takes on a central role in manager’s lives, employees throughout the organisation will also start to embrace the centrality and importance of effective communication – helping to change attitudes.

 

 

4. Evaluate and learn

Review and evaluate are well-known manager mantras and many managers have the belief they are ‘good communicators’. The problem lies in the fact this belief isn’t necessarily held by their staff. What are staff saying about the organisation, about you, about the state of communication in your workplace? If you don’t know, find out. This is definitely good practice when an organisation has shifted to new thinking, new ways of doing things.

When all of these elements are pulled together, the organisation should start doing things differently. This will be demonstrated through employee motivation, satisfaction and organisational commitment. Stronger relationships with colleagues will ensue, employees will collaborate and cooperate more readily – they should feel more encouraged to challenge and get involved.

 

Andrea Harper is senior lecturer and Programme Leader in  Business Management at Warrington School of Management, University of Chester, Warrington (Padgate) Campus, WA2 0DB

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