Member Blog

The Organisation

For more than a century, Larking Gowen LLP has been giving a trusted, reliable and friendly accountancy and advisory service to businesses and private clients across East Anglia.

With eight private practice partnership offices in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, Larking Gowen LLP covers a diverse range of sectors with specialist teams across a number of industry specialisms, as well as in corporate finance, tax, insolvency, business advisory and audit.

“We wanted to get as much feedback as possible so that we could build a case for making any changes needed. However, there is always an issue with getting people to participate in surveys, especially in a professional services firm.”  Amanda Ninham, Human Resources Manager, Larking Gowen

The Challenge

When Larking Gowen participated in Best Employers Eastern Region in 2016, the relatively new HR team was looking for an opportunity to gather information from the 320 employees and to use the findings to begin shaping the HR agenda.

While the confidential Best Employers Eastern Region employee survey provided the opportunity to discover current levels of employee satisfaction, the HR team knew they could be faced with a degree of scepticism from employees who had completed surveys before and not seen any outcomes.

Solution

One of Larking Gowen’s values is “Passion for our People”. Managing Partner Jon Woolston’s key objective is making Larking Gowen an employer of choice and he was a strong advocate of the Best Employers Eastern Region survey to instigate change. His endorsement and the support of the Partners collectively was key in driving participation in the survey.  Amanda added: “We wanted employees to see that the survey had a clear purpose and that it was not just another ‘HR thing’. Jon’s support was essential in engaging staff to take part and it added a visual commitment that changes would be made as a result.”

“When leaders ask people for their honest opinion and explain the reasons for taking part in the survey, they can really help to drive participation. Employees feel they are contributing to a bigger vision and understand why they need to take part.”  Lynn Walters, Executive Director, Pure

Benefits

The findings of the survey were used to shape the HR plan, the whole of which is focused on the value of Passion for our People and designed to help achieve the ambition of being an employer of choice.

Amanda said: “We took all the employee feedback, including about our culture, values and leadership, and looked at how we could bring everything together in one holistic approach which would reinforce our value of ‘passion for our people’. We used the findings to help shape several employee initiatives, including our total wellbeing programme. This has been a great catalyst for delivering results across all elements of workplace culture, by focussing on ensuring our employees are happy, healthy and supported.”

The HR team is continuing to run follow up pulse surveys, aligned to the themes of the Best Employers Eastern Region, to maintain employee interaction and to gather instant feedback on new initiatives. 

Amanda said: “Each month we ask five questions related to a Best Employers Eastern Region survey topic and ask employees to rate their current level of happiness. We publish the results within a week of the survey closing. The Employee Forum meet quarterly with the Board to review the data and agree any actions. This shows our commitment to making Larking Gowen LLP a great place to work and is a transparent way of tracking improvement in our engagement scores. Our people can see the benefits of contributing to the surveys and that in turn encourages participation. Keeping the topics linked to the Best Employer’s key themes will also help us to take part again seamlessly in the future and to have a better chance of winning an award.”

Lynn Walters, Executive Director at Pure, co-founders with eras Ltd of Best Employers Eastern Region, added: “Larking Gowen’s experience of using the Best Employers Eastern Region survey as a starting point to inform strategic planning is a great example of why we developed the initiative. To be able to actively evolve workplace culture, employers first need to understand their current engagement levels and give their employees a voice. It also highlights how support from senior management can make a big difference. When leaders ask people for their honest opinion and explain the reasons for taking part in the survey, they can really help to drive participation. Employees feel they are contributing to a bigger vision and understand why they need to take part.”

www.best-employers.co.uk

ABOUT

PS is a specialist provider of vacant, occupied and site security solutions. Leading the European empty property security services market, it provides a full suite of specialist solutions across the complete property lifecycle. It also offers a wide range of property services for occupied property; from locks and glazing to grounds services and remote site security. Expert teams work in close partnership with customers to understand their needs and design effective solutions.

CHALLENGE

Andrew Viner, Group Head of IT Development at VPS, needed to recruit seven new employees into the technical team based at the Norwich Service Centre at the Broadland Business Park, east of the city. The roles covered a wide range of positions and required a variety of different skills including software development, software testing and management information analysis. The vacancies included four graduate developer posts, aligning with the existing graduate training programme that continues to prove to be successful   Having recognised that the organisation’s approach to recruitment was sometimes abstracted and faced with finding a large quantity of high-calibre candidates for specialist technical positions, Andrew decided to seek expert support.  

SOLUTION

Andrew chose to contact Pure as the two organisations had already successfully worked together to recruit for HR related roles within VPS. Senior Recruitment Consultant Ruben Davis, who has been instrumental in growing Pure’s Technology specialism, visited Andrew to find out more.

Using his experience of recruiting in this field, Ruben was able to work with Andrew to not only recruit for the roles needed but to review VPS’s recruitment procedure, talent attraction and retention policies overall. He was also able to provide advice overcome the challenge of finding people with the right experience.

Ruben explained, “Andrew was really open-minded to our advice and this maximised our chances of securing the right people for the roles. During the process, we were able to work together to enhance the VPS employer brand and ensure the positions were pitched in a way which would attract the high-quality talent we needed to find. We worked together to refine the job specifications to ensure they fitted the calibre of candidates required and so that the applications we received were all a good fit. We also adapted the recruitment process, to help narrow down the shortlist to the very best candidates with the right experience, skills and attitude. We were able to successfully fill all seven roles and the new team members have settled in well.”

BENEFIT

Andrew describes his experience of working with Pure as extremely positive. One of the aspects he most appreciated was the consistent communication and advice he received.

Andrew said: “Pure always provides really good communication throughout the recruitment process and this has helped us to develop a long-term partnership. Because they are extremely knowledgeable of the local and industry market, they have been able to put forward high-quality candidates, especially at the graduate developer level we have been focussing on.”

Ruben added, “We’re always really open and honest in our approach to recruitment and this resulted in us being able to work collaboratively with Andrew. In return, Andrew was really open with us about the future plans for his team, and its projects, so we could talk confidently to potential candidates about the roles and really understand what Andrew was looking for both now and in the future. It was a true partnership approach and that’s exactly the way we like to work.”

The successful partnership has resulted in Pure continuing to support VPS in the recruitment of technology-focussed roles including actively sourcing two more graduate developers and three more system developers.

In today’s competitive recruitment market, businesses are having to work fast when hiring new employees to avoid missing out on the candidate they want.

Fiona Cooper, Senior Recruitment Consultant at Pure, explained: “If there is too long a gap between the applications being submitted, interviews and job offers, there is a real risk that organisations will lose the most highly-sought after candidates to a competitor. Beyond that, taking too long to interview and hire can damage your employer brand, especially if there is no contact or explanation. If candidates feel like they have been left waiting, there is a real risk they will begin to view the company in a negative light. After taking the time to apply and interview, candidates can feel the effort they have put into the process so far isn’t being valued by a potential employer. It is important for employers to use the recruitment process as a reflection of their values and culture and how they look after their staff.”

Here are some top tips to speed up your recruitment process, without compromising on gathering the information needed to make the right hiring decision.

Make use of internal contacts

Share details of any new vacancies with current employees. They are likely to have a network of contacts in similar roles and industry sectors, helping you to find possible candidates faster. It also opens up the potential of in-house candidates, including those considering lateral moves as well as those looking to progress up the career ladder.

Build your own potential talent network

People you have previously interviewed, past employees and contacts made through networking could all be potential candidates. A prior candidate who wasn’t right for that particular role, or an employee who left to gain different experiences could be the perfect fit to join or return to the business in a different position. Keep in touch with top talent through platforms such as LinkedIn and networking events, so you can connect with high-calibre candidates as soon as positions arise.

Streamline your interview processes

Interviewing is the most time-consuming part of recruitment. Look for ways to reduce the steps involved and to keep it as efficient as possible. For example, consider group interviews so you can meet all potential candidates in one day, make use of technology to conduct video interviews rather than trying to get everyone in one place, or be flexible and consider evening or weekend meetings if it means you can see candidates quicker. Conduct any tests, assessments and office tours etc. on the same day as interviews.

Show investment in candidates

Do all you can throughout the recruitment process to make high-calibre candidates want to work for you, rather than any competitors they may also be in touch with. Show your investment in them from the outset, create a positive interview experience and keep them feeling engaged and valued throughout. For more ideas on how to do this, read Kelly Earl’s recent advice piece here.

Stay in regular contact

Share a clear timeline with candidates, stick to it and keep in touch regularly. If a candidate is left waiting they are likely to become frustrated and feel less excited about the role. They could also presume they’ve not been selected for the next stage and accept a different job in the meantime. If you are in a position to make a candidate an offer, do it verbally as soon as possible, rather than waiting for any paperwork to be completed.

How we can help…

Our expert consultants can provide the extra time and resources you may need to keep things moving as quickly as possible. We can approach suitable candidates we’re already in touch with immediately, interview them so you only need to meet with a shortlist of the most suitable people, and spend the time needed to make sure everyone is kept informed throughout. Also, candidates are unlikely to tell a potential employer if they are seeing more than one organisation, but they will tell their recruitment consultant. We are in the position to offer impartial, yet informed advice on what would be the best move for everyone involved, rather than just the first job offer that arises.

Don’t miss out on your perfect candidate, contact us for expert recruitment advice and support.

About Fiona

Fiona Cooper is a Senior Recruitment consultant who joined Pure in 2015. She has gained a wide breadth of experience while working at Pure, moving between different divisions such as HR and Office Support before settling into Finance and Accounting.

Working out of our Ipswich Office, Fiona is now part of our Accountancy team and looks after part and newly Qualified Accountants in the Eastern region.

Reviewing staff resources for the year ahead doesn’t have to mean committing to the cost of recruiting full-time employees. Temporary workers can quickly fill any gaps within teams and bring a wealth of other business benefits too.

Senior recruitment consultant Gemma Pluck explains some of the reasons why employers should consider hiring temps and the options available to bring temporary talent into an organisation.

Whatever you need, our specialist temp recruitment experience puts us in the best position to support you at every stage of the process, so you can gain the following benefits of professional interim support.

INSTANT, EFFECTIVE SUPPORT

A temp can usually start a new role within a matter of days and make an immediate difference. Those who thrive in interim positions are likely to be highly self-motivated individuals, they have cultivated the flexibility and adaptability to hit the ground running and to achieve results in the short term.

INCREASED MORALE AND REDUCED SICKNESS ABSENCE

If the current workflow is unmanageable, recruiting an interim will boost the morale of your full-time workforce by relieving the team from an excessive workload. This can prevent a potential drop in productivity or increase in sickness absence caused by employees feeling snowed under.

FRESH PERSPECTIVES

Temps and freelancers are likely to have worked across many different organisations, both in the same industry and outside of it. They can bring experience and knowledge of different systems and processes which could spark ideas you may not even have considered.

SPECIFIC SKILL SETS  

By bringing in a professional interim to complete a special project you can gain access to strategic skill sets and experience you may not already have within the organisation.

AVOID POTENTIALLY COSTLY RECRUITMENT MISTAKES

Temporary employees can not only provide an immediate injection of skills and experience, they can also help to buy you time when you are recruiting for a permanent position. Taking on an interim to manage the workload in the short term could help you to avoid recruiting the wrong hire due to time pressures.

EXTENDED INTERVIEWS

In some instances, employing temps can also lead to meaningful hires in the long run. Taking on an interim allows you to assess their suitability for the role, team fit and skill set, prior to hiring someone on a permanent contract.

At Pure, we have developed a network of highly experienced temps, freelancers and consultants, which we place with organisations on a short-term basis to provide a temporary injection of skills, resources and specialist knowledge. We support organisations with temporary recruitment solutions across all levels and for a variety of different reasons, whether it is covering employees on leave, planning additional support for particularly busy periods or bringing in additional expertise for a specific project.

Temporary workers can be employed on a fixed term basis, where the employee is contracted for a specific time period and is set up on your own payroll system and subject to the terms and conditions of your organisation’s contract. Alternatively, we can support you to employ a temp as an agency worker who is paid on an hourly or daily rate. In this instance, we will manage the temp’s pay on a weekly basis so there is no need for you to have to administer the payroll, and in most instances, both the employer or the temp only need to give one week’s notice to terminate the assignment.

If you would like more information about recruiting temporary workers or to discuss any temporary candidates, contact one of our consultants:

Cambridge 01223 209888  |  Chelmsford 01245 708808 |  Ipswich 01473 250990  |  Norwich 01603 216450

Through our Women’s Leadership Programme we see first-hand that the businesses most successful in creating diverse senior teams are those open to exploring positive solutions, and research from the ‘Power Part Time List’ shows that job shares are one of the options being adopted.

It revealed that there is now a record number of senior job shares, and this is being attributed to more organisations looking to change from the traditional office hours as a way to attract and keep the very best people.

It’s important to recognise that job shares do require a commitment from everyone involved and won’t be right for all employees or organisations. Our focus is on encouraging organisations to consider and explore all flexible working options as part of their talent recruitment and retention strategies. Here are some of the ways in which job shares might work for your organisation and the benefits to both the business and its employees.

Increased senior team diversity

Job shares enable employers to offer part-time working hours without compromising on providing a full-time level of service, people management and strategic input. It enables employees to meet the demands of challenging, business critical roles, while still working genuinely part time hours. Christina Youell, co-founder of our Women’s Leadership Programme, describes them as talent partnerships. She said: “Through job shares, you find a talent shortage fix, where people can balance work and caregiving. If it’s the same person you need 40 hours a week, and that’s all you’re open to hiring, they’re generally male. Talent partnerships open the door to more women remaining in the talent pipeline.”

Talent attraction

Job shares won’t just appeal to women either. In the current competitive recruitment market, businesses are working harder than ever to enhance their employer brand. Being seen as an organisation which embraces flexible working opportunities, such as job shares, in order to support its employees to achieve a work-life balance, will appeal to people of all ages, genders and backgrounds. 

Talent retention

They can also be an effective way of retaining and progressing talented employees by catering for people’s changing working needs throughout their careers, such as a need for increased flexibility due to a change in personal circumstances. The Job Share Project survey revealed that for 87% of respondents, job sharing had meant the difference between staying with a company or leaving. Unlike going part-time, job shares reduce pressure on employees to try to fit five days of work into less hours. It can also reduce the impact on the engagement of the wider team. They are less likely to feel they are left picking up extra work or lacking in management support.

Increased innovation and engagement

Two people in one role can bounce suggestions of each other and bring different experiences to the table. Senior employees are often faced with challenging situations and as the saying goes, two heads are better than one. Those in the job share are also likely to be more productive and engaged. They can focus on work when they are in the office and not be distracted by trying to juggle personal commitments.

Inspirational case studies

As the Power Part Time List shows, more businesses are adopting job shares and gaining the benefit of full-time expertise and productivity, while offering the flexibility of part-time working. Many of these organisations are proactively sharing their stories of how job shares have worked for them and their employees. This gives businesses more background and informed advice on how it could work in their own company.

Our expert consultants can also advise clients on how job shares and other flexible working practices can best suit their business and support their talent recruitment and retention strategies. Contact us to arrange an informal chat about how we could help.

Zak Agency is a youth marketing agency – focusing on people under 30, also known as the millennial generation. We were contacted by Zak Agency to help the site rank better on Google and other search engines for terms such as youth marketing and creative agencies in London and this is how we approached the campaign.

What is youth marketing?

Youth marketing uses a range of marketing communications to target young people – this includes email, TV, radio, branding, media, advertising, social media, billboards, experiences and more. The tone of youth marketing is typically loud, collaquial, bright and appealing to a younger generation. It is an opportunity for brands to engage with a young, growing generation which is likely to have disposable income for consumer and material goods, and something that can heavily influence their friends and family too.

What we have done for Zak Agency?

Our main objective is to help Zak Agency improve their positions on Google’s search for a variety of target keywords. We started by sitting down with the client and compiling a list of key terms that they wish to target including youth marketing agency, creative agency, millennial agency and more. Our next job is to integrate these keywords naturally into the website through meta-data and content.

Site Clean Up: We start the first month with a full site clean up, ensuring that every page is fully optimised from head-to-toe. Every page needed a quality meta-titles, descriptions, h1 headings and every image needs alt-text so that it can be read effectively by Google. As a very visual website, we had to individually address over 1,100 images on the website.

Links: To build up the site’s domain, we added some high quality links to the homepage and other main pages of the site. This included links from marketing, tech and news sites – showing relevancy in today’s news and also to build up some authority. This is something that will put them in good stead for the long-term future.

Next Steps: Once the site has been cleaned up and has started to rank nicely, we can now look at some new opportunities to capture some traffic and high quality customers. For instance, we aim to propose some useful guides to position the company in the youth, digital space such as:

“How many instagram followers do you need to become an influencer?”

“What is the millennial market worth in the UK?”

“Which social media platforms are most used by young people”

We are delighted with the initialy progress of the campaign, since we have captured a top 5 position for ‘youth marketing agency’ within the first month and look forward to building on this success over the next few months.

Selecting which gifts to buy for any occasion is difficult and comes with a variety of challenges including choosing your budget, getting a gift the recipient(s) will be happy with and getting a gift that will be remembered by whoever is receiving it. However, when choosing which gifts to buy purely online, there are additional challenges to be found.

Because you are not shopping for the gift in a traditional sense (going to a shop and examining it before purchasing), you need to assess the item of product very differently. Furthermore, many people find shopping for anything, let alone a gift for someone else, extremely challenging and quite a headache at times (source: Cotton Twist).

The Evolving Purchasing Process

In past years, any gift bought for anyone, from items of clothing to novelty items and even electronics would need to be properly seen, examined and assessed in store by the purchaser.

This was to ‘qualify’ the item; to make sure you bought what you were hoping for and to check that the item met expectations. For example, it may be the case that online or in a magazine, an item has a stated size, but in reality, it didn’t match up and would come up too large or too small, with different clothing retailers’ sizes slightly varying.

Nowadays however, with the death of the traditional high street appearing to be an evolving reality, more and more people are shopping online for all nature of gifts. This evolution in consumer behaviour has come about in part due to the surge in popularity of the likes of Amazon, ASOS, eBay and other well-established online retailers and marketplaces. These online retailers make selecting gifts easy as can be online.

Because customers can view, zoom in on and even sometimes ‘test’ items (for example in a simulated test environment), the need to physically ‘go and see’ a product is greatly reduced. Apart from items which are dependent on senses of smell and taste, it is perfectly feasible to select an item online.

Shops, Outlets and the High Street

Shops, outlets and other retail premises on the high street do still have their places although for many, it is an accepted practice to go to a shop to physically view, taste or smell the product or gift idea in question. Once the product to be purchased is decided upon, many consumers will then go online and buy the exact same product, often at a cheaper price.

Hence, the high street and high street-dependent businesses are for the most part, in a steep decline. Some retailers and shops do however have their places on the high street over some others. This includes food and drink providers and the likes of coffee shops. Additionally, shops selling fragrances and ‘testable’ items such as perfumes, alcohol, chocolates and similar do see visitors, with people needing to experience the products to validate them as a purchase from time to time. An issue faced by such businesses though is that people may simply use the shop to taste or test an item, only then to purchase it online thereafter.

The future does not look brilliant for the high street in a traditional sense with many shops and businesses being forced to close, unable to afford drops in profits twinned with expensive business rates and staffing costs. That all said, it may well be a case that the high street evolves rather than disappears, although that remains to be seen.

Booklets are very useful in promoting any kind of business, giving you the opportunity to introduce your products or services to potential customers in a detailed, clear and attractive way. In the same time, these informative materials represent the image of your business and, because of this, it’s important to use the proper content, a good quality printing service and an interesting design when you decide to create a booklet.

Establish the purpose of the booklet

The first step in creating the best printed booklet for your business is to decide how do you want to use it and what’s the message you want to send to your audience. All the other decisions are based on this and identifying the purpose of your booklet can help you channel all the available resources in the same direction. To make it easier, ask yourself some questions and decide the features of your booklet according to the answers:

• Do you want to include storytelling in your booklet?
• Are you marketing a product or a service?
• Who is your targeted audience – business partners, clients, a certain group of people?
• Is this a supportive material for your sales department or are you planning to use it just as an informative material?
• Will the booklet end up in the hands of existing or potential partners and customers?
• Will you hand other informative materials – flyers, leaflets, brochures – together with the booklet?
• Are you planning to keep the booklet for customers visiting your office or do you want to use it in exhibits and trade shows?

Once these details are clear, you can move to the next step and create the proper content and design that will help you reaching your goal.

The content of the booklet

The ideal content of a booklet is on point, simple, but not boring. It might be a good idea to ask a specialist to create the content. A freelance copywriter or content writer, an agency – the choice is yours and it mainly depends on the budget.

Make sure the content is catchy, informative and easy to read. Divide it in short paragraphs and use subtitles – nobody likes a huge text block. Use clear fonts and combine the text with different colours and graphics or pictograms to make it more interactive, but remember that less is more. Don’t overload the pages, because you will risk confusing the reader. You must focus the attention on the main point, so dosing the elements in the proper way is something important.

Image resolution and colours

Your booklet should look professional and for this to happen you must use high resolution pictures. If the images don’t have the proper quality, it will appear blurred or pixeled when printed, thus the booklet will look bad. Most of the times, the pictures you are seeing on your computer have a 72 dpi (dots per inch) resolution, enough for your laptop’s screen, but not enough for a printer, where the pictures should have a resolution of 300-400 dpi.

It goes without saying that your booklet should be coloured and not black-and-white, unless you choose the greyscale design to make a point – for vintage images or for an old school design. But this matter is not only about which colour palette you will use. It goes beyond the taste issue, getting a little bit technical: you have to know the difference between RGB and CMYK colour models. RGB (red, green and blue) is used for displaying images on electronic devices, while CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) is used in printing. In order to have control over the accuracy of the utilized colours, it is recommended to use a software like InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop or similar, that allows designing in a CMYK colour space.

Paper type and weight

You should choose the paper for printing according to the design of the booklet. Silk, uncoated, natural, gloss or recycled – these are all different types of paper in terms of looks, feel and quality. It goes the same for the cover, where you can choose from different types of finishings: matt, gloss or soft touch lamination, matt, gloss or spot UV and so on. Choose carefully, considering the purpose of the booklet and the targeted audience. A bad quality paper and finishing will look and feel cheap and all the efforts made for a flawless design and content will not matter anymore.

The paper weight is also something to be considered. For the inside pages, the weight can usually range between 90 gsm and 250 gsm, but if you’re not on a budget and you’re aiming for a durable product it is recommended to go higher than the minimum. As for the covers, the available options usually start from 170 gsm, but a high-quality booklet will have a cover paper with a weight of 300-350 gsm.

If you focus on quality when designing and printing your booklets, the chances to impress a potential customer and to determine him to work with you are higher. More customers or business partners means a higher revenue, and this should be enough reason for you to be interested in making the best booklet for your business!

Part of our vision at Naked Marketing is to generate positive impact for our clients and help their organisation achieve success through our ideas, design and approach. This desire for positive impact is built on our belief that design should be an investment, not a cost. When design can deliver tangible, or even less-tangible, results against set objectives, it becomes effective – and through that we maximise value to the client

The effectiveness of design in business is a well-explored narrative. The Design Council established in 2007 that for every £1 invested in design, businesses can expect over £20 in increased revenues. Since 1997, shares in design-led business outperformed the FTSE 100 by more than 200%. But the positive impact of design goes far beyond the bottom line and it can mean different things to different businesses or communities – it can improve customer experience, raise levels of engagement, generate new revenue streams, improve sustainability, raise morale, create new jobs and much more.

This is why, when first discussing a new project, we ask the question: “What does success look like to you?”

Perhaps you aim to increase footfall at your next event (tangible), or it could be that you wish to increase the perceived value of your brand in your customers minds (emotional). One may be easier to measure than the other, but in the course of time the outcome for both objectives can be tracked and analysed.

This mindset isn’t something that you can switch on overnight, it’s a culture that has been embedded in Naked from Day One. Our philosophy of always delivering more value than we charge is built on the idea of having a positive impact on the goals of an organisation. It’s all very well developing good design in response to a business challenge, but, without objectives for success in place and measuring against those, how can you track if your budget was wisely spent with your marketing and design agency? As an example of this, we’ve seen recent success with a relatively new client of ours, Abacus Hotels, who were part of the Best Western group. Naked were asked to help build the brand equity as a standalone group of hotels. The project, of rebranding each hotel and redesigning individual websites, alongside marketing activity, was set against clear objectives for success. After six months, the brand identities have been rolled out across the hotel group, and the website results are now offering tangible rewards. In this period the group has seen an increase in web bookings of 370%, and revenue from these bookings has climbed by 415%. We are confident enough to say that Abacus Hotels have seen a return on their investment within a month. Now our ongoing focus for Abacus is very much on retention of new customers, whilst continuing to build on the growing brand reputation we have helped to create. You can find more on that project here » So before your next project, why not first ask yourself ‘What does success look like?’ …you know we will!

nor(DEV):con 2019 Thursday 21st to Saturday 23rd of February 2019, The Kings Centre, Norwich, NR1 1PH, https://nordevcon.com Tickets: https://nordevcon-2019.eventbrite.com Friday opening keynote: The Failure of Focus, Liz Keogh We know that in our landscape of people and technology, aiming for a particular outcome doesn’t always lead to us getting what we want. Sometimes the best results come from approaching a problem obliquely. But in Agile our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through the early and continuous delivery of valuable software. We like to start with the outcome, meet the needs of our users, delivering high-quality working software with happy teams and true agility… but how might that focus be holding us back, and what are the alternatives? In this talk we look at some different strategies for approaching complex ecosystems, starting from where we are right now, and allowing innovation to emerge through obliquity, naivety, and serendipity. Friday closing keynote: Software doesn’t always work out, Kevlin Henney Looking at the number of software failure screens in public places, it can sometimes seem that software developers are the greatest producers of installation art around the planet. Software failures can be entertaining or disastrous. They can also be instructive – there’s a lot we can learn. Saturday keynote: Plain Wrong?, Heydon Pickering I love writing JavaScript. The trouble is, so does everyone else. When people aren’t writing JavaScript, they’re usually writing frameworks for writing JavaScript in JavaScript. In fact, most of the JavaScript that’s around these days seems to either be written for, or within, a JavaScript flavor like React, Vue, or Angular. Frameworks make writing your own code faster and more ergonomic, but they do not come without problems. Code written with Framework A depends on the environment Framework A provides in order to work – and this dependency often represents a lot of code to transmit, decompress, parse, and compile. What about ‘plain’ JavaScript? Is it always naïve to think anything worthwhile can still be achieved just writing some straight-up code? It turns out this is a tricky question to answer, because the line between plain and flavored JavaScript is kind of blurry. It’s also not clear who should be the ones to get to write JavaScript, for what reasons, or when. But there’s no doubt the little we do as web developers is often done with much more than we need. See the full schedule here: https://nordevcon.com

Content has become one of those buzz wordy sounding things that it is trendy to bash, marketers can be very quick to channel their inner hipster in this way. Content marketing could be cast as crusty and old fashioned in the light of more technical, data driven ‘new age’ marketing techniques, but maybe all it needs is a bit of a polish. The reputation of content marketing has been dented, not because of it not ‘working’, but because a big chunk of the advertising industry has forgotten how to use it. You will have seen this in sponsored articles that are little more than text based adverts and sales features that look like they came straight from a brochure. To really work, content marketing has to be better than this. Content marketing now has to be useful; it has to be interesting, engaging or entertaining in some way. To cut through all the fluff pieces that usually sit under sponsored content banners good content marketing has to be…well… good.   Content marketing should also not just be about words: video, photos and infographics all have a valuable part to play.  Being ahead of the curve, we are transforming the way we create content marketing. Starting with a process of topic modelling, we are able to take a subject and research questions being asked online. Questions that start with ‘How do I…’ or ‘What is the best…’ can bring some interesting and useful answers. Good content marketing delivers expert answers to these questions and maybe even asks the questions in the first place. One of the things we have seen with our new content marketing approach is that it really does deliver results. It builds awareness, delivers visibility on search engines, it builds reputation and interaction on social channels and it really does deliver new customers. Done right content marketing is a really valuable, relevant and effective piece of the marketing puzzle.

“Understanding your consumer in any industry is vital; especially when they’re irrational.”

The ‘perfectly rational’ individual wakes up in the morning in complete darkness…

He gets dressed for work but never turns the light on because he knows exactly where all of his clothes are. He rationalises to turn the light on would be irrational. Spending an extra penny on lighting would take away an unjustifiable figure from his concise and dotted budget.

He drinks a cold coffee for the same reason. Boiling a kettle is one of the least energy efficient appliances in the home. The caffeine is just as strong as if the drink was slightly cooler than 100 degrees. He thinks the potency of caffeine is not related to the temperature of the drink, so why boil the kettle?

After he is dressed he heads to work. He does not need to travel to work because he sleeps at his desk. If you asked him why he would say that to own or rent is irrational; “when it is possible to sleep at work why waste the paycheck on a house and commute?”

Does this sound like someone you know? Human beings are not one hundred percent rational. We are emotional beings.

As science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein once said: “man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalising animal.” In other words, we always try and explain our behaviour without knowing why we do it.

In the 1970s, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky highlighted just how irrational human beings can be. These two academics helped develop the idea of “cognitive biases,” showing that humans systematically make choices that defy clear logic. A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment.

An example of this deviation occurs every morning for some people. How many of us are guilty of skipping breakfast. Is breakfast not the most important meal of the day? Not eating in the mornings knocks our capacity to function throughout the day. Breakfast kick-starts the metabolism, helping you burn calories and helping us perform efficiently throughout the day. So why do we do it? Because we don’t have time in the mornings or we are too rushed or… and so on. Little things get in the way and we end up making poorer choices because of it.

These seemingly insignificant irrationalities can have a big impact on our perceptions of our customers. Understanding the customer is crucial in any industry; especially when they’re irrational. Knowing the exact problem your customers are trying to solve, and what shortcuts they might take to solve it is what is demanded by today’s consumers.

Take any everyday consumer product such as washing up liquid or toiletries, consumers generally have a preference for a small number of ‘trusted brands’. Knowing what makes a brand ‘trusted’ and why someone would pick one trusted brand over another is crucial insight in today’s competitive world however irrational the thought processes are.

Behavioural economics is a research field that uses psychology to understand more accurately how people make economic decisions. The insights provided by academics can be used by businesses to work with people’s irrationalities rather than against them.

One of the ideas within behavioural economics is framing. In a nutshell, framing is the difference between painting something in a positive or a negative light. This taps into our biological desire for immediate gratification or loss aversion (depending on if the frame is positive or negative) making us more likely to shift our decisions a particular way.

At the heart of behavioural economics lie nudges. These small hints, tweaks or changes are used to ‘nudge’ very specific behaviours in order to create larger lasting changes over time. This can be as simple as putting fruit before a chocolate sundae on a lunch menu or having to enter your pin rather than tap your card.

Putting fruit higher on a lunch menu means the reader has to actively reject the healthy option before they can accept an unhealthy one as their eyes scroll down. Entering your pin rather than using contactless creates friction. That friction that creates a half a second pause can be enough to make you think, “do I really need this?”

In theory, the wealth and range of products available means people should be able to have their exact needs met more so than ever before. In practise, people become overwhelmed and resort to rules of thumb; some businesses don’t understand that people don’t have the time the energy or the desire to seek out the best option.

While having a fleet of behavioural scientists might be a bit excessive for your company, taking a behavioural approach to your products and services could be the difference between a happy customer and one that is misunderstood.