New leadership simulation transforms business education

The ‘Kerovka’ simulation, created by Prendo Simulations in collaboration with Professors at Kellogg School of Management and Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, is revolutionising business and management education by enabling students to learn by actually doing something.

Currently employed by a number of top business schools in the world, including Kellogg, Wharton, HEC Paris, and Saïd Business School at University of Oxford, the Kerovka simulation is the latest in Prendo’s educational simulations.

Covering key topics like crisis management, managing trust and reputation, stakeholder management and responsible leadership, the Kerovka simulation gives business students the opportunity to actively participate during classes, significantly changing the way in which business students learn.

At Saïd Business School, the Kervoka simulation is used in its MSc in Major Programme Management for a module on corporate diplomacy.

The cohort is broken down into teams who, over a two-hour period, experience the challenges and dynamics of working with multiple internal and external stakeholders in a complex scenario.

This is followed by a classroom debrief in which the outcomes are uncovered and explained. The process gives participants an engaging, emotional and therefore memorable experience.

Alastair Giffin, Director of Prendo Simulations, says:  The Kerovka simulation challenges participants to manage a crisis under time pressure, by engaging stakeholders, building trust and managing reputation.

"With radical innovations happening in many other industries, Prendo’s mission is to provide real innovations, like the Kerovka simulation, to the leadership education industry, an industry that is still primarily using centuries old teaching methods.”

To learn more visit https://www.prendo.com/

Women in Recruitment launches equality study

In order to try and understand and correct gender disparity in the recruitment profession, Women in Recruitment is launching a comprehensive examination of the sector and its approaches to female talent, allowing them to benchmark their strategies against the overall market.

The initiative, founded by the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) and supported by sector-wide stakeholders is reportedly the first of its kind to conduct such a study.

With recent APSCo research showing just 23% of firms offer flexible working and only 9% provide enhanced maternity benefits, the survey will enable firms to challenge and rethink long-standing assumptions, practices, re-align out-of-date strategies and identify opportunities for change.

Ann Swain, Director at Women in Recruitment, CEO of APSCo, said: "While research shows females account for 41% of the recruitment workforce at recruiter level, this falls to just 25% board level. However, despite this, just 31% of companies have initiatives in place to retain women."

He went on to say: "With this disparity, we hope our benchmarking survey can work as a catalyst for change. For firms working to improve equality, measuring progress is crucial and benchmarking your success against contemporaries can play a large role in driving change."

She ended: "I’m proud to announce the launch of this project, and hope that together we can build an accurate picture of what our workforces look like today, and track progress within our own organisations and across the entire sector."

Take part in the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/Women-in-Recruitment-Benchmarking-Project

(Image courtesy  Robin Higgins at Pixabay)

Puzzel delivers new chat bot solution to insurance company If

The Nordic region's biggest insurance company, If, has adopted innovative AI in combination with its existing solution from contact centre supplier Puzzel. The new agreement covers If's contact centres in four countries.

Puzzel, an acknowledged leading provider of cloud-based contact centre solutions, offers, among other things, artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver complete, cost-effective solutions. One such solution is the chat bot, Ruby.

What is a chat bot? It's software that simulates human dialogue using AI. Chat bots have been shown to positively strengthen customer contact.

The bot answers questions around the clock and is fast because it can handle multiple chat cases simultaneously.

The use of chat bots allows employees to free up time to handle more complex cases where personal contact is vital.

AI is proving to be a clear success factor when it comes to customer experience and is an important ingredient in the mix of contact channels.

In the summer of 2017, If switched to a cloud contact centre in the Nordic countries with the assistance of Puzzel. It became Europe's largest cloud-based contact centre with a total of 3,400 customer service employees and the state-of-the-art contact centre became the hub of the insurance company's services.

Kjell Rune Tveita, CIO and Head of Group Services at If, said: “We chose Puzzel because the chat bot solution from Boost.ai offers the ability to build advanced automated services.

"The solution is smooth and easy to implement, which is a good example of Puzzel’s flexible and innovative solutions. That is why we decided to collaborate with Puzzel from the beginning when we transferred our entire contact center to the cloud a couple of years ago."

He added: "We could see that automated services are becoming increasingly popular with customers and our ambition is always to meet the customers where the customers want to be, no matter what channel they choose to communicate with us. The chat bot will be a great addition to our contact centers throughout the Nordic region, and thanks to the flexibility of Puzzel we can grow in the future and gain more customer and business value.”

Gunnar Aasen, CCO, Puzzel AS pointed out: “Puzzel’s business strategy has always been to offer contact centre solutions to customers by building partnerships with those who can offer the most innovative components. For the new solution with If, Puzzel is working with Boost.ai. From our previous experience we know the insurance company is very innovative. Together we saw the potential for AI is huge and it is exciting that Puzzel has now started one of our largest chat bot rollouts in the Nordic countries.”

Gunnar Aasen concluded: “Meeting the customer on the customer's terms may sound like a cliché, but it has never been more true than now. When you are interested in a service or product, you do not want to wait. It should be easy to order and easy to understand. Virtual agents are quickly gaining in importance. Within about four weeks, a contact center can train its company-specific virtual agents so that they can answer the most frequent questions and explain even more complex things. The fact that the Nordic region's largest insurance company is now building its service with Boost.ai as part of a Puzzel solution shows that AI has become an important success factor in keeping customers satisfied."

Imprivata further expands Identity and Access Management capabilities for the UK healthcare market

Imprivata®, the digital identity company for healthcare, has today announced the extension to its Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions with Imprivata Identity Governance™, which is now available in the UK.

 A proven solution, that has been designed specifically for healthcare and is already widely implemented at some of the largest public health systems in the US, Imprivata Identity Governance™ enables organisations to easily manage user accounts, controlling access to sensitive patient records throughout the employee lifecycle. User entitlement policies and controls can be enforced so that compliance obligations including GDPR requirements are met.

“With Imprivata Identity Governance, we can easily provision users when they first join the hospital,” says Leah Dorman, Information Systems Security Analyst at Northern Light Health, a 1,176-bed integrated health delivery system that serves the state of Maine, USA. “When employees are added to our HR system, they’re assigned a role through Imprivata Identity Governance where each role has been mapped to their job code. The solution enables us to automatically grant users access to applications and systems associated with each role. In fact, we continue to add more applications for automating user provisioning.”

Imprivata Identity Governance™ enables NHS Trusts and other organisations to:

• Introduce precise role-based data access for all staff;
• Increase productivity of clinical staff by removing barriers to technology;
• Strengthen data security with faster threat evaluation and remediation;
• Better manage compliance with analysis of usage data via dashboards; and
• Reduce IT costs by automating identity management and self-service portal for users.

Same-day access rights to clinical systems
With Imprivata Identity Governance™, care providers can access key clinical systems immediately. When staff leave or move to a new role, their user accounts are automatically adjusted or closed, ensuring that access to data is tightly managed.

Self Service Portal
Users are able to update or reset their passwords and request access to additional applications quickly, without IT intervention, saving significant time for IT support departments.

Access and entitlement enforcement
Imprivata Identity Governance™ enables IT and department heads to manage identity roles and entitlements over the entire lifecycle of a user. Workflows allow for certification and remediation of access rights, making the process easy and fast.

Governance, risk management and compliance dashboard
Compliance teams and security officers can view complete user behaviour and entitlements in reports and dashboards that combine rights and usage data.

Imprivata Identity Governance™ is part of the fully integrated Imprivata platform for Identity and Access Management which includes Imprivata OneSign® Single Sign On, Imprivata Confirm ID for Clinical Workflows, and Imprivata OneSign Spine Combined Workflow.

Wes Wright, CTO, Imprivata said: “Managing access to sensitive patient information is critical for healthcare organisations. Clumsy security and slow to provision IT systems lead to frustration for frontline staff. When Imprivata Identity Governance™ is combined with Imprivata OneSign Single Sign On, users have immediate access to all the data they need to do their job with the simple tap of a badge or a token. Streamlined login times save up to an hour per shift, giving back significant time to care, which has proven popular with clinicians and aids adoption.”

“Precise role-based user accounts ensure care providerswill be able to deliver high-quality care with immediate access to the correct systems and patient information, and the audit trails to prove it.

"This timely access to the right systems at the right time removes barriers to technology, enabling clinicians to be more productive, confident they are complying with data regulations.”

Imprivata Identity Governance™ automated and controlled user access strengthens data security across the organisation, and provides compliance teams with rights and usage data in a single comprehensive report.

Imprivata Identity Governance can be seen at Digital Health Rewired, Olympia, London, Stand No: B31, 4 March 2020.

To book an appointment with them email marketinguk@imprivata.com.

Post-Brexit immigration system welcomed by staffing specialist

Following the publication of the Home Office’s new policy statement on the post-Brexit points-based immigration system, a top engineering recruiter has expressed a welcome that access to talent from overseas won’t be severed after Britain leaves the EU,  but warned that more needs to be done to address ongoing skills shortages in the UK.

Under the new rules, the general salary threshold for ‘skilled workers’ will be lowered from £30,000 to £25,600 in line with Migration Advisory Committee recommendations. In addition, if an applicant earns less than the threshold, but no less than £20,480, they may still come to the UK if they are offered a job on the government’s shortage occupation list (SOL).

Roles on the current list include civil engineers, electrical engineers and mechanical engineers amongst other careers.

Commenting on the new rules, Lewis Richards, Director of WR Engineering, said: “While there were concerns the end of free movement of labour would severely exacerbate talent shortages which are already prevalent across the engineering sector, news that the salary threshold will be significantly lower for SOL occupations will offer welcome relief for the clients we work with.

“However, with a recent study from EngineeringUK suggesting the sector will need an extra 186,000 skilled recruits each year until 2024 in order to ease talent shortages, relying on immigration alone would not solve the impending skills crisis.

“The new points-based immigration system may keep the wolves from the door for now. But, long-term, individual businesses must explore how they can best attract the next generation of professionals to the sector, and retain and upskill their existing employees, to ensure their talent pipelines are resilient to future demand.”

Options, a new pension brand, has launched

Options, a new pensions brand, promises to bring an innovative, solutions-based approach to the UK market.

Options, the new name for Carey Pensions, is an independent pension administrator and professional trustee company providing specialist pension services and products.

It's backed by a business with a 20 year heritage in pension provision and currently administers in excess of £1.7billion across a range of corporate and personal pension schemes. Options Pensions is the UK focused pension solutions arm of STM Group Plc, the cross border financial services provider.

Options is led by a strong, knowledgeable, highly-qualified and experienced senior team and its Managing Director Christine Hallett (PICTURED) has over 30 years’ industry experience with expertise in both SIPP and corporate pensions. She commented: “Options is a robust, honest, and trusted service driven business with a team who all passionately believe in pensions solutions as being the right way to plan for a secure financial future.

"With our wealth of experience, and the strength which is derived from being part of the STM Group Plc, Options has a firm foundation from which we can offer a wide range of solutions, and more options and therefore more choice when compared to most other providers.”

Options bases its solutions on SIPPs, SSAS, commercial property, syndicates, workplace pensions, auto-enrolment and third party administration. It also provides specialist commercial property services for individual SIPP, SSAS and syndicates.

Options’ brand imagery is inspired by the growth rings of a tree and reflects the strength and confidence the business has gained over the last 20 years, and the foundation which that provides to enable the business to craft solutions from products.

Hallett adds: “For most providers, talking about SIPP, SSAS, workplace pensions and other products is where the conversation ends. For us, as a solutions provider aiming to offer more choice, it’s where the conversation begins. Planning for tomorrow needs options – so our new brand is all about providing the best solution, not just a particular product.”

Options is investing heavily in systems and technology so that advisers and their clients can access their pensions information with ease and to enable Options to respond quickly and effectively to their needs. It is also committed to providing advisers with the knowledge and support they need to offer the best advice and service to clients. This commitment includes Options’ partnership programme which gives advisors access to resources and training in a range of areas including technical, marketing, presentations, webinars, client meetings, business planning, education and training.

Alan Kentish, CEO of STM Group Plc, said: “This is a really exciting next step for both STM Group and Options. Strategically, as a group, we have stated that we are keen to do more in the UK pensions market, and with the Options team we have all the right ingredients to do so. The rebrand to Options is the final piece of the jigsaw in being able to offer advisers and their clients a true, solutions-driven service that is capable of delivering Workplace Pensions via its authorised Master Trust through to highly complex bespoke SIPPs (including syndicated commercial property ownership) for the high net worth market. I am looking forward to seeing the success of the team’s hard work.”

Find out more at https://www.optionspensions.co.uk/

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Could a business fail over too much self-belief?

Being too optimistic about one’s ability and future prospects could be one reason businesses are failing, according to research by the University of Cologne.

The study, conducted by Professor Fabian Sting and a team of interdisciplinary co-authors, learned that businesses could be failing as managers might see their own innovation abilities and future more optimistically than they actually are, affecting how they view their ideas.

Failing to grasp the true value of an idea could cause a business to be run on poor selection decisions, miss out on great opportunities or to make costly investments, which could threaten their survival.

“There is an optimistic illusion rooted in the human need to maintain, defend and promote a positive self-view, which explains why so many entrepreneurs and CEOs take overly big and risky strategic shifts that could potentially harm their business,” says Professor Sting.

A person’s self-belief can be affected by the environment they are in, such as an organisation, as it can manipulate identities through cues contained in job role definitions.

For this reason, employees that are higher up in the organisation may become overconfident in an instinctive attempt to conform to their role expectations.

“As employees move up the career ladder, they usually acquire a stronger belief in their own abilities to accomplish tasks, particularly when this belief is reinforced in their daily work. For example, having a separate office, wearing more formal clothing and taking part in leadership meetings,” says Professor Sting.

However, having optimism is not all bad as the authors say that entrepreneurs and CEOs need to be sufficiently optimistic about their abilities to set up a business, otherwise they would not take such action.

The study was conducted on a large corporate process innovation dataset, validated on 9,000 people in an online experiment, and published in the Academy of Management Journal.