June 2021. Gallup. Among all the bad news recently is this positive discovery: German companies are perhaps becoming much more agile.
In fact, Gallup’s Agility Index shows an eight-percentage-point increase — from 9% in 2019 to 17% in 2020 — in German workers who strongly agree their company has the right mindset, tools and processes to respond quickly to business needs.
November 2021. Reuters. More than half of German companies doing business abroad are suffering severe problems in their supply chains or logistics, pushing them to diversify suppliers, shorten delivery routes and even relocate their own production, a survey showed on Tuesday.
The German economy has boomed on the back of globalisation over the past decade. But pandemic-related disruptions in the worldwide network of supply chains that used to turbo-charge its growth engine are now proving a critical weakness.
November 2022. Yahoo Finance. Ways of working in Germany have entered a state of constant change due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise in digitalization, making digital transformation to improve employee experience increasingly essential, according to a new research report published today by Information Services Group (ISG), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.
What is a business continuity plan? SAP’s global HR value advisor, Chiara Bersano, has a unique perspective on the question. In 1999, she was working for a global company that operated a factory in Izmir, Turkey, when a devastating earthquake ultimately left more than 17,000 dead and 250,000 homeless. Her company’s employees, however, fared better than most.
So, what is contingency planning? If you ask Bersano, it’s creating an emergency-response framework that results in retaining a healthy, motivated, dedicated workforce during and after crises.
“The power of relationship building from a crisis is extreme,” Bersano says. “It’s building a relationship based on trust with the employees.”
Natural disasters. Power outages. Mechanical failures. Events like these may be rare, but if they happen your business could be at risk, potentially costing you millions in lost sales and productivity. In today’s complex world a simple checklist won’t do when ‘what if?’ happens.
Only a thorough contingency plan ensures you have properly assessed your risk and have the right backup systems and strategies in place to activate on a moment’s notice. Trane can help. Our experts work closely with you using a strategic, multi-step approach to identify, prioritize and mitigate the risks you face. You get an action plan to safeguard your critical operations and peace of mind knowing that you’re prepared.
As an American Jeff Bezos is untypical in his long-term and customer-centric approach to business. The success of Amazon speaks for itself.
New York Times. 2015. From Wall Street to Washington and in the towers of academia, people are buzzing about what some say is the pernicious focus in corporate America on short-term profits.
To understand the debate, it helps to understand the various forces that contribute to the pressures on companies to focus on short-term financial results. Those pressures are not just a product of one bad actor. It turns out that nearly everyone in the investment world plays a role in creating the challenges companies face in setting their sights on the far horizon.
The Atlantic. 2016. There was a time, half a century ago, when what was good for many American corporations tended to also be good for America. Companies invested in their workers and new technologies, and as a result, they prospered and their employees did too.
Now, a growing group of business leaders is worried that companies are too concerned with short-term profits, focused only on making money for shareholders. As a result, they’re not investing in their workers, in research, or in technology—short-term costs that would reduce profits temporarily. And this, the business leaders say, may be creating long-term problems for the nation.
Forbes. 2019. It’s also a rebuke to the epidemic of short-term thinking we’re currently living in. Politicians plan in four-year election cycles. Fashions change with the micro-seasons (there used to be just four).
Corporations measure by quarters. News cycles turn over in days, and Twitter churns constantly. Short-term thinking has become our default; meanwhile, we can’t marshal the focus or resources to tackle some of the world’s most pressing problems — the kind that loom long term, from public debt to technological risk and climate change.
Harvard Business Review. 2015. Thirty years ago, no less a business guru than Peter Drucker weighed in, skewering short-termism in a Wall Street Journal editorial.
“Everyone who has worked with American management can testify that the need to satisfy the pension fund manager’s quest for higher earnings next quarter, together with the panicky fear of the raider, constantly pushes top managements toward decisions they know to be costly, if not suicidal, mistakes,” he wrote.
