Hybrid for happiness (because wellbeing matters, too)

Charlotte Alldritt, Senior Consultant and Hybrid Organisation Expert Panellist guest blogs on the importance of happiness and wellbeing in the workplace for Microsoft's The Hybrid Organisation.

Hybrid for happiness (because wellbeing matters, too)

Volterra supports HSR in the UK

The Transport Select Committee is currently taking evidence at the inquiry into High Speed Rail (HSR) in the UK. Volterra supports the development of an HSR network in the UK. With only 70 miles of high speed track, the UK lags behind countries such as Morocco with 422 miles and Saudi Arabia with 342. By 2025 Network Rail predicts that Japan, the first country to introduce HSR and with a similar geography to the UK, will have over 3,750 miles of track. International examples show us that HSR typically pays for itself through fares, quickly exceeds demand forecasts, delivers significant economic and regeneration benefits and reduces the demand for car and aviation trips.

The UK has historically underinvested in infrastructure – specifically transport – and it is vital that this is rectified if we are to continue to be globally competitive and to grow our way out of the recession. Volterra has long argued that cities are crucial to the UK’s economy, they are places where innovation and knowledge transfer can take place. We argued the concept of agglomeration in the context of Crossrail, this resulted in changes to the way transport investment is evaluated in the UK. Yet the evaluation methods still don’t capture everything, effectively assuming that the economy is a zero sum game – benefits in one place must be at the expense of somewhere else. The government’s case for HSR, even using the existing guidance along with conservative demand forecasts, still result in a strong case with a good return on the proposed investment. Investing in transport which can relieve capacity constraints on routes that are already creaking is crucial to maintaining the future competitiveness of the UK and its cities.

By Ellie Evans

A Hybrid approach to flexible working

A Hybrid approach to flexible working
'Hybrid Organisation is a business approach driven by an understanding of the people within a company. A focus on people – and an understanding of the tools and resources they need to be productive and engaged – is central to any Hybrid strategy'...

Value Added and Plan B

The proponents of the need for a Plan B have got one thing right – rebalancing the economy is a painful process and anything that could reduce the pain would be jolly nice. However, it is not clear that they understand the disease and thus the remedy.

In a way we need to go back to the definition of what an economy is about. The fundamental measure of economic activity is based on value added. This is what work adds to inputs to make outputs that people want. In a state-run economy this can be subverted by the government deciding what we ought to want, a proposition whose failure is now pretty well established. Indeed the failure is even worse, since governments are particularly bad at establishing what is wanted by non-citizens and it is especially clear that it is trade that drives economic performance.

For example, ‘China’s share of world trade in goods has soared, rising from an insignificant 1% of the total in 1980 to 9% today. And China and India are enjoying increases in living standards every decade which took the US between 30 and 50 years to achieve in the 19th and early 20th centuries’.* It is growth and trade which are intimately connected.

So value added is also connected to trade – to creating specialism, and to meeting the needs of not only your own citizens but also the citizens of other countries. Over recent decades, indeed most of the second half of the twentieth century, Germany did this with machinery and the UK with professional services, including banking. Nonetheless, the UK also has some niches in high performing textiles, chemicals, medicine and computing. At least these are the ones I know about, there may be others. Building on these, allowing them to be successful, will reduce the trade deficit and equally the government deficit.

Creating real value added then also allows spending on services which make life more comfortable. Plan B would only work if it helps create that value added. It does not do so if it binds up wounds which are still festering under the bandages.

Bridget Rosewell



*The Southern Silk Road, HSBC Global Research, June 2011

Paul Ormerod: What a good job Keynes didn’t believe in forecasti...

Paul Ormerod: What a good job Keynes didn’t believe in forecasti...: "Keynes is in many people’s minds at the moment, as uncertainty about the course of the economic recovery is high. In May 1933, at roughly t..."

Some Comments from the Third European Public Relations and Communications Summit

I recently attended the third European Public Relations and Communications Summit organized by the New York-based company Exl Pharma. This year there was a change in mood and direction compared with the first, the mood was urgent and the direction was towards building new kinds of partnerships with clinicians and patient groups. Corporate communicators are now much more than flag wavers in front of the juggernaut. They are managing a function vital to the survival of the company. Chief Executives know who they are.

So why this transformation? Pharma companies are in the process of changing their business models. The days of blockbusters are over, for them the phase of greater urgency was with the regulator in gaining initial market access. Instead the companies are having to relate much more directly to their funders: the patients. A new kind of pharma care pathway is now on the way to involving diagnostics, targeted personal therapies and outcome measurement. Companies have to take more responsibility for getting therapeutic results. Especially notable were the contributions at the Conference from Fiona Olivier, Strategic Business Communications Director at Abbott. And from James Read, Director of Public Affairs International at Gilead. Abbott are working to develop a new team approach to the culture change. Gilead has shown what can be achieved in getting improved results for patients from the new range of anti-viral therapies. The new model is being supported by key voices in the European Federation of the Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations led by Colin Mackay.

The new model gives the opportunity for a wider range of companies to develop special expertise. It’s more favourable to new entrants than the blockbuster model, those winner take all models that led to increased concentration in the industry. The new model gives smaller and medium sized companies the chance to build a new kind of relationship with patients.

Nick Bosanquet

Happiness Sceptic

Happiness Sceptic

I finally got something positive about the project to measure wellbeing. Much of this has so far rather left me cold. Clearly, there is more to life than the economy, and equally there are many measures of such things as life expectancy, quality of life, educational outcomes and so forth.

And some of the happiness gurus I find distinctly scary. When they tell me they know what makes me happy, I turn up my copy of 1984 (well worn it is too). When they say that all we need to know is a left hand variable (happiness) and the right hand variables which determine it (how often you go to the pub) I want to get away from regression analysis and reach for a gun so that I can shoot before I am shot as an undesirable who doesn’t know what is good for her.

But actually there is something in this. The something is the word ‘subjective’. A lot of subjective feelings are of course ephemeral, emotional and variable with the weather. But some of the ‘subjective’ analysis – how do you generally feel about life – has the capacity to enhance some of our objective analysis. We know that unemployment is a loss of output. We can measure the association with health problems. An association with views on life and its value adds a dimension to this understanding.

But I have not abandoned scepticism. First, I want to know how plausible I might find an allocation of public spending based on such judgements rather than the more normal ones. Moreover, if I discovered that unemployment was a greater scourge than previously thought, does this mean that we should pay people to continue to do jobs for which there is no economic justification?

Bridget Rosewell

Engaging Citizens

Engaging Citizens

I have just participated in a workshop organised by a EU Research Programme called ASSYST, which was focused on the role of ICT in developing policy for a green knowledge based society. I am often sceptical of titles such as this which seem to have every policy buzzword and which can become a substitute for thought. This was, however, an exception.

The most interesting phenomenon was how participants from two Italian regions, from Ile-de-Paris and from London (me) were all stressing the need for more open data access and for creating a more informed and participative dialogue with citizens.

Moreover, we were all positive about the potential for enhanced ICT access to revitalise democracy and help develop better, more focused and more effective public services.

Of course, our histories are not entirely shared and so the balance of views was not universal. Both Britain and France are more centralised than Italy, and in Britain the scope for deciding on local spending is decidedly limited. As ever, participants were shocked to discover that local authorities in the UK only dispose of 5% of budgets independently. This included some of the other Britons present, it should be said.

The group present included both regional policy makers and the academics from the research programme, who want to establish how to develop scientific descriptions of these interactions between citizen, policy and politics. How to model networks and their dynamics, as well as how connections might differ under wider use of internet communication were discussed.

The digital divide and the risk of disempowering those who cannot afford or do not want to try new methods of engagement were key risks, particularly if the sort of knowledge that begins to matter excludes the elderly whose value in some societies is precisely their broader knowledge. If it is the old who vote while the young engage differently, some of us were concerned about society tension.

Nonetheless, in spite of worries about these sorts of tensions, I came away more enthused about the fight to increase access to data, and more convinced that it is an important battle.

Bridget Rosewell