SI Editor's View: Looking up, and toxic leadership

14 Jul 09

Mid summer and things always seem better in the sunshine. Even if you’re sitting in your garden this year instead of on some foreign beach, all the gloom of the recession doesn’t seem quite so bad when you’re lazing on your own green shoots.

That’s assuming you’ve:

A: still got a job;

B: temporarily loosened the shackles of the national media (stop reading the papers and watching the news during your break and see how it’s all just fine and dandy in La La Land).

It all seems an age away from freezing, snow bound Britain and the appalling financial news we were being bludgeoned with at the beginning of the year.

And, as if by magic, I’ve just been sent the results of two surveys that could almost be described as upbeat.

The latest MBD report on the CCTV market shows that even in this global economic mess the value of the UK market increased by an estimated 2 per cent last year.

Obviously down on the 3-5 per cent growth of the previous three years but nowhere near the knockout blows other industries have had to endure.

What about ‘09? MBD says this year is “anticipated to decline albeit at a marginal level” and return to growth next year at 2-4 per cent up until 2013.

Things looking up

The other encouraging news from a construction market tracker says that public sector recover is starting to gather momentum in the “second half of 2009” – ie, now.

The year-on-year decline in new projects fell to 20 per cent in June – compared to 30 per cent in recent months.

A fair percentage of security centres around new-build, even if installation is close to last in the food chain.

But this can only be good news, and the obvious message is hang on in there - by your teeth if necessary.

Six days a week job

This fragile recovery is not happening by itself, according to research by BT Business, which puts it down to people working £200m extra in overtime per week.

A full 50 per cent of people are working overtime as a norm and, on average, seven hours a week more – an extra day - since the recession began.

More than two thirds of men (there’s a clear gender split, according to the research) said they were working over the recommended 48-hour week, so lots of work prospects for the medical profession.

Middle managers are most likely to be doing this extra work. So if you’ve been given extra “empowerment” by your boss (jargon has not been a recession victim), know you’re not alone.

Firm but unfair

Bosses themselves can be part of the problem in these tougher times, becoming bullies to their employees, according to a staff coaching specialist.

If you’re an installation proprietor who rules with a rod of iron you’re probably more likely to describe yourself as firm but fair.

But, according to the specialists, they have been approached by three top FTSE companies in recent months with the intention of them sorting out a bullying manager.

Senior management bullies are now a real threat to the firm itself.

Increasingly, employees facing the prospects of redundancy in a recession are looking to cash in at court by claiming they were being bullied.

Logic says that bosses who bark orders without explaining the reasons, dominate the conversation and are rude and non-communicative will not be running successful companies anyway, but what about that dangerous middle management under so much pressure?

Click here for advice on soothing the savage breast.

Toxic leadership

In the wake of the MPs’ expenses scandal and the disreputable bankers, political and commercial leadership itself has taken a real knocking.

This current leadership problem is not something dreamed up by coaching specialists, according to another consultancy.

They say that “toxic leadership” can turn a turn a great company team into a “one-brained organism”.

Leaders should be role models for employees, they say, especially when the going gets tough.

Salaries aside, it doesn’t seem much fun at the top these days, being blamed and criticised by all and sundry. What happened to all that pleasurable networking on the golf course? I’m almost beginning to feel sorry for them.

Companies blog off

Not surprisingly, businesses say they haven’t got so much time for blogging since the recession started to bite.

A full 70 per cent of small firms say they now don’t have time to keep their on-line activity up to date.

Not making this a priority is a real mistake. Non-updated blogs and websites create the worst of impressions to potential customers. There’s nothing more guaranteed to make your company seem dead on its feet than having only old news in your “latest news” section.

“What? They haven’t done anything worthwhile since 2008?”

Blogs can massively increase your web traffic so it’s not surprising that companies have sprung up offering to write them for you. Like this one.

Restore the feel good factor

It’s also no surprise that training often takes a back seat when budgets are tight. But training can be a big motivator to staff when there is a lack of the ‘feel good’ factor.

As well as a morale booster, training improves sales results.

One training company is offering to visit your company on site and carry out a free health check, spelling out its recommendations in “short, easy to follow steps”.

Click here for details.

Identity crisis

There’s jubilance in some quarters that the ID cards scheme will no longer be compulsory.

I’ve banged on a lot about this over the past two or three years in this newsletter and so could be expected to be pleased about that announcement from the Home Secretary.

But a minister’s comment that they could eventually be used to store not only biometrics and basic details, but additional personal information – potentially medical records - does arouse suspicion.

The quote from the Passport and Identity Service did not allay fears of a secret agenda.

“When we issue ID cards later this year there will be no spare capacity to hold information beyond that already laid out in legislation”, they said.

“Spare capacity”? Capacity is strictly a time-bound issue. Go forward a couple of years and we will be astounded at the amount of increased storage capacity available for every technology.

Hidden cost

Always a muddy area, it also looks like the cost of ID cards is being buried by an increase in the price of passports.

Announcing a £5.50 rise in the cost of a passport, the Home Office says the price of passports has gone up because demand has fallen.

I would have thought if demand had fallen so much (as a result of the cash-strapped people staying at home) the price should come down.

Logically, that’s a lot less work and a reduced staff costs at the issuing agency, isn’t it?

So, if it’s not to disguise the cost of ID cards, then why are we having to pay more?

The ‘creep’ of RFID

Information and biometrics is, of course, mainstream and welcome in security and not likely to arouse anything like the civil liberties issues of the NID scheme.

We hear of everything from Roy Keane getting his players to use a fingerprint system at Ipswich FC to marijuana ID cards being issued for people who need it strictly “for medicinal purposes”.

No problem with any of that.

But I predict the next big civil liberties issue to knock ID cards and “Big Brother surveillance” into touch will be the increasing creep of RFID into society.

Similarly, there’s no problem with RFID that helps us all - like yogurt pots that record the temperature along the supply chain or RFID kiosks designed to confirm when branded goods are genuine.

Tracking livestock and fish stock is now becoming commonplace – everything from RFID tags in the stomachs of cows, the tracking of salmon on migration, to biometric bar coding on chickens beaks.

But tracking technologies are getting so ubiquitous that they now present a danger to privacy, say some.

The ‘internet of things’

The EU has launched an investigation into the implications of RFID to track people without their knowledge – now possible due to the “internet of things” – automatic communication of devices.

Alongside the things we benefit from, comes some questionable benefits.

For instance, according to this mobile phone exec, by next summer all mobiles will come packed with an RFID chip giving your phone the possibility of becoming the keys to your car or even house.

He says credit card companies could prevent fraud by tracking a mobile user’s location to make sure any transaction made on the card was made in the vicinity of the person with the phone.

Or, by analysing mobile phones carried by drivers, data on the speed a car was travelling could be sold to GPS companies enabling them to provide better information to motorists.

Some big advances there but isn’t it also slightly worrying that this is, indeed, becoming the “internet of things” as feared by the EU?

Mobile insecurity

When it comes to mobile phones, security is a nightmare anyway.

No matter how much valuable data, bank and personal details and customer information is stored on a typical mobile phone, a vast number of people (40 per cent) don’t bother with password protection.

Even IT security professionals can’t be bothered with the simplest security (35 per cent).

Not very reassuring is it when - according to the British Crime Survey - a phone is stolen in half of all robberies?

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