Wednesday 12th March 2008, 15:05Budget, Child Poverty and World Call Public ServicesInteresting to see the Budget today and the indicators government sees/sets for the UK economy and our society. Whilst there is economic slowdown, there is still much growth potential and A4e’s experience endorses the view outlined by the Chancellor that there is significant opportunity for exports, particularly service providers. Our international business has shown us that many UK businesses have fantastic potential in overseas market. We need to encourage businesses to explore, identify and take up these opportunities and we will aim to promote this through our business support ser.. View Complete Post Wednesday 16th January 2008, 11:19New Year, Great OpportunitiesFor those of us who have had a holiday season, I hope you had a great time. 2008 brings some fabulous opportunities for A4e, services we deliver and our customers who utilise the services we provide. The back end of last year saw a lot of my time committed to strategic planning to ensure we have a clear view of the work we want to progress over the next 3, 5 and 10 year time periods. Having a good, clear and flexible view of where we are heading is an important part of increasing growth as a business.
2008 is quite a rare occurrence. With so much bid activity over the last 18-24 mo..View Complete Post Sunday 6th January 2008, 11:01BloggingYou realise when you’re getting a bit older when you refuse to stop working when your body is having a go at you. So, no Blogs since September as I lost 6 weeks with bronchitis but believing I’m still 21 decided I didn’t need to stop working or go to a Doctor. Only found that I had bronchitis after 4 weeks and by then it was too late. So, apologies for lack of Blogs but my learning is complete and next time I’m ill I might stop working as you only slow down and then have to play catch up because you worked so slowly anyway! A little more consistency in 2008 with my Blog..View Complete Post Tuesday 4th September 2007, 10:31US Mortgage Mess, Social Accountability and Poverty Over the past few weeks I’ve read numerous articles and had numerous conversations about the effect of the mortgage collapse on lending to people on low incomes (salary or welfare payments). The term ‘sub-prime’ is offensive – I detest it, but that unfortunately how the banks and much of the media refer to the group. It’s the last time I’ll use it here and I use it only so we’re all clear on the subject matter.
As part of my day job, I have spoken to a lot of people in the financial community and banking sector on this and the wider impa.. View Complete Post Tuesday 21st August 2007, 10:30The answer’s yes, what’s the question? One of the things I often get asked about is growing a business. Particularly, growing a business organically and particularly, growing a business organically in public sector markets. I have been in a few different environments where people comment on the business strategy at A4e – from customers, banks, judges at awards or competitions. I’ve had it put to me that it’s just ‘luck’, or ’riding an outsourcing strategy by government’ or – and I always liked this one – ‘it doesn’t matter as you’ll not last long’. So wha..View Complete Post Wednesday 1st August 2007, 12:22Big stick? World of opportunity.The recent Green paper has focused lots of discussion on people being forced into work and the role of the private, public and voluntary sector.
At A4e, we help thousands of people every year find work. We work with lone parents, the ill, disabled and long-term unemployed, and succeed in placing someone in employment every ten minutes of every working day. People are not forced into work and we customise the services for each individual who participates in the services we offer. On a daily basis we see people’s lives being truly transformed by getting a job and in many cases ..View Complete Post Friday 1st June 2007, 09:37Legal ServicesA key challenge for entrepreneurial, organic growth is having really long term business opportunities, coupled with a vision, tenacity and passion for finding a way to make them come alive, without being a slave to the idea and ignoring other options - or worse, failing to make your business work in the meantime. The older I get, the more I realise it is quite rare. So, it’s quite nice when one of these things comes off.
One of my bad habits is that I tend to keep things on my White Board for a few years. I do this to remind me of those long term, seemingly unreachable object..View Complete Post Monday 28th May 2007, 10:53Successful Public ServiceWhen you work in and around public services, one of the things you get used to is the criticism of public services. There are varied - often opposite - opinions on the merits, success or failure of various public services. Since starting as a Non-Executive Director of a Primary Care Trust I have watched the impact of criticisms on staff working in the sector.
Everybody in the sector recognises the need for improvements and change especially with increasingly tight ‘budgets’. At the same time we have to acknowledge achievement and improvements in our services. The two ar.. View Complete Post Wednesday 23rd May 2007, 16:11Opening in StocktonLast Monday I was up in the North East opening both a new site and a new division with A4e, focusing on Enterprise and Education. Last week also saw the launch of 'Civic Pride' and the transfer of assets into the community. I was really pleased to see such a strong linkage between the plans we have been developing over the last two years on supporting alternative curriculum and enterprise in education and the idea of making better use of potentially 'redundant' 'civic space'.
Back to Thornaby and our team in Stockton working with local stakeholders to come up with a fantastic and c..View Complete Post Thursday 26th April 2007, 09:04Inspirational People I’ve said in previous Blogs that one of the things that inspires me is the people who work in A4e to drive the business day in day out. That applies to both our front line staff and the leaders in our business. Last week we held our One Vision conference and our IPL (Improving People’s Lives) awards. I was delighted to be at a table with all our award nominees who had some fantastic stories of how they deliver front line public services to a variety of different customers. I sat next to the winner – Neil – who was fantastic in his commitment to the work he does with you..View Complete Post Wednesday 11th April 2007, 11:12Choice, Personalised Public Services and Social PolicyA4e is probably most well known in its markets for helping people back into work. A few years ago that was pretty much all of our business. As we have grown, so we have diversified and nowadays getting people back into employment accounts for about 40% of our revenue in the UK. There were three main reasons for our diversification – as a business, we needed to work in different markets as we grew to ensure opportunity for our staff as most of our business worked on short term contracts. More importantly, we recognised as we dealt with issues affecting unemployment, we had to develop join..View Complete Post Sunday 4th March 2007, 09:19Freud Review and Welfare ReformThe details of David Freud's review to John Hutton is due to be reported tomorrow on reinvigorating the UK's approach to welfare to work. Over the last few years the UK has been recognised as a world leader in this (and other aspects) of its broader social policy. Drawing an analogy with sport - if you're a world leader, there's only one way to go if you don't continue to improve, and that's down. Hence many people have spent time looking at ways to continue to evolve the UK's approach to be 'world leading' in the future.
I was fortunate enough to have a couple of hours one to one w.. View Complete Post Tuesday 27th February 2007, 12:27Long Time No BlogIt's been a while since I had a chance to update my blog. Over the last month I've spent time working with our teams on a range of interesting stuff with different governments, as well as different parties in different countries. This work revolves around us making sure we take every opportunity to input into service design and policy review of the services we are involved. For me, the most important thing is putting the customer at the heart of policy design. Sounds a lot easier than it sometimes works out to be!
As a company that's grown up delivering public services we have a.. View Complete Post Wednesday 24th January 2007, 17:04Inspirational public servicesI often get inspired when I meet people who use our services and see the way they tackle difficulties in their lives - for example, battling addiction, coming out of jail and getting into work, securing employment after many years out of work. In the same way, the work we do with business and voluntary organisations also inspires me as I see entrepreneurs use business support services to grow their companies and we assist voluntary and community groups build their capacity and self sufficiency as well as utilise grant support to provide amazing work. And of course, I am inspired daily .. View Complete Post Thursday 18th January 2007, 17:06The most unpopular Blog on the web!I wanted to say a quick 'thank you' for people who have taken the time to e-mail. Apologies for the delay in responding but a technical hitch meant I only got them all at the beginning of this week - and here I was convinced I had the most unpopular Blog in the history of the internet with no responses whatsoever! An interesting balance of responses including ideas, questions, business proposals, requests for information, networking, complaints and observations.View Complete Post Tuesday 2nd January 2007, 20:04A Healthy New YearA bit of nice news before Xmas - after one of the longest application processes I have been involved in, I received confirmation that I have been accepted as a Non Executive Director of a Primary Care Trust (PCT). Ever since I started at A4e, I have retained a keen interest in the development of the health service ad it has been a long term ambition to work in this area. It is great to be able to combine this with my work at A4e.
My passion for trying to add value in the development of health services in the UK started when I met an NHS CEO 12 years ago. I was fascinated.. View Complete Post Saturday 16th December 2006, 08:13Bonjour! Funny how things change and stay the same. 15 years ago I walked round the streets of the East End of Sheffield looking at the impact of industrial decline and high levels of unemployment. Walking the streets where our customers come from - whether its individuals or business or community organisations - has always helped me think about how we need to work to best support our customers. It was my first day with A4e and I was the first employee and as I hadn't found myself a desk yet, I thought I'd better do something useful. After being unemployed for the previous 3 months since leaving Uni, I..View Complete Post Wednesday 13th December 2006, 09:34Blog meAs a late adopter of technology, I'll be following Emma and Roy's example of sharing information and ideas about the sectors A4e work in. If there are any areas you are particularly keen to know about, let me know!View Complete Post |
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