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As software developers, we at Naked Element, are skilled and experienced in a number of different programming languages (see below) and aware of many, many more. Choosing the right programming language for a piece of software is as important as choosing a hammer to knock in a nail, a flat headed screw driver for a flat headed screw and a cross headed screwdriver for cross headed screw. However with software it’s far more complicated as there isn’t always just one tool for the job.   It’s also important to consider the skills you have at hand. For example, you wouldn’t usually ask a plumber to fix your electrics or an electrician to fix your plumbing. However, given enough time most plumbers could learn to do electrics and vice versa. Generally people with a talent for practical things can easily pick up other practical skills. It’s the same with software developers, but you have to consider whether the investment in new skills will return sufficient results in an acceptable time frame, or whether to risk compromising your margins by bringing in already experienced outside help. It’s not an easy decision!   Software developers (the good ones at least) love learning new things – programming languages in particular – but there are divisions of course. Some software developers are only interested in writing software for Microsoft Windows, for example, or for Open Source (see below) platforms such as Linux and the tools they use are quite different. It’s even more pronounced with Android developers and iPhone developers! You don’t often get developers who like a bit of everything, but it does happen, and those are the sorts of developers we have at Naked Element.   It’s true that we’d happily write Java (a general purpose programming language aimed at open source software development) all day long, but that wouldn’t allow us to develop complete pieces of software. We regularly use various combinations of Java, Ruby on Rails and JavaScript in order to get the best result. We’ve turned our hand to Python and, more recently, Microsoft core languages such as C# and VB.net too. It depends what our clients need and our assessment of the right tool for the job. Sometimes it’s not even about choosing a programming language. Sometimes it’s about choosing pre-built software, such as WordPress, and customising it to our client’s needs. We wouldn’t use WordPress for anything more complicated than a simple e-commerce system, but for websites, including ours, it’s the right tool for the job.   So when you’re choosing your software development partner, consider whether they’re using the right tools for your project or whether they’re just using the hammer they’re familiar with to knock in your screw.   What’s a Programming Language?   A programming language is a formal language that specifies a set of instructions that can be used to produce various kinds of output. Programming languages generally consist of instructions for a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that implement specific algorithms. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language)   Open Source   Open-source software (OSS) is computer software with its source code made available with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software)

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Words by Paul

Five reasons to stop working for an international corporation and move to a small company, as told by someone who’s been there, done that and got the lanyard.

After spending my early twenties living and working abroad, I moved back to England in 2012 to start my career.

For five years, I made my way. I was a little fish in the open sea – one of a global workforce of over 20 thousand people. I made progress, moved departments and secured a promotion. I learned so much about business, savings and investments, and worked with some wonderful people. At the same time, I learnt about office politics, who my allies were and who I needed to avoid if I wanted to get something done. I wondered, are all offices like this? My team are creative, willing and able, so why is somebody based in another part of the country not allowing us the time / budget / headspace to make things better?

I’m a few months into my role as Marketing Executive at Indigo Swan, and the decision to move from the ocean into a lovely little pond was one of my best. Here are 5 things I’ve learnt in 5 months.

The welcome is warmer

New starters are a statistic in the employee turnover for big companies. The onboarding is brief and standardised. You might end up in a room with 10 other people all working in different departments. A small company, however, can tailor their training process to you. Chances are, you’ll be 1-2-1 with your Manager, giving you an understanding of how the company works, with lots of time for Q&A. They want you to feel ready, confident and qualified for your first day on the job.

An education that’s worth more than the paper it’s written on

SMEs don’t have the scale to offer secondments or promotions very often, but that certainly doesn’t mean there’s no chance for development. You see the business from all angles; from marketing and client acquisition all the way through retention and to renewal, you understand the journey your customers go on. This gives you a great knowledge base to make decisions, and lets your colleagues know that they can rely on you. Plus, it gives you the chance to find out where your strengths lie. Teams in big companies are segregated from most other areas of the business. Nobody can know every area inside out.

A louder voice, without needing to shout

National companies are often reduced to an unwritten “who shouts loudest” policy. I even received feedback during my previous role that I wasn’t “bolshie enough” (nail + coffin). If you put yourself in an environment that encourages innovation, supports your ideas, and gives you the time to see them through then you’re onto a winner. That’s what I’ve found with Indigo Swan and I see it happening around me all the time. We have a system in place where improvements are suggested and looked at by someone who can implement them. The best bit about this is that it actually happens. It’s not an empty promise from internal comms.

Visibility, accountability, opportunity – the limelight shines on everyone

Goliath companies tend to reward hard work using financial incentives. This drives bad behaviours, with employees working double time in the months leading up to bonus pay day, scrupulously asking for feedback and collecting evidence. I’ve known people to delay their departure from a company so they get their bonus. Nobody really wants it to be this way, not even the managers, but those bad behaviours are a hard habit to break. Another thing making it hard is that the lines between role and responsibility are seriously blurred. Members of the senior leadership team often straddle two roles or manage too many teams, and sometimes one role is shared by two people. How can success be measured, or rewarded, if it’s unclear who’s responsible?

Now imagine a place 0.8% of the size of the one I’ve just described. Everyone knows what their job is, knows how to do it and enjoys doing it. They know who to ask if they need assistance, and also know what their own specialisms are. The work is efficient, and overflows with the small business mentality that everybody mucks in. When you get to this level of competency, employees develop behaviours that deserve recognition: being helpful, innovating, showing respect, working professionally, acting with integrity, going above and beyond. In this environment, reward isn’t often financial, but look around you – does anybody mind? The likely answer is ‘no’, because it comes in so many other ways. A ‘well done’ from your manager in your weekly 1-2-1, a ‘thank you’ from your MD in the monthly team meeting. Perhaps you’ll be given an opportunity to work on something new, because you’ve impressed everyone with how well you worked on your last project.

In this mythical place, you hear ‘well done’ more than once a year, and your career development is actively supported. Things are put in place to help you do your job better. Luckily for me, it’s not a myth anymore.

People care more – about you, about the company, about themselves

Individual teams from big companies tend to rally together and there’s often a great sense of comradery, but this isn’t the case outside the bubble – does your CEO know about the great work you do? Does your manager’s manager know your name? People shouldn’t have to log on at the weekend to prove they’re working hard.

Small companies look after their people, because they know they’re crucial to success. They provide their humans with the habitat they need to thrive. A safe, empowered pair of hands is a valuable pair of hands. Indigo Swan have a Mindful Employer accreditation, and everybody here knows what’s available to them if they ever want to talk about how they feel, positive or negative. In places like this, everybody is rooting for you.

It can be summed up in one example…

If you work for a big company, you buy a cake on your birthday to share with your team.

If you work for a small company, your team buys the cake for you.

We’ve all heard the old adage ‘prevention is better than cure’. It’s usually used in relation to our health. But it can just as easily be applied to the health of your business. Surely it’s better to treat those niggling issues before they become bigger problems that are going to be much more difficult, and costly, to fix?

That’s why I recommend all businesses should consider a business improvement health check every few years.

What is a business health check?

A business health check seeks to answer one big question: how fit for the future is your business?

It’s a chance to take a step back from the day-to-day running of your organisation and look at it with fresh eyes. It asks you to answer key questions about your business, looking at different aspects of current performance and, critically, the factors that determine future success.

By looking at your people and culture, resources, sales and marketing, operations, finance and innovation, a business health check highlights areas of strength but also potential weakness. It identifies areas for improvement, giving you the opportunity to close any cracks before they threaten the very success of your business.

There are various online tools which pertain to offer a free business health check. The main problems with these is that they usually only take into account one person’s view and lack any sort of context. They rely on an element of self-diagnosis. And anyone who’s ever Googled ‘headache’ should know how dangerous and unreliable self-diagnosis can be!

A business health check only offers real value when it considers more than one person’s views within the specific context of that business and the environment in which it operates. Honesty is another vital ingredient!

Why is it important for your business?

We’re all guilty of spending our time working in our business rather than on our business. We work day-to-day to deliver against targets and customer expectations. Having the time to look at the wider context and to think about potential improvements is all too often a luxury that rarely makes it to the top of our ‘to do’ list.

But for a business to really thrive and stay ahead of its competitors in the long run, continuous improvement should be part of your business’ DNA.

Let’s use a quick analogy to demonstrate. Modern medical advances have meant that regular screening programmes for certain types of cancer have seen survival rates improve dramatically. Any potential issues are diagnosed at an early stage, giving the opportunity for treatment and intervention before things have advanced too far.

Whilst I can’t pretend that a business health check is on the same scale as life-saving interventions, similar logic applies. If you regularly asses the health of your business, you can spot any potential problems early and act before they become critical.

Taking action early is likely to save you money. Indeed, by regularly questioning and improving your processes, your business is likely to become measurably more successful.

Why should you involve me?

If we want to get our health checked, the sensible thing is to go and see a doctor because they’re an expert in their field.

Similarly, if you want to get the health of your business checked, the sensible thing is to consult an expert! Calling someone in to help isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s simply acknowledging that you can benefit from some professional advice – two heads, as they say, are better than one!

When you’ve worked within a business for a while, it’s easy to overlook a threat or miss an opportunity to add value because you’re simply too close.

I provide clarity and balance. And a lot of experience.

With over 25 years’ senior management experience in technical innovation, lean operations and customer excellence, I’ve got a lot of knowledge that he can apply to your business. You can take advantage of that to learn how to do things better based on real-life examples.

At the end of the business health check I will supply you with constructive feedback for discussion and review. It will identify strengths but almost certainly provide opportunities and solutions for growth.

Our business health check isn’t a threat to you or your business. It’s not about pointing a finger and blaming people for things that aren’t working quite as well as they might. It’s about taking a positive step on a continuous improvement journey, however you choose to progress it.

So what now?

Could your business benefit from an external, balanced health check? And do you have a willingness to change?

If so please feel free to call me on 07468 499131 for an initial chat, at absolutely no cost, to find out more.

Pure and Grant Thornton have delivered the second stage of 2017’s leadership and career development programme specifically designed to support finance professionals in the East of England.

The Finance Leadership Programme aims to support high performing individuals looking to progress their career to Financial Director level. Thirty-four people from across the region attended the interactive seminars which took place at Grant Thornton’s offices in Norwich, Ipswich and Chelmsford throughout May and June. The topic of discussion covered was ‘The importance of raising your profile as a business leader’, supported by several high-profile Finance Directors or Managing Directors from within the region, sharing their professional journey to Board level. The first session of 2017, held in March, focussed on the topic of Effective Leadership.

Tom Earl, Associate Director at Pure, said: “A wider support network like this can play a critical role in assisting ambitious and talented individuals to reach their full potential. Our aim is to support the region’s future finance talent by helping them to explore the skills and experience needed to further progress, add value within their organisation and to become effective leaders. The sessions are designed to be a relaxed and neutral forum where like-minded senior professionals can share experiences, hear from those already in high profile leadership roles, gain business insight and spend time on their personal development.”

Darren Bear, Practice Leader for Grant Thornton’s East Anglian office added: “Alongside our work with dynamic, forward thinking business across the East of England, we have a wider purpose at Grant Thornton which is to get businesses, individuals, cities and communities working together to create a more vibrant, progressive and productive economy at all levels. A crucial part of this is ensuring there is sufficient local talent available with the right skills to help our region’s businesses grow. The Finance Leadership Programme provides an excellent step towards this goal.”

The programme is delivered free of charge in return for a small donation to charity. To date, the events have raised £1,562 which will be split between Norfolk’s The Big C charity, The Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital NICU, Brightstars in Bury St Edmunds and Chelmsford-based charity Kids Inspire.

The final sessions of the 2017 Finance Leadership Programme will be held across the region in September. For more information contact Lucy Plumb on lucy.plumb@prs.uk.com

Over the coming months, you will all have a role to play in shaping a new Economic Strategy for Norfolk and Suffolk.

New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership is working with local authorities and businesses to develop a strategy which outlines our ambitious vision for the future. It will look at how we build on our strengths to make the most of our region’s opportunities.

Consultation is key to the success of this piece of work as it is you – the local businesses – who will create jobs, innovate and drive economic growth.

Our current plan runs to 2026 and sets out ambitious targets to create:

• 95,000 more jobs by 2026 • 15,000 new businesses by 2026 • 117,000 new homes by 2026 • Increased productivity (added value per job) to equal the national average We are on track to reach many of these targets and where progress is slower than we’d anticipated, we are working together to drive the change which is needed. The new Economic Strategy will give further strength to our plans to achieve them. We will be looking at the timeframe for the new Economic Strategy and the targets will be reviewed accordingly.

So what are we doing? At the moment, work is under way to develop the evidence base which will be used to look at future potential growth. Over the next few weeks, that evidence will be analysed and any gaps will be identified. The draft evidence report will be ready by the end of May. Once that report is ready, we will start consulting with businesses to get your views on the future scenarios which the data presents.

We will keep you updated, but if you would like to know more, you can read the full FAQs on our website.

By Jim R. Wilson ISBN-13: 978-1937785734 Node.js the Right Way is a fantastic little book. It’s a small book (but then it’s Pragmatic exPress) and it doesn’t go into anything in much detail, but then that’s what makes it fantastic. It gives a useful and practical overview of writing Node.js server side applications and explains many of the tools and JavaScript patterns which will be useful to Node.js programmers. It starts off with examples of manipulating the local file system using Node.js. This struck me a little odd as the only thing I tend to use the local file system for is reading configuration files. If I need to write a file I tend to put it in Amazon S3. However, this is genius and looking at how to manipulate the filesystem gives some useful insights into Node.js programming. The book then goes on to look at networking with sockets, something which is often neglected in a world where we expect everything to be RESTful. There’s then a tour through scalable messaging, including clustering, how to access databases and how to write web services, including JavaScript promises and generators! The final chapter covers writing a web application with a single page front end and authentication. This is the only place the book falls down. Too much is covered in two short a chapter. It’s still quite useful though. This is not a book for a novice JavaScript or even a novice Node.js developer, but for once a little knowledge is not a dangerous thing and Node.js the Right Way will help increase that knowledge. It even led me to believe JavaScript might actually be the future. Click here to read the blog on our site. Words by Paul

As the sun comes out, annual leave requests tend to flood in with employees planning trips abroad, staycations and childcare during the school holidays. Are you concerned that this could lead to a drop in productivity? Or that results and outcomes won’t be achieved? We can help you to find short-term candidates to fill any gaps and keep everything flowing smoothly. If you’ve never thought about using a temp before, here’s just some of the business benefits they can bring. 

Experience at short notice

Short-term contracts are not just for administrative roles, we can provide temporary candidates for senior and specialist positions within the fields of Accountancy, Financial Services, Human Resources, IT, Marketing and Office Support. The temps we place are highly-experienced, skilled employees. In many cases they have chosen to work on short-term contract or interim basis as a way of providing themselves with a more flexible career option.

Fresh perspectives

Bringing new talent into an organisation often brings fresh perspectives. This is just as relevant for temporary employees and in some cases even more so. Temporary candidates are likely to have worked across many different organisations, both in the same industry and outside of it. They may have experience and knowledge of different systems or processes which could work far better and introduce innovative ideas you may not even have considered.

Strategic skill sets

If there are specific short-term projects taking place during the time you are looking to cover absences, you can look for temps with the relevant skills and experience to handle these. This could help you to bring in additional experience you may not already have in house. It can also help to inspire existing employees who will be able to learn from them and develop new skills. 

Increased morale

Some employers may be concerned that bringing a short-term ‘stranger’ into an organisation may have a negative impact on the rest of the team. However, our experience shows that temporary employees bring new ideas and an added enthusiasm which can be a boost to the entire team. Team members will also feel reassured that there will be an extra pair of hands to support them and that any additional workload will not all fall to them.

Smooth transitions

Temporary placements can be arranged to include handover time with the person they will be filling in for, both before and after the person returns to the business. This makes the transition period much smoother for all involved.

We’ll help make sure you get the right fit

Whether it is temporary or permanent placements, we pride ourselves on finding the right person for the role and for the organisation. If appropriate, we arrange for the candidate to experience a four-hour working interview in the organisation. This gives both you and the candidate the chance to review cultural fit and skills needed. If for any reason you didn’t think the candidate was suitable, you wouldn’t be charged for this time.

Longer term options

Once you have found a temporary employee, you may appreciate them so much you don’t want to let them go! It provides an extended interview in which you can see how they work, the results they achieve and how they fit in with the team. This puts you in the best position to know if you would like to offer them a permanent role, if there is one available now or in the future. However, remember that it will depend on what the temp is looking for as to whether this is of interest to them. If they’ve chosen to work on a temporary basis to increase flexibility then a permanent position may not appeal to them. Instead they will hopefully become ambassadors for your organisation, sharing their experience of working for you amongst what is likely to be an extensive network of contacts, helping you to attract future talent.

We’ll support you through the process

If you’ve never recruited on a temporary basis before, it may seem like a daunting process. Our expert consultants will guide you through everything, from administration through to understanding the regulations around short-term contracts. For more information, get in touch with one of our offices.