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Chantry Place is a finalist in the EDP Business Awards 2024 Large
Business of the Year category!

If you are a business professional with responsibility for people in your organisation then these bite sized qualifications may be just right for you. Blue Sky Professional Development are announcing the dates of their CIPD Foundation Award in Human Resources and Learning and Development Essentials. These short courses are aimed at line managers and HR professionals who want to have the opportunity to study bite size topics and gain knowledge from a range of HR areas such as recruitment and resourcing talent, delivering training, organisational change.

Beth Russell, Director and Tutor at Blue Sky says ‘ We know that a lot of HR functions are, in reality, carried out by line managers so this allows these people to gain knowledge as well as a qualification in this area. Alternatively, some first line HR staff may want to get their foot on the first rung of a career in HR and want to gain a recognised CIPD qualification to start them off.’

Who are CIPD? The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is an awarding body for HR and L&D qualifications. Over 13,000 students join their programmes each year to enhance their knowledge on the latest theory, case studies and insights into best practice HR.

Why Blue Sky Professional Development? Blue Sky’s team has vast experience in HR and L&D, and over 20 years experience of delivering CIPD programmes with Supported Distance Learning as a speciality. All workshops are delivered by professional, approachable tutors in the Norwich area. Blue Sky also offer individual tutorials should you need them.

How are the courses delivered? The CIPD Level 3 Award in Human Resources and Learning and Development Essentials consist of just one or two units from a suite of topics. For each unit, the learners receive a distance learning pack and attend one or two monthly workshops in Norwich, finalising in a marked written assignment. Add more units together and you could receive a CIPD Certificate or Diploma in HR/L&D Practice.

Course Start Dates Recruitment and Resourcing Talent August 2014 Delivering Learning and Development Activities September 2014 Undertaking a Learning Needs Analysis November 2014 Coaching Skills February 2015 Mentoring Skills March 2015Coming soon …… Supporting Change within Organisations Reward Management Employment Relations

If you want any more information about Blue Sky and these qualifications please see www.blueskypd.co.uk, email beth.russell@blueskypd.co.uk or call Beth or Kate on 01603 821177.

Atkinson Moss proudly hosted a charity quiz night at the
stunning Royal Norwich Golf Course in support of Alzheimer’s Society. The
event brought together twenty teams from local businesses, who battled it out
across eight competitive rounds to claim the title of the brainiest team. After
a close contest, Sign’s Express (Quizzy Rascals) emerged victorious, taking
home the crown on the night.

Guests enjoyed not only the quiz but also a lively game of
“Heads or Tails” and a raffle table brimming with prizes, generously donated by
local companies:

– Jarrolds Hamper donated by Jarrolds

– Jarrolds Benji Afternoon Tea for 2 donated by Comm-Tech
Voice & Data

– Hotel Chocolat Box donated by Lucas & Wyllys

– Fen Farm Dairy £50 Voucher donated by Fen Farm Dairy

– Blakely Vouchers donated by Blakely Clothing Co.

– Gin donated by Zagwear

– Board Games donated by Zatu Games

– Ellough Raceway Voucher donated by Ellough Park Raceway
Beccles

– Jarrolds Goodie Bag donated by Leading

– Cosy Club Voucher donated by The Cosy Club

– Pensthorpe Tickets donated by Pensthorpe

– David Lloyd Family Day Pass donated by David Lloyds Club

– Pasta donated by Pasta Foods

– Bowling House Tickets donated by Bowling House

– Hippodrome Voucher donated by Hippodrome Circus

– Holkham Hall Voucher donated by Holkham

– Enchanted Journey of Light Tickets donated by Thursford

– Jarrolds Hamper donated by Leathes Prior Solicitors

– Roarr Tickets donated by ROARR

– Quasar Vouchers donated by Quasar Norwich

– Royal Norwich Afternoon Tea donated by Royal Norwich

and auction prizes donated by

– Wex Photo Video

– FAIRFAX & FAVOR

– Premier Education UK

Director Graham Moss expressed his gratitude:

“We’re so thankful for the incredible support from our team
and the local business community. It was inspiring to see so many people come
together to raise money for such a worthy cause.”

and Angie Atkinson (Director) added:

“The support from our clients was so humbling, thank
you to all who participated, from generous donations to on the night
contributions. I believe most people have been affected by Alzheimer’s at some
point in their lives, I know I have, my father passed 3 years ago (27th
October) to this sad illness and my best friend lost her mum only this year to
the same disease. We are beyond proud to support such a great charity to help
those impacted”

While things have settled back to normal at Atkinson
Moss HQ, the team and attendees are still reflecting on an enjoyable evening
and looking forward to seeing the event photos shared on the company’s website
later next week.

Look out for the photos on the Aktinson Moss website.

NorDevCon 2016 was yet another resounding success for Norfolk Developers. With an impressive array of speakers and workshops we had more attendees than any previous year. This year, for the first time, we had students and teachers attending from some of the local schools and academies as well as the usual range of techies and business people. It was great to see them mingling and discussing the various sessions they’d attended.

This year my 12 year old grandson, Nathan, also came along for the first time. I asked him to write about his experience and this is what he came up with:

“The conference was very good. We met Michael Feathers when having breakfast at the hotel and he was very nice and then we walked to the conference with him.

The first activity I did was the android course by Paul Lammertsma. It was very well done and easy to follow. The tutorial he made explained everything really well and when there was something that was not working or was hard to set up he helped with it and knew how to sort any issues. By the end of the 6 hour course I had learnt how to make simple android applications. After this was the pre-conference dinner where I met a nice guy called Giorgio who was talking to me through dinner.

Then the next day there was a keynote by Michael Feathers which was interesting but confusing. Then there was an OpenShift 3.1 workshop by Ed Seymour and Keith Lynch who work at Redhat. This was complicated but fun and did what it was meant to do; explained how to use OpenShift 3.1.

After this was the session ‘Fake it Until You Make it’ by Dom Davis. It was funny, interesting and easy to follow. After that was another talk by Michael Feathers called Collection Pipeline Design Techniques. I understood a lot more of this than his first talk and found it very interesting and it taught me a lot of things.

Following a tea break was a talk by Darren Cook called WebGL is Serious Fun! It was funny and made sense and was interesting to listen to. It helped people to get started with WebGL and was not hard to follow.

After this was a talk by James Taylor about making passwords safer. I learnt about a usb device you can plug into your computer for 2 factor authentication which made it impossible to get into any account you own without it, so it makes hackers jobs harder. He also talked about 2 step authentication and it was all very interesting. Then there was a sponsor’s presentation by Elizabeth Scholefield who talked about mobile phones and how they were socially acceptable and it ended with an interesting video of a man rapping about how we replace phones with human interaction.

After this presentation was a closing keynote by Jon Jagger who talked about pair programming. It explained a lot of things I did not already know and was very easy to follow.

The next day there was a talk about smart wear by Paul Lammertsma and it taught you how to make a watch face for smart wear and explained the basics of making a smart wear application. It was a good tutorial and easy to understand.”

I think this demonstrates well that when there is genuine interest there are no age barriers!

Caroline Hargreaves

Pure has been presented with a global award in recognition of its outstanding track record of using its company intranet system to enhance its internal communications.

The regional recruitment firm was crowned the ‘Radically Better Organisation of the Year’ at the annual Jostle Awards. The awards are open to organisations across 159 countries which use Jostle’s People Engagement intranet as a platform to share communications with employees across the business.

The Radically Better Organisation of the Year category is seen as the overall ‘best in show’ award and is presented to organisations which have demonstrated a consistent track record of achieving employee engagement through effective internal communications. Pure received the award for organisations of 200 employees and under and the City of Vaughan in Canada received the award for organisations with more than 200 members of staff.

As Pure is located in four counties across the region, with offices in Cambridge, Chelmsford, Ipswich and Norwich, the Jostle intranet forms an integral function in enhancing employee communication. The judges commented that Pure had demonstrated how the effective use of an internal intranet can be core to an effective employee engagement strategy, especially during periods of organisational growth.

Gill Buchanan, Director at Pure, said: “Jostle has been central to underpinning and supporting our continued focus on making Pure a great place to work, with a motivated and high-achieving team. It’s important for us to have a clear way of communicating internally and we have found Jostle to be a great way of doing this. Every member of staff contributed to this award as they all use the intranet to share news and announcements, host instant group discussions and to access all of our company information.”

Pure has previously won the Jostle Award for ‘Vibrant Culture’ and has also been shortlisted in the category for ‘Highest/Most Consistent Engagement’.

Bev Attfield, Director of Tactical Marketing at Jostle, added: “Reading through the nominations this year was incredibly inspiring. We received essays, photos, and videos from so many different companies in vastly different industries. I was amazed at how these organisations were all able to leverage their Jostle intranet to improve connectivity, culture, and communication in diverse but equally valuable ways.”

For more information about the awards and to watch Pure’s acceptance speech visit the Jostlewebsite.

Charlie has completed his work experience with TVC today and has written a blog about his week which you can read here. Along with the post are a couple of drawings he produced and some photographs taken during his week with us:

I chose to do my work experience at The Validation Centre (TVC) because I knew they do things to do with engineering which I would like to get into when I’m older. I saw it as a good place to get some experience about work and what goes on which will help me for when it comes to getting a job.

On the first day of my work experience, in the morning and up to dinner, I was helping out in the stores department with Morgan. He told me what goes on; how goods are brought in and sent out and also how to book things in and out. In the afternoon I then went into an office where Michelle told me what she does. I was taken to the photography room where she has a set up and she takes photos for the TVC website and also social media. I saw how she crops the photos using a specific editing program. I was shown by John what he does and how to design different types of equipment, or anything really, on a computer. You can do this with 3D objects as well. If you need to, you can look inside to see if everything is lined up correctly. I was then shown by Jim what he does with IT for the equipment and he was working on a piece of equipment which shows you how deep a weld is.

On the second day, to start the day off, I went into the reception and was shown what you have to do in there. You must answer the phone and put people through to the specific person they would like to talk to. You put things on the system which are being shipped out. Later in the day I helped work in the accounts area. I was placing all the files into number order and putting different invoices onto the system. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon with Louise putting jobs onto the system and invoices. All different things!

Day three has been my favourite day at TVC. I would like to be an engineer and I spent the day in manufacturing which is where they make equipment or assemble things. I spent the whole day working and I really enjoyed it. I was assembling Mini Arc Loggers (MAL III) cases so they could be ready to send out. This involved screwing the piece of equipment to the case and also screwing other pieces to the whole unit. After I had finished doing these, I started to modify small printers, these print out the results for the amps and voltage. This meant taking the plastic bottom off and taking the screws out. Through the screw holes I had to drill through to make a clear hole then by placing the metal bottom onto the printer, I had to line up the holes and put the screw through and tighten it on.

On day four I had another really good day which I very much enjoyed. I was down in the calibration department and was shown by Chris how to calibrate a MAL III and also a new piece of equipment, the MAL III (2-Channel), even Chris hadn’t worked on it before. Later in the day I calibrated the MAL III (2-Channel) so the reading for volts and amps where correct and it could be ready to send out when needed.

On my last day working at The Validation Centre (TVC) I was shown how to design a piece of equipment or any object by John. I then had a go myself and I really enjoyed it. I looked around in the office to see if there was anything else to design. I saw a pair of scissors and thought why not. I made all the different parts of the scissors so I could put them all together in the end, but as one of the sides had a slight curve in it and the other piece were straight, it meant we couldn’t put all the pieces together to finish it all off. I still had a great time learning how to do it.

Later on in the day I had a good time doing photography with Michelle. The photos that were took will be going onto the TVC website and on social media. I learnt how to properly edit photos so they look neat and tidy.

I’ve really enjoyed my week at TVC and it has helped me realised what the work day involves and what goes on. It has helped me towards a career in engineering.

Newly-elected Police and Crime Commissioner, Lorne Green, is asking Norfolk residentsto share their views and help shape his Police and Crime Plan for 2016-2020.

Lorne’s public consultation, which closes on 12 August, is currently running online in the form of a short survey, andhe will be spending the coming weeksmeeting with people, groups and organisations across the county to gather their views on crime and policing.

Based on the feedback received to his consultation, the PCC will then develop his Police and Crime Plan,to be published in the Autumn, which will outline what hewill work to achieve over his four-year term, as well as setting out the objectives for policing, the resources that will be made available to the Chief Constable and how performance will be measured.

Launching the consultation, Lorne said: “My Police and Crime Plan will set out how we, as a county, tackle crime and disorder between now and 2020.

“In setting that plan, I must meet requirements set by the Home Secretary, such as ensuring our police have the capacity and capability to respond to threats like cybercrime, terrorism and child sexual abuse.

“I must also take into account what victims of crime, our police, partners and other agencies identify as the key issues affecting Norfolk.

“The final piece of the jigsaw, and the part that will enable me to ensure the needs of Norfolk people are considered, is the community perspective on crime and policing.

“During my campaign to become your PCC, I spoke with many people living and working in different parts of our county, and began the process of finding out about the issues of most concern to them.

“To build on what I heard, and get a fuller picture of what matters to our communities, I am asking people to share with me their views on crime and policing. Your views are crucial to ensuring the approach we take over the next four years is the right one for our county.”

To take the survey, please visit www.norfolk-pcc.gov.uk/TellLorne

You can alsoemail, telephone or write to the PCC to give your views.

Dedicated email address: TellLorne@norfolk.pnn.police.uk

Phone: 01953 424455

Postal address: Building 8, Falconers Chase, Wymondham, NR18 0WW

Digital Marketing agency, Bigfork, were appointed by Norfolk Holiday Homes to design and build their new website. The clientwanted a website that was more appealing with easy navigation to help increase successful user journeys. They also wanted the new website to be integrated with their holiday home booking system Supercontrol.Headon over and take a look at theNorfolk Holiday Homeswebsite.

Bigfork – we make websites stand out

t: 01603 513080

www.bigfork.co.uk

UK Internet Service Provider FreeClix is celebrating its tenth anniversary of Data Centre operations at its Norwich facility.

The FreeClix Data Centre was founded in 2006 and was the first facility of its kind in the region. Considerable investment has been made in the last two years to upgrade the Data Centre. It is now provided with a fully N+1 redundant infrastructure, dual-fed substation with UPS autonomous power delivering 99.999% uptime since installation. It offers highly resilient Connectivity & Internet Transit from multiple carriers with separate points of entry. Its diversely routed BGP carrier network can provide internet transit speeds up to 1Gb. The growing number of digital services used by UK businesses and local government has boosted demand for secure spaces for them to host their physical infrastructure including servers and storage equipment that run application servers and data virtualisation.

Managing Director Pete Freeman said “Businesses are increasingly recognising the need to guard against their data loss risk as part of their business continuity and disaster recovery planning. Using a data centre enables organisations to not only deliver their IT strategy into the future, by delivering the server and storage space needed but also reducing risk and improving energy efficiency strategies.”

The seemingly unstoppable rise in cloud based services which reduces the need for businesses’ own physical storage needs has not curbed the requirement for data centre space however. Pete explains “We’re actually seeing an increase in enquiries from organisations that need off-site disaster recovery or physical data centre space for legacy systems and services that can’t be migrated to the cloud.”

“It’s a fantastic milestone to have reached and we’re looking forward to the coming months in which we shall be launching our new self-managed hosting platform.”

The FreeClix Tier 2 Data Centre is securely located in central Norwich for easy access 24 x 7 x 365. Secure, resilient data centre solutions include colocation and hosting services, internet transit, secure data storage, virtual dedicated servers and network solutions.

FreeClix is offering free installation up to the end of August 2016 to all new colocation customers (up to half a rack).

In a move to supplement Alan Boswell Group’s insurance offering, the highly experienced Risk Management Adviser Gavin Dearsley has been appointed to support the firm’s clients with their Health and Safety and Risk Management requirements.

Gavin, who joins from NFU Mutual, will work alongside Risk Management Adviser John Neil, helping clients to reduce their potential exposure to claims.

Gavin commented: “I’m excited to be joining Alan Boswell Group at this time of growth. Providing risk management advice makes good sense for clients. By helping them to proactively manage risks we can help them reduce accidents, incidents, claims and ultimately premiums.”

John said: “I am extremely pleased to be working with an experienced and highly qualified professional like Gavin, who will help me to develop the service we offer to our clients.”

Gavin’s appointment follows that of three other employees from NFU Mutual: David Wheeler has joined the underwriting department; Michael Henderson has joined the account handling team and Sinéad Brogan has taken up a role as a Business Insurance Adviser. Kodi Burch has also joined the team as a Business Insurance Adviser having held roles at several insurance companies in the region. All four are based at the Group’s head office in Norwich.

The Group expects to see an eight percent increase in staff numbers in 2016. This will support strong growth projections, with commercial insurance forming a key area for expansion.

Chris Gibbs, Managing Director, said “We’ve seen substantial growth in the company as a direct result of winning new business. We’re anticipating similar increases this year and we’re actively looking to hire the best executives we can find.”

One such appointment sees Richard Sayer join the company as a Commercial Account Executive. He brings 24 years’ experience with him from roles with companies including Lowndes Lambert and AXA.

“Richard will complement the commercial team, bringing a wealth of experience with him, including expertise in the automotive and construction sectors,” said Chris.

The group, whose insurance division was recently named ‘Independent Broker of the Year’ at the Insurance Times Awards, is also recruiting new starters to the industry through their award-winning apprenticeship scheme.

Director of Human Resources, Gillian Anderson Brown, commented: “We’ve seen a number of apprentices successfully complete our apprenticeship scheme and becoming valuable members of the team. The programme offers hands-on experience in multiple disciplines, giving employees a chance to experience a wide range of roles and activities before specialising in a specific area.

“We’re now looking for the next intake and expect the scheme to be in high demand.”

The sun is trying its best to shine in London, on a rather chilly evening in June, as myself and 5 colleagues optimistically stroll the short distance from our hotel to the awards venue. We’ve been shortlisted for 4 out of the 12 awards at the 2016 TELCA awards (the Energy Oscars) and we are running on 45% nerves, 25% excitement, 25% pride and about 5% Dutch courage, courtesy of the hotel bar.

Last year we were over the moon to win the Most Trusted and Best Small Consultancy awards and realised that this year we were up against tougher competition in 4 highly contested categories –

Unsung Hero – Andy Kindleysides – our Innovation Engineer Business Person of the Year – Emily Groves – our MD Most Trusted Consultancy Consultancy of the Year

And the winner is…

Sumit Bose, Editor of Energy Live News and compère, had barely got the awards ceremony into full swing when a video camera swooped in on our table. It was the announcement of the Unsung Hero award and the winner is…… putting composure to one side, our table erupted on hearing Andy’s name and he made his way through the sea of hugs, applause and congratulations towards the stage.

The client who nominated Andy stated – “I’m delighted you are entering Andy for this award; in my honest opinion he deserves an OBE for his commitment, positive attitude and diligence.”

Consultancy of the Year

The ceremony progressed and we missed out on 2 categories, leading us to the penultimate award of the evening, our sweaty palms clapping all the entrants, and the winner is….. I can honestly say hearing our name being read out is one of the best moments of my working life. The past 7 years have been full of sweat, tears and plenty of hard work from all of us, making Indigo Swan what it is today, and being recognised for it is fantastic.

How do we feel?

“I have never been prouder of a company I have worked for and to be recognised as one of the best within our industry is a testament to all the hours of hard work that have been put in and confirmation that we are doing things in the right way.” James G

“We really care about what we do and it’s wonderful to be recognised for it.” Hannah

“Each Swan brings their own skills and strengths to the team and when you mix them all together you create an amazing award winning company.” Leanne

Why us?

Indigo Swan is a mix of tangible elements, that are relatively easy to replicate (a simple, transparent client report, complex but clear processes and a unique client portal), and also a great deal of intangible aspects that are unique to us. We live and breathe our values, every one of our colleagues 100% believes in our journey & we fully embrace innovation.

We are lucky that these intangible elements came right from the very core of why we started, which means they are naturally reinforced every day and shot through every activity we do. They are in our DNA, which isn’t easy to replicate. That’s the magic.

Article originally from Indigo Swan website:indigoswan.co.uk/blog/telca-awards-2016/

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More info on TELCA awards – Peck Here Sign up to our Newsletter – Peck Here

ESE Direct’s Social Media & Web Content Co-ordinator, Laura Holland, takes a look through how social media began.

Social Media is still a very young platform only gaining traction in the last 4-5 years but it can trace its roots back as long ago as 1994 when GeoCities launched (for those, like me, who are old enough to remember) it allowed users to create their own websites and visit others (I had a Sailor Moon and Buffy page…er, anyway), it grew up to have 38 million users until it was shut down in 2009 (although it still exists in Japan as a hosting company).

August 4th 1997 human decisions are removed from strategic defence. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate…wait, wrong article…

OK so Skynet didn’t happen in 1997, but, the web started to grow, it had one million sites online and signalled the birth of blogging, it was also the start of instant messaging (AOL anyone?). Moving onto 1998 (the year of the Hamster Dance) and Google opens up as an internet search engine and index and in 1999 Friends Reunited was the very first social network to take off, reconnecting people with their old school and university friends.

Fast forward to the early noughties and in 2003 you had the launch of MySpace.com and LinkedIn. It was also the year that Apple introduced iTunes, as mp3 players gained in popularity. Podcasting would begin a year later in 2004 (the same year Facebook was created for students at Harvard).

A few years later, in 2006 and you had the launch of Twitter which was a social networking and microblogging site, allowing users to send and receive 140 character messages or tweets. YouTube had launched and MySpace was the most popular social networking site (maybe it was the dilemma of arranging your top 8 friends?) and Facebook expanded its membership to anyone over the age of 13.

Jumping to 2010 and Facebook now has over 400 million users while MySpace users have withered down to 57million (Poor Tom!) and the amount of people using the internet is 1.97 billion, that’s around 30% of the global population. It was also this year that more people got news from the internet than the traditional method of newspapers (OMG I need to tweet this!).

In 2011 social media was accessible for pretty much everywhere with apps available for smart phones and the recently launched iPad and other tablets on the market, more and more people were spending time online connecting with others. Because of this social commerce was on the climb, as was the concern over privacy with more people being more open about their lives, it flagged up issues regarding identity theft and private information available to all. 2011 was also the year that Google+ launched.

The next couple of years the rise of social media and the popularity of the smartphone and tablets have gone hand in hand, making social media accessible 24/7. Facebook now boasts over 1 billion users, Twitter over 500million closely followed by YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn.

It is no wonder that companies are now taking it seriously; it’s a great way of engaging with your customers and more importantly potential customers. It has only been very recently that companies are investing in Social Media teams but as the social media community continues to grow and evolve it is a worthwhile investment.