Monday 16th January 2012 has been designated ‘Blue Monday’ – officially the most depressing day of the working year. Research by the University of Exeter estimates that low morale could cost businesses £93bn in lost productivity. So, instead of leaving your employees to wallow in the misery of ‘Blue Monday’, use it as an opportunity [...]

By Andrew Rayment, partner, Walker Morris Just before Christmas I had the pleasure of being invited by Victoria Tomlinson of Northern Lights PR to talk at a seminar about employment issues and social media. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are hardly new, but the legal world is notoriously slow to react and is only now really [...]

In an age of 24 hour news and social media, everything you do is under scrutiny and corporate reputation is more precarious than ever. A top corporate headhunter recently told PR Week’s editor Danny Rogers that corporate affairs directors have gained more influence than marketing directors over the past few years.  Rogers puts this down [...]

Last week, the CIPR’s Yorkshire and Lincolnshire group held a workshop for public sector communicators on handling Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. We ran the event in response to growing concern about the increasing volume of requests received by local authorities, universities, FE colleges and others – and the lack of coherent approach to handling [...]

Universities need to teach different employability skills to ensure their graduates get jobs. Blogging, Twitter and LinkedIn are essential, as are knowing how to network and ‘create’ their own job opportunities.

by Kulbir Sandhu, Intern at Northern Lights PR As somebody who has had some work experience of ‘in house’ communications, the first week of the programme has been an eye opener for many reasons. My objective before the internship started was to immerse myself:  immerse myself in the master classes, in client briefs and generally [...]

A new report ‘Social Media and Employment’ is a must-read for employers, employees and graduates looking to find their first job. Produced for the Glasgow Employer Board, the report looks at the implications of social media on employment and recruitment – Northern Lights’ CEO Victoria Tomlinson took part in the research. The insights, sensible advice [...]

Getting senior management to see why social media can help achieve strategic business goals is easier said than done. It can take years to build a strong social media network that generates real business leads and for risk averse organisations like Greater Manchester Police when they decided to tweet all their calls for assistance in [...]

Interesting to spot that the FT has this week written …. “People grumbling to friends about their health or waiting times at hospitals is nothing new. But as more choose to do so on internet forums and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, they may be surprised to learn that hospitals and healthcare professionals [...]

We have spent the summer helping The Directorbank Group to carry out research into What makes an Outstanding FD? This has been done in association with Grant Thornton. When you mention the word ‘finance director’, many will have that old image of an accountant in the Monty Python sketch trying to tame a lion.   Forget [...]