In the 1970s, Xerox pioneered a concept known as Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) where all the out-groups or historically excluded ones would get additional funding towards their efforts at greater equality. This included groups such as women, religious minorities, immigrants or the LGBTQ community. While most of these were successful to quite an extent, the overlying benefits could not be reached as even today the in-groups of white straight men tend to dominate the large corporate groups. That is why business consulting group Deloitte has taken on the initiative of educating the in-groups towards increasing diversity. As the talent pool in the US has changed, it is time for a rethink and the ERGs were seen as an anachronism. Increasing number of leaders are organically coming up who are women or immigrants, so the traditional majority is becoming a minority in some cases. The in-groups still remain in power and the future of more members of the out-group reaching the top echelons continues to be dictated by the latter. So the need to provide diversity lessons to the in-group as identified by Deloitte.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/08/deloittes-radical-attempt-to-reframe-diversity?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert&referral=00563&spMailingID=17792212&spUserID=OTY0OTMwNTk5NwS2&spJobID=1080216301&spReportId=MTA4MDIxNjMwMQS2

Uploaded Date: 27 October 2017

Liberal Arts or Humanities students often get asked about what they wish to pursue in their respective careers. It is often wrongly assumed there are very few career choices after this. Yet a cursory glance at today’s requirements clearly confirms that not only is it a highly sought after a vocation, indeed people with knowledge of such fields actually have an edge in the digital age. In the past it was assumed that to get a job in the tech industry, one had to be from one of the STEM fields. Now a lot of previously difficult tasks can be done using online tools such as programming from Git Hub. While economists often underestimate cultural factors behind decision making, humanities grads have deep insights on human nature and a resultant empathy. Reading literature helps people in understand specifics as opposed to others treating people as mere abstractions. A management consulting expert has written the book Sense-making where he has illustrated the importance of understanding people to gain a foothold in the market. That explains why a lot of organizations such as Airbnb, Facebook, Alibaba, Slack and YouTube were founded by Liberal Arts majors. Ultimately Inter-disciplinary studies can only be beneficial for businesses and larger human problems.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/07/liberal-arts-in-the-data-age

Uploaded Date:21 October 2017

There are certain character traits associated with leadership success. Yet a lot of these traits could prove to be deadly if not handled in the right manner or if available in too high dozes. Two decades back, a study conducted by psychologists established eleven such traits which were- bold, cautious, colourful, diligent, dutiful, excitable, imaginative, leisurely, mischievous, reserved and sceptical. For example, colourful could give way to being dramatic or attention-seeking, bold could mean entitled or overly self-confident and so on and so forth. Now a related business research carried out by the Hogan Development Assessments has divided these eleven traits into three broad categories. It has been noted that most managers display at least three such dark traits and about two-fifths score high enough in one or two to put their careers in potential peril. As leaders rise in their professional careers, they tend to make a less objective assessment on their own selves. The three categories are Distancing, Seductive and Ingratiating. Distancing involves cautious, excitable, leisurely, reserved and sceptical. Seductive includes Bold, colourful, imaginative and mischievous. The last category consists of diligent and dutiful. All of these in excess quantities can prove to be dangerous and managers must take care to navigate past their dark sides.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/09/could-your-personality-derail-your-career.

Uploaded Date: 21 October 2017

It has been observed especially at client facing services that clients are often more favourable towards the personnel serving them rather than the company itself. This is because at such service- centric professions such as management consulting or law, the personal attention is immense. Thus a study was conducted to gauge the differential and it was noticed that with each six months extra being devoted, the chances of the client shifting loyalties to the employee increases by an additional two percent. This is particularly impactful when employees at the service provided either join any competitor or start their own enterprise. Companies are aware of this trend and thus seek employees who can bring with themselves their existing clients.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/01/research-are-clients-loyal-to-your-firm-or-the-people-in-it?

As per business research conducted by the Economic Modeling Specialists International, the number of people employed in freelance or part-time rose to more than thirty million in the USA by 2014 and set to rise further. It represents nearly a fifth of the overall workforce. Yet, no proper national level policies exist to facilitate the gig-economy workers. Traditional employment protections, vacations, insurance or retirement benefits do not exist for them but only the full-time employees. This is partly due to the fact that historically companies wanted the ownership of talent within the organization, but the internet took away those benefits so now companies are happy to collaborate with external experts. Even in the education sphere, MOOCs has facilitated the ease of doing Executive MBA without from the comfort of one’s computer system. Companies such as Uber, Etsy, Lyft, Airbnb or Zipcar have been at the forefront of this new trend yet continue to get away by providing minimum protection to its workers who are categorized as contractors and not employees. It is time that the peer economy gets formally recognized by companies and governments alike so that freelance workers get the protections due to them.

 https://hbr.org/2015/07/who-benefits-from-the-peer-to-peer-economy

The field of international business will encounter some unique challenges in the year 2017. One of them is that international company structures are set to be modified. There could be greater emphasis on localized offices rather than headquarters. Companies will increasingly need to tailor their offerings as per local laws, as evidenced by Airbnb running into trouble and fines at Barcelona. A lot of supranational bodies such as the European Union are working to ensure tax compliance so companies need to be extra careful. Pricing needs to be determined depending on local conditions rather than pre-determined corporate strategy as experienced by IKEA whose traditionally low cost offerings suffered in China where there were already cheaper options. Universal payment gateways such as PayPal or Wordpay need to be further integrated using digital currency like Bitcoin. In times of upheaval, those engaged at international business will have stay proactive in tracking currency fluctuations. Global shipment methods need to be carefully scrutinized and then further tracked just as UPS has done by creating Trade-Ability online tool. International traders will need to breach the challenges of communication difficulties and cultural differences including body language. Something beyond the scope of most individual companies is political risks or instability. There also exist complexities in global supply chain. International talent recruitment needs to follow due process so that hidden slavery is not followed as that is a serious offence.  Within the present scope, there cannot be any planning without due diligence followed on environmental concerns, many of which are common across.

Source:http://www.hult.edu/news/international-business-challenges/uture-of-work-10-hr-trends-for-17/#2ed518292214″>http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2017/01/05/the-employee-experience-is-the-future-of-work-10-hr-trends-for-2017/#2ed518292214

Ten business trends which will pull success in the year 2017 have been compiled together. Subject Matter Experts (SME) will drive growth especially in the B2B segment. They will also get increasing sales support. A lot of products may or may not meet public approval, but the concept of crowd-funding gives them the lead as only such ideas will get funding which have some level of mass market support. Content will become fully integrated with sales by driving digital marketing. Video based marketing will further rise in importance stakes. Market research conducted by Forbes has already outlined that four-fifths of people are watching greater video content than last year while a similar number quoted that they watch work related video. A bit more than half do that on YouTube. Two-thirds of professionals have visited vendor’s website after being convince of their work thanks to viewing some video of theirs. The email method may soon get modified thanks to the presence of new collaboration tools such as Slack or even Facebook driven precision target marketing. Brick-and-Mortar stores which do not provide any genuine value ought to disappear from the market in 2017. Instead of broad maxims, it is marketers who advertise niche offerings that will capture customers’ attention. Instead of constantly hunting for new revenue streams, the existing ones will fortify to be recurring. The year 2017 will finally see the millennial generation come of age. Several studies conducted by renowned firms such as Pew, Goldman Sachs and Deloitte confirm that a lot of organizations will hire millennials as leaders while a lot of startups founded by that generation will also flourish.

Source:http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianaltman/2016/12/06/top-10-business-trends-that-will-drive-success-in-2017/#22412cf64132