A Brit Abroad!

Introducing Vikki, the newest addition to our Team!

Most of us at some point in our lives have wondered what it would be like to work and live abroad.  Interestingly a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) identified that 80% of recent university leavers want to work abroad at some point in their career.  When you are young with relatively few ties, working abroad can have huge benefits to your burgeoning career, giving you not only precious foreign language skills, but allowing you to live your personal dreams.  

Talking from personal experience, deciding to uproot your life when you have more commitments can be an emotional rollercoaster.  Let me share my story...

I was working for a local authority in a highly stressful role involving the Equal Pay Review for about 6000 employees.  We were lucky, my husband and I had good jobs, a house, a beautiful son and we lived in a beach town on the south coast.  Most would think our life was perfect, and to a degree it was.  Although I had always felt the need to spread my wings. Unlike a number of my friends and family I didn't jump on the gap year bandwagon and backpack my way across the places I'd seen in the Leonardo DiCaprio's film The Beach.  So the travel bug came back to bite me, and boy did it bite hard.  My husband worked for JPMorgan and after years of not quite making the progress he deserved, he approached a few contacts in the States (networking skills fully deployed!).  The testing of the waters paid off and after some internal wrangling, a trip to the US Embassy and 4 months we boarded the plane to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

It's not as easy as you think to just apply for a job abroad, especially in the USA. JPMorgan sponsored my husband and arranged for all the Visas and Embassy paperwork.  They even assigned a Relocation Specialist, although we had very minimal contact with them, it was nice to know we had one.  

Hurdle #1

One thing we could've done more advice about was relocation costs.   If you are lucky enough to be offered a role abroad, make sure you do your homework on how much it costs to move belongings , visit the country to look at housing and set up costs for renting a place to live.  My advice, whatever figure they offer you, go back and ask for double the amount. 

Hurdle #2

Swallow the cost and take up international bank account.  One little known fact, no matter how good your credit rating is, it is NOT transferable to the USA.  You arrive as a credit ghost.  The USA runs on credit, you cannot get any form of credit card, mobile phone contract or get decent rates on car insurance unless your credit rating is good.

The only way to get a good credit rating is to get credit and you can't get any credit without a credit rating - chicken and egg spring to mind.  At least with an international account you can get a credit card and access to expert help understanding the mountains of tax forms which are different for each state by the way!

Hurdle #3

HealthCare - yes we all moan about the NHS, you won't after spending anytime in the US healthcare system.  How anyone affords to pay for critical care I do not know. If your job comes with Health Insurance, find out someone who can explain in layman's terms what it covers and how much it costs.  Don't fall in to the trap of paying the lowest amount - you'll regret it when you get a bill from your doctor asking for $200 just for looking at your sore throat last week.  

Hurdle #4

Driving - do not expect US driver to wave you through a junction, give way (yield) or wait and allow you to parallel park on a main road.  It will not happen, you will find yourself wishing for British drivers, yes even the ones in white vans.

I could go on, but I may turn my experiences in to a best seller featuring starcrossed lovers with a fondness for dunkin donuts and S&M. Giving away all my material would be best seller suicide.  So I'm moving on to something more constructive...

The Workplace

Working in the US is very different to working in the UK. However, thank your lucky stars for your 20 days paid holiday and bank holidays.  In the US the average worker gets 10 days paid holiday in addition to the US bank holidays,  however not all of them are considered 'official' days by all companies so be warned.  You don't get paid sick leave, you have to earn it.  Some organisations may give you a bank of sick days (up to six days and 2 personal days.  Oh and on another note Boxing Day does not exist in the US, so booking it off is a must!

The workers in the US are broken up in to 2 main categories by the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) - Non Exempt (those who are paid an hourly rate and are eligible for overtime of 1.5 over 40 hours a week) and Non-Exempt (those who are paid a guaranteed salary and are not eligible for any overtime).

The rules about which jobs fail in to which categories are very complicated, but in general there are three typical categories of exempt job duties, called "executive," "professional," and "administrative."  It is likely as a graduate or professional you will be an exempt employee.  It is usually expected for an exempt employee to work 40+ hours a week, on average the real time spent at work is 55 hours.   Long days...

Most companies seem to pay bi weekly or weekly rather than monthly, personally I think this is a great advantage over the mostly monthly pay of the UK.  It allows for easier budgeting and not having to stretch money to the end of the month is always great.

Language

Be prepared to be asked the inevitable questions, "Are you from England?" and "Do you live in London?"  I would strongly suggest referring all UK geographical locations to their proximity to London.  On the other hand having an English accent works wonders for your profile.  People remember you, they’re interested and engaged.  This can be turned to your advantage, it’s a icebreaker of the biggest magnitude.  A standout accent can attract positive and negative attention so you should be aware of how and when to use it.

The People

On the whole we met the warmest people and made some amazing lifelong friends.  I think Americans get a bit of a raw deal; British folk tend to think of them of brash and arrogant.  I’m sure our reputation is no better.  There are always bad apples in a cart, accepting people for who they are is our biggest challenge as human beings.  Not everyone will get along, but that’s life.

So you’re probably reading this and thinking we didn’t enjoy our time in the US.  On the contrary, we are richer for the experience, more rounded and most importantly we followed our dreams.  Although I did rather miss chocolate hobnobs more than I thought I would.

~ Vikki

As Simple As 'ABC'

This month's guest blog is written by one of Insight's Associates, Ricky Coussins:

The post war years saw little to recommend them to any time traveller.  Rationing was still a part of daily life.  Spam and powdered egg was still on most menus. Much of the nation’s major cities were still bombed out.  Most of the population were struggling to come to terms with a new world order in which the British Empire was beginning to play an increasingly insignificant part. 

But someone somewhere was thinking about issues that concern modern marketers just as actively now as they had begun to then.  A group of the great and the good known then (and now) as the Joint Industry Committee for National Readership Survey– or JICNARS for short (catchy acronyms they had in those days) – was considering how to provide useful information to advertisers about readers of their publications.  They decided that it would be very helpful for advertisers to understand what their readership looked like in terms of socio-economic characteristics.  This way they could match their advertising space purchases to those publications and those readerships that they thought might be most likely to buy their product (or service).  That’s right.  Someone, somewhere had invented the idea of segmentation. 

In order to make this entirely clear to those product producers and advertisers, they decided that they would use alpha numeric segmentation labels that would relate to a group of characteristics.  So an A would be upper middle class and a B would be middle class.  The complete table looked a bit like this: 

Social  Grade	Social Status	Occupation
A	Upper middle class	Higher managerial, administrative or professional
B	Middle class	Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1	Lower middle class	Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2	Skilled working class	Skilled manual workers
D	Working class	Semi and unskilled manual workers
E	Those at lowest level of subsistence	State pensioners or widows (no other earners), casual or lowest grade workers

It was pretty revolutionary and very clever stuff.  In fact it was so interesting, clever and well thought out that nascent marketers started to use these distinctions for other purposes. It had that instant appeal of being memorable, exclusive (you had to know to what it referred), logical and easy to understand once you were on the inside of it. 

And what’s wrong with that?  Nothing of course if you are a new bright young marketer living in the ‘never had it so good’ decade of the Beano and the Tiger, Radio Times and The Daily Sketch, holidays in Clacton, plain talking horny handed machine fitters, and folks running things ‘what know best for us’.  Those distinctions make a lot of sense for that social order.

The problem is that people are still using these terms today.  In the 21^st century when meritocracy rules, there is no machine to be a fitter for, Clacton holidays are an interesting historical phenomenon, where is the relevance? So why do people persist in referring to these segmentation characteristics?

Our modern world is far too complex for such simple social divisions. 

In one weekend I might eat at a McDonalds with the kids, have a pint and a pie at the local pub, take the family to a Harvester and then eat at the Complete Angler at Bray.  Yet each of those organisations, if they’re not careful, will see me as a simple mono dimensional code. 

We need to throw out the alpha numerics and replace them with other segmentation models as smart, clever and insightful companies have been doing for more than a couple of decades. 

So it’s time to begin to invent your own segments and segmentation criteria.  Ones that recognise where the world is now and where it is going and what that means to your customers and market places.  And we need to keep re-inventing them to keep pace with the fast changing social dynamics.

And if you are one of the all too many organisations still using these wholly outdated JICNARS socio economic demographics for any marketing purpose, well shame on you.  The world is all now a little too complex for that. 

Don’t believe me?  Well just take a look around your desk and tell me how many other tools you are using now which are more than 60 years old.  I rest my case. 

Time, boys and girls, to forget your ABC, because, as you know deep down, it’s never as simple as that.

For more from Ricky, see his blog and the Coussins Associates Website.

Exploring Diversity

The National Skills Academy Graduate Scheme is making progress at an incredible rate, and we at Insight are already impressed by the caliber of the Grads, and the speed of their development.

We recently ran the first of the Management in Social Care Development Days, focussing on Diversity and Disability. As part of this, the Grads had an opportunity to explore, first-hand, a number of the challenges their service users may face.

Insight would like to introduce you to The Diversity Carousel:

The Carousel has six 'stations', each with an activity. I'll hand over to the Grads to tell you what they found...

Fine Motor Skills

We particularly related this to the experiences older people may have as their fine motor skills deteriorate. Grads tried a number of tasks whilst wearing cumbersome gloves, including trying to put screws and bolts together, sending a text, writing a note... Here's what they said:

"This task... effectively replicated the stiffness of joints with age."

"We noticed: loss of capacity, feeling very self-aware, humiliating, stressful. The task was frustrating as we felt as though it should be easy, and that it was a task we should have been able to complete quickly. We adapted the task to pick the easier option - using bigger screws."

Learning Disability

This task focussed on processing - Grads had to complete a maze whilst only viewing it in a mirror. Here's what they said:

"It was frustrating - what I wanted my hand to do, and what it actually did wouldn't match up. However, it didn't make me any less determined to do it, and I felt a sense of achievement when it was complete!"

Autistic Spectrum Disorder

For this task, Grads were given two laptops, and told to hold a conversation over an instant messenger without using any punctuation other than a full stop, or any emoticons or smiley faces. Here's what they said:

"My group struggled with the lack of social cues, such as facial expression and voice intonation, as we realised how much we used nonverbal communication in our daily activities. We felt that a huge part of social interactions is lost for individuals on the autistic spectrum and we recognised the need to adapt our language and tone to ease understanding. We saw that conversations could become quite a ‘cold’ exchange through this. The lack of punctuation caused intended meanings to be misread or, at least, hard to decipher – in particular, we found it difficult to tell when questions were being asked. Conversations could be challenging if, for example, sensitive issues were not recognised as such. We discussed the perseverance needed to continue with a conversation in which the communicator knows the recipient will struggle to grasp their intended meaning."

Sensory

Grads were given a blindfold and an iPod and were asked to nominate 1 person to block their sight with the blindfold, and another to block out sound with the iPod. The remaining members of the group were to try to facilitate conversation. Here's what they said:

"As one of the facilitators in this exercise, it was hard to involve everyone as their communication needs were so different. As a group member with a sensory impairment, I felt isolated, and even when efforts were made to include me I felt self-conscious and embarrassed that others were having to go to such lengths just to include me in conversation."

Mental Health

This task simulated one of the ways Schizophrenia can manifest itself. Two Grads were told to hold a conversation, whilst another two whispered in the ears of one of them. Here's what they said:

"We found it difficult to concentrate on the person we were having a conversation with as the 'voices in our head' were hard to get rid of, especially when they asked questions. Not only was it hard to concentrate on what the other person was saying, but it was hard to hear them at all. This lead to confusion, and a person could become highly anxious as a result of this. Some people felt they wanted to be in their head, and make sense of the voices rather than deal with reality, which could of course lead to isolation from society and withdrawal socially. Other people also mentioned the whole situation was disorienting, and that they wanted to answer the voices no matter how hard they tried to block them out."

Homelessness

This 'station' was slightly different to the others - when Grads arrived at it, there were no instructions. The trainers wouldn't answer their questions, people walked through their area, and they were ignored. Here's what they said:

"We felt aimless and didn't know what to do with ourselves. We also felt very segregated from everyone else, and devalued by the way we were ignored and our space was invaded. We'd also underestimated how powerful boredom can be! There are lots of struggles in the life of someone who's homeless, but there can also be a lack of stimulation, and that can be incredibly demoralising."

Overall, the Grads recognised that while we may understand a person's condition or situation on the surface, and we can work to support them and meet their most basic needs, it's often the detail, or the underlying emotion that is overlooked. If we're to support an active state of Wellbeing in our Service users, we need to work with the whole person, not just an aspect of them.

~ Laura

Effective Meetings

Meetings.

Does your heart sink at the word? The meeting room becomes a place outside of time, where people seem to age quickly and energy is mysteriously drained...

Or do you welcome the opportunity to  sit in a warm room, with colleagues you get on well with, and take an hour away from doing 'real work'?

It's very easy for meetings to become a weekly time-waster, so here are Insight's 6 top tips to make them useful again:

1. Have a purpose

It may sound obvious, but often we arrange meetings without there really being any purpose to them. Meetings may be used to make a decision, to update people on progress and therefore to plan next steps, to gain approval for a course of action etc, but there will always be an objective. This should be formalised in an agenda, and the agenda should be circulated at least 2 hours before the meeting to ensure participants can prepare or read anything they'll need. To help you to identify the objective, complete this sentence: 'At the close of the meeting, I'd like people to...'

2. Only invite people who need to be there

Invite the minimum number of people necessary to achieve the objective. Anyone who isn't directly involved is likely to be distracting and chatty.

3. Stick to time!

Set a start and finish time and keep to them. Don't wait for latecomers, mark the mid-way point, and give a 10 minute warning before the end. If the expectation is that meetings wont be allowed to overrun, attendees will ensure that everything that needs to be said and done is finished by the end of the meeting.

4. Have a Chair

Ensure someone is nominated to chair the meeting. Someone needs to be responsible for ensuring the meeting runs to time, covers all points on the agenda, and achieves the objectives. Without a chair, meetings are likely to overrun and lack purpose.

5. Encourage everyone to talk

Be conscious of certain people being dominant in the conversation. If everyone was invited because it's necessary for them to be there, they need to be involved in the conversation, and in decision-making. Make sure you draw everyone in to participate fully, as they all hold valuable information and suggestions.

6. Get rid of all the chairs! (Except the one running the meeting!)

If you're willing to embrace a little lateral thinking, take all of the chairs out of the room - if people have to stand, they're not going to want to spend hours telling you about their holiday! Meetings will instantly be more focussed and succinct.

Got any other tips you think should be on this list? Let us know!

~ Laura