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When it comes to the social and economic wellbeing of local communities, business has a vital role to play. If the people are the lifeblood, SMEs are the beating heart.

With Christmas approaching it's time to give some thought to your wish list or risk unwrapping yet another copy of Superfreakonomics. But where do you begin?

It’s the worst possible term you could ever use. Sales are never closed.

Making investment decisions for your firm is one of the great privileges of leadership. It's also, however, a responsibility that many business leaders still struggle with.

Sadly, mental health problems are on the increase in society and this inevitably impacts on the workplace. Mental health is now the leading cause of sickness absence. It has been suggested that a staggering 70 million work days are lost each year due to mental health problems in the UK, costing employers approximately £2.4 billion per year.

Because of the misplaced belief that loss of resilience is a sign of weakness, many people tend to avoid a deeper understanding of what it is and, as a consequence, fail to make changes in their behaviour that would make them more able to manage its negative effects. The result can be patterns of behaviour and illness ranging from the relatively minor, such as individuals working below their capacity, to major physical and psychological injuries.

Treat September as the start of a new year, and press pause If everybody is addicted to their smartphone, nobody individually feels like an addict

The fact is, Britain has a productivity problem. The average German worker could clock off early on Thursday afternoon and have matched - in terms of meaningful work completed - their British counterparts’ entire forty hour week. French and American workers would have to put in a full day on Thursday, but they could still take Friday off and get just as much done as we do. Our productivity has risen and fallen over the last decade, but the troughs are generally lower than the peaks are high. Why does it happen? What do we do differently with our work time that means we take so much longer

Adequate sleep on a regular basis is as essential to well-being as the air we breathe. Proper rest is necessary for maintaining cognitive sharpness, emotional balance and the efficient functioning of all our physical systems. Wake up refreshed, ready for new day. Overall improved sense of wellbeing. Increased mental awareness, concentration, focus. Increased resilience and

Marie Kirbyshaw was approached directly by Stephen Salt, Chair of the Home Counties region, about joining the Academy for Chief Executives. Marie became the Chief Executive of Luton Culture 10 years ago, just as the charity was about to lose £1m funding. Luton Culture delivers engaging arts and cultural programmes across art centres, museums, libraries

GDPR – the General Data Protection Regulation – comes into force this week on the 25th of May. Because it’s citizen-first legislation, it covers what we in the UK do with the personal data of people in the EU, so will remain important even after Brexit. Failure to comply with the new consent-driven laws carries

In tough times, there is always more pressure on business budgets and businesses begin to strip non-essential expenditure out of the mix. The budget for marketing is an area that often comes under intense scrutiny and there is a temptation to reduce expenditure that seems to have no clear hard benefits attached. There is an