Category: professional development

The leap from formal education to the real world can be challenging in more ways than you think. You might have come across social studies, even economic sociology, and you might have some big ideas about how you can contribute to human development. Then you arrive at your first job and you begin to wonder how you can incorporate ideas of social responsibility into a role that already has several challenges. However, first things first, congratulations on deciding to be an agent of positive social change.

‘Social capitalism’ is cited as a new type of capitalism that focuses on more than financial and monetary outcomes. It emphasises the importance of looking beyond profits to examine how a company is contributing to positive social outcomes. While the idea itself is noble, no practical examples of how this can be implemented are provided. Truth be told, the renowned sociologist Max Weber’s 1904 publication, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism talked about the correlation between modern economic growth and putting individual interest aside for the collective good. You might have come across this book during your studies and you might wonder how to ensure the integration of cultural and social institutions for long-term growth. More recently, the narrative has changed to include corporate social responsibility (CSR), ethical business practices and sustainable development. Businesses were encouraged to look at ways to mitigate adverse social and environmental impacts and proactively look for positive impact creation. We now have mainstreamed ways to reconcile social and financial returns and work in a way that supports the double bottom line.

But how can you incorporate social capitalism into your daily operations at work? Here are some practical tips:

Promote diversity, equity and inclusion

Most workplaces have a policy covering non-discrimination, equal opportunity, diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s important, therefore, not to be afraid to speak up when you see any unfair treatment of people, direct or indirect discrimination or lack of diversity. I remember the days when it was rare for fresh graduates to speak up about such issues, but workplace culture has changed a lot since then. Nowadays, it is much more accepted to point out shortcomings on diversity and to promote ways of making the workplace a more inclusive place.

Be a champion of employee wellbeing

Employee wellbeing is a hot topic, especially since the pandemic highlighted how adversity disproportionately affects people on short-term contracts, agency workers (mainly administrative staff) who are employed by agencies and other contractors. While employee status provides the benefits of medical coverage and paid time off, for example, these might not be available for non-employee workers. I always recommend that companies update their HR policies to extend certain benefits to short-term and agency workers, review procurement practices and improve due diligence on contractors, as well as their employment terms and conditions. This ensures that no one works under employment conditions that don’t meet a company’s corporate labour standards. Fair wages, transparency on grades and promotions, meanwhile, are just a couple of ideas that can lead to better office morale. Flexibility for part-time work, working from home and additional flexibility for those returning from parental leave will also go a long way.

Ethical leadership and good governance

Step away from the workplace and look at how you conduct yourself. While you might not enter a leadership role immediately, you are on the path to be a future leader. Early-career habits, mentors and role models have a significant impact on how you define your values and principles in terms of social impact and ethics. Good governance, fairness, transparency and ethical business conduct are all very important because such factors help define how much a company invests in its employees and communities. Governance covers issues under the previous point to a certain extent, especially when you think about CEO salaries compared to those of other employees. What you can do, even as a junior professional, is advocate for improved governance practices, more transparency in disclosures and an improvement in a company’s codes of ethics and conduct.

Embrace CSR

After improving your own conduct and corporate policies, you can proceed to looking at external stakeholders. You will most likely end up in a company that has a CSR programme and/or one that supports charities or philanthropic organisations. It should be possible to get involved with the team that is managing these programmes and contribute towards maximising their impact. You might also suggest new opportunities to expand or recalibrate existing efforts and cover topics that seem more relevant to your stakeholders. You will most likely have paid days off to volunteer and give back to your community. As a future leader, it is imperative that you engage with stakeholders and understand their concerns, issues and feedback. Volunteering for a local charity to support a cause close to your heart will also give you a fresh perspective and bring benefits to the community.

If you want to dream big and win, you must be able to grow and to keep growing; maintaining the status quo is never sufficient. Growth allows a company to change and diversify, to remain current, to have the runway to innovate. Growth is key to retaining talented employees and to have the ability to reward them with promotions, perks, and the opportunity for them to expand their own careers. Growth is everything. Growth is critical to a company’s long-term success.

You can’t reach a goal if you don’t set it

Look around and you’ll see talented people everywhere. The world is full of people who are smart, innovative, creative and diligent – and many of them know it. Proficient people are often keenly aware of their own ability to shine. However, so many of them fail to make it big, despite their merits, despite their confidence, despite their dreams and despite the fact that they’re better at what they do than 99 per cent of their peers.

What holds these superstars back? What prevents them from meeting their full potential? What’s the silver bullet? Think about your own experiences where the best person didn’t go home with the biggest prize.

For example, maybe the most pitch-perfect, technically proficient, dynamic singer you’ve ever heard is still working for tips at some random suburban karaoke bar you went to for your cousin’s bachelorette party, yet that popular band you hate is selling out arenas. Or what about your awkward high school chemistry lab partner – the guy who was always accidentally melting beakers and giving you acid burns – the same person who is now a PhD graduate testifying about science to a senate subcommittee? Why do some succeed when many do not?

The assumption is that the cream always rises to the top, but this is simply not true. While talent, creativity, innovation, hard work and a certain amount of luck are key elements, none of these aspects will guarantee results on their own. The silver bullet for turning talent and potential into success is… goal setting, paired with deadlines and accountability.

The benefits of goal setting

I know goal setting is not a sexy concept, especially when presented with her homely stepsisters, deadlines and accountability, but hear me out. A Harvard Business School study found that 10 years after graduation, the three per cent of MBA graduates who bothered to write down their goals ended up earning 10 times as much as the other 97 per cent who did not. Imagine the flex of out-earning your peers 10 to one at your next reunion.

Goal setting isn’t just having a dream you’d like to achieve and putting it on paper. You need more than rubber cement, poster board and back issues of Vogue magazine to create your vision. What you need is a systematic plan, and that’s goal setting’s homerun swing.

Goal setting is where most people get stuck and there are two reasons for this. First, people often come up with an amorphous goal, such as “I’m going to work really hard because I want to create a world-changing app, or an AI-based technology”. The problem is that there’s no measurable metric behind goals like this and no timeline. Goals must have a direction and a deadline to be effective. A common acronym in goal setting is to make that goal ‘SMART’, meaning specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.

Hold yourself accountable

Once you’ve established that measurable goal, holding yourself accountable to meeting the objective in a timely manner is key. So many people refuse to be tough on themselves and that’s why they don’t see their dreams come to fruition. They allow themselves too much slack. Remember, time is the enemy – if you wait too long to get your world-changing app or AI-based tech to the marketplace, a hundred other companies may beat you to the punch. You can’t wait around because the benefits of being first are too great.

For me, I didn’t want to start just any language translation company. When we decided to create our business, I knew there were literally 10,000 other companies in the translation space. While there were a handful of larger organisations, such as Euramerica, most of them were one-to-five-person shops, started and run by linguists who were so busy translating, they couldn’t grow their businesses. We were set on starting a different kind of translation company, to be a pioneer in the space. We wouldn’t be satisfied to just be in the business; we wanted to create the biggest and the best, the world’s leader, with the most versatile and robust solutions and be the most client-centric one-stop shop. We wanted to disrupt the industry.

Our overall goal was specific – to create the world’s premier language solutions company. We knew the only way we’d achieve this was by setting measurable goals with deadlines and holding ourselves accountable for meeting them. When I say holding ourselves accountable, I mean working constantly in the early years, because that is what it took to meet our objectives.

We wanted to go big to win big and this is what it took. I wish I could tell you about the shortcuts we employed, but there were none. If you want massive success, you’re going to have to put in massive effort, for an extended period of time. And there’s nothing sexy about it. It’s working to satisfy a goal until you worry you can’t go any further and then pushing on anyway.

 This is an edited extract from Dream Big and Win: Translating Passion into Purpose and Creating a Billion-Dollar Business by Liz Elting (published by Wiley).

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses have been forced to make mass changes to the way they operate. In an era where rapid and widespread transformations are reshaping industries, businesses must remain vigilant and prioritise resilience by embracing adaptability, innovation and a commitment to continuous learning.

The need to upskill

To achieve this, the global workforce is seeing a mass interest in upskilling employees to facilitate research and development (R&D), especially in innovative sectors like science and technology. By taking advantage of R&D, businesses can tackle emerging challenges and problems within the industry, ultimately improving their adaptability. During the pandemic, this type of innovative thinking was required to stay afloat, however moving forward, businesses can harness this power to ensure their success in a changing landscape and spark meaningful change for their company and industry as a whole.

As well as facilitating R&D, upskilling employees also supports businesses by boosting staff satisfaction and increasing the likelihood that valuable talent can be retained. This, in turn, also improves their resilience.

The benefits of fellowships

Fellowships can play a critical role in equipping employees with the skills required to run R&D projects and are an effective route for upskilling talent while pushing a company towards innovation. And in today’s business landscape, innovation is key to growing and sustaining a successful company.

By providing individuals with the opportunity to expand their knowledge and skills, fellowships enable them to stay at the forefront of their fields and identify new opportunities for growth and development. Furthermore, they can also be a powerful tool for businesses looking to grow and expand. By investing in the education and training of their employees, companies can develop a highly skilled and knowledgeable workforce that is capable of driving innovation and growth. This, in turn, can lead to increased competitiveness and profitability for the company.

In addition to benefiting individual employees and their companies, fellowships also have broader implications for education and career development. By providing access to funding and resources for academic and research pursuits, fellowships can broaden access to education and enable more people to progress their academic careers.

Fellowships can take many forms around the world. In the UK, the Industrial Fellowships offered by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 are one example of how business can upskill their employees while developing solutions that directly benefit their operation.

Connecting academia and industry

One way in which an Industrial Fellowship can work is by giving an existing employee the opportunity to work on a PhD project as part of their employment. Alternatively, it can allow a business to start (or expand) an R&D programme through supportive funding.

In this way, the fellowships connect the often-separated worlds of academia and industry – universities gain a link into the most pressing challenges faced by businesses, while businesses get an oversight of the latest academic research into issues that affect their sectors.

Additionally, employees develop new skills that can be applied to their current job and contribute directly to the growth and success of their company. For PhD students, fellowships also provide valuable opportunities to gain industry experience and work on projects that have direct relevance to their field of study.

In practical terms, an Industrial Fellowship covers 50 per cent of a fellow’s salary and associated academic and travel costs. A PhD candidate also receives a £10,000 grant once their doctoral thesis has been submitted from their university.

Removing barriers to innovation

Over the years, the Royal Commission has seen great success from the projects and relationships that emerge from its fellowships. With more than a century of funding higher education and research programmes, its active alumni number more than 900 and its prestigious former recipients list includes 13 Nobel Prize winners.

Current Industrial Fellowship recipients are working towards innovative solutions in science, medicine and engineering. For example, Finbar Gaffey, University of Sheffield, is working alongside Life Arc to develop a platform to improve the identification of therapies for motor neurone disease. Another fellow, Nicholas Nyamayedenga, University of Bradford, is working alongside the James Mae Group to develop an innovative system of waste-water treatment that reduces the coast and energy of the original process. The outcomes of these projects directly benefit both the industrial and academic partners by facilitating R&D and supporting research activity.

The Industrial Fellowships are just one of a selection of programmes offered by the Royal Commission. It believes that by ensuring that all partners involved in a fellowship are supported, they are removing barriers to facilitate innovation.

The Royal Commission is a funding body and charity that emerged from the profits of the Great Exhibition of 1851, an event that aimed to showcase art and science at the time and promote its influence on society. Its success in supporting innovative companies of all sizes could and should be replicated in other countries to help tackle today’s biggest challenges, such as in the area of sustainability.

Bringing together academic rigour and industrial process brings benefits to all parties. Academic learning is shared with companies, leading to the development of new products and services that support the greatest societal goals – everything from climate change to antimicrobial resistance. In a business atmosphere led by these issues, collaboration is essential.