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Recruitment News

Anyone can and should be an entrepreneur

Sahar Hashemi, co-founder of Coffee Republic, addressed the Ideal Business Show Wales in Cardiff recently and urged people to be bold and take risks if they want to be successful. And she should know.

She said that anyone can make is as entrepreneur providing they are willing to work out of their comfort zone.

A former solicitor, Sahar was inspired by the coffee shops she frequented when visiting her brother in New York. At that time Starbucks in the USA was still in its infancy and she quickly realised that there was a huge potential market for something similar back in the UK.

Along with her brother and co-founder, Bobby, they started the successful coffee chain in 1995 that was to turn the notion of Britain as a tea-loving nation on its head.

She said: “You need to act on your idea because an idea not acted upon is worthless. You have to get it out and give it some physical shape”.

Since leaving Coffee Republic in 2001, Sahar has turned author, with her book Anyone Can Do It becoming a bestseller. She has also launched a new venture, based on sugar-free confectionery, called Skinny Candy.

(Picture: Photo of a man in a shirt and tie on the phone with his feet on the desk)


Brits are the global leaders in hard work

The UK tops the list of the number of hours worked each week, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

According to the study, 1 in 4 British workers spend more than 48 hours at work every week – more than any other nation wealthy industrialised nation in the world.

Israel, Australia, Switzerland and the USA make up the top 5 behind the UK. The ILO suggests that the growth of service industries such as tourism, banking and transport in addition to informal working arrangements or antisocial hours, are responsible for our longer working hours culture.

That’s fighting talk that is

(Picture: Photo of two woman in business suits arguing with a man stood between them)

It seems like incidences of colleagues going head-to-head like in TV’s The Apprentice are not solely limited to the boardroom. In fact, conflict is rife in the workplace according to a new survey by leading law firm, Eversheds.

Despite 60 per cent of the workers believing that conflict is unhealthy, almost a third of workers (30.7 per cent) clash with their colleagues on a weekly basis.

And, younger workers aged 16-24 years are the biggest culprits with 45 per cent clashing with their colleagues at least once a week.

Women, however, are more likely to avoid potential conflict than men, with almost half saying they wouldn’t challenge any of their colleagues if they thought it would lead to conflict compared to just 28 per cent of men.

The majority of workers (56 per cent) said they found it difficult to challenge people about their performance when it is linked to a personality trait such as a lack of confidence for fear of causing offence.

The survey also found that people working in the fields of finance, human resources, travel and transport or in the retail, catering and leisure industries are more likely to disagree with their colleagues than in other professions.


Key Facts

80% of working couples argue at least once a month about their work which has resulted in 31% taking some form of action to alter their working lives.

10 years – the time spent by managers responding to emails over the course of their working lives
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