“It’s beginning to feel at lot like Christmas!”

If truth be told, that Christmas feeling seems to begin earlier and earlier each year. In fact, it appears to start right after Halloween. Once all the reduced in price “Trick or treat” paraphernalia, such as vampire costumes, werewolf masks, gory face paint, sickly marshmallow sweets and monkey nuts are gone, they’re gone.

Tinsel, baubles and Christmas trees, miraculously come out as if by magic! Even the BIG man from the North, invites us to make a list, before “Black Friday” gets us all excited whilst maxing out our credit cards. Make no bones about it, we succumb to commercialisation all too easily. Even Santa’s hard working wee elves are not immune to modern day pressures.

We can see evidence of Waterford making its annual Christmas statement, with the return of Winterval and Santa switching on the lights, on Friday 17^th November. This will take place in the heart of the City Centre. Supported live on air by WLR FM. All this exciting action will take place between John Robert’s Square and The Apple Market.

You may also have noticed that preparations are well under way, ready for the official Winterval Festival launch.

A huge vintage Ferris wheel has located itself on The Quay, opposite Shaw’s Department Store. You may just have seen the structure being erected last weekend. This is apparently, the largest mobile in Ireland. Offering passengers a unique perspective of the City and unparalleled views across the River Suir. Just remember to wrap up and maybe bring a warm blanket when going on this, as you wouldn’t wish to have a cold for Christmas day.

Winterval’s very successful ice rink, has of course moved to a bigger, better, new location, the Waterside Car Park, previously the old gas works. This will allow not one but two ice rinks to be operated. There will be the usual large rink and a smaller rink, to encourage the wee ones to take up ice skating. This makes a lot of sense. Previously, the mix of giddy teenagers trying to impress one another, caused many a collision and safety concerns for the smaller members of our community.

The move has caused some consternation, stoked of course by social media. One or two Facebook posts, indicating that the rink was NOT returning! In reality this has given the new operators lots of free publicity, creating a frisson of excitement. Will the new rink deliver a little bit extra this year?

The Apple Market, Waterford’s newest outdoor venue, continues to programme fresh, innovative exciting events. There will be a Christmas village located here, lots of live music and maybe even the opportunity to have an interactive snowball fight!

With so much going on, I do wonder, if these Christmassy distractions, will encourage those who represent us, to have some down time? After all, our Santa list for Waterford Inc. is not that big, is it?

Well yes it is!

The Cath Lab resolution must be at the top of Waterford’s long standing Christmas wish list. However, the recently published “Terms of reference”, appear, “Surprise, surprise”, to be anti-Waterford. Why, one wonders, do we have to start every process quite literally on the back foot! Surely, someone, given the record of reports for Waterford, had to be influencing the terms of reference, before they were published and NOT after.

University status for WIT, has been kicked so far down the road, that yet another generation of secondary level school leavers are missing out and having to travel many kilometres to go to a third level university. Waterford Airport has had no commercial flights for nearly 20 months and Government has been very quiet on the funding for our North Quays. This wish list, despite numerous opportunities, would have allowed Ireland’s Three Wise Men (Varadkar, Donohoe and Coveney) to be the bearers of gifts, our Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.

There is much to look forward locally this festive season. Waterford will no doubt be supported regional by many a Christmas shopper and visitor.

I hope that these Dublin centric elves, don’t forget us and remember to deliver the odd present or two, to kick start our 2018.

Time to support our own!

One Swallow doesn’t make a summer! It is not one good quality that makes a man!

These are certainly two sayings that could well be used to paraphrase the Festive shopping period in Waterford City. Some, quite wrongly assumed, that as there appeared to have been large numbers of people visiting Waterford in December, taking in the wonders of Winterval, exploring the architecture of Ireland’s oldest city, visiting our retailers, that businesses have, figuratively speaking, made a “killing!”

This of course could not be further from the truth.

Many businesses have done well over the festive period, with the hotels, restaurants and entertainment establishments being particularly buoyant. There can be no doubt, that general retail had at best flat sales when compared to 2016 and some sales were even slightly down on last year. Many will ask just how this could be, when guesstimated numbers for Winterval could be in excess of half a million, going on the 2015 figures (we are still awaiting the official bean counter announcement)!

All the data released so far, will back up the fact that Christmas sales were, for many retailers, very disappointing. As these could account for up to 30% of a businesses’ annual turnover, the real cost of a poor Christmas, in terms of sales, hits home during the months of January, February and early March.

There are many contributing factors to these poor sales and there can be no doubt that countless shoppers, are simply holding on to more of their hard earned cash due to continued uncertainty in the economy. In addition, Waterford and across the wider southeast, we continue to be a low wage economy with higher unemployment, when compared to national averages. This in turn means that we have less disposable income to spend in our local shops. After all, if you only have €50 of disposable income in Waterford, compared to €150 in another city, then who will have a stronger, better economy – it really is that simple. WE have far less to go around.

 

For years we have suffered, as regional strategy, after regional strategy, has left Waterford City and the southeast’s economy trying to play catch-up.  We have been running the 100m, against the likes of Mr Bolt. But we have been wearing wellies that are two sizes too big, filled with custard and our lane has been coated in treacle! It is proving impossible to get on even terms, let alone be in with a chance of winning the race.

To throw even more fuel on the fire, we have very low third level attainment and we are the only region not to have a University. This in turn means that we have limited higher education capacity for our children. The lack of IDA visits is a constant thorn in our side and for the period 2011-2015 the southeast accounted for only 4% of new IDA jobs created. There are many other metrics that clearly show we have much to do to get back on an even keel. But then you the readers already know this! Don’t you?

But here is the crux of the issue. Getting people to talk openly and honestly about where our economy is, proves very, very difficult, time and time again. There are very few people willing to speak up, because they somehow fear that speaking the truth, will sound negative! Yet, our very own excellent academics, in WIT, have been saying the above for many years. So why can’t we be more honest and say it like it is?

If our businesses do not start speaking loudly enough to be heard, then many of those in power (locally and nationally) will, wrongly assume, that Waterford’s economy is “booming”. Come the Council budget next year, scores of our Councillors will vote for commercial rates increases. Maybe increased car parking charges, increased property taxes and who knows what else.

We need to stop being the “Quiet people of Waterford” and start to shout just a wee bit louder. In the meantime get out and support your local businesses – because once they are gone they are gone!

Sometimes a simple word of thanks can be the best bonus.

We see many businesses and organisations put in place reward structures that focus predominantly around a receipt of a cash reward. And we hear periodically about groups of individuals from specific industry sectors, particularly investment bankers and banking in general, earning huge cash bonus rewards. In some cases these can be referred to as “balloon payments” and these are more often than not measured in the hundreds of thousands of Euro.

When I worked in London one of my friends was employed by one of the world’s largest merchant banks and to this day he is still employed in this industry sector. I recall one year, in the late 1990’s, whilst driving to Cardiff for a Wales versus England rugby match, we started talking about the how well each of us were doing in our respective areas of employment. Three of us in the car thought we were being gainfully employed until we heard of the yearend “balloon payment” our banking friend was about to earn.

It was an unbelievable £250,000!

Well to say the car went quiet was an understatement. We were simply dumbfounded and yet the amount was such a regular payment in this industry that our banking buddy stated the amount with such little excitement and enthusiasm that we had to ask again just to make sure we heard the figure correctly.

When asked how he could justify such a large bonus payment and how he could have earned such a vast payment, the story I was told was trapped in my memory forever.

As a Senior Fund Manager he would gamble, his words not mine, people’s pension funds on the open market and was given leeway of plus or minus £5,000,000 a week! If a profit was being made then the company rewarded his gambling with massive end of year bonus payments.

I ask if he had any concerns that he was gambling people’s retirement funds and his answer was simply “No”. He told us that he was so far removed from the source of the money that it was just a process to him and the money was therefore not “real”. As he worked away on several computer screens he never actually saw any of the money transactions he made or lost, and as a consequence it was just like a computer game to him and I suppose a bit like online gambling today, but with absolutely none of the obvious risks.

Initially, I would have been more than a wee bit jealous. As would the other two friends in the top of the range BMW paid for on the back of balloon payments. It had started to rain, as it always does when you drive towards Wales. And as the westbound carriage of M4 motorway was heaving in a sea of George Cross clad English rugby fans, and we crawled ever nearer the Severn Bridge (the old one and not today’s shiny new bridge), I was so glad not to be involved in an industry that rewarded such high risk strategies and created a culture of greed, dishonesty and a breed of sales people that in my mind had no scruples and or ethics whatsoever.

That journey was almost 20 years ago and yet we regularly read and hear about the very same over inflated bonus culture that still exists within the banking industry. Despite the collapse of banks, such as Barings, bailouts and many other financial scandals these International institutions facilitate. We just do not seem to have learned the lesson that over rewarding staff based on large monetary bonuses can be counterproductive and in fact can often be incredibly destructive.

There are so many other ways to reward your staff other than simply taking the easy option by making additional monetary payments to them.

I would always be concerned that monetary payments, over time, not only become expected, but to a certain extent become rather meaningless. And by meaningless I am implying that the staff member or members in receipt of regular bonus payments more often than not forget the “Why” and the “What” are the core values of the company or business they work for. They merely do what is necessary to earn that yearend bonus payment no matter what the consequences are.

It sometimes does quite evidently become a race to the bottom with no real vision as to what a bonus culture is doing to a company’s brand image. And remember every single employee is a brand ambassador for the company and business they work for. So by creating a bonus grabbing culture within a company or business this can be very much counterproductive.

You would think that it would be relatively easy to set up a sales function within a company or business. But getting the right structures in place and getting that sales function working smoothly, is one of the core fundamentals that so very often is incorrectly planned and more often than not not set up at all.

Many businesses focus on rewarding their sales staff based on achieving, meeting and surpassing targets. Targets that are often set without applying any real thought and science to the process.

There is far more to motivating staff to sell correctly than just a monetary reward. Clever companies put a great deal of consideration and energy into coming up with creative strategies on just how to reward their staff and when to reward their staff. I have even come across some reward schemes that acknowledge and reward an employee’s wife or husband and their family. These schemes build a unique relationship with their staff and make sure that employees see a bigger picture when working for the company. They are more likely to go that extra mile if they know that their employer is taking an active interest in what goes on “outside the factory fence”.

In many instances there does not even have to be a monetary reward to motivate and encourage staff members. We are social animals and in general we like the one to one human interaction we have been designed to receive. And we have been blessed with two ears and one mouth; I always say that we should be listening twice as much as we speak. Communicating messages of encouragement is something that must happen more regularly in our day to day business lives. A simple acknowledgement of good work and a verbal “Thank You” is often all that is needed to bring the very best out of many staff members.

Unfortunately, this is missed on far too many senior managers and business owner and those who cannot even be bothered verbally thank their staff will see this indifference seep into and trickle down to ultimately affect how customers are dealt with.

And finally, remember that a balloon always bursts when it comes into contact with just one little prick. 

ENDS