General – Page 3 – TwonaBlog

January 31, 2023

Human resources vs non-human resources

Currently, there are several countries in Europe experimenting with shorter working weeks. If you are not familiar with it, we are talking about reducing work days to 4 days a week. The other option, very well established in Scandinavian countries like Sweden, is to reduce the number of daily hours to 6 hours per day, instead of 8.

For the sceptics, no, this model it is not only possible for countries of a certain size:

Iceland: between 2015 to 2019, Iceland conducted the world’s largest pilot of a 35 to 36-hour workweek (cut down from the traditional 40 hours) without any calls for a commensurate cut in pay.
Belgium: in February, Belgian employees won the right to perform a full workweek in four days instead of the usual five without loss of salary.
UK: Companies in the UK that have run a six-month trial of the four-day workweek are now planning on making the shorter workweek permanent, after hailing the experiment as “extremely successful”.
Germany: is home to one of the shortest average working weeks in Europe. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the average working week is 34.2 hours. Last year, IG Metall, the country’s largest trade union, called for shorter working weeks, arguing it would help retain jobs and avoid layoffs.
Spain: in December Spain launched a pilot programme of a four-day working week.

This work philosophy is not just a fancy European experiment.

In Japan, it’s the larger companies that are venturing into this territory, following the Japanese government’s announcement in 2021 of a plan to achieve a better work-life balance across the nation. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, 81 employees working for the consumer goods giant Unilever are currently taking part in a year-long trial of a four-day workweek at full pay.

According to a survey by cloud-software vendor Qualtrics, a whopping 92 percent of US workers are in favour of the shortened workweek.

The employees surveyed cited improved mental health and increased productivity as the perceived benefits.

In Canada, research from global employment agency Indeed found that 41 per cent of Canadian employers are considering alternative hybrid schedules and new work styles, following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Indeed’s survey of 1,000 employers of office workers in Canada found that 51 per cent of large companies with 500+ employees would be “likely to implement 4-day workweeks”.

On the opposite side you can find the case of Spain, where many employees work longer than specified in their employment contracts, quite often for free. Yes, I know that if you are a workaholic you wouldn’t see any problem, that’s fine as long as it is your choice.

Actually, the number of hours worked after hours was so high that a specific law was created to track the time, yes, I know, welcome to the seventies. From that moment on, by law, all employees must fill up a form indicating their arrival and end time of their work day – luckily, there is software for it, we are not talking about the punching machine you see on movies to make holes at the entrance of your workplace!

I am not going to comment on who controls that information, if there really is someone who reviews it or if something has changed.

I personally work 6 hours a day. This schedule was put in place after a month-long pilot that we did 2 years ago, when we confirmed that the work could be done efficiently with the same quality of service, and every employee could benefit from a better work-life balance. Not taking the step is a matter of blindness.

Could it be more interesting to have a happy employee working 6 hours than a non efficient one 10 hours in the office?

So, can we talk about the non-human resources?

In the case of Spain, what is at fault here? Employees for not rebelling to this situation, employers expecting these crazy hours? Is this an example of a chicken and egg situation?

What do you think?

January 24, 2023January 24, 2023

The 3 challenges of up-to-date SOPs

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are a critical component of any organization’s quality management system. They provide clear, detailed instructions on how to perform specific tasks, ensuring consistency and accuracy in the performance of those tasks. However, keeping SOPs up to date and accurate can be a significant challenge for organizations.

SOPs are critical in the creation and update of packaging materials for Pharma, Food and Retail companies where a mistake introduced in the packaging can trigger a costly product recall.

Consistency

One of the major challenges is maintaining consistency in the SOPs. As an organization evolves and changes, it can be difficult to ensure that all SOPs reflect the current processes and procedures, specially when dealing with changing external stakeholders, such as printers, regulatory agencies and contract manufacturers. This can lead to confusion and errors, as employees may be following outdated or incorrect instructions, or even worse, ignoring them all together because they do not reflect the reality of their daily work. Additionally, as new employees are hired, or existing employees move to different roles within the organization, it can be difficult to ensure that everyone is following the same SOPs.

Accuracy

Another challenge is ensuring the accuracy of the SOPs. As processes and procedures change, it is important to update the SOPs to reflect those changes. However, it can be difficult to ensure that all changes are captured and that the SOPs are accurate and up to date. This can be especially challenging in large organizations where there may be multiple departments or teams responsible for different SOPs.

The Devil is in the details

The line between accurate representation of proceses and overly detailed instructions that are difficult to follow is sometimes thin. A third challenge relates to this line and the art of keeping the SOPs concise and easy to understand. SOPs should be clear, concise, and straight forward to follow. Overly complex and detailed SOPs can make it difficult for employees to understand and follow the instructions, leading to confusion and errors. Additionally, writing too many pages can be overwhelming and time-consuming for employees to read.

How can you address these challenges?

To address these challenges, organizations can establish a system for regularly reviewing and updating their SOPs. This can include assigning a specific individual or team responsible for maintaining the SOPs, and setting up a schedule for regular review and updates. Organizations can establish a clear process for capturing and documenting changes to the SOPs, and for ensuring that all employees are aware of and understand the most up-to-date SOPs. By adopting these strategies, they can ensure that their SOPs are accurate, up to date, and easy to understand, without falling into the trap of writing thousands of pages.

November 2, 2022February 3, 2023

Accessible cereals, leaflets, and more… for everyone

Photo by Tiard Schulz
Photo of cereal bowl with strawberries and berries

A few years ago, the Kellogg Company started a trial in partnership with the RNIB in the UK, to use a special code in their packaging that, using NaviLens technology, would read out ingredients and other label information to clients.

This trials, from I could read, originated in the US and actually are spreading – thankfully – to other countries. In July 2021, it was announced that this technology would come to Europe, amongst others to The Netherlands and Spain. I have not seen it in the shops of any of these two countries yet even though it was announced for Q1- I will be sure to triple check the shops this week to confirm.

You may have noticed that I am not mentioning visually impaired and blind clients when talking about the Kellogg’s example. They are the key group the trial started for, and the heavy users of the technology currently.

However, Jamie S. published a post recently with a statement that I believe so true! When we talk about accessibility and accessible products/services, very often the collective it is aimed at is mentioned as we are making the product accesible to them. But aren’t we all benefiting from those improvements? From a lowered pavement that allows you to move the baby buggy with ease, to subtitles on videos to not activate audio at work, to GPS on your car to reach your destination, … we all use them daily!

And this is why, I linked a few more things together in my mind.

Not long ago, our colleague Rafael Cruz Núñez published an article about what seems like the future of leaflets in the pharmaceutical industry. The article mentions how printed leaflets inside a box are likely to become a thing of the past. However, these are really important for health reasons, so removing them altogether is risky.

Pharmaceutical packaging is subject to many regulations, one of them is to include braille on their boxes to make them accessible to a larger collective and avoid the risk of mixing up medicines. But what happens to the leaflet? This contains the critical information needed to administer the medicine, and understand side effects. Implementing such technology on pharmaceutical packaging would contribute to making medicines far more accessible than what they are now. But, to be honest, this would help you too, as I cannot be the only one whose leaflets disappear or get damaged after opening the box!!

So, after making public transport, museums, and now also food accessible for everyone, maybe it is a matter of time before we see these colourful NaviLens codes in medicine boxes too??

October 4, 2022February 3, 2023

Remote work is here… to stay?

Photo by Nelly Antoniadou - image of small scrabble like letters in black wooden pieces, saying Work from home — *Photo by Nelly Antoniadou*

Unfortunately, change sometimes comes hand in hand with a crisis, of different types. The last change in the working environment had as a catalyst a sanitary crisis.

Even though it is of course true that not all jobs can be performed remotely, a great percentage of these only require a computer connected to the internet. Although it did not go without difficulties, imagine how this pandemic would have looked like for us 20 years ago!

Would have you been able to do your job from home 20 years ago?

If you go back in time … do you remember the amount of paper that was used at the time, that needed to be archived… a large room with the photocopiers, maybe even a fax… using telephone for everything, and access to an intranet with servers in the same building?

I have been working from home for a while and I feel confident that I have all the documentation I need and that the servers we use are on the cloud. If you work with Artworks and think there is some room for improvement for your process or moving to more modern technologies, I invite you to have a look at us.

There are many pros and cons about remote working depending on your activity and job environment . Working remotely you avoid unnecessary travel back and forth to your office, although it is true that sometimes that commute also helped “disconnect”. You remove distractions with chit chat and extra long breaks to talk to people. But the job is more isolated, and sometimes there are meetings where an email was enough (although that also happened in the “real” world).

In my view, there is still a process before the job environment adapts to this new paradigm, where there are many possibilities: mixed formats and phased approaches for new hires, etc.

Similarly, it is important that regulation comes to place for those remote / home workers based on what this means for their economies: support for extra expenses (utilities for instance). If you are working from home and are new to this topic, make a search around legislation that has been approved/promoted in this respect .

This article is not a fear monger about what would happen if we are forced again to all work/stay at home; on the contrary, the article is a praise to the fast adaptation of many companies in a difficult situation, demonstrating how agile they could be to make sure they could work as usual in a changing world, from one day to the next.

Do you think remote work has come to stay?

July 22, 2022January 24, 2023

Add (this) AMS to your life

Are you involved in Artwork Packaging Design?

If you’re reading this you and your team probably manage thousands of artworks a year: from packaging, to labels, to digital assets, you name it. Between emails, phone calls, reminders, artworks with change requests, new design specifications, and last minute jobs, there’s no doubt you have a busy work day.

If all the above makes you feel stressed it could be because you have not found the right system to help you with all of your workload … YET.

With that in mind I would like you to take a look at Twona AMS, a highly customizable Artwork Management System which is simple and easy to use, and can be integrated with other tools to automate your workflow, all without you having to be a coding expert.

With Twona AMS you will find a one stop shop for your design process, from beginning to end. So what can you expect from Twona AMS?

Twona AMS can provide you with…

Tailored workflows
A complete overview of you and your team’s workload
The ability to allocate time and resources accordingly
A way to oversee the complete process of a project from one single location
A tool to collaborate with your team, add messages, and leave notes
Quality assurance tools, such as graphic and content comparison directly from your job request
A way to share documents and get artwork approvals internally or from external parties
The ability to keep version control and history of all your files
Automation of tasks that can be repetitive
Integration with other applications already used in your organization to avoid duplication of activities

If this sounds lovely, you don’t need to wait any longer to regain control of your workflow and increase your efficiency.

Checking our website is free, and getting yourself a license is too!

You can start today with no obligation.