EVENTS
Pros and cons – Womble Bond Dickinson’ s Peter Snaith( second left) discusses his views with fellow Teesside Boardroom delegates.
Hybrid working’ s great but I fear a mental health crisis, with young people sitting at home, not talking to people.
Charlie Nettle: I would say in the last five years, it( cybersecurity) has gone to being a board agenda item every single meeting.
Mark Wilkinson: There are two things I hear which terrify me. One is not having cyber insurance- everyone should have that as a starting point. The other thing is,‘ It won’ t be us- we’ re not big enough.’ But our strapline now is,‘ it’ s not if, it’ s when you’ ll get attacked’ because it’ s so widespread now. You can build malware using ChatGPT, so it’ s not even hard to be a hacker anymore, and it is the biggest industry in the sense of what they can exploit out of it, so it’ s scary.
Q: How has your organisation had to adapt in the past three to five years? Sharon Lane: Energy pricing has been a major challenge. It changed when Russia invaded Ukraine, and it’ s happened again recently, but that is nowhere near the increase we had in 2022, which had a big impact on margins and manufacturing. We have renewals coming through and new technologies, but that transition isn’ t happening in a measured, controlled way.
Daniel Smith: We operate in data centres across the UK, so it costs a hell of a lot to run and power them. And people aren’ t so receptive when you have to move your pricing to accommodate that when they’ re also being hit from every angle. So, we weathered a few storms but came out the other side with better relationships and an opportunity to think outside the box.
Rachel Burke: Covid was really bad for us in terms of key workers being unable to travel and it’ s the same now with Middle East airspaces closed. We do adapt and have people going on more convoluted routes, although it takes more time and is more costly. But every time Trump comes out, we think‘ Oh no, what now?’
John Price: We’ ve reinvented ourselves- we went through some negatives, but we had to find a new niche. We had to look at more adventurous means of achieving that, looking at technology and more innovative ways to produce.
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