Business

E Series is the ideal solution for a wide range of collaboration scenarios demanding fluid performance and meeting equity

Wilsonville, OR, December 1, 2021 – Avocor, one of the fastest-growing global interactive display and video conferencing companies, has today announced the launch of its new E Series interactive displays. Available in four sizes, ranging from 55” to 86”, the E Series features optically bonded glass in a 4K IR interactive display format. This impressive combination delivers a smooth, leading-edge touch technology display solution of exceptional value, which is ideal for all sizes of office, classroom, meeting room and huddle space application.

Designed to create a more equitable meeting and collaboration experience, all models in the E Series feature Avocor’s UiQ touch-enabled interface for remote control-free use. This superior glass display technology facilitates a smooth, extremely accurate, low-latency writing experience through instant writing object recognition. This allows any user to quickly and easily switch between using a pen or finger to create a fluid, collaborative real-time environment for users. A zero parallax optically-bonded glass surface with anti-glare and anti-fingerprint coating ensures a crisp image with smooth, pixel-perfect inking.

“As meeting equity has become paramount for all types of organizations, we’ve recognized that our customers require a performance and feature set from all products,” said Dana Corey, Avocor Global Sales SVP. “We have this need for value performance in mind when we created the E Series, which is an ideal interactive display solution that’s affordable, offering outstanding value.”

Ideal for BYOD, there is a wide range of connectivity options, including enhanced HDMI-out that supports 4K video @60Hz, front-facing guest HDMI, USB touch and hub connection for easy access to USB drive data with the 55” also offering a Type-C connectivity option. In addition, a high-quality, front-facing soundbar module is included, ensuring that the display provides 30W conference room audio delivered crystal-clear audio quality.

The AVE-5530, AVE-6530, AVE-7530 and AVE-8630 are available globally now for 2,699 US Dollars, 3,299 US Dollars, 4,699 US Dollars and 7,499 US Dollars respectively, through Avocor’s network of authorized dealers. To learn more or book a virtual demo, go to https://www.avocor.com/products/e-series/.

To learn more about how to get started with Avocor, visit www.avocor.com, and follow news and updates from Avocor on social, via, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Mechelen, Belgium, 02 December 2021 – Rydoo, a leading international SaaS software solution for managing business travel and expense reports and global business travel management platform, TravelPerk have launched a strategic partnership helping Rydoo and Travelperk customers adopt a faster and efficient business travel process. 

Rydoo’s ‘plug and play’ expense management solution is empowering businesses with the ability to seamlessly connect the tools that the finance team work with, creating a more connected system that delivers the best user experience. In the past, you needed to manually match the bookings made on TravelPerk with the rest of the expenses in Rydoo. This new integration does the work for you, eliminating any hassle for the travellers and reducing the risks of errors. 

When a traveller books a trip on TravelPerk, the connected platforms now auto-create an expense in the Rydoo app. Through smart automation, any changes made to the travel bookings will appear in the user’s Rydoo account. By automatically syncing all bookings made in TravelPerk directly to the user’s Rydoo account, users can reduce the time needed to manage business travel. They can easily book trips with one click, instead of browsing through multiple booking websites for more flexibility and a seamless experience. 

“Our technology aims to make business travel management easy, giving users full control and visibility. Integrating our platform with Rydoo’s smart expense automation allows us to streamline the process of expensing and reporting business travel costs. This partnership is an example of how best-in-class solutions can come together to build a frictionless user journey,” says Kelly Jewison, Head of Product Partnerships and Business Development at TravelPerk.

Automated expense matching means that finance teams have more control and employees can enjoy a more seamless user experience. Not only does this boost employee satisfaction by leaving them to select their plans within your travel and expense policy, but it also saves time that would previously be spent on manually reporting business trips. 

The process works in three simple steps. First, the user goes to their TravelPerk account to book a trip as usual. Once bookings have been made, they are automatically synced to Rydoo on a daily basis. The user can then add any additional out-of-pocket expenses for the trip in Rydoo and submit. This makes it quick and easy to get insights into the complete trip spending and provides a hassle-free user journey.

“We want to stop unnecessary manual work for TravelPerk and Rydoo users with high travel requirements. By combining our automated expense management with TravelPerk’s sophisticated travel management solution, we are helping businesses to save time and improve the end-to-end experience for travelling employees through an intuitive and connected platform. It is an exciting next step in Rydoo’s automation philosophy, putting it into practice for businesses and professionals globally,” says Justin Borja, Partnership Manager at Rydoo.

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BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s exports growth lost steam in November, pressured by a strong yuan, weakening demand and higher costs, but imports accelerated and came in well above expectations as the country scrambled to restock key commodities like coal.

Exports rose 22% on-the-year and imports jumped 31.7% in November, customs data showed on Tuesday.

Analysts in a Reuters poll had forecast November exports would increase 19.0% after jumping 27.1% the previous month.

Imports were forecast to have risen 19.8%, according to the poll, versus a 20.6% gain in October.

China’s coal imports in November hit their highest level in 2021, as the world’s biggest consumer of the dirty fuel scrambled during the onset of winter to feed its power system, which had been experiencing shortages.

The easing of the power crunch also helped increase demand for copper. Imports of the key industrial metal hit their highest levels since March.

Higher imports were likely more driven by the scramble for coal and restocking of iron ore and crude oil than a broader uplift in domestic demand, said Ting Lu, Chief China Economist at Nomura.

China posted a trade surplus of $71.72 billion last month, compared with the poll’s forecast for a $82.75 billion surplus. China reported an $84.54 billion surplus in October.

The data comes a day after China’s central bank announced a cut to the amount of cash that banks must hold in reserve, its second such move this year, to bolster slowing economic growth.

The country has staged an impressive rebound from the pandemic but there are signs momentum is flagging. Power shortages, regulatory crackdowns and debt troubles in the property sector are weighing on China’s recovery.

Analysts expect more supportive policy measures in the coming months.

A private sector survey showed factory activity fell in November, hit by higher prices and subdued demand. An official survey showed factory activity grew that month, however.

China’s factory gate inflation hit a 26-year high in October as coal prices soared amid a power crunch in the country’s industrial heartland.

No cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant have been reported in China to date, but its emergence could add pressure to the strict zero-tolerance policy on coronavirus cases and increase logistical challenges for exporters, say analysts.

China reported 94 new confirmed coronavirus cases for Dec. 6, with locally transmitted infections in Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Yunnan and Zhejiang.

(Reporting by Gabriel Crossley and Albee Zhang; Editing by Sam Holmes)

HONG KONG (Reuters) – UBS Group AG has offered its Hong Kong staff up to HK$2000 ($256.45) a day to help cover mandatory hotel quarantine costs as the city maintains some of the strictest COVID restrictions in the world.

In a memo seen by Reuters, the bank said full-time employees up to executive director level would be eligible for the payments between now and the end of November 2022.

A UBS spokesperson in Hong Kong confirmed the contents of the memo.

Hong Kong requires 21-day compulsory hotel quarantine for arrivals from most countries which is paid for by the traveller.

The city last week banned https://www.reuters.com/world/china/hong-kong-bans-non-resident-arrivals-13-more-countries-due-omicron-2021-11-30 non-residents from entering Hong Kong from a further four African countries and will expand that to travellers who have been to Australia, Canada, Israel and six European countries in the past 21 days due to fears over the Omicron coronavirus variant.

Hong Kong is one of the final places in the world pursuing a zero-COVID strategy and has some of the tightest travel restrictions.

In coming months it hopes to partially reopen the border with mainland China, which also has no tolerance for coronavirus cases.

The strategy is a growing headache for major employers such as banks as they try to retain staff in Hong Kong.

JPMorgan is granting some staff a one-off payment of up to $5,000 to cover their quarantine costs.

($1 = 7.7988 Hong Kong dollars)

(Reporting by Scott Murdoch in Hong Kong; editing by Jason Neely)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Anheuser-Busch InBev set a target under its new leadership on Monday of delivering core profit growth of between 4% and 8% over the medium term.

The world’s largest brewer, headed since July 1 by Michel Doukeris, is hosting an investor seminar late on Monday.

(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop, Editing by Louise Heavens)

Entrepreneurial teams perform better if able to choose their own team members or their own ideas, finds new research from ESMT Berlin. However, this benefit to performance disappears if given autonomy to choose both.

Scholars suggest autonomy can lead to better entrepreneurial team performance, but there are different types of autonomy. Viktoria Boss and Christoph Ihl, both from Hamburg University of Technology, and Linus Dahlander and Rajshri Jayaraman, both from ESMT Berlin, investigated how two types of autonomy affect the performance of entrepreneurial teams: choosing project ideas to work on and choosing team members to work with.

The researchers ran a field experiment involving 939 students on a startup entrepreneurship course in which students are organised into teams to develop and pitch business ideas. Individuals were assigned to one of four scenarios: 1) choosing their team members and idea, 2) choosing their team members, 3) choosing their idea, or 4) choosing neither their team nor idea.

In teams, students developed an entrepreneurial pitch deck; a presentation aimed at hypothetical venture capitalists to secure funding. Pitch decks were assessed on six criteria: novelty, feasibility, market potential, likelihood of success, likelihood of invitation for follow-up, and investment amount.

Results show that teams with autonomy to choose ideas or team members outperform teams without the autonomy to choose either. However, the effect of choosing ideas is significantly stronger than the effect of choosing teams. Also, these benefits were not seen for teams granted full autonomy over choosing both ideas and teams.

Professor Dahlander says,

“Choosing ideas or teams can lead to a better match of ideas with team members’ interests and prior network contacts among team members, respectively. Also, granting autonomy increases feelings of confidence which can have a motivational effect. However, if confidence rises above a critical threshold, teams can experience overconfidence and exhibit complacency and lack of focus. This points to the possibility that those who chose both teams and ideas experienced too much confidence too soon, reducing subsequent effort.”

These findings are important to the professionalisation of entrepreneurship, particularly incubator and accelerator programmes, most of which give aspiring entrepreneurs a choice on both ideas and team members. These results suggest granting autonomy solely over choosing ideas would lead to the highest performance outcome.

These findings were published in the journal Organization Science.

By Silke Koltrowitz

ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss chocolate makers Barry Callebaut and Lindt & Spruengli said improving cocoa farmers’ income was crucial to ending child labour in the cocoa supply chain.

An estimated 1.56 million children work in cocoa production in West Africa and chocolate makers, under pressure from consumers and investors, are finding it tough to tackle.

Lindt Chief Executive Dieter Weisskopf and Barry Callebaut CEO Peter Boone both reiterated their support for the living income differential (LID) at the Reuters Next https://reutersevents.com/events/next conference.

The LID is a premium on cocoa beans from top growers Ivory Coast and Ghana that was introduced just over a year ago.

Barry Callebaut, which supplies food groups, is one of the biggest chocolate producers, processing almost a million tonnes of cocoa beans a year, about a fifth of the global volume.

Lindt, which does not publish its volumes, is much smaller.

Barry Callebaut has vowed to eradicate child labour from its supply chain by 2025, which Boone said was an important target to show that the company was tackling the challenge.

“It is a tremendous kind of objective, there is still a lot of work,” Boone, who took over as CEO in September, said in an interview, adding it would unleash creativity and action.

“We cannot close our eyes to something which is out there we know should not be part of our supply chain.”

Barry Callebaut found just over 21,000 cases of child labour in its supply chain in its financial year to August and uses remediation to resolve them.

“By getting to know more of these farmers, we also know where the risk is and where we have to sit down with them, with the community to make sure it’s not going to happen,” he said.

“Child labour is a big issue I’m not happy with, but I try to focus most of my time on just getting the farmers a better income,” Boone said, adding the LID was one tool to achieve this, but teaching farmers how to increase their productivity thanks to tree pruning or fertilisers was also essential.

Jeroen Douglas, executive director of the Solidaridad Network which works with small-scale farmers, said the scope for companies to influence price differentials was limited by the long-term arrangements of price setting.

He said the cocoa market and prices were completely controlled by Ivory Coast and Ghana and big financial institutions hedging future volumes of production three years in advance. “They are the ones that are regulating the market. That is the missing angle,” Douglas told Reuters in an interview.

“What it boils down to is that the farmers need a larger scale of operation to be successful,” he said.

STEP BY STEP

Weisskopf said Lindt’s farming programme was aimed at improve poverty through yield enhancement, infrastructure programmes and organic fertilising, while farmer training and visits and external verification should help change behaviours.

“It’s step by step going forward, but at the end of the day I have to tell you it’s a very, very difficult challenge we have here,” Weisskopf said.

He said he was ashamed how little the industry had achieved in the last 10-15 years to improve the situation on child labour despite the efforts of NGOs, governments and the industry.

A recent survey by the University of Chicago found that among children in agricultural households in Ivory Coast and Ghana cocoa growing areas, 45% were engaged in child labour.

Weisskopf said it was good all industry players had to pay the LID because it meant nobody had a competitive advantage.

To watch the Reuters Next conference please register here https://reutersevents.com/events/next

(Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz, additional reporting by Nigel Hunt; Editing by Alexander Smith)

BERLIN (Reuters) – Allianz raised its targets for shareholder returns for 2022-24 on Friday, aiming for 5-7% annual growth in earnings per share, as well as rolling out a new dividend policy.

The company also said it was aiming for a minimum 13% return-on-equity (RoE).

In its three-year strategy outlook, Allianz said efficient capital management was an essential component to meeting the goal.

The company said it expects to generate 12 billion euros ($13.55 billion) of excess capital through its operational plans.

Beginning retrospectively with fiscal year 2021, Allianz will also offer a dividend per share that is the higher of a 50% payout ratio or a 5% increase from the preceding year’s dividend.

($1 = 0.8857 euros)

(Reporting by Miranda Murray; Editing by Paul Carrel)

By: Dr Jo Kandola, business psychologist and head of digital solutions at Pearn Kandola

We’re all biased. It’s important for everyone to recognise this fact. And while most of us would never describe ourselves as racists or sexists, that doesn’t mean that we’re inoculated against the power of prejudice.

We all acquire stereotypes throughout our lives: from the people around us, the media, interactions with others and our personal experiences. The moment we recognise that we’re all susceptible to unconscious bias and that we all have a part to play is the moment we can start to move forward and address the problem.

But how do we address the problem?

Unconscious bias training has proven to be a value tool for tackling modern racism and sexism in the workplace when delivered as part of a wider diversity and inclusion programme.  Sadly, it’s become highly politicised over the past year or so, which has led to the spread of misinformation and fanned the flames of its harshest critics.

Looking at the debate around unconscious bias training, it’s important to note upfront that it’s not the existence of unconscious bias that’s being disputed. This is very well established in academic research. Instead, most of the discussion centres around how best to tackle it, and whether or not training can accomplish meaningful and lasting change.

Many sceptics of unconscious bias training have attempted to dismiss its effectiveness by citing research that supposedly disproves it – such as that by Forscher et al, Lai et al and Bezrukova et al. The trouble here is that none of this research actually looks unconscious bias training and is therefore not relevant in this context. It’s unclear what has led to this – perhaps the evidence has got lost in translation.

What’s clear is that when you examine the evidence, unconscious bias training can have a profound impact on changing attitudes, behaviour and representation when it’s done properly. To be effective though, the training should be designed to tackle a specific bias or workplace process. It should also avoid any form of thought suppression – which has been proven to have adverse effects – and incorporate personal feedback, space for personal reflection, and strategies to overcome the biases it identifies.

Then there are the critics who say that unconscious bias training is little more than box-ticking exercise. In moments like these, I can’t help but feel that they are quite simply missing the point. At its core, unconscious bias training is about helping us to uncover our blind spots and develop a deeper understanding of our own unconscious thoughts and behaviour. In this sense, it’s about awareness raising and empowerment, a tool that allows us to challenge and engage with our own predispositions.

Unconscious bias training is not a silver bullet in tackling systematic racism or sexism in the workplace. It’s simply a starting point – an effective tool that allows us to look inwards and start a conversation. To deliver real, positive change, it needs to be part of a wider training strategy – one that focuses on other areas, like inclusive leadership and recruitment.

In my experience of working with some of the top organisations across the UK, unconscious bias training is a meaningful and insightful exercise, linked to positive behaviour change. To deny this only stifles the debate ensures that the existing power structures that exist within organisations are maintained.  We should be dedicating our time and resource to increasing our understanding of the conditions under which unconscious bias training works and under which it’s less effective.

Remember, unconscious bias transcends personal politics, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation, and we mustn’t let it be weaponised in this way. Otherwise, we risk it being disregarded by a huge percentage of the population. And to deny bias, conscious or unconscious, is to deny racism, sexism and all other forms of oppression we see in society today.