Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy – www.simplynetworkinguk.com
www.simplynetworkinguk.com

This statement discloses the privacy practices for Simply Networking UK Ltd (SNUK) and its network of websites and services.

This statement is our notification of:

• What personally identifiable information of yours we collect through our websites, blogs and services.
  
• The organization collecting the information.
  
• How the information is used.
  
• With whom the information may be shared.
  
• What choices are available to you regarding collection, use, and distribution of the information?
  
• The kind of security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse, or alteration of information under our control.
  
• How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.
  

Information Collection and Use

We will not sell, share or rent information to other parties, in any manner that is different from what is disclosed in this statement; unless this issue was discussed with our client when the information was obtained.

Registration

In order to gain access to some areas of our website a visitor must first complete the registration form. During registration a user is required to give certain information – such as contact name, business name, business address, telephone and email address. We use this information only for validations when placing material as a Member or adding information around the SNUK website, it will not be used for any reason not previously discussed with the rightful owner of this information – You!

Membership

We request information from users on our Membership and Registration forms. Here a user is asked to provide contact information; the information is used for billing purposes of sales and requisites only. If we have trouble processing an order, we will use this information to contact the user, as per initial agreement.

Log Files

We use IP addresses to analyse trends, administer the site and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information. They are used only to increase our own awareness, feasibility studies and statistical analysis for the benefit of the client (demographic information). They will never be disclosed to ‘Third Parties’ without the prior consent or knowledge of the client.

Sharing

We will share aggregated demographic information only with our partners. This is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person or enterprise.

It is our belief and understanding that Pay Pal does not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes, this is the reason we have opted for Pay Pal to be our on-line mode of currency transaction in the future.

We partner, on occasion, with another party to provide specific services for our clients. When the client requests these services, we will share names, or contact information that is necessary for the third party to provide these services. This information is given in good faith and the client will always be made aware that such information will be requested, prior to any interaction on behalf of SNUK. Permission to use said information will always be requested from the owner if deemed to be in any way contrary to the information contained within the Data Protection Act 1998.

The aforementioned parties are not allowed to use any personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing these services on our behalf.

Links

The Simply Networking UK website contains links to other (3^rd party) sites; please be aware that SNUK will not accept any responsibilities for the privacy practices of these linked sites nor do we validate any of the site content. We encourage all users to be cautious when they leave the Simply Networking UK site and to automatically read the privacy statements of each and every 3^rd party website that asks for and collects personally identifiable information. This privacy policy applies solely to information collected by this website and covers the information given to SNUK by the client.

Security

This web site takes every precaution to protect our user’s information. When user’s submit sensitive information via the web site, your information is protected both online and off-line – SNUK Ltd adheres to the Data Protection act (1998).

We also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. All of our users’ information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices.

Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job are granted access to personally identifiable information.

Furthermore, ALL employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices as well as any new policies that are added as required. Our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and our Policies covering this matter on a regular basis.

Finally, the files that we store personally identifiable information on are kept in a secure environment with Back-Up hard drives stored securely off premises in different locations.

Correction/Updating Personal Information

If a user’s personally identifiable information changes (such as address and postal code) or if a user no longer desires our service, we will correct, update or remove that user’s personal data. This can usually be done via the ‘Contact’ button on our site or by emailing:

Notification of Changes

If we change this privacy policy we will post those changes on our Blog home page so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances if any, we disclose it. If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we would notify users by way of an email. Users will always have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.

Questions:

Please contact us via the ‘Contact’ button on the website or E-mail:

sales@simplynetworkinguk.com should you have any questions about this privacy policy.

 

Corporate Manslaughter / Homicide Act

The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 has now been on the statute books for three months. For those not fully acquainted, the Ministry of Justice has an excellent website (www.justice.gov.uk ) where its Guide to the Act can be found.  While the purpose of the Act seems quite clear – to allow the prosecution of large corporations where deficiencies amounting to gross negligence in their management of health and safety processes have resulted in the death of an employee or other person, history suggests that it is smaller businesses that will bear the brunt of prosecutions.

With few exceptions, all employers fall within the scope of the Act and so face the prospect of unlimited fines upon conviction.  Where gross negligence is shown, and this is essential for any prosecution to be successful, there is the distinct and cheerless prospect of a company’s insurer then refusing to cover any subsequent civil damages claim on the grounds that the insured has breached his contract of insurance.  Bereaved families are likely to seek to recover damages from the company’s assets, which will be sufficient (if the business has managed to survive the fine in the first instance) to ensure its closure.  While the Act is limited to the prosecution of businesses, it seems unlikely that owners and senior managers will escape subsequent prosecution for breaches of their duty of care under the Health and Safety at Work Act, with the further prospect of substantial personal fines or even imprisonment.

Avoiding prosecution and conviction should be a priority for all businesses, owners and managers. Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that many businesses have given little thought and even less action to the fairly complex legal relationships that now exist, in health and safety terms, between Employers and Employees, Clients and Subcontractors. Following a fatality, it is now feasible that a business could find itself prosecuted because of negligence by others in the chain of liability, perhaps, for example, where different companies are working alongside each other in the same workplace but have failed to provide each other with adequate information about each other’s activities, negligence by management to provide such information as well as to ask for it. 

Employers not only need to have robust documented health and safety systems for their own staff but must also ensure that these are effectively implemented; it is almost certain that to have the former without the latter will constitute gross negligence.  However, their subcontractors must also have robust systems and processes in place, and this legislation is forcing all businesses and organisations to verify that this is the case. In the motor vehicle recovery industry, recent legislation regarding working time and drivers’ hours has forced many Recovery Operators to subcontract to other operators, either within their territory to cover manpower shortages, or outside their territory to ensure the onward transit of Members.  Yet many have not taken steps to confirm that subcontractors have robust safety systems in place nor have they Satisfactory documentary evidence to prove it should the need arise.

Personal experience and anecdotal evidence suggest that standards of implementation of health and safety systems are not uniform, and for many the legislation is an inconvenience best avoided.  What is needed to avoid allegations of gross negligence is compliance with the spirit of the legislation, which means having the required systems fully and effectively implemented.

The main benefit of compliance with the spirit of the legislation is that the records generated e.g. plant maintenance, training, will provide a sound defence in the event of the worst happening; how can you have an effective defence if you don’t have effective records?  Furthermore, although HASAW Act permits employers with fewer than five employees not to document their health and safety policy, how can you provide adequate evidence that you have addressed health and safety if your arrangements aren’t documented?  So the first requirement in avoiding a charge of gross negligence is to have a documented and effective health and safety system in place.  ‘Effective’ means having clearly defined arrangements and responsibilities, risk assessments demonstrating that risks have been eliminated or reduced to as low a level possible, safe systems of work, and training records which reflect the safe systems of work; (note that risk assessments must conform to the standard laid down in the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, as well as in specific Regulations e.g. COSHH 1999)

However, this is not enough.  The second criterion you must meet is to be able to demonstrate that your system is fully operational at all levels in your business. This is achieved partly through the records created but also through management’s monitoring of the system using techniques such as safety competence appraisals and workplace inspections (including at remote situations such as at other employers’ sites), safety audits and regular management reviews and planning.

If you have the above in place, you may not necessarily avoid a fatality but it is probable that you will avoid becoming an early victim of this new legislation.

Lack of time is usually the busy manager’s worst enemy and is one of the main reasons why health and safety systems tend to be undeveloped or underdeveloped.  However, off-the-shelf or generic packages can be used, provided they are customised to a business’s specific requirements, conform to the legislative criteria and are industry and company specific.  Further information can be obtained by contacting Murray Duncan who is the author of this article.

 

E: – enquiries@tqma.co.uk  T:  01738 631770 / 0771 275 1866                                           

Murray Duncan is Principal Consultant with Tayside Quality Management Associates

On Line Scams

Again we seem to be bombarded with scams where ever we look – if scammers’ put as much energy into legitimate businesses I am sure they would be sitting on a small fortune by now! Scams are becoming more like buses, with the same style all circulating at the same time (do you think they have underground meetings, like bus depots of old and just follow one another out? No neither do I – they just lack originality, hence the reason they can’t do anything legitimate with their time!).

There are more Internet scams on the go, concentrating on the on line refund and your ability to claim. The 1st informs you that if you have been misfortunate to have suffered from on line fraud (that’s rich coming from a scam merchant!) the Bank of England (under Government instructions) will compensate you for this – surely that will convince you that it is a real service? As usual you are asked to part with valuable banking information, however with this one you have the opportunity to try and get the scammers’ tracked down!

www.ic3.gov is the American ‘Internet Crime Complaint Centre’ and have asked that should you receive an Email concerning entitlement to refunds being given out (concerning on line fraud) by the Bank of England, they would like to know about it via the above website.

The 2nd on line scam concerns the person who contacts you to let you know he holds the same Domain Name as you, only with a .com or .co.uk but would be happy to sell it to you for approximately $200!

I received an Email regarding a Domain I owned and put it straight into my spam box, however a friend of mine got himself in a real flap when he got a similar one as he was convinced he would lose his website and wanted to know the feasibility of buying the other suffixes for his Domain?

Now this one could be a legitimate business idea that may not even be illegal, but none the less it may be obtaining money out of genuine hard working business owners, who are panicked into believing they have to hold every complete web address to save their website?

Causing money to be relinquished to the person contacting them or even inducing a panic buy from a Domain store, of every last web address for their Domain is an underhanded activity as far as I am concerned and one that people should be made aware of! Hopefully it will prevent them from being parted with hard earned cash on needless transactions (I wonder how many different suffixes can be added to 1 Domain and how much it would cost [approx.] to ensure only you owned anything that resembled your Domain.anything?).

This next one continues to do the rounds and refers back to the discs that went ‘missing’, along with the Family Allowance details of thousands of people. You receive an Email to let you know that your name was found to be included on the missing discs and due to this you are entitled to claim compensation in the way of a one off payment into your account. Like many other’s that have gone before, you are asked to follow the link and enter your account details, I didn’t think anyone fell for these one’s any more so was very surprised to see it in my inbox (unless of course I missed it the first 20 times round the globe?).

At the end of the day the SNUK Blog, as with most Blogs out there will continue to up-date you as and when scams appear on the scene. Until they begin to fade out we can only hope to reach as many people as possible with this information – it is then up to yourself to network it further and inform more and more people to prevent them becoming another statistic.

Cheers

Kim

Business Crime and OUR Response

Have you ever had a crime (anything from verbal abuse right up to substantial theft of property) committed against:

• You and your business?
• Your business premises?
• Your staff members?

Did you report it to the police to be investigated? If you didn’t, why didn’t you?

Did you think it too small to worry about? Did you feel that, for whatever reason it may not be investigated? Did you feel there were insufficient police officers, with the ability or specialist training, available to deal with your specific business crime? Did you think it would involve too many working hours?

If there is indeed a lack of specialist, dedicated police officers for business crime should we the business community accept any responsibility for this?

Approximately only 1 in 8 business crimes are reported to the police! With reported incidents so low we must seriously consider the impact these findings have on the amount of police resources being made available to combat business crime!

How is it rectified? WE REPORT CRIME – EVERY TIME!

Businesses should accept a degree of responsibility for reduced police numbers available! If we do not report criminal activity (no matter how trivial) we will never know the extent and type of corporate crime occurring in any specific area? If the crime statistics are not available how can anyone cater for the number of officers or the specific areas of training required by police forces to combat corporate crime?   

A national campaign is being jointly managed (Northumbria Coalition Against Crime and the FSB) to encourage businesses to:

1. Continue to call 999 in an emergency (or the local police if non urgent)
2. To report criminal activity on-line!

You can help yourself and your community by going on-line, reporting the incident and helping to formulate the statistics we require to back the request for more police officers to be trained in business crime. Every incident, from damage to your business property to crimes that are difficult to classify as either ’Criminal or Civil’ (the kind true con-men like to work on; deciding if the case belongs with your solicitor or the police can itself be sole destroying) should be reported.

For more information and an on-line ‘Reporting’ Form please go to:

http://www.thecoalition.org.uk/ecet 

http://www.fsb.org.uk/ecet

http://www.businesscrimecentre.org.uk/ecet

It can take many business hours collecting all the information needed to report a corporate crime - however at the end of the day unless We Report Crime Every Time we will only have ourselves to blame when there are insufficient police officers to cover our area and those available are unable to concentrate on preventing corporate crime as they are too busy trying to catch the corporate criminal!

Business Rates

On April 1st 2008 the Small Business Bonus Scheme was introduced in Scotland to replace the Small Business Rates Relief Scheme.

The Scottish Government have introduced the new scheme in a bid to help the true “Small” business! Rates are responsible for the largest proportion of the outgoings in many small businesses and paying them damages their profit margins; more so than the larger businesses, who have a greater turnover enabling them to cover their rates easier.

The introduction of a scheme, specifically designed to keep more money in the bank of  the small business, aims to level the profit margins between small and medium size enterprises and will hopefully allow the business community to benefit as a whole?

With less money to pay out on your rates you have more money to invest in your growth or help you to sustain your business in the current economical climate!

Over the next year this scheme will progressively help those enterprises with properties where the combined ratable value is £15,000 or less.

It is delivered in three different categories and they will apply:

up to £8,000

£8,001 – £10,000 

£10,001 – £15,000

To discover more about the new scheme and to see if it applies to you, please visit:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/212130/0056430.pdf

Tendering Opportunities

The following information is of vital importance to small businesses attempting to bid for contracts in the public sector. It is the latest initiative to encourage smaller enterprises to see the possibilities open to them and promote the opportunities of possible new contracts within a sector that many may never have considered before.

In our bid to introduce some of the many different formats of Business Networking we are asking smaller businesses to look closer at the ‘Supply 2 Gov’ route and how it may benefit them.

Not all contracts are for single enterprise bids and in some cases the smaller business may find it highly beneficial to themselves and other local businesses if they were to tender for a contract together! Some contracts can be bid for by a ‘Team’ made up of separate local business owners who know that jointly they have all the abilities required to compete for the contract should they pull resources, this makes sense for individual growth and also long-term stability of the local economy.

Please read what ‘Supply2Gov’ have written and find out more by visiting their website – but remember you have very little time left to take advantage of the FREE trial - Good luck from all in the SNUK Office.

Supply2.gov.uk- the official lower-value (typically below £100,000) contract opportunities portal – was created by the Government to reduce the barriers facing SMEs competing for public sector contracts, enabling small businesses to grow and stay competitive. By registering on Supply2.gov.uk you can select a free location and benefit from:

• Daily email notification of Government contract opportunities relevant to your business
• Promotion of your company to the public sector market
• On-line contract search facility
• Resources to assist you when tendering
• Market intelligence

Until 31 July 2008, new registrants can benefit from access to lower-value opportunities throughout the whole of the UK – free for 3-months

 

The free trial is part of the Department for Business’ Enterprise Strategy released in March, which outlined new measures to increase the amount of government business that is won by small firms. To register for the 3-month free national upgrade trial and for further information please visit www.supply2.gov.uk before 31 July 2008.

Start Networking

Welcome to the Simply Networking UK (SNUK) Blog site. This Blog was created using WordPress.com who fittingly provided us with the source for the first piece of business advice on it!

• Enterprises that rely on the Internet should really have a Blog to further promote themselves. [More about this as the SNUK Blog evolves but worth considering for the moment]. 

This Blog will be dedicated to providing information and ideas for businesses of all sizes; although we expect the new start-up, micro and small enterprise to gain the most from the items posted on it. 

If we find or hear about issues that may be of interest to entrepreneurs, we will highlight them here on this Blog. The business world is swamped with current legislation and Red Tape so to make life slightly easier for you we will try to bring things of importance or interest right to your front door – to save you having to go out and find it: We all know that Time equals Money in the business world!

We hope you find the Blog interesting and we welcome any constructive input you may wish to share with like-minded business people? As some of the first visitors to the site you will have the opportunity to watch it grow and evolve into a portal of valuable posts - including items concerning networking, legislation in plain English, scams to be aware of and even one enterprise seeking assistance from another.

Please feel free to Log In on a regular basis and help other enterprises discover the things you already know and even learn something yourself from those who have already ”been there!”. Networking is only effective if everyone is willing to help everyone else succeed whilst ignoring the urge to keep valuable business information under wraps or to themselves. 

We look forward to your input and we are sure some business, somewhere, will be eternally grateful for the smallest piece of information shared in this ever evolving Blog.

Kim