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China demands diverse content China’s iResearch Annual Summit explores the internet in 2019 China’s current economic environment is now dominated by Millennial consumers and an accompanying new take on content, concluded China’s top internet experts at the recent iResearch Annual Summit in Shanghai. “We are seeing a major shift from an audience hungry for content, to users utilizing the internet for spiritual, intellectual upgrades,” said a breakout group of attendees, debating the challenges of 2019. As well as a generational change, noted one speaker, we are also seeing an increasingly diverse and inclusive society getting online: the traditional Chinese market must now meet diverse needs. Also up for discussion at the 50,000-strong event was the role of
corporate and industrial servicesoriented internet companies. Projections presented at the summit suggested that the annual compound
growth of the service sector for the Chinese internet economy will rise to 37.7% – double that of the commodity sales segment – by 2020. The scale of the service sector is set to exceed that of the sales category in 2020. “Enterprises need to pay attention to where the market is, where users are, and how to win users,” remarked researchers. “All of this stems from the ability of enterprises to establish business decisions that win the minds of users, and to mine the needs of users, define and accumulate products, in order to rationally judge market trends in the market of cross-border melee.” — Dialogue is media partner of the iResearch Annual Summit
Employee engagement is dish of the day Workplace learning and wellbeing experts descend on Europe’s first Productivity Summit When stocks crashed in 2008, workplace productivity went with them, revealed Kisaco Research’s latest venture, The Productivity Summit. The first of its kind in Europe, the summit saw 20 crossindustry productivity case studies, models and strategies from Unilever, Twitter, Rio Tinto, AstraZeneca, Investec and more. The Productivity Summit, held in London, touched on office space, flexible working, workplace psychology and creativity, with employee engagement systems and modelling at the core of every successful strategy presented. “Employee engagement has been proven to improve outputs,” noted Dialogue Q2 2019
conference director, Angela Tyrell, “whether it’s through the John Lewis Partnership’s employee shareholder model, Team Sky’s culture of ‘winning behaviours’, or Unilever’s investment in helping employees find purpose in their work.” Another example was Perpetual Guardian’s four-day week trial, which saw over 200 employees across New
Employee engagement has been proven to improve outputs
Zealand test out the new schedule. Christine Brotherton – head of people and capability – was on hand at the summit to reveal the results, a year on. “Our trial was to challenge our employees to look at their output; their value to the business,” Brotherton explained from the stage. “Job performance was maintained, and we saw incredible increases in levels of employee engagement.” Could the four-day week be the next step to sustainable workplace productivity? Time will tell, the audience concluded. — Dialogue is media partner of The Productivity Summit 2019