A finalist in the ‘Tech professional (non-coding)’ and ‘Tech entrepreneur’ categories, Sarah has been recognised for the crucial role she’s played — not just in bringing Natural HR to market, but in its continued success. This is thanks, in no small part, to the entrepreneurial spirit and unwavering drive to succeed that Sarah has displayed throughout the past decade.

It’s an approach that Sarah hopes will inspire other women and girls looking to explore careers in tech, whether as part of the Natural HR team or in other trailblazing organisations. Sarah comments: “It’s vital that we continue to raise awareness of women succeeding in tech so that we can begin to level out the gender disparity that continues to dominate the sector.

“The Women in Tech Awards does a wonderful job of recognising the progress achieved by females in the tech field. It’s such an honour to be shortlisted and I look forward to attending the awards ceremony and celebrating alongside the other shortlisted ladies.”

Celebrating the vibrant spirit of women in tech throughout the Midlands, the awards champion those making a name for themselves in what has traditionally been considered a male-dominated industry.

The awards ceremony will take place on 11^th October at The Eastside Rooms, Birmingham.

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Over 300 people gathered at The Park Regis Hotel to recognise the area’s array of exciting entrepreneurs.

Of those in attendance was our very own Sarah who initially thought she was going there with fellow business peers to acknowledge the city’s brightest talent. With no idea she’d been nominated by Kim Leary, the regional Chair of Downtown in Business, the evening ended in a way she never expected…

“I genuinely thought I was there to go along to a brilliant event and support those in business. And, of course, that’s what I did but never expected to have my name called out for an award!” said Sarah.

“I couldn’t believe it. I actually burst into tears as I walked up to collect the award, but I was so happy to be recognised… and I managed to smile for the photos!

“The surprise will be something I’ll remember for a very long time and I’m just so grateful to Kim and the City of Birmingham Business Awards for acknowledging the work we do at Natural HR.”

Speaking about the nomination, Kim – who is also managing director of web design agency Squibble and chair for Birmingham Tech CIC – added: “I’m a big advocate of tech and women in business, so I felt privileged to be able to present Sarah Dowzell with the Chair’s Award.

“Over the past few years, she’s stood out as I’ve watched her expand and nurture Natural HR to become a global organisation.

“Sarah has achieved a huge amount – from securing investment to growing and retaining her team. I knew she’d be a worthy winner, and truly deserved the recognition.”

From humble beginnings in which Sarah owned her own cleaning business to helping to run Natural HR alongside husband and our company’s CEO, Jason Dowzell, it’s been a huge transition but an exciting one for Sarah.

And following a fantastic start to the year – which has included winning new clients and welcoming fresh faces into the team (we’ll be telling you more about this news soon) – we’re looking forward to kick-starting the next half of 2022 with even more product updates and organisational developments.

We’d like to extend our thanks to Downtown in Business Birmingham for running such a prestigious COBBA22 – it’s a night we won’t forget in a hurry. For a list of all the winners, visit here.

Photo: Edwin Ladd

If you want HR software technology that will help you to better engage, manage and pay your people, find out about Natural HR. Visit our website, book a free demo or call 0121 663 1500 for more information.

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This is the second West Midlands Tech Awards that has seen Natural HR bring home a prize, with the last awards in 2019 seeing our COO and Co-Founder was named the West Midlands Woman in Tech.

Sarah Dowzell, COO and Co-Founder of Natural HR, attended the glittering awards ceremony alongside her husband and CEO Jason. On winning the award, she said: “We are thrilled to have been named the West Midlands Scale-Up Business of the Year. It is an honour to be recognised for all of our dedicated team’s hard work to grow Natural HR into the successful business it is today.

“This award is testament to the unwavering commitment of our ever-growing team: from sales through to support, development, marketing and implementation; it is fantastic to be recognised in celebrating Natural HR’s achievements and growth.”

But what does scale-up business of the year mean? The Reach PLC Judging panel criteria for the category is; “We are looking for established tech and digital businesses which are more than three years old, have more than £1m in annual revenue and are currently experiencing or getting set for rapid growth.

“You will have proven your product or service in your initial market or with key customers and now see a route to growth by expanding into new locations, launching new products and securing new customers.”

With December fast approaching, this is another success for the Birmingham-based team as our team continues to grow and scale up as 2020 has seen us welcome nine new colleagues in key positions, including marketing, sales, service and development – taking us to a headcount of 37 employees with 5 more new team members due to join in the next few weeks.

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Nikki Hill, an Executive Coach and Talent Consultant, took the lead for September’s Natural HR, HR Expert webinar series, which focused on why emotional intelligence is critical to the success of HR teams in the workplace.

With over a decade of in-house HR and talent experience with companies in organisations ranging from luxury fashion to food, retail, telecoms, and financial services, Nikki talked about how HR teams can break down the critical elements of emotional intelligence and how you can begin infusing a healthy dose of emotional intelligence into your workplace agenda.

Natural HR chose this topic to help you drive productivity, profitability, and job satisfaction, which ultimately helps with staff retention within your business.

Why is Emotional Intelligence important in HR?

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathise with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict.

But why is emotional intelligence so important to the way that a business runs? Research has shown that the concept:

• Provides a framework to help us better understand and intelligently deal with and respond to emotional responses.
• Individuals with emotional intelligence are better equipped to handle issues relating to stress and function effectively in work teams.
• Emotional intelligence equally has the ability to enhance an individual’s leadership abilities and personal resilience.

Similar research on emotional intelligence has found that:

• 80% of employees consider emotional intelligence crucial for developing their careers.
• 87% of Millennials today are motivated by the Emotional Intelligence of their leaders to help the company succeed.
• Only 30% of companies look for emotional intelligence during the hiring process.
• 59% of employers would not hire someone who has a high IQ but low EI.
• 75% of employers said they are more likely to promote a worker with high EI

The elements of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is not the answer to absolutely everything, and the entire concept builds on the fact that there are different fundamental dimensions of emotional intelligence. These include self-perception, self-expression, emotional self-awareness, interpersonal decision-making, and stress management.

Self-perception is about how we see ourselves, and more so, thinking about that in terms of self-regard, having a realistic appreciation of our strengths and weaknesses, and being comfortable with who we are.

Emotional self-awareness is about being able to understand how are you feeling in a particular moment? But beyond that, what are the triggers for that feeling and being mindful about how you can use that effect once you’re aware of how you see yourself?

Does it link into how you appear to other people and express yourself in their world? For instance, both in the words that we’re using and nonverbal, how are we communicating the emotions that we’re feeling, whether through words or actions?

Assertiveness is all about standing your ground while also constructively and respectfully communicating your ideas, wants, needs, and opinions to the rest of your team.

While independence is about being able to stand on your own two feet, and not being able not to be unduly influenced by how other people are feeling, including their emotions, and being able to be in your own space.

Social responsibility is really about how you show up and how you support the wider community. So that could be a department that could be a business area, your local community, and society as a whole. But really about how you contribute to that greater group.

Stress tolerance is about having several different tools in your toolkit to withstand the stresses that are going on around us and having coping mechanisms that are helpful and supportive there.

Finally, optimism is about having a realistic sense of positivity. For example, looking for the things that are opportunities or things are going well rather than focussing on the things that aren’t going quite so well.

American Express, an example of using Emotional Intelligence in the workplace

But in terms of the business case of using emotional intelligence, there were three examples that Nikki showcased. One such example was American Express, which undertook some research with its financial advisers and supervisors.

They had a control group who had not gone through emotional competence training and then an equal number of people who had gone through training, and the individuals who were managed by supervisors, and who had gone through that training, grew their business by 18.1% than compared to the alternative group.

How to grow your emotional intelligence within your company?

In the final part of the webinar, Nikki talked about how you can potentially grow your capability.

To begin with, it’s imperative to think about how often are you, as an employee, actually showing up by listening and putting yourself in other people’s perspectives or by pausing before you’re acting on that impulse and that temptation to thinking about how can you demonstrate this?

Beyond this, you also want to consider flipping the coin. How would other people describe you? In terms of your self-development, this presents an excellent opportunity to seek feedback from those you trust and whose opinions you value, in much of the same way you would approach 360-feedback.

The second idea Nikki explored was to consider the impact of your emotions on different tasks. When using emotional intelligence, when working in that way, what’s the effect on other people? How are they reacting when you feel that way and being quite mindful of that?

The next piece of advice came in terms of paying attention and asking for feedback on how you are coming across when interacting with others? What’s happening with your body language or facial expressions? How do you hold your posture, and what happens with the tone of your voice? Are you communicating in a way that can make someone think that you are confident and comfortable in that situation?

But if you’re not achieving this, then why not? And again, being able to think about some modifications that you enact to communicate that more effectively?

Finally, in terms of standing your ground with others, are you able to consider if there are situations where you feel less comfortable you’ve put yourself across? Where you’ve said something that you think is important, but then you back down if you’re challenged?

Do you need to think through the different implications, perhaps? Do you want to do some more research on this front? How can you make sure that you feel confident and robust in your opinion so that it is still with salt and withstand some critique and different ideas from others?

You can watch the entire webinar event, for free, by clicking here.

James Moore, the director at Morgan Phillips talent consulting outlines how HR leaders can design and implement high-impact talent solutions that enable their more comprehensive business strategy to flourish.

The post Webinar Review: Why is Emotional Intelligence critical to the success of HR? appeared first on Natural HR.

If you missed it you can download the slides by completing this short form:

Jason covered some important aspects regarding data security in HR, including system passwords, phishing and social engineering and how they can breach your sensitive data.

What is sensitive data?

Firstly, to be security-savvy, we need to understand what sensitive data actually is. In short, it’s any data that relates to a living individual who can be identified or financial data such as bank and credit card details.

Why is data security important for HR?

HR departments usually hold an abundance of sensitive data for employees and it becomes their responsibility to protect the availability and integrity of this data. Any data breaches will cause huge implications such as:

• Diminished company reputation
• Non-compliance with data protection laws (the GDPR)
• Fines – up to €20m or 4% of global turnover
• Potential job losses or prison sentences

Are there any fines pending?

Yes, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is currently investigating British Airways relating to a cyber incident in September 2018, where user website traffic was diverted to a fraudulent site instead. This resulted in a data breach where 500,000 customers’ details were harvested by the attackers.

The penalty?

Potentially a £183.4m (1.5% of turnover) fine. Ouch!

Value of sensitive data on the black market

The big five – date of birth, visa credit card credentials, credit card details, NI number and bank account numbers all possess an associated value on the black market.

Strangely, visa credentials are the lowest value, due to a very short timeframe that they can be used due to improvements with the bank’s security processes. On the other hand, your bank account number is by far the most valuable piece of data at £230.

Next time you’re on the train and you’re giving out your bank account number over the phone, be careful who may be listening.

Ways data can be leaked

Although the news headlines may make you believe that the only way data can be leaked is through online hackers, in reality, data can be leaked in many ways.

• System failures
• Employee carelessness
• Denial of service (DOS) attacks
• Fraud
• Misuse of resources: email, internet, phone
• Physical risks
• Espionage
• Viruses or spyware
• Use of unlicensed software

The biggest data breaches of the 21^st century

Precautions you can take to prevent a data breach

HR professionals can implement many measures to ensure that sensitive data isn’t leaked from the company. Certain precautions are more easily implemented and can carry more weight, for example, stronger passwords or updating your PC regularly.

Here is a full list of precautions:

• Create strong passwords and change them often
• Update your PC regularly
• Don’t leave sensitive data on desks
• File data securely
• Shred documents if necessary
• Lock your PC whenever you’re away
• Don’t uninstall security software
• Block suspect sites
• Back up data
• Don’t share office door codes
• Only allow expected visitors entry to your building
• Ensure every visitor signs in
• Block USBs and easy data sharing
• Report all incidents early to your data protection officer

A ‘strong’ password is your best defence against data breaches

This may be something that you already know as almost every website, system or even a mobile phone may ask you for a password or passcode to keep your data secure.

But what many don’t know is what actually constitutes a strong password.

The most important factor is the length of a password. The longer the better, especially if it’s three words or more. To make that password even stronger you can mix in uppercase and lowercase letters, as well as symbols (such as @, ! or #) too.

It’s important to remember to change it regularly, never write it down and don’t use the same password on multiple sites.

The most secure password

As mentioned, password length is the most important factor when creating a secure password. However, theoretically, all passwords can be cracked, but some much sooner than others.

Here are some examples and their theoretical time to crack:

A fundamental mistake that most employees will make when it comes to choosing a password is using a common phrase or using the same password from other login details just because it’s easy to remember

Potentially, hackers have a 10.4% chance of guessing a password in just 20 attempts.

Passwords such as ‘solo’ or ‘football’ will be topical in relation to recent film releases or major sporting events. It’s best practice not to choose passwords based on recent events as hackers will ensure these are factored into their algorithms.

What is a phishing attack?

Phishing is trying to get you to follow a link and provide information to the sender like a password or account number.

Phishing attacks will happen often and as an HR professional, you need to ensure that the employees in your company abide by a few simple tasks to maximise email security. These are:

• Only open email that you need for your job
• Transmit sensitive data via approved methods i.e. NOT unencrypted email
• Don’t open email attachments in unexpected emails, even if it’s from someone you know
• Only keep data locally for as long as is necessary to process
• Use work email for business only
• Delete any spam straight away
• Don’t circulate jokes, videos, letters, hoaxes etc
• Don’t click on links in an unsolicited email

Before opening any email, always ask yourself…

• Am I expecting this?
• Does it make sense?
• Would they send this to me?
• Why?
• Look for attachments and links
• Why now?

Even if the email looks legitimate, it may not be. Phishing attacks can be clever and very convincing. Here are a few examples:

Example one:

Example two:

How to avoid phishing attacks?

Don’t click on any links from unknown senders and even from a known sender, use caution.

Only ever communicate personal data via the phone (if it’s a known contact) or secure sites (look out for the padlock icon in your web browser’s URL bar).

Never give out your PIN or password when an email asks for it. Banks etc will never ask for this information.

Preventative action against social engineering

Firstly, social engineering is an attack vector that relies heavily on human interaction and often involves manipulating people into breaking normal security procedures and best practices in order to gain access to systems, networks or physical locations, or for financial gain.

To prevent social engineering, never give out your password, PIN or account number over the phone, even if you’re asked for it – especially if you didn’t initiate the conversation. If you didn’t initiate the contact, offer to call them back through an externally verifiable number.

If you or one of your employees is on the phone and communicating sensitive data, always be aware of your surroundings as you never know who may be listening in.

Never be afraid to say ‘no’. This can be one of your most effective ways of ensuring data security.

The web is no different and there are measures you can take to heighten your data security:

• Only access websites you need to perform your job
• Be cautious about entering personal data on website forms
• Use different passwords for personal or downloaded software to your key business systems
• Don’t post sensitive data on social accounts
• Avoid installing software unless necessary for your job and you understand the licensing agreement
• Log internet usage to flag potential threats or repeat offenders
• Never download screensavers, games or other executable files (.exe, .vbs, .com)
• Only give personal data on sites with a SS certificate (padlock next to the URL)

To summarise how HR can encourage their employees to be security-savvy

• Use common sense!
• Treat all data as if it were about you or your family
• Only access systems you’re authorised to
• Only access data you need to do your job
• Only share sensitive data with others on a ‘need to know’ basis
• Only send data outside of your network using approved means of protection
• Always report incidents no matter how small
• Review your current processes to make sure they don’t pose a risk

Remember, you can download Jason’s slide covering data security in HR by completing the form below.

To understand more about how you can encourage your employees to be security-savvy, feel free to contact us or follow us on our social media channels.

Ensure you have the right HR system in place to manage your sensitive data. Natural HR’s core HRIS will secure your employee data in a single place, make data entry faster and more secure as well as allowing only relevant users access to the information they need to do their jobs. To see Natural HR in action, request a demo today.

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