(Time to read this Blog section is about 60 seconds)
- Which travel navigation App is best? There are three main navigation Apps, Google Maps, Apple Maps and Waze. Arthur Grabowski, who apparently has way too much time on his hands, has spent the last year measuring the effectiveness of these three Apps by testing them over 150 trips.
Apple Maps turned out to be the most accurate, but Google Maps got him to his various destinations about 7% quicker. Waze had slower-than-promised arrival times 11% of the time. - Plastic-eating enzyme hailed as breakthrough in recycling. An enzyme that breaks down a common plastic that pollutes the oceans and landfills has been engineered by scientists from Britain and the USA.
- This discovery could reduce the time that it takes for plastic to decompose from centuries to days, making the material truly recyclable. While currently operating only on a small scale in a lab, it’s thought that this process can be commercialized on a large scale, eliminating a one of the world’s biggest pollution problems.
- Women in management. The tiny county of Latvia has the highest percentage of women in managerial positions at 44.4%, followed by the United States at 43.5% and Hungary at 40.5%.
The industrialized countries with the fewest women in management positions are South Korea at 10.7%, followed by Japan at 11.5% and Turkey at 13%. - The world’s largest airport will open next year on the outskirts of Beijing, China. It covers 18 square miles and will serve 100 million passengers a year. The architect, Zaha Hadid, who passed away in 2016, was a remarkable Iraqi-British woman who became a world leader in a profession dominated by men.
- Tim Horton’s reputation crashes. Canada’s iconic national coffee chain has been ‘roasted’ by the public and the media for the way many of their franchisees treated their staff following the increase in the minimum wage in the Province of Ontario last year.
Tim’s head office had almost a year to prepare for how they would handle this increase in operating costs…and they blew it. So, many of the franchisees, some of whom are multi-millionaires, took away paid breaks and free uniforms from their staff.
On top of this, almost half of Tim’s franchisees are suing head office for its draconian and arbitrary cost-cutting measures.
So, what has this done to Tim’s brand reputation? According to the annual Canadian ‘Corporation Reputation Study’ by Leger and National Public Relations, Timmy’s has plummeted from 4th place last year to 50th place in 2018.
What are you doing to ‘crash-proof’ the reputation of your business?
