Technology is becoming more and more powerful in assisting our effectiveness and efficiency in business. Here are some of our teams’ favourite apps and websites that you could use.

Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Free to sign up (limitations apply) zoom.us

WeChat users can do just about anything, including play games, send money to people, make video calls, order food, read the news, book a doctor appointment, and more. wechat.com/en/

Slack is where work flows. It’s where the people you need, the information you share, and the tools you use come together to get things done. Slack.com

Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what’s being worked on, who’s working on what, and where something is in a process. Trello.com

WhatsApp Messenger is a freeware and cross-platform messaging and Voice over IP service. The application allows the sending of text messages and voice calls, as well as video calls, images and other media, documents, and user location. Whatsapp.com

Scanner will turn your mobile device into full-featured, powerful and fast document scanner.
With iScanner you can scan books, receipts, any kinds of documents, paper notes, whiteboards, schedules, timetables – anything you might need in your day-to-day life. Iscannerapp.net
Call us anytime if you want any help or insights – we are always learning from our clients the latest and greatest innovations.

Mental illness is still a mystery in the modern day workforce… what is causing you pain? Unhappiness in the workplace?

If a team member gets physically sick you take action. If someone gets the flu – you do something – ban them from the office The workplace is more savvy today around physical wellness such as massage & corporate fitness training. Dieticians/ gym membership but what do you do to support good mental health?

So many employers disregard the impact of poor mental health and do nothing. The Australian Human Rights Commission has estimated that around 45% of Australians aged between 16 and 85 will experience a mental illness at some point in their life. A total of 3.2 days per worker are lost each year through workplace stress. Mondo has recruited over 2700 people over the last 20 years and not once have we read a letter of offer, with a clause providing time for mental health leave – only sick leave is noted. Nor have I ever read clauses for support for mental health. I believe we need to make little steps and provide simple tools and assistance to support staff in the workplace.

It is often presumed that a worker’s mental illness develops outside of the workplace. However, an ‘unhealthy’ work environment or a workplace incident can cause considerable stress.

Grief is a process that all people will experience at many points in their life. Grief can be loss of a loved one, change of circumstance – (such a house move, demotion or divorce) or even grief for a change in a life stage. Repressed grief can also cause dysfunctional behaviour. Employers should be aware of employees experiencing grief and offer support to making a workplace more supportive.

Providing a healthy and safe workplace benefits all workers, including those with mental illness. It also makes good business sense. Stress-related workers’ compensation claims have doubled in recent years, costing over $10 billion each year. Australian businesses lose over $6.5 billion each year by failing to provide early intervention/treatment for employees with mental health conditions. Harvard Health Publications advise employees and employers to think of mental health care as an investment.

So, as employers let’s start to think of ways to provide support in the work force and talk openly about mental health. Some ways that we can do this are:

• Provide and note time for mental health days and include these in sick leave entitlements on letters of offer
• Make available mental health counselling
• Supportive grief counselling and support
• Link to the key available support services in your company intranet and in-house resource tools, such as Beyond Blue and RUOK websites
• Simply talking openly about these services and be supportive
• Encourage volunteer days supporting mental health
• Get to know your staff wholistically
• Build a “ Trusting culture” that improves productivity and wasted negativity – See Stephen MR Covey – Smart Trust 2011https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVCTVOBQSoI.

When it comes to mental health situations in the workplace – ignorance is not bliss!

Can customers have a meaningful conversation with a robot? By Katja Forbes

Leading global powerhouses are currently directing energy and resources toward experimenting with specific Chat Bot experiences for different user groups. However, because they are effectively just an intelligent technical interaction, customers are not actually engaging with a real person. Whether customers prefer to talk with a robot or a human (and if they actually even notice) and how this affects the customer experience has been a debatable issue.

Chat Bots (short for Chat Robots, and sometimes referred to as virtual assistants, avatars and just plain old bots) are essentially computer programs that simulate human conversations with people using artificial intelligence and machine learning. Starting out as basic FAQ systems on websites, nowadays they can transform the way a user interacts from a series of self-initiated tasks to a quasi-conversation, and look set to replace many App functions entirely. Essentially a Chat Bot is created to assist a user solve a problem or attend to their query. They can provide very simple information, like a weather report, or help you troubleshoot a computer problem. Whilst one user is usually human, applications are currently being developed to allow two chat bots to communicate with one another.

Chat Bots are the perfect customer experience tool for small to medium size wineries to adapt right now, whilst technology and trends are still developing and new advances in artificial intelligence are being made. It’s a stepping stone to speech self-service. Imagine the conversation with your Amazon Alexa or Google Home: “Alexa, order me a dozen 2017 shiraz from my favourite winery”. If you’ve got a working chatbot, you’re already half way there to being able to fulfil that request.

I can see the immediate benefits of Chat Bots over live chat, with an actual customer services agent. Chat Bots can have unlimited concurrent conversations (humans can only realistically focus properly on a few at the same time), provide coverage 24/7, and the cost per conversation is significantly less. In addition, with a live agent, it would be impossible for them to provide a conversation experience and professional manner that is consistent across multiple different customers and even throughout the one conversation with the same customer. With a Chat Bot, businesses can be confident the conversation will always take the same format and tone.

Creating a Chat Bot doesn’t have to be a large complicated project in which to invest a lot of time and energy. With CellarChat, it’s easy to get set up with your own product range, take bookings for tastings and answer a hundred other repetitive queries effortlessly by leveraging artificial intelligence.
Automation is not necessarily something to be afraid of, as long as human thought processes are at its heart.

Katja is the CEO of syfte, a customer experience consultancy, Guest Lecturer in Interaction Design at USyd, Director on the Global Board of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and Founder of www.CellarChat.wine, a chat based customer service based on IBM Watson’s Artificial Intelligence. We partner with Katja to let our wine clients hear about this service. For more information please email: info@mondocalibre.com.au

Proactively sponsoring a clear future people agenda is mission-critical for our Boards today. Without it, our organisations fail to adapt or prosper – particularly against the backdrop of quick technological advances, strengthening competitive forces and huge shifts in workforce and customer expectations. Under their corporate governance role, Boards now need proactive and clear ways to help their C-suite, leaders and people become future-fit.

In the quest for people future-fitness, Boards typically come up against 5 problems that prevent them from asking the right questions and getting traction:
1. Challenges – They haven’t yet specifically identified the external and internal challenges they will face in the next 3-5+years and assessed the likely people impacts
2. Readiness – They haven’t yet invested in preparing themselves to act with the right agenda, structures, toolkits or mindsets
3. Acuity – They haven’t yet taken the time or have the expertise to quantify the exact nature of the anticipated people risks or shifts
4. Fitness to Act – They may not yet have cleared the path to getting future-fit, nor have the right skills, resources, alignment and/or attention of key players in place
5. Traction – They may not yet have considered how to engage the hearts and minds of key players, nor established how to track progress in a highly visible, meaningful and objective ways

While seemingly complex and difficult to pin down, the key is for the Board to tackle these problems in priority order, based on an objective assessment of the current state of play. Through this lens, they can build a clear and structured approach and a framework against which to positively shape the future with near-term traction.

Elisa Hukins is Founder of FutureCrafters. We partner with her company. FutureCrafters have a track record of building forward-thinking Boards and executive teams of progressive organisations. To explore how these ideas can be brought to life more strongly in your organisation, contact us to arrange a time to meet her. Inquiries@mondocalibre.com.au