Sarah Cook – författare

This wide-ranging collection addresses many important issues in China's economy under transition, from grain production to trade, to the development of township enterprises, the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, the emergence of big business, money demand and consumption behaviour. Together, the studies provide insightful analysis and discussion of economic policies, illuminating the institutional context within which reform strategies are negotiated and implemented in different economic sectors.

This collection addresses many important issues in China's economy under transition, from grain production to trade, to the development of township enterprises, the restructuring of state owned enterprises, the emergence of big business, money demand and consumption behaviour. Together, the studies provide analysis and discussion of economic policies, illuminating the institutional context within which reform strategies are negotiated and implemented in different economic sectors.

The Asian crisis of the late 1990s severely affected some of the most successful economies in the region, placing the issue of social protection high on the regional and international agenda. Subsequently, growth rates revived, but the fruits of growth have not been evenly distributed and inequality has risen. Behind this trend lie deeply entrenched forms of poverty and social exclusion as well as new forms of vulnerability resulting from the liberalisation of markets and growing exposure to the global economy. This volume deals with issues of poverty, vulnerability and social exclusion in the Asian context. The articles deal with different groups of vulnerable people, exploring some of the characteristics of vulnerability in different contexts, and reflecting on appropriate policy responses. Collectively, they emphasise a broad-based systemic approach to the problems of vulnerability and insecurity, where social protection needs to be ‘rescued’ from its dominant current conceptualisation as a response to risk and crisis, and instead be integrated into the mainstream of development policy. This book will interest scholars of economics, politics, development studies, development economics, sociology, social policy, and South Asian studies.

Good customer service may be seen as a crucial asset for most organisations. But how do you know that you are delivering good customer service both externally and internally and, more importantly, delivering it to meet and exceed your customers' expectations? Customer service is an intangible thing, it is perishable and it is personal, so measuring it can be complicated and less than straightforward. Help is at hand. Sarah Cook's down-to-earth guide provides the rationale behind measuring service effectiveness externally and internally and explains the measurement process, from preparation to managing the results. The book also includes an exploration of the various techniques open for measuring effectiveness and how to use them. Utilising her consultancy experiences the author has ensured that there is plenty of ready-to-use materials to enable you to start measuring your own organisation's service effectiveness straight away.

Among the most dramatic changes to affect China in the 1990s is the upsurge in labour mobility and the emergence of a market-driven system of labour allocation, changes which profoundly affect the working environment and livelihoods of the Chinese people. Papers in this collection draw on a wide variety of data sources to analyse key elements of this transformation.

This volume adopts a multidisciplinary and comparative approach to development that brings together issues that are characteristic of the lifelong scholarship of Professor Gordon White. These include a focus on the state, civil society, welfare and globalization.

Among the most dramatic changes to affect China in the 1990s is the upsurge in labour mobility and the emergence of a market-driven system of labour allocation, changes which profoundly affect the working environment and livelihoods of the Chinese people. Papers in this collection draw on a wide variety of data sources to analyse key elements of this transformation.

This volume adopts a multidisciplinary and comparative approach to development that brings together issues that are characteristic of the lifelong scholarship of Professor Gordon White. These include a focus on the state, civil society, welfare and globalization.

The Essential Guide to Employee Engagement explores the concept and practice behind creating an engaged workforce and how this can contribute to organizational success. Recognizing that engaged employees are more productive, engender greater customer satisfaction and loyalty, and can help to promote your company's brand, the book gives you the necessary tools to make this happen. The author draws on a wide range of international case studies and examples, which demonstrate how an actively-engaged workforce can help your organization to flourish. You are shown how to measure the level of your employees' engagement and provided with a strategy to apply to help increase active staff participation.

Customer loyalty is essential to the long term financial success of your business, but with more choice then ever before, customers today have high expectations of the products and services they use. To continue to meet - and even to exceed - these high expectations, you need a top notch customer services system in place, and Customer Care Excellence will enable you to achieve just that.In clear, practical language, this book takes you through how you can develop and sustain a customer-service focus within your company. Emphasizing both strategic and practical aspects of customer care, Customer Care Excellence explains how gaining customer commitment and motivating employees to deliver an excellent service at all your company's touch points can ensure successful results and satisfied customers.This fully revised and updated edition includes new material examining the impact of social networking on customer behaviour and the emotional connection customers have with the brand, explaining how you can create a memorable customer experience. Author Sarah Cook takes you through the practical steps necessary to create a culture of customer focus and, crucially, shows how employee engagement leads to customer engagement.

Across the global economy, customers' expectations are continually rising - but many companies fail to deliver against those expectations. With the rise in social media, customers are becoming more vocal in expressing any dissatisfaction, which can both lose existing customers and alienate potential new ones. Complaint Management Excellence provides practical advice, tools and techniques for managers to adopt when managing any complaints that come into their organisation. In order to arrive at a culture where complaints are welcomed, the underlying values, processes, structure, strategy and people within an organization all need to be aligned with, and respect, customer needs. Not only does this improve the long-terms prospects for the company itself, but can have a tremendous knock-on effect in terms of boosting employee morale and engagement. With case studies from companies as diverse as John Lewis, Waitrose, DHL, Hilton Hotels, the Starwood group (including Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton hotels) and BT, Complaint Management Excellence explains what customers are really looking for when they make a complaint, how to avoid conflict and how managers can lead culture change to ensure the best experience for all customers and clients.

Good customer service may be seen as a crucial asset for most organisations. But how do you know that you are delivering good customer service both externally and internally and, more importantly, delivering it to meet and exceed your customers' expectations? Customer service is an intangible thing, it is perishable and it is personal, so measuring it can be complicated and less than straightforward. Help is at hand. Sarah Cook's down-to-earth guide provides the rationale behind measuring service effectiveness externally and internally and explains the measurement process, from preparation to managing the results. The book also includes an exploration of the various techniques open for measuring effectiveness and how to use them. Utilising her consultancy experiences the author has ensured that there is plenty of ready-to-use materials to enable you to start measuring your own organisation's service effectiveness straight away.

The Asian crisis of the late 1990s severely affected some of the most successful economies in the region, placing the issue of social protection high on the regional and international agenda. Subsequently, growth rates revived, but the fruits of growth have not been evenly distributed and inequality has risen. Behind this trend lie deeply entrenched forms of poverty and social exclusion as well as new forms of vulnerability resulting from the liberalisation of markets and growing exposure to the global economy. This volume deals with issues of poverty, vulnerability and social exclusion in the Asian context. The articles deal with different groups of vulnerable people, exploring some of the characteristics of vulnerability in different contexts, and reflecting on appropriate policy responses. Collectively, they emphasise a broad-based systemic approach to the problems of vulnerability and insecurity, where social protection needs to be ‘rescued’ from its dominant current conceptualisation as a response to risk and crisis, and instead be integrated into the mainstream of development policy. This book will interest scholars of economics, politics, development studies, development economics, sociology, social policy, and South Asian studies.

Leading the Customer Experience explores the relationship between leadership behaviour and exceptional service. Most organisation’s strategic aims and goals centre on the delivery of excellent service. Loyal customers not only keep buying from a company but also recommend the business to others. It is clear that managers and leaders throughout an organisation have a key influence on the experience that customers receive. How leaders behave has a direct impact on their team member’s motivation to go the extra mile to deliver excellent service for the customer. Sarah Cook’s vision for Leading the Customer Experience is to provide practical advice, tools and techniques for managers in how to effectively lead and motivate their team to deliver the best possible customer service. This book encapsulates her research on the behaviours of leaders who successfully create an environment where employees deliver exceptional service and she brings a pragmatic and business focused approach to the topic. Each chapter contains a variety of case study examples from businesses in UK and Europe, Asia Pacific, US and BRIC countries. These include service organisations in the financial sector, manufacturing, hospitality, transport, healthcare, public and third sectors.

Manage your team successfully so you can all reap the rewards of remote workingThe rise of remote working The world of work is changing. Many employees no longer hold the traditional nine-to-five job. Instead, working time is increasingly flexible. Technology has enabled a rapid rise in the number of remote workers in recent years; the TUC estimates that the number of UK people working from home increased by a fifth in the ten years to 2018, and now stands at around 2.5 million people. This number is expected to continue to rise – as a result of changing attitudes and technological developments – with half the UK workforce expected to be working remotely by 2025.Benefits of remote workingRemote working, flexible working, working from home – whichever terminology you use – allows employees to change the locations they work from and their working hours. For the organisation, proven benefits include improved employee retention, a wider pool of applicants, reduced costs, increased productivity, lower absenteeism and carbon footprint reductions. For the individual, the flexibility brings a better work-life balance, reductions in costs such as those associated with commuting, less stress, increased well-being and less time spent travelling. For a manager, it can help them empower team members to give their best, improve well-being in the team and improve job performance and satisfaction.Making a success of managing and working remotelyThis book will help managers and team members alike who are about to or have already started working remotely. It will enable managers to comprehend the challenges of managing remote workers and put strategies in place to overcome these, and will advise employees how to approach their work when doing so remotely.For the manager, this book provides practical advice on how to manage remotely, with emphasis on the use of technology, creating team cohesion and avoiding isolation factors.For the team member, the book provides tips and techniques on how to work remotely, balance work and outside-work demands, and deliver desired outcomes.Using case studies, diagrams and tables, with a good balance of research and practical advice, the book discusses both the technological and psychological aspects of remote working, helping employees and managers understand how they should approach and evaluate working remotely.Ensure you make remote working a success with proven, practical advice – buy this book today.About the authorSarah Cook is the managing director of The Stairway Consultancy Ltd. She has 20 years’ consulting experience specialising in leadership and management development. Before this, Sarah worked for Unilever and as head of customer care for a retail marketing consultancy.Sarah has practical experience helping managers to manage remotely and create high-performing teams. She has also worked extensively with team members to help them effectively transition to new ways of working. Sarah is a business author and has written widely on the topics of leadership, management development, team building and coaching. She also speaks regularly at conferences and seminars on these topics.Sarah is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and is a Chartered Marketer. She has an MA from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from The Open University. She is an accredited user of a wide range of psychometric and team diagnostic tools.

What is resilience?Resilience is the ability to cope with setbacks and find solutions to problems. It is the ability to bounce back from adversity and hardships, learn from experiences and move on. Being resilient means having the strength and conviction to confront life’s challenges and adapt positively to difficult circumstances.A 2020 Gartner survey revealed that 74% of CFOs and finance leaders planned to keep their previously on-site workforce working remotely post COVID-19. Even before the pandemic, the work environment had become one of constant change. People could no longer expect job stability, working time had become increasingly fluid and sophistication of technology meant that businesses were no longer limited to specific geographical locations to manage their workforce.The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, from the uncertainty and stress it created to the realisation that the world of work will need to change to deal with economic uncertainties and modified ways of working, means that resilience is now more important than ever.Why is resilience important?We need to build our resilience to cope effectively with ambiguity and change, and to bounce back in the face of adversity. This is particularly important if we manage and lead others at work.Well-being in the Workplace – A guide to resilience for individuals and teams is aimed at managers who need to build resilience in both themselves and their team and improve their own and others’ well-being. Remote working makes it even harder for managers to identify if team members are struggling, and employees may lack the support network to help them cope with stress in their work and home environments.Recognise the warning signs and take positive actionA practical guide, this book will equip managers with the skills and confidence to effectively build their own and others’ resilience and support their team’s well-being. It covers:An introduction to what resilience is and why we need it;The challenges for managers of building resilience in themselves and others;How to assess your own levels of resilience;Tips for physical, emotional, mental and social well-being;How to build resilience in team members; andThe benefits of building resilience and how to make habits stick.Managers, team leaders, those in HR roles, and employees looking to adapt to new ways of working will find this book invaluable.Understand the benefits of building resilience and how you can support your team’s well-being – buy this book today!

Career development is no longer a case of climbing the corporate ladderThe world of work has changed dramatically in the last decade and so has our expectations. Changing jobs, roles, locations, sectors, and careers is becoming the new normal. Furthermore, the shift to remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered the working world and for many, has led to reflection and a desire for a career change.This book will help you:Set career development objectives;Recognise your achievements to date;Build upon your strengths; andIdentify personal and professional development opportunities.The book includes exercises and activities to help you understand what is important to you in a job and how to attain your career goalsThe author outlines the role of mentoring in career development, how to build your personal brand, present yourself professionally online and in person, and find the resources you need to achieve your development goals. The book also provides a practical example of a career development path in the cyber security sector.

In an organisational context, you need to be able to influence well in a variety of situations. These can include but are not limited to: Networking and developing good interpersonal relationships;Leading and inspiring others;Communicating and gaining buy-in for your ideas;Promoting change;Developing a high-performing team;Negotiating with other people;Building successful working relationships;Navigating the complexities of hybrid/remote working; andSuccessful negotiating.This book is very practical. It features case studies of successful influencing and persuading in different industries, including the cyber security sector. It also contains advice, exercises, activities and diagnostics to help you improve your influencing skills.Influencing is a soft skill that is applicable to leaders, managers, project managers and team members.