With MSMEs comprising 99.5% of business enterprises in the Philippines, the need for them to adapt to the changing market and increase their reach is more important than ever. Recognizing this, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has identified the digitization and innovation of MSMEs as one of their key priorities as they continue to improve productivity growth and generate employment opportunities among MSMEs. Many entrepreneurs now go online to scale their businesses through the variety of tools, features, and opportunities that e-commerce offers.

E-commerce platforms such as Shopee are not only accessible, but also a more seamless way for all kinds of businesses to go online. With its wide reach and initiatives such as Shopee’s first mega sale of the year, the 3.3-3.15 Mega Shopping Sale, sellers such as Geline and Camil are able to find new opportunities for their businesses spurred by two deep passions: love for fashion, and advocating animal rights. 

From fashion enthusiast to loungewear entrepreneur

From being an avid online shopper, Geline’s background and love for fashion enabled her to thrive as an online seller. With her knowledge of the tiangge (bazaar) market scene, she initially sold her mother’s creations of printed dresses in a brick-and-mortar store. When the popularity of e-commerce platforms grew in 2020, Geline decided to ride the wave and bring her business online selling sleepwear and loungewear that she designs herself at Trend Studio Manila. 

Shopee continues to be Geline’s platform of choice, even now that she’s a seller. She started joining Shopee’s monthly campaigns mid-2022, and saw first-hand how the added exposure from marketing campaigns helped her reach more customers. At present, Geline has more than 50 staff who help sew and reproduce her own designs. She even recalls being overcome with the feeling of kilig after acquiring a truck for her business and buying their family’s dream house.

“At first, I never saw myself as a full-time entrepreneur when I started selling online. Shopee has made it easy for me to channel my passion and capabilities, and grow our business in order to support my family and my staff. When my staff tell me stories about how they’ve renovated their homes or set up their own sari-sari stores, I feel so proud and happy because all of us share our accomplishments,” Geline shared.

A pet supply store rooted in animal rights advocacy 

Camil is a passionate animal rights advocate and part owner of House of Sioco Pet Supplies. Her online selling journey started with her buying pet supplies in bulk for their 35 rescued cats and dogs at home. When her husband Mac pitched the idea of selling some of the items online, Camil was hesitant at first because they were unfamiliar with this new terrain, but they chose to persevere. 

While there was a learning curve in navigating the platform, Camil and Mac’s hard work paid off. They availed of Shopee’s marketing packages and saw their orders double and even triple during big campaigns.They now offer about 800 product listings and average over a thousand orders per day during double-day campaigns.Their efforts in sending product photos, replying to buyers’ messages, and mentoring staff on excellent customer service, have enabled a culture of trust with both clients and her team. With this, Camil hopes to be an inspiration to other online sellers who are afraid to take the leap.

She shared, “Shopee gave us a stepping stone as passionate pet lovers and now a strong foundation as entrepreneurs. The opportunities that they have given us enabled us to grow our business while still delivering quality service to our customers who have put their trust in us. I hope my fellow sellers will take advantage of these opportunities and always put customer service at the heart of their businesses.”

Geline and Camil are a testament to what sellers can achieve on Shopee. This 3.3-3.15 Mega Shopping Sale, catch discounted products and vouchers from Trend Studio Manila, House of Sioco Pet Supplies, and many more! For more information about Shopee’s 3.3-3.15 Mega Shopping Sale, make sure to visit https://shopee.ph/m/3-3. 

Is your business still counting on your general IT team to handle an entire spectrum of cybersecurity issues? If you do, it might be time for a change.  

If lack of budget is one of the top reasons your business is in status quo despite the danger of security breaches, the more you may need to consider getting on board a managed security service provider (MSSP).

What exactly is a managed security service provider (MSSP)?

Today, companies of all sizes go to a managed service provider or MSP for extra hands to support different business areas, such as payroll and HR. This is the usual route taken by businesses in the midst of growth where systems have to be implemented quickly but internal resources and expertise are lacking. With information security becoming a growing concern, services now also include management of IT services and infrastructure. In other words, an MSP is a third party for businesses maintenance services. 

A managed security service provider (MSSP) is of a different breed because it focuses on cybersecurity. The first job of an MSSP is to help with the process of keeping a company’s critical systems and highly sensitive information secure while understanding the client’s concerns and showing them how to overcome it. Large organizations with diverse in-house staff of IT experts but need specialized help with a whole range of cybersecurity outsource an MSSP. 

For companies requiring round-the-clock monitoring, an MSSP is a suitable alternative to a security operation center (SOC), which requires at least nine people to operate 24/7. An MSSP is designed to reduce the number of operational security personnel that an enterprise needs to hire, train, and retain. 

In a post-pandemic environment, planning for contingencies and considering the uncertainties of the future are what will ultimately spell the difference between surviving and thriving among businesses. 

Gartner projected that by 2023, the widespread adoption of advanced technologies will see a jump from less than 15% today to 75% of organizations restructuring their risk and security governance.

To understand how organizations have responded to their pandemic-related challenges so far, Kaspersky has surveyed businesses of different sizes in 26 countries in September 2022.

Results of the survey are collected in the latest Kaspersky IT Security Economics Report where respondents in Southeast Asia shared their current setup when it comes to managing the IT security of their organizations. 

In using MSSPs to fulfill their IT security needs, SEA businesses admitted to be enjoying the following benefits:

1. IT teams doing more with less. SEA companies appear to be placing a premium on getting access to extensive knowledge and resources from outsider-cybersecurity technology pros. 

Some 55.8% of these companies said MSSPs provide special expertise, 54.7% are helping them meet compliance requirements and reduce regulatory risks for them, and 50.4% realized that MSSPs are taking the complexity out of business processes. They believe that partnering with MSSPs is a shot in the arm for their internal IT crews with all the resources and skills they bring to the table. 

2. Cutting costs. This is one of the biggest benefits of MSSPs for 49.4% of companies in the region. Keeping a roster of highly specialized cybersecurity experts in-house is expensive for every company of every type and size. Engaging an MSSP could reduce HR expenses and up-front IT security costs such as huge spending on full-time staff, rigorous protection measures as well as staff training and awareness. 

Businesses are now beginning to look at security as an operational expense, taking into account the cost of suffering a breach such as a hacked database, costly downtime, customer losses, and reputational damage that could seriously hurt the bottom line. 

3. Scalability. SEA respondents (48.5%) have found that working with MSSPs is helping their organization become flexible in terms of changing requirements. They can add resources in increments or only for a certain period of time.   

“Recall how the usual ways of doing business were impacted during the pandemic years. We have seen how physical offices and stores shut down, employees suddenly dispersed to work remotely, and customers forced to transact everything online. We were also witnesses to how cybercriminals took advantage of the unprepared world, unleashing a surge of cyber attacks of various kinds,” says Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky. 

“From their pandemic experience, decision makers of thriving businesses have learned to adapt to the new normal to stay in the game and be on the frontline for when opportunities arise. There is no other way but to grow and expand only if we change our mindset and shift our priorities,” he said. 

Kaspersky’s partner-MSSPs across Southeast Asia are at the disposal of companies that are considering turning to MSSPs to gain access to Kaspersky’s wealth of experience, expertise and comprehensive portfolio of cybersecurity services and solutions, including threat intelligence, incident response, threat detection, malware research, and reverse engineering and digital forensics. 

To know more about Kaspersky’s Managed Service Provider Partnership, interested vendors can contact https://www.kaspersky.com/partners/managed-service-provider .

The full report Kaspersky IT Security Economics Report 2022 is available for download here. 

Sixty-one organisations in the UK committed to a 20% reduction in working hours for all staff, with no fall in wages, for a six-month period starting in June 2022. The vast majority of companies also retained full-time productivity targets.

Now, results from the world’s largest trial of a four-day working week reveal significantly reduced rates of stress and illness in the workforce – with 71% of employees self-reporting lower levels of “burnout”, and 39% saying they were less stressed, compared to the start of the trial.

There was a 65% reduction in sick days, and a 57% fall in the number of staff leaving participating companies, compared to the same period the previous year. Company revenue barely changed during the trial period – even increasing marginally by 1.4% on average. 

In a report of the findings presented to UK lawmakers, some 92% of companies that took part in the UK pilot programme (56 out of 61) say they intend to continue with the four-day working week, with 18 companies confirming the change as permanent.

Research for the UK trials was conducted by a team of social scientists from the University of Cambridge, working with academics from Boston College in the US and the think tank Autonomy. The trial was organised by 4 Day Week Global in conjunction with the UK’s 4 Day Week Campaign.

Companies from across the UK took part, with around 2,900 employees dropping a day of work. Organisations involved in the trial ranged from online retailers and financial service providers to animation studios and a local fish-and-chip shop.

Other industries represented include consultancy, housing, IT, skincare, recruitment, hospitality, marketing, and healthcare.

Researchers surveyed employees throughout the trial to gauge the effects of having an extra day of free time. Self-reported levels of anxiety and fatigue decreased across workforces, while mental and physical health improved.

Many survey respondents said they found it easier to balance work with both family and social commitments: 60% of employees found an increased ability to combine paid work with care responsibilities, and 62% reported it easier to combine work with social life.

“Before the trial, many questioned whether we would see an increase in productivity to offset the reduction in working time – but this is exactly what we found,” said sociologist Prof Brendan Burchell, who led the University of Cambridge side of the research.

“Many employees were very keen to find efficiency gains themselves. Long meetings with too many people were cut short or ditched completely. Workers were much less inclined to kill time, and actively sought out technologies that improved their productivity.”

Dr David Frayne, a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, said: “We feel really encouraged by the results, which showed the many ways companies were turning the four-day week from a dream into realistic policy, with multiple benefits.”

Joe Ryle, Director of the 4 Day Week Campaign, calls the results a “major breakthrough moment” for the idea of shorter working weeks. “Across a wide variety of different sectors of the economy, these incredible results show that the four-day week actually works.”

In addition to the survey work, designed in collaboration with colleagues including Prof Juliet Schor from Boston College, the Cambridge team conducted a large number of extensive interviews with employees and company CEOs before, during and after the six-month trial.

Other pilots run by 4 Day Week Global in the US and Ireland – with research conducted by many of the same academics – have already reported their findings. However, the UK trial is not only the largest to date but also the first to include in-depth interview research.

“The method of this pilot allowed our researchers to go beyond surveys and look in detail at how the companies were making it work on the ground,” said Frayne, from Cambridge’s Department of Sociology.

In terms of motivations, several senior managers told researchers they saw the four-day week as a rational response to the pandemic – and believed it would give them an edge when it came to attracting talent in the post-Covid job market.

Some saw it as an appealing alternative to unlimited home working, which they felt risked company culture. Others had seen staff suffer through health problems and bereavement during the pandemic, and felt an increased “moral responsibility” towards employees.

“I hated the pandemic, but it’s made us see each other much more in the round, and it’s made us all realise the importance of having a healthy head, and that family matters,” said the CEO of a non-profit organisation that took part in the trial.

However, many said shorter hours were being discussed long before Covid as a response to demanding or emotionally draining work. The CEO of a video game studio pointed to high-profile examples of “crunch and burnout” in their industry as a reason for involvement in the trial.

Perhaps surprisingly, however, no organisation interviewed was taking part in the trials simply because technology had reduced their need for human labour.

Some companies stopped work completely for a three-day weekend, while others staggered a reduced workforce over a week. One restaurant calculated their 32-hour week over an entire year to have long opening times in the summer, but much shorter in winter.     

A few companies in the trial attached strings to the reduced hours, including fewer holiday days, agreement that staff could be called in at short notice, or a “conditional” four-day week: one that only continued while performance targets were met.

Interviews documented how companies reduced working hours without compromising on targets. Common methods included shorter meetings with clearer agendas; introduction of interruption-free ‘focus periods’; reforming email etiquette to reduce long chains and inbox churn; new analyses of production processes; end-of-day task lists for effective handovers or next-day head starts.

When employees were asked how they used additional time off, by far the most popular response was “life admin”: tasks such as shopping and household chores. Many explained how this allowed them a proper break for leisure activities on Saturday and Sunday.  

“It was common for employees to describe a significant reduction in stress,” said researcher and Cambridge PhD candidate Niamh Bridson Hubbard. “Many described being able to switch off or breathe more easily at home. One person told us how their ‘Sunday dread’ had disappeared.”

For some parents of young children, a midweek day off meant savings on childcare expenses. For those with older children, it meant some welcome ‘me time’. All reported doing more of the activities they already enjoy – from sport to cooking, music making to volunteering. Some developed new interests, while others used the time to get professional qualifications.  

“When you realise that day has allowed you to be relaxed and rested, and ready to absolutely go for it on those other four days, you start to realise that to go back to working on a Friday would feel really wrong – stupid actually,” said the CEO of a consultancy organisation involved in the trial.

When it came to working culture, employees were generally positive, feeling more valued by their employer and describing a shared sense of purpose arising from efforts to make the four-day week a success.

However, several staff at one large company had concerns about intensifying workloads, while some at creative companies expressed disquiet over reduced worktime conviviality due to ‘focus time’, and argued that unstructured chat often generates new ideas.

By the end of the six-month trial, many of the managers said they could not imagine returning to a five-day week. “Almost everyone we interviewed described being overwhelmed with questions from other organisations in their industry that are interested in following suit,” said Burchell. 

“When we ask employers, a lot of them are convinced the four-day week is going to happen. It has been uplifting for me personally, just talking to so many upbeat people over the last six months. A four-day week means a better working life and family life for so many people.”