Quick guide to avoid UK/French cultural confusion in your business 

If you are a UK person working or planning to work with French people, or a French person unfamiliar with UK office culture, here are a few key pointers to help you navigate some of the more frequently encountered cultural differences.

In the UK, you’re likely to assume a business meeting is about exchanging ideas, making decisions and agreeing a way forward. If the meeting comprises mixed cultures, this assumption could be a mistake and can cause a potentially damaging misunderstanding, particularly between UK and French partners! If you are French, you’ll leave a meeting having explored alternative ideas and possible outcomes, but you won’t think you’ve made a decision or agreed to anything binding.

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With the average family in the UK expected to spend up to £800 on Christmas this year, businesses have an opportunity to act responsibly and help ensure the festive season doesn’t turn into a big fat waste. Don’t use marketing as an excuse!

The true cost of Christmas

We are really proud to be taking part in Small Business Saturday. And so we should.

At the start of 2015 private sector businesses totalled an estimated 5.4 million according to The Business Population Estimates (BPE) for the UK and Regions. With small businesses accounting for a whopping 99.3% of all private sector businesses and 99.9% being small or medium-sized we most definitely are an economic force to be reckoned with.

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As the UK wakes up to Small Business Saturday, #SmallBizSatUK, a great initiative to encourage people to ‘shop local’ and support small businesses in their communities, both today and all year round, it’s time to unapologetically celebrate the nation’s 5 million small businesses, and for the business and wider community to champion them.

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You may already have a page on Twitter but do you have as much Klout as you should, as many followers as your brand commands?

If your business does Twitter well, you’ll get discovered by prospective customers and get to know your existing ones better. You can engage with them in real time, anywhere, in a highly personal and approachable way – informing, sharing ideas and inspiring them – and listening and learning about what they really think. Anytime.

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