Do you live in Ireland? Do Polbusiness with us!

Are you a Polish entrepreneur working in Ireland? Perhaps you are planning to start your own business? Or maybe you wish to change the profile of your company and start something new?

The Polbusiness training is what you are looking for!

 logo IW i FP

The Foundation Institute for Eastern Studies based in Warsaw, Forum Polonia and other partners invite you to participate in a 3-day long training course on doing business in the Republic of Ireland. The series of training seminars aims to support the functioning of your company in the receiving country, as well as facilitate contacts with potential business partners and institutions in Poland. The trainings will be conducted by Irish experts as well as the Polish partners of the project. Each session will be devoted to a different issue: from basic legal regulations, to industry secrets and alternative business patterns. The trainings will take on different forms: analyzing case studies, workshops, competency tests. A more detailed programme is provided below.

 In order to participate in the training please fill in the registration form which is available on the following website: http://www.forum-ekonomiczne.pl/polbusiness/

 The training will take place on 11-13 June 2015 in Dublin. You can apply until 29th May.

 The Polbusiness project is co-financed by the Department of Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs within the framework of a competition “Cooperation in the field of public diplomacy 2015”

 

Programme

The sessions of the training will evolve around the following themes (8):

 

Day 1

  1. Basic legal regulations, legal and financial assistance in starting a business (4h)

At the beginning of the seminar the participants will familiarize themselves with the British/Irish law that regulates the basic aspects of running a business. They will learn about the opportunities and obligations that result from the legal requirements. Furthermore, they will be informed about the potential tax advantages as well as legal and financial assistance opportunities they can benefit from. They will also learn where and how to apply for such assistance.

  1. Business culture in the United Kingdom/Ireland (4h)

The following issues will be discussed during this part of the training:

  • the reasons for organising cultural trainings in companies
  • characteristics of the country – United Kingdom/Ireland
  • the most important aspects of British/Irish culture
  • British/Irish business etiquette

 

Day 2

  1. Retail and sales (4h)

This part of the training will focus on effective sales strategies, including the following points:

  • Professionalism in retail
  • Creating the image of a competent consultant
  • First contact and sales pitch
  • Sales conversation
  • Identification – customer personality types
  1. IT and new technologies (4h)

Information technologies play a very important role in modern businesses, as they are present in virtually every aspect of their functioning. This fact is proved, for instance, by the investments in IT, which often take up more than a half of the investment budget in many enterprises. At the same time, very often they do not bring the expected results. That is why such investments need to be systematized in order to maximize the value of the enterprise. The participants of the training will learn about the concept of IT Governance, which encompasses the following: strategic alignment, value delivery, resource management, performance management and risk management. Thanks to applying IT Governance a business is can use the data it has in the most effective way and maximize the gains that come from them.

 

Day 3

  1. Media and culture and alternative business (4h)

The training aims to consolidate and extend the knowledge about the new media, together with presenting the newest trends, innovations and tools of internet communication.

Among others, the following themes will be touched upon during the training:

  • Internet portal
  • Serach engine and positioning
  • Internet commercials
  • Social media
  • Blogosphere
  • Managing internet communication

In the second part of the session the participants will learn:

  • How to expand their business in an honest and ethical way.
  • How to become a perfect salesperson/networker.
  • How to create a dynamic, powerful MLM structure.
  • How to make a great global MLM business.
  • How to motivate and not manipulate their co-workers.

 

  1. International Trade and Cooperation with business institutions in Poland (4h)

The participants taking part in this seminar will obtain complex knowledge and skills pertaining to launching, as well as running sales on new, attractive foreign markets. They will be able to answer the following questions: how to choose the right destinations, build the right strategy, effectively promote and sell products on foreign markets, successfully negotiate and secure trade contracts.

The Project participants will obtain knowledge about the possibilities and benefits from maintaining contact, as well as partnership with business institutions in Poland. The models and examples of launching such cooperation, together with basic, practical information pertaining to effective partnership proceedings will be presented during the training.

The seminar leaders will contribute to the creation of a report covering all the seminar sessions from the programme. This report will then be presented during the Economic Forum in Krynica-Zdrój in September 2015 and the Congress of Polish Entrepreneurs in London in October 2015.

 

Partners of the Project

logosy partnerów

 

 

Is integration in the Goverment’s agenda?

Responding to the pamphlet entitled “Hidden Messages/Overt Agendas” written by Niall Crowley and published by the Migrant Rights Centre the Minister for Integration, Mr. John Curran T.D., said: “Normally I welcome contributions to the debate as I believe it is only by discussion and debate that we can, as a society, deal with the challenges posed to Irish and non Irish alike. Unfortunately, for reasons I will make clear I cannot afford a welcome to this contribution as I believe there are such omissions as to render the pamphlet seriously flawed.

What are the omissions?

First of all, in the context of this Office no reference is made to the grants given to national groups in various fields to support integration – in sporting and cultural fields, as well as grants made available to local authorities to support integration in their own areas.

The pamphlet quotes, correctly, the McCarthy report as recommending that the Office of the Minister for Integration should be abolished and that language support teachers in schools should be reduced from 2200 to 500. The Government did not abolish this Office and the reduction in language support teachers was to about 1500 at a cost, incidentally, of about 100 million euro. The pamphlet does not record this fact.

In dealing with the Live Register the author claims that, in previous recessions, the numbers on the register were in some way hostile to women and older people and, as a consequence, apparently “massaged” so as to show a lower total. While it is not germane to the current pamphlet it is difficult to see how paying pensions instead of unemployment benefits would have been of financial benefit to the Governments of those years.

In this recession the author claims that the Government is encouraging migrants to return home as a means of reducing the numbers on the live register. In support of this the author quotes an official of the Department of Finance as saying that the overall projection for unemployment had been reduced from 15.5% to 13.75%, predicated on significant numbers of non national workers returning to their home countries and quoting an ESRI projection that 40,000 non Irish nationals would leave in 2010. Mr. Crowley then says “Unemployment, it would appear is now to managed by encouraging migrant workers to leave Ireland” This conclusion is simply not sustainable.

In dealing with racism the author states that in 2007 there were 224 racist crimes reported in Ireland, an increase of 29.5% on the previous year. The figures for 2006 – 173; 2007 – 214; 2008 172; 2009 – 126: Use of incomplete figures can be misleading. There is no place for racism but a full picture, good or bad, should be given.

The author makes much of the fact that there were only 77 labour inspectors in August, 2009 despite the target having been set by the Government at 90 two years earlier. The reality of the recession on public sector recruitment might have been
worthy of mention alongside the fact that at the time the commitment was made there were 31 such inspectors.
Instead Mr Crowley states “This communicated another clear but unstated political message that racism and exploitation are not as big a problem anymore”. It does no such thing.

On the Equality Authority it is true that Mr. Crowley resigned because he believed that the proposed budget for the Authority for 2009 would not be adequate. So did some members of the board of the Authority. The fact is that a new CEO is in place and the work of the Authority continues.

In similar vein Mr Crowley refers to other bodies where funding was reduced or eliminated. We are in a recession and the ability of the Government to continue to fund activities as generously as in the past is limited.

In dealing with the National Employment Rights Authority Mr. Crowley deplores the fact that inspectors of the Authority were given powers to check for the existence of work permits were required and states “the use….unhelpfully transformed an agency that was established to protect employee rights into a source of fear and anxiety for some migrant workers”.

It is surely the case that a worker without a work permit is vulnerable to exploitation, that an employer who employs such a worker is at a competitive advantage vis a vis an employer who pays the appropriate fee and that a separate agency should not be required to check for work permits.

Mr. Crowley in his concluding remarks cites a UNDP report published in June 2009, which suggested ways of opening up migration paths. The controls which have been put in place are regarded by the Government as sensible.

Concluding the Minister said that while issue could be taken with the use of statistics (for example in regard to the number of complaints made to the Equality Tribunal regard should be had to the outcome rather than the fact of an application) and other aspects of the pamphlet he believed that the facts set out by him supported his view that the pamphlet is seriously flawed and he was left pondering it’s title “Hidden Messages/Overt Agendas”