Approximately 86% of 16,000 professionals worldwide surveyed by Adobe in 2025 reported actively using AI in their creative workflows. It’s no longer futuristic; it is the reality of our times. One would imagine that AI tools would free people from the difficulties of labour and prolonged work hours.

However, the opposite is happening. Instead of leisure, workers around the world are met with demands for unyielding speed and inhuman productivity.

We must decide whether this universal integration signifies genuine technological progress or whether it simply marks the moment human artistic labour becomes economically mandatory to execute at the pace dictated by Silicon Valley’s algorithms.

There is an immense economic pressure forcing creative professionals to comply or face immediate market obsolescence. The data confirms that AI is deeply integrated into creative workflows, yet this utility must not be mistaken for ethical merit or long-term soundness.

Creative professionals do see genuine, tantalising opportunities, with over half reporting that AI helps them explore new mediums and a remarkable 46% believing it helps them create higher-quality work.

This is the lure, the captivating promise of instantaneous enhancement and boundless efficiency, a promise designed to mask the underlying erosion of value and independence. The current analytical view of AI’s labour impact is dangerously complacent, focusing almost exclusively on macro-economic trends while entirely ignoring the microscopic, fundamental erosion occurring at the individual creator level.

Technophiles often point to recent analyses showing that the broader labour market has not experienced a discernible disruption since the public release of major generative AI systems, a finding that allegedly undercuts fears of immediate mass job losses across the entire economy.

This fact is often presented as reassurance, suggesting a measured, benign adoption trajectory, yet it hides a critical, predatory truth, namely that AI first displaces value and incentive long before it ever displaces employment.

Copyright and corporate capture

To understand the core immorality of the generative AI revolution, we must look no further than the fuel source that powers it, which is the massive, unprecedented datasets of human creative expression upon which these models are trained. These datasets, which developers use as a neutral shorthand for copyrighted works, are the products of millions of human lives, careers, and artistic struggles.

The training process, executed often without explicit permission, licensing, or any financial compensation, represents the original, defining sin of this entire industry, effectively turning the intellectual property and life’s work of millions of artists into free, disposable energy for a burgeoning multi-trillion-dollar technological complex.

The fear among creators is profoundly visceral and absolutely justified, because unlicensed training will fatally corrode the creative ecosystem, permitting AI-generated content to directly and unfairly compete in the marketplace with the very artists whose works were ingested and repurposed without consent.

The US legal system is currently caught in the paralysing gridlock of this crisis, embroiled in dozens of high-stakes lawsuits that specifically focus on the strained application of copyright’s fair use doctrine to the mass ingestion required for AI training.

These legal challenges have exposed the staggering scale of the alleged infringement, including claims against powerful entities like Meta for allegedly using its corporate IP addresses to download nearly 2,400 copyrighted adult movies via BitTorrent for the explicit purpose of training its AI systems, a transgression that puts the potential damages well over $350 million.

The stakes in these legal battles are existential, with some developers arguing that requiring formal licensing would irreparably throttle a transformative, world-changing technology, while creators fear, with equal passion, that allowing this unlicensed exploitation will mean the inevitable death of the human creative community. The public interest demands striking an effective balance, one that allows technological innovation to flourish without dismantling the thriving community of creators who feed it.

In terms of intellectual property protection, the American courts have established one clear and critical legal marker, confirming that human authorship is a foundational, bedrock requirement for copyright protection, thereby establishing a critical and necessary distinction between a human using a sophisticated tool and the tool itself attempting to claim the rights to its output.

This decision affirms the principle that intellectual property rights must apply to works generated by humans. The ruling addresses only the resulting output, leaving the foundational injustice of the mass, uncompensated training data capture entirely unresolved, a loophole large enough to drive a generative AI truck through.

Crowding out true innovation

The deployment of generative AI has led to a fundamental economic revaluation of creative labour, posing an existential threat to the long-term health of the artistic community. When AI provides sophisticated tools that enable individuals without traditional, hard-won artistic skills to produce high-quality, technically sound work in fields like illustration, design, or digital music, it fundamentally lowers the barrier to entering the market.

While accessibility sounds like a profound social good, the immediate economic consequence is brutally clear: this widespread capability devalues the artistic skills honed over years of craft, study, and sacrifice, diminishing their perceived market worth and making the professional’s work less appreciated or undervalued.

This devaluation sets the stage for the most dangerous economic outcome, the widely observed “crowding out” effect. Generative AI excels at creating high-volume, low-variance, and highly formulaic work at nearly zero marginal cost, making these formulaic outputs significantly cheaper than traditional human creations.

The lower cost of this technically proficient content then acts as an economic steamroller, systematically forcing out the more costly, experimental, and risky human creations that are essential for driving long-term innovation and stylistic evolution in culture. This phenomenon is not theoretical; the marketplace is already providing clear warning signs, with consumers sometimes showing a direct taste for the influx of AI-generated images, selecting them over human-generated works, confirming that increased competition and variety for buyers come at the devastating cost of financially crippling the creators who fuel the market.

The ultimate psychological and financial violation faced by creators is the commodification of their unique artistic style. Creative professionals are acutely aware of this profound threat, which is why surveys indicate a significant majority express keen interest in being paid specifically to license their unique artistic style (58%) or getting paid for having the models trained on their specific body of work (55%).

Generative AI seeks to distil the most subjective, intangible, and unique element of an artist, his/her individual aesthetic footprint, into a fungible, replicable, and licensable commodity.

If a distinct style can be captured, licensed, and then replicated infinitely by a machine for a small fee, the intrinsic, irreplaceable value of the human hand, the individual struggle, and the unique history behind that style, everything, gets tragically erased.

Yet here lies the supreme, glaring irony, the self-defeating nature of the AI developers’ exploitation. The fundamental truth of machine learning is that the output of these complex models is fundamentally limited by the volume and, more importantly, the quality of the input, the human-generated works they ceaselessly ingest.

Suppose the economic displacement and devaluation of human creators continue unabated, and their financial incentives diminish to the point of collapse. In that case, the flow of new, high-quality, experimental, and challenging human work, the raw fuel of the entire system, will inevitably degrade. Machines are capable of regurgitation. They can modify existing work. But the true fuel of the creative economy is raw, high-quality human work. And this model ensures that there will be recycling and no innovation or radical experimentation in the field of creative arts. It demonstrates that a thriving and compensated creative community is necessary for technological advancement, not merely an optional luxury.

It’s important to recognise that not all creatives oppose technology. They are simply asking to be remunerated for the work they put in. A massive 83% of creative professionals think genuine transparency around whether artwork was created using generative AI is essential, and the same high percentage demands transparency about the specific data used to train the models.

This urgent need for verifiable provenance has spurred important initiatives, such as the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), which now provides open technical standards for publishers, creators, and consumers to establish the origin and edits of digital content, thereby providing verifiable assertions about content origins and, most importantly, ensuring a necessary baseline of trust in this increasingly murky digital marketplace.

The advent of these transparency tools, which allow users to know the source of the information they are receiving, is the only possible path toward stabilising an ethical market where human and machine creations can coexist.

Ghost in the machine

AI can make skills slightly redundant. But true creativity and imagination come from intentionality and lived experiences. Human imperfection mixed with imagination is necessary for art. It can be mimicked, but machines cannot create anything new that is also relatable to the human psyche. We must draw a clear and forceful distinction between sophisticated computation and genuine, conscious creation.

Marvin Minsky, one of the foundational pioneers of AI, famously imagined machines capable of complex human reasoning. Yet the 21st-century generative AI has emerged primarily as the product of immense computational capacity and sophisticated algorithms, fundamentally departing from that initial, perhaps overly optimistic, vision.

The core difference remains immutable. Human creativity is intrinsically rooted in genuine vision derived from living within a specific physical world, from experiencing the emotional complexity of loss, the transformative power of joy, and navigating complex cultural nuances.

AI may function as a superb mimic and an incredibly fast learner, generating complex linguistic experimentation if prompted, but mimicry is not the same as true insight, and the resulting art risks lacking the genuine human depth that separates mere image generation from soulful expression.

Philosophical analysis strongly suggests that mass AI-generated artifacts cannot be legitimately defined as bona fide “art” because they fundamentally lack the sort of intentional control that is plausibly accepted as a necessary precondition for the label of “arthood.”

The aesthetic experiences created by mass-produced AI are often similar to those found in inorganic nature, relying solely on formal properties. Because the work is the result of statistical probability and algorithmic iteration rather than struggle, conscious choice, or personal commitment, it risks meaning nothing to the AI and consequently risks meaning substantially less to us, the audience. This absence of a discernible consciousness or intentional struggle creates an aesthetic void.

Imperative of human accountability

We stand at a profound cultural and economic precipice, facing an existential crisis that must be addressed with clarity and legislative courage. The problem isn’t the technology, which promises genuine improvements to people in all fields of life. As usual, the culprit is corporate greed and unchecked power that boardrooms wield.

These entities have ruthlessly leveraged this transformative capability to systematically dismantle existing legal and economic frameworks for their own profit, establishing an innovation structure that demands the consumption of past creativity while vehemently refusing to compensate the millions of creators whose labour and intellectual property fuel their systems.

The question we face today is fully comparable in its magnitude and complexity to the social shifts that accompanied the advent of the printing press centuries ago, demanding that society urgently debate and establish entirely new, robust frameworks for genuinely rewarding creativity and ensuring that information provenance is transparent and trustworthy.

We cannot possibly maintain a functioning, free creative ecosystem if the people in possession of the truth and the facts, the creators whose work defines our culture, are unable to win the necessary legal and rhetorical argument against powerful, highly capitalised corporate interests.

To effectively preserve the unique and irreplaceable value of human creativity and ensure a stable future for the arts, our political and regulatory response must be swift, comprehensive, and absolute, demanding three non-negotiable elements.

The first essential requirement is transparency and provenance, mandating the full, detailed disclosure of training data used by all generative models. Furthermore, we must implement verifiable authentication systems, such as the standards offered by C2PA, to provide immediate, verifiable confirmation of content origins, allowing both consumers and competitive creators to know exactly when the output is the result of a machine and statistical inference. This clarity is the minimum requirement for a fair market.

The second non-negotiable element is compensation and licensing, requiring an immediate end to the cynical reliance on tenuous fair use arguments for mass, systematic data ingestion. Governments must proactively establish robust collective licensing organisations or statutory compensation mechanisms that ensure genuine financial arrangements for all artists whose work is used to train these models. Creator participation must be predicated on appropriate financial arrangements, recognising that they hold the key intellectual assets that allow the algorithms to function.

The third critical element is the preservation of authorship, legally reinforcing the established principle that copyright ownership must belong only to human beings, recognising the inherent distinction between human creation and machine replication. This ensures that the unique human elements, including personal stories, genuine emotional resonance, and complex cultural nuance, remain the legally protected, recognised, and invaluable core of the creative economy, serving as the ultimate differentiator against the sea of machine-generated competence.

Not too long ago, we envisioned artificial intelligence handling the mundane tasks, like data entry, dishwashing, and manual labour, allowing us to focus on pursuits such as poetry, painting, and philosophy. However, the exact opposite has occurred. We are now automating creative endeavours like poetry and painting for profit, while humans are left to deal with the administrative remnants.

We are at risk of building a culture where the act of creation is viewed as an inefficiency to be solved. We thereby alienate ourselves from the process of creation. It becomes merely a product. A machine can generate a tear-jerking story, but it cannot know what it means to cry.

When we read a book or view a painting, we are unconsciously searching for the hand of the maker, seeking validation that our own joy, suffering, and confusion are shared by another living being. Without that shared resonance, we are simply staring into a mirror of statistical probabilities, profoundly alone. There is a need to fight for these protections to save jobs and to ensure that the future of human culture remains, quite literally, human.

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We have tech companies supporting diverse hiring practices through programmes like returnships (internships for experienced professionals reentering the workforce).

Healthcare ventures are also providing reentry training programmes for industry professionals, keeping in mind the experiences they bring in clinical and administrative roles.

Schools and educational organisations often seek individuals with life experience to enrich their programmes, whether as teachers, administrators, or support staff.

Banks and financial institutions also value the analytical and interpersonal skills that many returning professionals bring to roles in risk management, client relations, and beyond. Even entrepreneurship (business and consultancy services) is serving as a potent reentry route for industry veterans.

With the explosion of content-driven marketing and media, there is a strong demand for writers and editors. Professionals with sharp communication skills can find freelance or full-time roles in publishing, corporate communications, or digital media.

Reframe the narrative

Before you plan your industry comeback, think deeply about your past experiences and accomplishments, and acknowledge that they are equally important as those listed on a conventional resume. Once you return to your personal life, it should be more about you adding value and quality to the organisation’s work output.

Think about this: your role as mother or caregiver has gifted you abilities like multitasking, time management, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence. Even though you were not in a professional environment, you have been coordinating schedules, budgeting for a household, or advocating for a loved one’s needs, and in the process, cultivating abilities that transfer seamlessly into professional settings.

The 21st-century employers are increasingly recognising these diverse experiences. They are looking for people who can think critically, work under pressure, and bring fresh perspectives. Your time outside the workforce has not diminished your value, but enhanced it. Using that, reframe your narrative and highlight these skills confidently, while exploring new opportunities. Negotiation, advocacy, budgeting, and time management are all useful and transferable skills that differentiate an excellent professional from a routine worker.

Seizing the opportunity for flexible work

In the post-COVID professional world, we have concepts like remote work and flexible schedules. Businesses have embraced hybrid models, allowing employees to contribute without adhering to a strict 9-to-5 schedule. This shift can be a game-changer for professionals who need flexibility or prefer working from home.

You can explore roles in a variety of fields, from project management to customer service to creative industries. Identify positions that align with your strengths and preferences. Whether you are seeking full-time, part-time, or freelance opportunities, there are bosses out there to cater for your diverse needs and lifestyles.

Overcome barriers in a smart manner

Technology and industry practices evolve quickly, and it’s natural to feel out of touch. Take online courses, attend workshops (physical or virtual) to brush up on skills relevant to your desired field. Platforms like Coursera, Udemy, and LinkedIn Learning are offering affordable and flexible options to help you get up to speed. Don’t forget that many opportunities come from connections.

Reconnect with former colleagues (and mentors), attend industry events, and join online groups or forums in your field. LinkedIn has become a powerful networking tool for this. Use it to build and maintain professional relationships, showcase your skills, and engage with content in your industry. Remember, there are people ready to help you navigate your return to the workforce.

Your reentry can also start with a small role in a large organisation. You can ease back into a corporate culture and environment while learning the lingo, developing computer skills, and expanding your network. Such positions can build your confidence and help you decide if the traditional corporate world is what you want. Over time, these stepping-stone roles will lead to more significant opportunities within the organisation.

Stay-at-home roles: Great skill enhancer

A stay-at-home parent basically operates as the CEO of the household enterprise, managing multiple departments with adaptability. Like a chief financial officer, the person oversees the family budget, tracking expenses and making strategic decisions about resource allocation. Their human resources’ role involves mediating conflicts between siblings and other family members, providing performance feedback on chores and homework, and maintaining high household morale.

As the operations manager, such individuals coordinate the complex logistics of school schedules, extracurricular activities, and medical appointments while ensuring smooth daily functions. They serve as facilities manager, overseeing household maintenance and cleanliness standards, while simultaneously acting as head of food services, planning and executing meals that meet diverse dietary needs and preferences.

Their marketing and communications position requires them to maintain relationships with teachers, other parents, and community members, while their risk management role involves childproofing, emergency preparedness, and ensuring family safety protocols are followed. All these skills come in handy when they reenter the industry.

The post Reentering the workforce? It’s not as scary as you’ve heard appeared first on International Finance.

However, the most significant threat to business continuity in this era is not found solely in the Consumer Price Index or the Federal Reserve’s interest rate adjustments. Rather, it resides in the psychological toll these stressors exact on the human capital that drives the economy, from the frontline employee to the Chief Executive Officer.

International Finance posits that financial stress has metastasised into a cognitive inhibitor, creating a “Scarcity Mindset” that degrades executive function, reduces fluid intelligence, and promotes short-term “tunnelling” behaviours at the expense of long-term strategic vision. Drawing upon extensive data from the third quarter of 2025, behavioural finance theories, and recent psychological research, we analyse the causal link between financial uncertainty and decision-making efficacy.

Jeffrey Anvari-Clark, Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of North Dakota, noted that the concept of Financial Self-Efficacy (FSE) is not merely a personal finance metric, but a critical business competency.

“Unlike financial literacy, which measures knowledge, FSE measures the belief in one’s capacity to exert control over financial outcomes. And this distinction makes all the difference in 2025. Tariffs are disrupting supply chains, and consumer credit default cases are on the rise, so technical knowledge is insufficient without psychological resilience,” he stated.

The macro-micro loop

To understand the psychological pressures weighing on today’s decision-makers, one must first quantify the external forces compressing the corporate and personal balance sheet. The economic environment of 2025 has defied the “soft landing” narratives of previous years, evolving instead into a landscape defined by friction in trade, credit markets, and household purchasing power. This friction is a lived experience that generates the “fog” in which strategic decisions must be made.

The re-emergence of aggressive protectionist trade policies has fundamentally altered the cost structures of American business. By the third quarter of 2025, the implementation of new tariff schedules has created a cascading effect on pricing strategies. The Yale Budget Lab notes that the average effective tariff rate faced by American consumers has risen to levels not seen since the early 20th century.

This is not merely an abstract geopolitical manoeuvre but a direct tax on the supply chain that forces executives into a perpetual state of defensive readjustment. The timeline of these interventions reveals a pattern of whiplash that makes long-term planning nearly impossible.

Administration orders imposing tariffs on imports, only to pause them days later, force supply chain managers and CFOs to operate in a constant state of crisis response, draining cognitive resources that should be allocated to innovation.

The impact varies significantly across sectors. In the apparel and footwear industry, executives express high anxiety regarding holiday season margins. The home improvement sector faces a significant contraction in demand, with executives citing consumer uncertainty as a factor disproportionately impacting demand.

Automotive manufacturers are dealing with increased component costs and a phenomenon of demand pull-forward, followed by stagnation. The tech sector is reeling from the supply chain shock and is emphasising the role of agentic AI to reduce costs. This creates a feedback loop where tariffs raise input costs, companies raise prices, consumer purchasing power erodes, and demand fluctuates wildly.

Inflation has shown signs of cooling, but the affordability baseline has altered significantly since 2020. Convenience prices are rising faster than grocery bills, so the middle class feels like it’s in a recession, even though GDP growth looks positive.

The cumulative psychological impact is “sticker shock fatigue,” where a standard grocery bill represents a tangible erosion of wealth. For the business leader, it represents a workforce that is increasingly agitated, demanding higher wages to match the cost of living, while the business itself faces margin compression from the supply side.

Perhaps the most alarming signal in the 2025 data is the rapid deterioration of consumer credit health. The “hockey stick” growth in credit card debt has returned, with total balances surpassing $1.233 trillion in Q3 2025. Rather than productive leverage, this represents distress borrowing aimed at preserving living standards.

Delinquency rates across credit cards, auto loans, and particularly student loans have spiked, suggesting a systemic failure in the financial resilience of the younger workforce. For the business reader, the implication is twofold. The consumer base is fragile, and the employee base is financially traumatised. When the majority of employees report that financial stress is negatively affecting their work life, the macro economy has effectively breached the office walls.

The neuroscience of scarcity

To understand why financial efficacy is the critical competency of 2025, we must move beyond economics into cognitive psychology. The prevailing assumption in business is that executives and employees are rational actors who make decisions based on available data. However, behavioural finance research, particularly the “Scarcity” framework, proves that the context of financial stress fundamentally alters neural processing.

The human brain has a finite amount of “bandwidth,” a combination of cognitive capacity and executive control. When an individual is preoccupied with scarcity, that preoccupation involuntarily captures attention. This is a biological survival mechanism designed to focus the organism on the immediate threat.

Research indicates that the cognitive load of managing severe financial stress is equivalent to losing a full night’s sleep or suffering a 13-point drop in IQ. In the context of 2025, a significant portion of the workforce is operating with this “bandwidth tax,” which levies a heavy toll on fluid intelligence, which is the capacity to solve novel problems, identify patterns, and adapt to new situations.

The most dangerous byproduct of the scarcity mindset in a business context is “tunnelling.” When resources are scarce, the brain narrows its focus to the immediate problem (the tunnel) and ignores everything outside of it. In an executive setting, tunnelling explains why leaders might slash R&D budgets to meet a quarterly earnings target, ignoring the long-term damage to innovation.

They are solving for the immediate scarcity while becoming blind to peripheral risks. In 2025, tunnelling is visible in the corporate response to tariffs; many organisations are obsessively focused on immediate surcharge costs while potentially missing broader shifts in consumer behaviour or opportunities to fundamentally reinvent their supply chains.

Scarcity also accelerates “temporal discounting,” the tendency to value immediate rewards significantly more than future rewards. A financially stressed individual or corporation will accept a high-interest loan today to solve a cash crunch, even if it guarantees disaster next year. This is known as “hyperbolic discounting,” where the future is heavily discounted because the present feels so perilous.

Ultimately, scarcity requires constant trade-offs. In an abundant environment, a manager can approve several initiatives. In a scarce environment, they must select only one. This ongoing evaluation of trade-offs exhausts executive function, resulting in “decision fatigue.” As fatigue sets in, leaders tend to default to the status quo or the path of least resistance. In 2025, the risk is that decision fatigue will lead to corporate stagnation. The organisations that survive will be those that can preserve the cognitive energy of their leaders by creating “slack”.

Financial stress kills productivity

The macroeconomic volatility and resulting cognitive scarcity translate into measurable losses for corporations. In 2025, financial well-being is the engine of productivity. The data gathered from HR leaders and workforce surveys paints a stark picture of the “invisible” costs of financial stress, which are eroding the bottom line just as aggressively as the visible costs of tariffs.

The phenomenon of “presenteeism” (being physically at work but mentally absent) is a primary vector for financial stress-related loss. Employees distracted by financial worries are estimated to lose roughly three hours of productivity per week. When aggregated across the American economy, this distraction costs businesses approximately $250 billion annually. The mechanism is the bandwidth tax. An employee engaging in presenteeism is likely on the phone with creditors or calculating daily expenses rather than focusing on work. Financial stress is a “greedy” cognitive process that demands attention.

In 2025, the primary driver of turnover is financial insecurity. Surveys indicate that financially stressed employees are twice as likely to look for a new job. This creates a paradox for employers. They are cutting costs to survive tariff pressures, but those cost-cutting measures are triggering expensive turnover.

Furthermore, the “compensation mismatch” has widened, with a majority of employees reporting that their compensation is not keeping up with the rising cost of living. When an employee feels their paycheck is effectively shrinking every month due to inflation, their loyalty fractures. They become “mercenaries,” jumping ship for minor pay increases simply to keep up with costs, destroying institutional knowledge in the process.

A significant indicator of this financial stress is the rise of the “Side Hustle Generation.” Data reveals that nearly two-thirds of Gen Z and Millennial workers have started or plan to start a side hustle to complement their primary income. While this demonstrates entrepreneurial spirit, it also indicates that the primary employment is failing to meet their financial needs.

For employers, this presents a “split focus” risk. If an employee is reserving their best cognitive energy for their side business because it provides the liquidity they desperately need, the primary employer is receiving a depreciated asset.

Building psychological capital

Financial Self-Efficacy does not exist in a vacuum. It is considered a component of a broader psychological resource base known as Psychological Capital (PsyCap). For organisations weathering the 2025 storm, investing in PsyCap is as vital as investing in working capital. PsyCap is defined by four distinct dimensions, easily remembered by the acronym HERO: Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism.

Hope represents the will to succeed and the ability to identify paths to goals. In the context of 2025, this manifests in scenario planning, believing the firm can survive a tariff hike by diversifying supply chains. Efficacy is the confidence in one’s ability to mobilise cognitive resources to execute tasks, crucial for delegation during a crisis.

Resilience is the capacity to bounce back from adversity, driving a “pivoting” logic rather than freezing in panic. Optimism involves a generalised positive attribution regarding success, allowing leaders to use cognitive reappraisal to view inflation as a driver for efficiency innovation rather than a death sentence.

PsyCap bridges the relationship between stress and performance. People with higher PsyCap perceive environmental stressors differently and engage in problem-focused coping rather than emotion-focused coping. Unlike rigid personalities, PsyCap is a mental state and can be trained.

There are workshops and training courses that can be held, like Resilience Engineering and Hope Training, which create safe-to-fail experiences that improve efficacy. By promoting a culture of learning and debate, organisations increase the collective PsyCap of their workforce, turning the ability to learn rapidly from tariff impacts into a competitive advantage.

Armed with the understanding of FSE and PsyCap, leaders must navigate the specific volatility of 2025 using an “Adaptive Leadership” framework. The antidote to the bandwidth tax is “slack”. Organisations designed for maximum efficiency are fragile in 2025. Adaptive leaders prioritise financial slack by holding higher cash reserves to weather shocks without panic.

They cultivate cognitive slack by avoiding back-to-back meetings and scheduling “white space” for strategic thinking to prevent tunnelling. Operational slack is achieved by diversifying suppliers even at a higher cost, viewing redundancy as an insurance premium against chaos.

Leaders must also practice “cognitive reappraisal,” identifying negative emotional responses to market news and reframing them. Techniques like “Thought Labelling,” simply labelling an anxious thought rather than fusing with it, create the distance necessary for rational decision-making, moving processing from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex.

To maintain high executive FSE, entrepreneurs must psychologically and legally compartmentalise risk. This starts with asset protection and diversification to ensure the personal portfolio is not correlated with the business industry.

Recognising the “Sleep Well” factor is vital. It may be rational to pay off a low-interest mortgage if the psychological relief frees up cognitive bandwidth for the business. Finally, adaptive leaders manage the collective anxiety of their teams by “regulating the distress,” being transparent about challenges without inducing panic, and acting as “external prefrontal cortices” for their teams.

Moving beyond wellness

The final piece of the puzzle is operationalising these insights. Companies must move beyond generic “wellness” programmes to create a “Financial Efficacy Ecosystem” that systematically builds FSE and PsyCap.

The case is well made. Wellness programmes do reduce absenteeism and ensure employees keep showing up. But in 2025, a simple education in wellness isn’t enough. It’s important to have behavioural nudges, such as auto-enrolment in savings plans.

Coaching must replace simple teaching. Surveys highlight a massive demand for personalised coaching. Employees need a “financial therapist” to help them navigate their specific scarcity anxieties. For the leadership tier, training must integrate Financial Psychology.

Executive coaching should focus on identifying “Money Scripts” that drive bias and recognising the signs of “tunnelling” in strategic planning. Finally, organisations must destigmatise financial stress to create psychological safety. When leaders model vulnerability and create a culture where it is safe to discuss financial trade-offs, they prevent the shame-spiral that leads to disengagement.

The economic data suggest that volatility is not a transient weather event, but a new climate. The era of “easy money” and predictable supply chains is over. In this environment, capital is necessary but insufficient for success.

The true competitive advantage of the future lies in Cognitive Capital. Organisations that can protect the “bandwidth” of their people, cultivate “Financial Self-Efficacy,” and build “Psychological Capital” will possess a resilience that their competitors lack. They will not just weather the tariff storms and inflation spikes; they will innovate through them.

The most valuable asset on the balance sheet is the confident, resilient, and efficacious mind. By investing in the cognitive infrastructure of the workforce through FSE training, PsyCap development, and adaptive leadership, organisations can turn the “fog” of 2025 into a strategic advantage.

The post The psychology behind corporate failure appeared first on International Finance.

In a similar vein, the CEO’s “positive” actions to eradicate “bad” business practices and their efforts to advance important issues like diversity, ethics, sustainability, and corporate governance will encourage everyone else in the organisation to view these issues similarly and act accordingly.

Research repeatedly demonstrates that CEOs and other C-suite members do not set the standard for others to follow. This is especially true when you look at the many corporate governance scandals that executives are ultimately held responsible for and their huge pay packages that have nothing to do with other employees’ salaries (about 200 times the average worker’s pay in the United States), the company’s performance, best practices, or even common sense.

Furthermore, CEOs’ actions don’t always align with the behaviour they are supposed to promote; rather, they frequently reveal attitudes that they believe are acceptable (at least to themselves) but that are at odds with the values of a progressive society.

According to Robert Ordever, European managing director of workplace culture and recognition specialist OC Tanner, “Every leader sets the tone, whether they intend to or not.” They establish standards for what is appropriate through their words and, more significantly, their deeds. The discrepancy between leadership behaviour and company rhetoric is the risk area.

The tower of ivory

Many recent instances show how some company leaders have a terrible moral compass and/or a ridiculous lack of self-awareness. For example, despite Starbucks’ claims to be a leader in sustainability, the recently appointed CEO, Brian Niccol, has come under fire after it was disclosed that he will travel nearly 1,000 miles via business aircraft from his house to the company’s headquarters in Seattle.

In August 2024, Chris Ellison, managing director of Mineral Resources, an Australian mining company, complained that workers who go out to buy coffee, instead of getting one at work, are costing the company too much money.

During a financial results presentation, Ellison expressed his desire to “keep staff captive all day long.”

Bill Michael, the UK chairman of Big Four firm KPMG, was forced to resign in February 2021 after his motivational speech to staff members during a virtual meeting went awry (and went public) after he referred to unconscious bias as “complete crap” and told them to “stop moaning” about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jes Staley, the CEO of Barclays Bank, resigned that same year after a UK financial regulator’s probe turned up a cache of emails indicating he had a closer association with paedophile and notorious businessman Jeffrey Epstein than he had disclosed.

A seldom applied discipline, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined him £1.8 million two years later and prohibited him from holding a senior management position in the financial services sector. When Staley attempted to expose a whistleblower who had concerns about his prior job history, the FCA had already slapped him across the knuckles.

Given these instances, it’s not surprising that some experts believe the concept has limitations.

Diane Newell, managing director of coaching consultancy OCM Discovery, states that “the tone from the top works in practice all the time, but whether the tone that is being set in practice is the one that we might choose is a different matter.”

She goes on to say that it is “never going to be an exact science” to control how people perceive and comprehend the actions of executives.

Higher standards

The idea of corporate and executive accountability, as well as the way that leadership is perceived, has evolved during the last ten years, which contributes to the issue.

According to Piers Rake, a partner at the legal services firm Astraea, “The board and C-suite of any organisation need to recognise that expectations around conduct and culture have changed and increased.”

He claims that whereas shareholders, consumers, and employees were the only major corporate stakeholders in the past, broader social forces “have resulted in heightened expectations from a wider cohort of interested parties.”

Activist organisations, “rights holders,” or individuals potentially harmed by the company’s operations could be among these parties. Rake cautions, “Businesses that engage in completely lawful operations that are viewed as inconsistent or at odds with broader societal trends are more likely to face adverse or negative press.”

Liz Sebag-Montefiore, the director of HR consulting firm 10Eighty, asserts that staff members actively seek and expect strong, moral leadership, prioritising actions over words.

“A company can talk about ethics, but if they are treating customers unfairly, gouging their suppliers, and exploiting employees, they won’t inspire a workforce committed to best practice,” she said.

Having said that, is it time to abandon the “tone from the top” mantra? And if so, what ought to take its place? And to whom should stakeholders and employees turn for improved leadership?

According to Melissa Hewitt, head of HR outsourcing at Morson Group, a recruiting firm, others can assist executives in carrying out their responsibilities as moral leaders. Because “company culture and values are part of their remit,” she thinks there is a compelling case for the HR director to be promoted to the board.

However, she also thinks regulators should do more to establish clear guidelines for industry leaders.

In the end, she acknowledges that commercial factors—rather than ethical ones—may be the most significant short-term influencer because Gen Z recruits, who are generally those born between 1996 and 2010, are more likely to depart if they believe the company is not meeting corporate best practice standards, leaving businesses with a skills gap that may be difficult to close.

Is there space at the summit?

There is already a move away from concentrating on a core group of CEOs to define expectations around ethical leadership, according to Sarah Miller, CEO of the ethics advice firm Principia.

She claims that, in part because it is such a dangerous strategy, “relying on a small group of executive leaders to shape, champion, and model the tone and tenor of a culture is increasingly the exception, not the norm.”

“It is better to share the responsibility with more, not fewer, people in the organisation, which means relying on middle management,” she adds, adding that increased scrutiny and higher expectations increase the likelihood of failure for a select few top executives.

“With an understanding that it is not only the executive team that needs to consistently reinforce and apply hallmark cultural attributes, many companies are also focusing on values activation and ethical decision-making skills for the top 100 people. This can still be considered the ‘top,’ but in a much broader, more diffused sense than the term has tended to apply to,” she said.

As per Miller, this tendency is “encouraging” since it will have a far greater and more profound effect on a larger group of employees to observe how middle and/or line managers handle moral quandaries and comprehend and follow the rules daily.

“Any day, especially in larger organisations, I would prefer to have a strong ‘tone in the middle,'” she said.

While some may recognise that the overall tone is inconsistent and requires reevaluation, it appears that most people are willing to keep using it, primarily because there doesn’t seem to be a better alternative available.

Kevin Gaskell, the chairman of the fibre broadband company ITS Technology Group and a former CEO of Porsche UK, asserts that while the “tone from the top” can be beneficial in practice, its effectiveness is heavily dependent on consistency, transparency, and authenticity.

He continues by saying that “it becomes difficult to imagine who else could effectively set the tone” if executives are not the greatest individuals to exhibit moral and appropriate leadership.

According to him, leadership is inherently hierarchical, and the attitudes and actions of the top executives in an organisation have a ripple effect on the entire workforce.

“There is a leadership void where misunderstandings, inconsistent behaviour, or unethical practices can readily proliferate if executives do not exhibit the moral principles or appropriate behaviours expected of them,” Gaskell continued.

According to entrepreneur and executive business coach Mike Greene, even some people who think a re-examination of the “tone from the top” is required do so “not for the reasons you might think.”

As per him, leadership is about making difficult, frequently unpopular decisions for the good of the organisation, not about being popular. He goes on to say that the practice of giving moral leadership to inexperienced majorities or feel-good committees is “dangerously misguided.”

Greene said, “Executives are not just accountable, they are essential. They possess the knowledge and power to negotiate challenging moral situations. It would be detrimental and shortsighted to lessen this obligation. It is foolish to believe that employee-led initiatives or middle management can successfully establish ethical standards.”

Instead of confronting prejudices, it frequently produces echo chambers of inexperience.

Greene requires “leaders unafraid of unpopularity, who understand that real-world ethics are not always clean-cut or politically correct,” and feels that “tone from the top” is effective when applied “with backbone, not as a PR exercise.”

Greene asserts that businesses need “experienced executives who are not afraid to take charge” to maintain moral leadership under real-world pressure. Keep in mind that, despite their softness and cuddliness, sheep require a shepherd and guard dog to keep them safe from wolves. Sell ice cream if you want to be well-liked.

The idea that corporate leaders set the ethical standard for organisations has long been upheld, yet real-world evidence suggests otherwise. Many CEOs fail to embody the values they claim to champion, often prioritising financial gain over integrity.

A broader cultural shift is required, where ethical leadership is embedded at all levels, particularly in middle management.

Companies must integrate ethical decision-making into their organisational fabric rather than relying solely on CEOs to dictate corporate values. If executives fail to lead with integrity, their authority to set the tone crumbles.

Instead of abandoning the concept entirely, businesses should expand ethical leadership beyond the C-suite, ensuring that values are upheld not just in words but in action.

The post When leaders fail the tone test appeared first on International Finance.

A strong relationship with a client or vendor will act like an asset in the event of an emergency as these stakeholders will provide valuable assistance. So, good and constant communication becomes crucial for building these relationships.

“Successful business owners seek out enduring partnerships among all of their varied constituencies—from vendors and corporate partners to investors and mentors. They understand the value of cultivating long-term relationships with the businesses and clients they serve and with those they rely on to keep their businesses afloat,” states Wes Wernette, who oversees marketing at Indiana-based FireKing Security Group.

Why The Topic Is Important?
As per a study from the Harvard Business Review, corporate alliances are growing in number, by about 25% a year, and account for up to a third of revenues and value at many ventures. Yet some 60% to 70% of them are failing at the same point in time. One reason behind this lies in the fact that some of the alliances involve interdependence between companies that may be competitors and may also have vastly different operating styles and cultures, thereby demanding more care and handling than other business arrangements, which the stakeholders are failing to ensure.

According to Kate Vitasek, an award-winning author and a faculty member at the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business, some of the most commonly cited issues behind the breakdown of a business partnership are unrealistic expectations, disagreement over objectives, and poor trust and communication.

Using a University of Tennessee study, Vitasek gave the example of the tech industry, where companies show the tendency to primarily take on a transaction-based approach, especially in supplier and outsourcing relationships. Enterprises provide money for a set range of products or services with little to no value or interaction beyond the basic items included in that transaction.

“The transactional nature of these relationships means they’re often not sustainable for the long-term, leaving the partnership lacking the potential to deliver value beyond basic contractual obligations. While transactional contracts certainly have their place in the tech world, relational contracts designed to motivate win-win solutions over the long term will ultimately deliver greater value,” she stated.

Our article here will deeply focus on securing and strengthening relationships with business partners.

Feel Free To Over-Communicate
In healthy business relationships, each side depends on the other to keep informed. Offering status reports on projects or other ongoing collaborative ventures means the partner doesn’t have to ask for updates. For entrepreneurs, this may look like “way too much back-and-forth stuff,” but this approach helps reduce the element of surprise.

“Just as you want vendors to alert you immediately if there’s a shortage of resources or some obstacle in delivery, you should also be sure your partners know what’s happening at your end—and that you’ll let them know if and when a problem arises,” Wes Wernette added.

Practice Honesty
As a business partner, an entrepreneur must commit to honesty and transparency, while dealing with the stakeholders. This principle alone will do more to generate trust than any other action. People generally know when someone is attempting to manipulate the truth. Once someone gets a bad feeling about the entrepreneur and his/her business, it’s almost impossible to turn things around.

“In the same respect, resist the impulse to pretend you have all the answers. Don’t be afraid to say, I don’t know. People will appreciate your honesty, particularly if you follow up with a promise to find an answer to their questions or problems,” Wernette noted.

As per a recent PwC Survey, nearly all executives face challenges in building trust and understanding stakeholder needs, which can directly impact productivity, operational efficiency, and even the quality of products and services.

“Among respondents, 95% of business executives agree that organisations have a responsibility to build trust (up from 92% in 2023). The numbers for consumers and employees are nearly as high, at 92% and 94%, respectively (unchanged in the past year). There isn’t just a moral case for building trust — there’s a business case as well, with 93% of business executives agreeing that the ability to build and maintain trust improves the bottom line,” the study noted further.

Always Meet Your Commitments
“Being true to your word also enhances trust between partners. When you say you’ll deliver your product by a certain date, it’s vital to move heaven and earth, if need be, to meet this commitment. Knowing that you’ll meet a promised deadline relieves your customer of any concern that things might go wrong at your end; being free of that concern also builds tremendous goodwill,” Wernette remarked.

Offer Your Knowledge And Resources Freely
In a healthy business relationship, each party should be willing to share knowledge and resources. Take loss prevention and asset protection for example, which are critically important concerns for businesses. A company that specialises in security products provides even greater value to clients and other partners by sharing its expertise in business security strategies, sending along relevant articles and white papers, reporting on industry trends, etc. regardless of whether or not sharing such knowledge leads to a sale.

Stay In Touch With Your Partners
“Without proper nurturing, business relationships can wither and die just like any other kind of relationship. Set up an automated system that reminds you to stay in touch with your partners regularly. Social media tools and platforms also make it easy to stay connected,” Wernette observed.

Remember The Personal Touch
“A business relationship that relies solely on email and texting lacks the grounding that comes with personal contact. Look for opportunities to meet your business partners face-to-face, in a social setting, or at a trade industry event. These experiences can significantly deepen the quality of your relationships,” Wernette explained.

Securing and strengthening a business partnership takes time and effort, but becomes beneficial for businesses in both good times and lean times. A strong relationship with a client or vendor will prove to be an asset in the event of an emergency or if a business issue arises in which they can provide valuable assistance.

The post Want to improve your communication with business partners? Here are the tips appeared first on International Finance.

The venture’s revenues increased 13% in the six months ended 31 October to 65.9 million pounds. However, profits slipped from 5.0 million pounds to 3.0 million pounds as it boosted staff levels to better manage a growing number of insolvencies.

Adjusted earnings per share were up from 4.4% at the same time in 2022 at 4.6%. While the firm’s insolvency and financial advisory units performed well, their property advisory and transactional services counterparts continued to provide the business with a solid growth platform.

Begbies Traynor remains confident of delivering full-year results in line with current market expectations, as it is expected to see a continued increase in insolvency activity.

As per the Insolvency Service, corporate insolvency volumes across England and Wales have grown by about 17% to 24,326 in the year to September, a stat which will give the Rishi Sunak government sleepless nights.

While a significant number of small businesses fell into liquidation, there was also an uptick in administrations involving larger companies.

Begbies Traynor now expects the overall insolvency activity to continue rising over the second half of the 2023-24 financial year, amid ongoing pressure on the British economy.

“We anticipate that activity levels in our largest service line of insolvency will continue to increase in tandem with the indicators of corporate financial stress in the UK, resulting from the current interest rate and inflation environment. This gives the board confidence that the insolvency team will continue to deliver growth through the second half of the current year and thereafter,” the venture told its investors further.

The firm has increased staff numbers by 93 to 1,051 since 2022. It also bought business debt specialists Jones Giles & Clay and the chartered surveyors Banks Long & Co.

Founded in 1989, Begbies Traynor has the distinction of working with British football clubs like Wrexham FC, Port Vale, and former Premier League sides Wigan Athletic and Huddersfield.

The post Begbies Traynor remains resilient as UK businesses grapple with economic challenges appeared first on International Finance.

The results also indicate that ESG initiatives have dropped globally from being the top organizational priority in 2022 to number three in 2023. Taiwan executives have ranked ESG as their third organizational priority, which is consistent with the overall trend, while the business leaders in Japan ranked ESG as their fifth organizational priority.

A crucial corporate concern, sustainability affects everything from clean air and climate change to legal compliance and brand integrity. Some 1476 senior executives from 16 markets, were polled as part of The Harris Poll’s second annual CXO Sustainability Survey, which Google Cloud commissioned. It highlights the precautions that leaders must take to prevent new risks when it comes to sustainability: stagnant progress and a failure to execute.

Thailand hasn’t always been a sustainability innovator. It was only 154th in the Global Sustainability Index just three years ago. But now, the nation is exhibiting genuine climate ambition. These measures are not only lip service. They stand for a sincere attempt to support sustainable development through policies and mere words.

Thailand’s government unveiled “Thailand 4.0” in 2019 to address some of the country’s long-standing economic problems. Heavy industry dependence and the enduring middle-income trap are two of them. It serves as a plan to make the Southeast Asian country a high-income, value-based nation. And within it is a persistent commitment to sustainable growth, whether by emphasizing social well-being, human capital, environmental preservation, or other factors.

The government reintroduced sustainable development promotion in 2020 by introducing Thailand’s ‘Sustainable Development Plan 2030’. This plan included explicit goals for lowering emissions, raising the proportion of renewable energy sources in the energy mix, and encouraging environmentally friendly land use.

There is a movement toward ESG-focused funds and products in Thailand, along with this country-wide focus on ESG elements. Combined with the government’s policies, these developments will probably move the Southeast Asian country toward a better, more sustainable future.

What is ESG?

ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) is a framework used to evaluate a company’s or investment’s sustainability and ethical impact. Let’s break down the key components of the ESG.

Any standard ESG effort carries an environmental aspect, thus summarizing a company’s business impact on the environment, including carbon emissions, energy efficiency, waste management, water usage, pollution control, and biodiversity conservation. Companies with strong environmental practices strive to reduce their ecological footprint and promote sustainable practices.

The social component of ESG refers to a company’s treatment of people. It encompasses labour standards, employee well-being, diversity and inclusion, human rights, community relations, customer satisfaction, and product safety. Socially responsible companies prioritize fair and ethical practices, respect for human rights, and positive community engagement.

Then arrives the governance element, which refers to the systems and structures that guide and oversee a company’s operations. It includes corporate ethics, transparency, board independence, executive compensation, shareholder rights, and risk management. Strong governance practices ensure accountability, fairness, and integrity within a company’s decision-making processes.

Investors, asset managers, and other stakeholders use ESG criteria to assess companies’ sustainability and societal impact. It helps these parties to set the long-term viability and ethical performance of investments and aligns with the growing interest in sustainable and responsible investing. ESG considerations are also increasingly integrated into corporate strategies as companies recognize the importance of environmental and social factors in maintaining their social license to operate and attracting investor interest.

Decoding Thailand’s ESG necessities

The Southeast Asian country is now emphasizing ESG principles across all of its industrial sectors. The country has introduced various policies and guidelines to encourage corporate entities to align with global ESG standards. Although a unified legal framework on ESG has yet to be established, stakeholders are witnessing a significant shift in corporate behaviour, reflecting the growing importance of ESG considerations. This article highlights the latest developments in Thailand’s ESG landscape, specifically in policy development, finance, and environmental conservation.

Thailand has been making significant progress in developing its ESG policy framework, which consists of non-mandatory guidelines that enterprises can observe. Despite the fragmented nature of these guidelines, several key updates have been implemented, either as legally required measures or as voluntary guidelines for action.

The Bank of Thailand (BOT) has introduced the policy on ‘Business Operations of Financial Institutions’ in consideration of ‘Environmental Perspectives and Climate Change’. This policy encourages financial institutions to integrate environmental considerations into their operations, governance, strategy, risk management, and disclosure. Financial institutions are expected to adopt this policy to manage risks, attract investors and customers, and contribute to long-term business viability.

The BOT is also preparing a draft Thailand Taxonomy, a common framework for classifying economic activities aligned with sustainability goals, which is expected to play a crucial role in Thailand’s green financing market and align the country’s standards with international benchmarks.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Thailand actively promotes the issuance and sale of environmental conservation bonds, including green, social, and sustainability bonds. These bonds are subject to specific regulations and disclosure requirements to ensure they finance sustainable projects. The SEC has also established rules and guidelines for Sustainable and Responsible Investing (SRI) funds, offering fee exemptions for ESG-related bond issuance and establishing SRI funds in 2023.

Thailand has seen progress in other ESG-related areas as well. The Equator Principles, a risk management framework for financial institutions, have gained traction in the country, with the Siam Commercial Bank becoming the first bank to join. Other financial institutions may consider similar principles when investing in projects. Additionally, although recent and non-binding in Thailand, the global guidance on Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) from the United Nations Development Programme encourages companies to examine their human rights commitments within the worldwide supply chain, reflecting increasing stakeholder expectations.

Thailand’s voluntary emission reduction program, known as the T-VER Program, allows projects to generate carbon credits that can be used to offset emissions or sold to businesses. The program recently introduced the T-CER premium standard, incorporating international methodologies, although approval and verification for T-CERs are still pending.

These developments highlight Thailand’s commitment to sustainable development and responsible business practices. While a unified legal framework is yet to be established, the country is taking important steps to encourage corporate entities to align with global ESG standards.

These policies and guidelines, along with the introduction of various initiatives in the financial sector and efforts to address environmental conservation and human rights, demonstrate Thailand’s dedication to advancing its ESG agenda. By embracing ESG principles and incorporating them into their operations, businesses in Thailand can enhance their long-term financial performance, manage risks, attract investors and customers, and contribute to a more sustainable and prosperous future.

What are the implications?

The ESG framework represents the company’s actions and effects on society, the environment, and corporate governance. These three elements largely influence all organizations’ long-term financial performance and sustainability. For some firms, implementing an ESG framework and incorporating ESG principles into business operations might take a lot of work. Adopting an ESG framework and incorporating ESG considerations into operations can take time for businesses, despite the positive response from society when corporations support ESG measures.

The lack of agreement and consistency in ESG reporting and measures significantly hinders ESG adoption by corporate organizations and tiny and medium-sized businesses. ESG factors are intricate and multidimensional. When looking at the big picture of ESG, stakeholders may have different viewpoints on what is relevant.

For instance, information on fuel, power, and water use should be included in the ONE Report by the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) as information on clean energy, renewable technology, and other related innovations (if any). If a company is unfamiliar with the global sustainability reports standard, such as GRI, TCFD, or CDP, it may initially need clarification.

Another barrier to implementing an ESG framework for small local enterprises is data management, such as the expense and difficulty of collecting and evaluating ESG data. However, many companies need more staff or the tools necessary to put in the substantial work required to gather and analyze ESG data.

ESG data can often be confusing and challenging to understand, and there might be discrepancies between different data sources. As a result, businesses could find it difficult to gather and analyze reliable ESG data, making it challenging to evaluate their ESG performance precisely.

Business companies must strike a balance between traditional business goals and ESG issues. Benefits and doing the right thing for business entities cannot be compromised. Investments in renewable energy, for instance, may be viewed as having long-term ESG benefits, but they may also be expensive and hurt short-term profitability.

Due to their perception that investing in ESG projects may harm their financial performance, firms may be reluctant to do so. Some organizations have shown how they manage this difficult issue by cooperating with local and international partners, utilizing technology, and sharing resources and responsibilities.

In Thailand, where wealth disparity is considerable and social unrest is a concern, social considerations and the interaction between business and society are especially crucial. By implementing fair labour standards, going through individual human rights due diligence procedures, fostering diversity and inclusion, and cooperating with local communities, many Thai businesses are working to improve social conditions.

Several challenges continue to be unaffected by the social efforts taken by enterprises. These include promoting real skills for individuals with impairments, same-sex marriage, and welfare for LGBTIQ+ in a genuine way. It is clear that the Thai government has also put into practice a number of steps to support social sustainability, including adopting policies to combat poverty and inequality, forming a social assistance system, and promoting education and healthcare. The business sector must collaborate with important players like SET and the local government to pursue these challenges beyond general social issues.

To complete their ESG initiatives, businesses in Thailand must work with various stakeholders. For most companies, dealing with governance issues takes a lot of work. Formal systemic corruption and a lack of openness are the main impediments to improving governance. By implementing high ethical standards, encouraging transparency and accountability, and assuring adherence to legal and regulatory obligations, many Thai businesses are working to strengthen corporate governance.

The formation of the ‘National Anti-Corruption Commission’, the application of corporate governance rules, and the development of policies to support accountability and transparency are just a few of the steps the Thai government has taken to promote good governance.

There are several reasons why Thai organizations should adopt an ESG framework and incorporate ESG considerations into their operations, despite these systemic and structural constraints.

First, investors are becoming more interested in ESG factors. They will be more drawn to companies with great ESG performances. Second, customers, particularly the younger generation, are placing a greater emphasis on ESG factors. Companies that emphasize ESG considerations may be better able to draw in and keep customers. Adopting an ESG framework will be advantageous for an organization’s financial situation. It may put it in a better position to manage ESG risks, including climate change, social unrest, and legislative changes.

Thai businesses must develop ESG strategies, action plans, and reporting systems that are transparent, consistent, and in line with the standards set by their stakeholders and the best practices in their respective fields. This will promote greater comparability and transparency in Thai business. Additionally, it will be simpler for consumers, investors, and other stakeholders to understand the benefits of ESG performance.

Thai businesses from various backgrounds and industries should invest in the skills and resources needed to manage, gather, and analyze reliable ESG data. Handling the collection and analysis of ESG data can entail creating agreements with ESG data providers or engaging specialized ESG personnel. For some businesses, the procedure can be a long and difficult one. It will undoubtedly enhance our performance, relationships with stakeholders, and reputation in the neighbourhood.

Thailand has become noteworthy in adopting ESG principles. Despite economic challenges, Thai business executives rank ESG efforts as a top organizational priority, indicating a genuine commitment to sustainable development. The government’s introduction of initiatives like ‘Thailand 4.0’ and the ‘Sustainable Development Plan 2030’ demonstrates a persistent commitment to sustainable growth and environmental preservation.

Thailand’s ESG landscape is evolving through policy developments in various sectors. The Bank of Thailand and the Securities and Exchange Commission have introduced guidelines and regulations to encourage financial institutions and corporations to integrate environmental considerations, climate change mitigation, and sustainable practices into their operations and investments. The adoption of ‘Equator Principles’ and the focus on human rights due diligence further reflect Thailand’s progress in embracing ESG principles.

While challenges remain, such as the need for more consensus and consistency in ESG reporting and the difficulty of collecting and evaluating ESG data, Thai businesses can harness the benefits of ESG. By balancing traditional business goals and ESG issues, organizations can mitigate risks, attract investors and customers, and foster long-term financial performance and sustainability.

The importance of ESG considerations is growing globally, with investors and customers increasingly valuing companies demonstrating strong ESG performance. Thai businesses must collaborate with stakeholders and develop transparent ESG strategies, action plans, and reporting systems to meet their expectations and align with international best practices.

By embracing ESG principles, Thai organizations can contribute to sustainable development and responsible business practices, enhance their financial performance, manage ESG risks, and improve their relationships with stakeholders. With continued efforts and investments in ESG data management, Thai businesses have the potential to foster a more sustainable and prosperous future for the country and its communities.

The post Thailand’s flourishing ESG landscape appeared first on International Finance.

The spend management platform, in July 2023, was acquired by HyperPay, another payments service provider in the MENA region.

In today’s episode of ‘Start-Up of the Week’, International Finance will talk about Sanad Cash’s expense management operations, which makes the venture a worthy asset in the fintech space.

A Unique E-expenses Management Platform
The venture was formed in 2021 by a group of top-tier technology entrepreneurs from the MENA region, with a vision of becoming the first-choice e-expenses management platform in the region by offering high-quality and premium services at a minimal cost for businesses of all sizes and shapes.

“We aim to build a top-notch digital platform, with international standards, while offering minimal cost for our customers to help them to save money, time and effort by taking their needs in diverse sectors into full consideration,” it remarked.

“Currently, many corporates are struggling with tracking, recording, and auditing their various expenses, Sanad Cash was created to simplify the purchases processes and reduce the effort in following up on financial expenses and auditing them in an automated and streamlined way,” the venture stated further.

Sanad Cash’s spend management platform, which serves SMEs (small and medium industries), corporates, and start-ups, helps its client businesses empower their employees with the Sanad Cash prepaid card, a product which can be funded with just one click. Also using Sanad’s expertise, these ventures can set up a spending limit to chart down their expenses at a competitive exchange rate for main currencies, apart from getting a real-time detailed overview for all of their transactions and last but not least, linking the transactions to the companies’ accounting systems.

Enabling Businesses To Issue Corporate Cards
Sanad Cash helps its client businesses to issue digital and physical cards, with product attributes like 100% spend visibility (a term referring to how well a company can understand and track how, where, and why capital is used in their business operations), faster expense reconciliation and account books closing and ability to setting card limits and rules for higher compliance.

Through Sanad’s assistance, client businesses can add their employees to the fintech venture’s cloud application platform, following which prepaid cards get made for these individuals. After that employees will get instant notifications for purchases being made through the Sanad Cash Card, and when expense reports are completed, they will be sent to the concerned manager for approval.

“The admin can track and analyze all transactions, get reports and view online receipts that are attached by the employee. Link Sanad Cash platform with the corporate accounting system and keep everything trackable,” the venture stated further.

Among the cloud platform’s main features, it has easy online registration, instant online receipt submission and purchase notifications, apart from giving the client companies the full authority to set card limits and instantly freeze, deactivate, or cancel the cards.

Also, the platform helps its clients to upload receipt images and get them analysed automatically, in a secure way.

Apart from adding notes and following up on receipt status, the client ventures can effortlessly link the uploaded receipts to their existing accounting systems, apart from selecting and changing their workflow and approval policies in a flexible manner.

Game-changing HyperPay & Sanad Cash Tie-up
Through Sanad Cash, HyperPay will attempt to simplify and automate financial transactions for individuals/corporations in the MENA region in the coming months.

These services will be available as a white-label solution, which will enable other FinTech companies to seamlessly incorporate Sanad Cash’s expense management, while issuing services into their offerings.

Muhannad Ebwini, Founder & CEO of HyperPay, told the media, “We are thrilled to welcome Sanad Cash into the HyperPay family. This acquisition perfectly aligns with our strategic vision of providing a complete range of digital payment solutions, covering issuing, and acquiring services, to our esteemed customers. By joining forces, we aim to deliver a more comprehensive and streamlined solution to regional corporate clients. Leveraging Sanad Cash’s expertise in expense management, we are confident that we can enhance our tools and services, simplifying financial operations for businesses of all sizes.”

Mahmoud Iswiad, founder and CEO of Sanad Cash, added further, “This strategic acquisition represents a tremendous opportunity for Sanad Cash and HyperPay to combine our strengths, expertise, and resources. Our shared goal is to build a holistic and dynamic digital payment ecosystem that addresses the ever-changing demands of our users. Sanad Cash has earned acclaim and confidence for our cutting-edge, secure expense management solutions. We have continuously aimed to streamline financial procedures, enhance transparency, and optimize effectiveness for individuals and businesses alike.”

Photo Credits: Sanad Cash

The post Start-up of the Week: Through its expense management solutions, Sanad Cash disrupts fintech sector appeared first on International Finance.

The DIFC is regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority, an independent regulator exclusive to the zone, and by its own court system, DIFC Courts, separate from the Emirate of Dubai’s legal system and that of the federal government of the UAE.

DIFC, an independent free zone in Dubai, provides businesses with 100% ownership without the need for a local partner. In addition to financial institutions, wealth funds, and space designated for hotels and retail, the free zone also houses these entities.

In addition to the UAE’s extensive network of double taxation agreements, DIFC provides clients with a 50-year guarantee of zero taxes on corporate revenue and profits.

According to the reports, the number of non-financial enterprises in DIFC rose by 19% annually in 2022, thus increasing the total number of foreign corporations, family businesses, and corporate service providers to over 3,000.

Recently, according to the Government of Dubai Media Office, the DIFC announced the introduction of a metaverse platform, under the ‘Dubai Metaverse Strategy’.

The forum will be held for six months, during which time companies will be given access to training, workshops, and networking opportunities. The focus of the platform will be on policy formation, legal frameworks, and digital identities. It will also reportedly contain a physical studio.

The DIFC has three hotels, the Ritz-Carlton, the Waldorf Astoria and Four Seasons. It is also home to several art galleries. The centre has more than 100 cafes and eateries, including national and international chains serving a wide range of cuisines. Many retail businesses, petrol stations and business service providers can be found inside the DIFC complex.

The brain behind this successful special economic zone is Arif Amiri, CEO of Dubai International Financial Center.

Who is Arif Amiri?
• Arif Amiri was born and brought up in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
• He completed his bachelor’s in aviation business administration from the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida and master’s in organization behaviour and marketing strategy from the University of Cambridge
• Arif Amiri began his career by joining HSBC Bank Middle East, where he was responsible for the implementation of a number of corporate and institutional banking initiatives
• He then joined Emaar Properties, where he drove the all-round commercial operations of the company and grew their portfolio significantly throughout his tenure
• From 2008 to 2011, Arif Amiri was the Chairman of the Middle East Investor Relations Society
• He joined DIFC in 2014 as Deputy CEO and after a year became CEO of the company
• Arif Amiri received the Honorary Award at the Retail City Awards in 2011, and the Retail Leadership Award at the 2012 Asian Leadership awards
• In 2017, he announced DIFC’s initiatives to accelerate the growth of financial technology in the MEASA region
• In 2020, Arif Amiri announced the launch of a start-up accelerator program for fintech start-ups in Africa
• According to DowhNet, as of January 2023, Arif Amiri’s net worth is around USD 1.2 Billion

‘Courage is the first quality one needs to develop’

In an interview with Tharawat Magazine, Arif Amiri shares the story of his unique journey and offers valuable insights for the next generation of leaders. He also noted some challenges that generations of leaders face today.

“The advancements in technology and knowledge have led to an unprecedented increase in career options for the next generation. Sometimes these options can seem intimidating. Some might find it difficult to figure out what they want to do in this next-generation economy, or they might feel pressured to follow the path that is most ‘acceptable.’ I also sense fear or hesitation in many with regard to taking that next step in their lives or careers because they have settled into a comfortable routine,” he commented.

“This is the reason why I believe courage is the first quality one needs to develop. It is an ability that helps challenge the definition of success in a time when there are a myriad of different walks of life to choose from,” he added further.

The post Business Leader of the Week: Meet Arif Amiri, CEO of Dubai International Financial Centre appeared first on International Finance.

According to a recent Gallup poll, only about 34% of the US workforce feels engaged. A related survey found that ignoring poor employee productivity and an unhealthy corporate culture has high costs for companies. Furthermore, it is not just individual companies that suffer but also the engaged employees. Actively disengaged employees cost USD 483 billion to USD 605 billion in lost productivity each year. In order to improve employee productivity, we at International Finance have listed eight effective strategies for boosting workplace productivity.

Goal Setting & Prioritization

Clearly define goals and objectives for individual employees, teams, and the organization as a whole. Break down large goals into smaller, manageable tasks and establish deadlines. Encourage employees to prioritize their tasks based on urgency and importance. This approach helps maintain focus and ensures that valuable time and resources are allocated effectively.

Effective Communication

Establish a culture of open and transparent communication within the workplace. Encourage regular and constructive feedback among team members and between managers and employees. Utilize various communication tools, such as project management software, instant messaging platforms, or regular team meetings, to keep everyone informed, aligned, and accountable.

Provide The Right Tools & Resources

Equip employees with the necessary tools, technology, and resources they need to perform their tasks efficiently. Outdated or inefficient systems can hinder productivity. Regularly assess and invest in technology upgrades, automation solutions, and employee training to ensure that they have the best resources available to perform their work effectively.

Promote Work-Life Balance

Recognize the importance of work-life balance and its impact on productivity. Encourage employees to take regular breaks, promote flexible working arrangements, and discourage overworking or burnout. Studies have shown that employees who maintain a healthy work-life balance are more engaged, motivated, and productive in their roles.

Foster A Positive Work Environment

Create a supportive and positive work environment that motivates employees. Recognize and appreciate their achievements and provide opportunities for growth and development. Encourage collaboration, teamwork, and a sense of community within the workplace. Promote a culture of trust, respect, and autonomy, as this can significantly enhance employee morale and productivity.

Employee Empowerment

Empower employees by giving them autonomy and decision-making authority in their areas of expertise. When employees have a sense of ownership and control over their work, they are more likely to take initiative, be innovative, and strive for excellence. Encourage employees to share their ideas, involve them in decision-making processes, and delegate tasks effectively. Empowered employees feel more engaged and motivated, leading to increased productivity.

Continuous Learning & Skill Development

Promote a learning culture within the organization that emphasizes continuous skill development and growth. Provide opportunities for employees to attend training programs, workshops, or conferences relevant to their roles. Encourage knowledge sharing, mentorship, and cross-functional learning. When employees are equipped with up-to-date knowledge and skills, they become more efficient and effective in their work, driving productivity gains.

Streamline Processes & Remove Obstacles

Identify and eliminate unnecessary steps, bottlenecks, and obstacles in work processes. Encourage employees to provide feedback on inefficient workflows or areas where they face challenges. Streamline processes by automating repetitive tasks, leveraging technology, or implementing lean methodologies. By reducing friction and optimizing workflows, employees can work more productively, focusing on value-added activities rather than being bogged down by inefficiencies.

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