When One Injury Stops The Work: Building Resilience on Family Farms
The livestock still need feeding. There is a weather window to make the most of and tomorrow’s jobs are already waiting. Then someone the farm depends on is injured. For a family farm, that person may also be a parent, partner or sibling. Alongside worrying about their recovery, the family has to work out who […]
Simple Ways to Keep Your Workplace Recycling Bins Under Control
Workplace bins run out of room long before they run out of actual capacity. If you’ve seen uncrushed boxes jammed in a bin, with the lid you can barely close, you might end up ordering unnecessary second bins or arranging an extra collection. Or you could be dealing with contaminated recycling bins, or staff who […]
Are You Hoarding Old Tech?
Office space is valuable. Whether you’re an SME or a huge enterprise, it’s so easy to overlook how much old tech can pile up in office cabinets and storage rooms. A laptop gets replaced, but the old one is kept “just in case”. Someone leaves the business and their monitor goes into storage. You might […]
North Devon Expertise Supporting Business on The Global Stage
Balazs Bagi, Management Systems Consultant & Trainer at Improved Ways Limited and member of Devon Chamber’s North Devon Business Board, reflects on supporting global offshore drilling contractor Seadrill in Houston, and why North Devon businesses should be making more noise about the expertise they deliver beyond the county. North Devon businesses may be based in […]
The Warning Before The Accident: How Near-Miss Reporting Builds Business Resilience
Picture a busy warehouse. A delivery has arrived, orders need picking and someone takes a familiar shortcut across the yard. A forklift driver brakes sharply. Everyone stops for a moment. “That was close.” Nobody is hurt. There is relief, perhaps a nervous laugh, then work starts again. But the shortcut is still there. The next […]
Electric Buses And The Foundations of a Resilient Devon Economy
This white paper draws on the first DEV Talks live conversation, in which Devon Chamber Director Paul Philpott sat down with Peter Knight, Managing Director of Stagecoach South West, to talk about electric buses and the future of transport in Devon. The conversation started with new vehicles and quickly moved to a bigger question for […]
Business Resilience: Why Crisis Communication Planning Matters
A PR crisis is the situation that no business ever wants to find themselves in. But unexpected challenges can happen in any organisation, and a well-prepared communications plan can help protect reputation, maintain stakeholder confidence and support business continuity when the pressure is on. Crisis communications planning is one part of a resilient organisation, working […]
The MOD’s New Cyber Security Model: A Shift to Operational Resilience
The Ministry of Defence’s new Cyber Security Model version 4, or CSMv4, represents a significant change in the way cyber security obligations will apply to MOD suppliers and their supply chains. The previous model was largely focused on protecting MOD data. The new model is much broader. It is designed to ensure that suppliers providing […]
Manufacturers Must Now Report Cyber Risks in Any EU Digital Products
Organisations supplying software, connected devices and other digital products into the EU should be aware that the first obligations under the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) take effect on 11 September 2026. While the CRA’s wider cybersecurity and product compliance requirements do not apply until December 2027, the reporting regime comes into force much earlier […]
Managing the Risk That Costs Devon Businesses the Most Working Days
Most resilience conversations start with cash, supply chains or cyber. Yet the largest single drain on working time in British businesses is not a storm, a supplier failure or a ransomware attack. It is work-related stress. In 2024/25, an estimated 964,000 workers in Great Britain suffered from work-related stress, depression or anxiety, and 22.1 million […]