< Previous30 East Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION systems to identify patterns of behaviour that could lead to accidents. These insights allow companies to adjust schedules, redistribute labour or modify workflows before problems emerge. Far from replacing human judgement, these platforms act as an advisory system, amplifying the intuition of site managers who already understand the rhythms and pressures of construction. By combining lived experience with machine-assisted analysis, firms are creating a more holistic view of safety. As with any technological shift, adoption is not uniform. Smaller firms can find the cost of new equipment challenging, and some workers remain sceptical about machines encroaching on traditional skills. Yet there is growing recognition across the sector that innovation is not primarily about replacing labour but about enabling safer, more sustainable ways of working. Where early pilots have been introduced, the results are encouraging. Companies report fewer minor injuries, faster reporting of near-misses and greater engagement from workers who feel their wellbeing is being actively safeguarded. The insurance industry is taking note, too. Insurers are starting to view technology-enabled safety practices as indicators of lower operational risk. Wearables that track heat stress or collision risks provide evidence that companies are proactive rather than reactive in their approach to safety. Over time, this could affect premiums, creating financial incentives for firms to adopt tools that genuinely reduce harm. It also signals a shift from compliance-driven safety to performance-driven safety, where real-world outcomes carry more weight than paperwork alone. Sustainability is closely intertwined with this safety evolution. Robotics and digital tools reduce rework, limit wasted materials and streamline workflows, contributing to lower carbon footprints on major projects. Drones minimise the need for travel between dispersed sites, while AI- assisted planning reduces delays that lead to unnecessary emissions. As the construction industry faces pressure to cut carbon, these safety- enhancing technologies are offering environmental benefits that extend well beyond the prevention of accidents. At its core, the transformation now under way is not about making construction sites unrecognisable but about making them more humane. Wearables that detect fatigue, robots that relieve physical strain and drones that keep workers away from dangerous heights all contribute to an environment where people can perform their jobs with greater confidence. Innovation is reinforcing the idea that safety is not simply a regulatory obligation but a driver of productivity, morale and long-term workforce stability. The construction sector remains one of the UK’s most challenging environments, but it is also one where thoughtful innovation can make a profound difference to everyday working life. As technology continues to weave itself into the fabric of projects, the industry is discovering that safer sites are not just a by-product of progress, but a catalyst for better outcomes across the board.www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link 31 CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION32 East Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk CORPORATE HOSPITALITY A s the festive season approaches, companies are once again turning their attention to end-of-year celebrations. Yet the shape of the corporate Christmas has shifted. The rise of hybrid work has pushed businesses to rethink traditional hospitality, forcing them to consider how to create a shared experience when their teams are scattered across offices, homes and, in some cases, countries. What once relied on a room, a venue and a single timetable has expanded into something more flexible, more Hybrid Christmas brings remote teams back into the festive fold As hybrid working reshapes the modern office, companies are reinventing their end-of-year celebrations to include everyone. From livestreamed events to at-home festive kits, corporate hospitality is finding new ways to bring teams together, wherever they are. www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link 33 CORPORATE HOSPITALITY creative and, in many cases, more inclusive. The result is a version of corporate hospitality that still feels communal, even when not everyone is physically present. Many firms spent the past few years experimenting with virtual events out of necessity. Now they are doing it by choice. A fully online Christmas party may no longer appeal in the same way it did at the height of lockdowns, but the practicality of including people who are remote, part-time, travelling or internationally based has become difficult to ignore. Rather than splitting teams between those who attend in person and those who miss out entirely, businesses are adopting a hybrid approach that gives everyone a way in. It is less about replicating an in-room experience through a screen and more about offering parallel moments that still add up to one celebration. Venues and hospitality providers have reshaped what they offer in response. Many events now include livestreams as standard, allowing remote staff to follow speeches, awards or entertainment without feeling like observers on the margins. Technical teams manage lighting, sound and camera work so the broadcast feels polished rather than 34 Á34 East Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk CORPORATE HOSPITALITY improvised. At the same time, organisers are designing these elements with remote participation in mind. Live polls, shout-outs, digital games and the ability for remote teams to present awards or nominate colleagues help blur the line between those watching at home and those sitting around the table. Food has become another point of connection. Caterers have leaned into the idea that festive hospitality does not need to be anchored to a single location. Companies now order chef- prepared meal kits, grazing platters, festive desserts or drinks packages that arrive at employees’ homes on the day of the celebration. The goal is not to replicate the full menu but to give everyone a shared flavour of the occasion. For many remote workers, receiving something they can enjoy alongside their colleagues helps restore a sense of ritual that might otherwise be lost. Entertainment has evolved in a similar direction. Performers who once specialised in stage-only appearances have embraced dual delivery formats. Comedians, musicians, magicians and quizmasters now routinely run hybrid sets, interacting with people on-site and online. A quiz might involve questions displayed on screens for the room and on browsers for those at home, with both groups feeding into the same scoreboard. A magician might perform tricks that rely on audience suggestions submitted from both sides. This approach allows entertainment to travel well, especially when teams are spread across regions or time zones. For companies that want to offer something more hands-on, hybrid www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link 35 CORPORATE HOSPITALITY workshops have become a practical alternative. Teams can take part in cocktail making, chocolate tasting, wreath building or creative classes with materials delivered in advance. The facilitator leads the session from a venue, while remote workers follow along from home. The value lies less in the finished product and more in the shared activity. Even if the atmosphere is different, the sense of doing something together still comes through. Gifting has become another subtle bridge between in-person and remote attendees. Many businesses send personalised presents, locally sourced hampers or charity-linked gifts that reflect their company values. These often arrive ahead of the event and act as a symbolic gesture, signalling that remote workers are not an afterthought. Some organisations go further and build small interactive moments into the gifting itself, such as QR codes linking to Christmas messages from leadership or digital treats released during the event. Despite these developments, companies are careful to ensure the hybrid format does not overshadow the social aspect of festive hospitality. For most, the in-person gathering remains the centrepiece. The hybrid layer sits around the edges, supporting those who would otherwise miss out. It allows teams to celebrate together without forcing staff to travel long distances, rearrange family commitments or join an office they may not visit regularly. It also reflects the reality that many businesses have settled into long-term hybrid working patterns, making this type of inclusion an expectation rather than a novelty. For hospitality providers, the shift has opened new opportunities. Venues can accommodate smaller physical groups while offering scaled virtual access. Caterers can serve both the dining room and the living room. Entertainers can reach wider audiences without complicated logistics. This has pushed the industry to innovate in ways that would have seemed unlikely a few years ago, and many of these innovations are becoming permanent fixtures. The hybrid Christmas is not a replacement for traditional hospitality, nor is it a stopgap. It is a recognition that the modern workforce has changed and that festive celebrations must reflect that reality. Companies are discovering that inclusion can strengthen morale, particularly for employees who rarely step into the office. When executed well, hybrid hospitality allows a business to bring its people together, wherever they are, without diluting the atmosphere that makes December events feel special. As 2025 draws to a close, businesses are settling into this new rhythm. Some will still opt for large, lively parties; others will favour smaller gatherings supported by thoughtful remote elements. What unites them is the idea that a Christmas celebration should feel shared. Hybrid hospitality is simply the latest way of making that possible.did, I’d tell them to hire an academic or get ChatGPT to mirror it. Zzzzz. Meanwhile, tech observer Simon Willison noted that “slop” is following spam’s path straight into the dictionary as the term for unwanted AI-generated content. The word has gained serious traction because it captures something real. Business owners don’t care about tittle tattle analysing celebrity relationships. They care about cutting through noise in a market flooded with constant bombardment of bang average but prolific content. The question that actually matters When business owners are drowning in this deluge, what do they actually need? Not academic analysis. Not sociological theory about parasocial dynamics. They need someone to ask them: “How do we actually sound? What is our brand? What resonates with our 36 East Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk PUBLIC RELATIONS M y immediate reaction to Cambridge’s choice of “parasocial” as 2025’s Word of the Year? Boring. Celebrity-obsessed. Get a grip. While Cambridge’s boffins were theorizing about one-sided relationships with media figures, business owners were drowning in something far more urgent: slop. The irony? “Slop” was on Cambridge’s shortlist. They knew about it. They chose the academic term anyway. What Cambridge missed at the coalface Here’s what I hear from clients every single day: “We’re worried about sounding like everyone else.” Not “we’re worried about being seen.” Not “we lack ideas.” They’re terrified of being boring. Indistinguishable. Generic. In a word: slop. They show me screenshots of people on social media mocking bland AI Why Cambridge Dictionary chose the WRONG word this year - contains “slop” not spam “Parasocial” may be Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year, but Greg Simpson, founder of Press For Attention PR, explains why the shortlisted term “slop” is much more apt as the new root of businesses’ content-creating fears. content. They watch the criticism. Then they freeze. Do nothing. Because the fear of being mocked for creating slop is paralyzing them completely. This is a new kind of content anxiety. Cambridge’s chief editor called “parasocial” a specialist academic term gone mainstream. But while they were celebrating linguistic evolution in the ivory tower, AI-generated content on the web exploded from 185 pages in December 2022 to over 15,000 in a sample of one million pages by 2024. The floodgates of slop are open wide. The deluge is pouring forth. The problem with looking clever Cambridge chose “parasocial” because it makes them look clever. Big words. Sociological theory. Academic credibility. It’s exactly what I warn my clients against: jargon that means nothing to the audience. If a client came to me wanting to sound as highbrow as Cambridge just www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link 37 PUBLIC RELATIONS relationships with celebrities. We’re trying to figure out if the content we’re creating still sounds like us. Or if we’ve become just another voice in the slop. Cambridge had the chance to recognize that struggle. They chose the highbrow option instead. Get a grip, indeed. A former business journalist, Greg Simpson is the author of The Small Business Guide to PR and has been recognised as one of the UK’s top 5 PR consultants, having set up Press For Attention PR in 2008. He has worked for FTSE 100 firms, charities and start-ups and conducted press conferences with Sir Richard Branson and James Caan. His background ensures a deep understanding of every facet of a successful PR campaign – from a journalist’s, client’s, and consultant’s perspective. target market?” More fundamentally: “Is this actually us?” That question gets lost in the AI rush. Business owners forget to ask it because they’re too busy worrying about keeping up, about using the tools everyone else is using, about not falling behind. Cambridge’s choice of “parasocial” over “slop” perfectly captures the gap between linguistic theory and business identity. Between what sounds impressive in academic circles and what keeps entrepreneurs up at night. At the coalface of business and marketing in 2025, we’re not grappling with clever new concepts about our 38 East Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE A rtificial intelligence has swept through boardrooms with a promise of speed, precision and competitive advantage, prompting many organisations to accelerate adoption before the groundwork was fully in place. Early demos made everything look simple. Tools could summarise documents in seconds, scan years of data, automate tedious workflows and offer predictions with confidence that felt almost clairvoyant. Yet as the initial excitement settled, businesses discovered that integrating AI into day-to-day operations is far more complex than plugging in software. The momentum that pushed Firms rushed to embrace artificial intelligence, only to discover that governance, data quality and human oversight matter more than early hype suggested. A growing number are now building structure before scaling. AI adoption slows as UK businesses realise the risks of moving too fast them forward is now forcing a quieter, more considered conversation about governance, oversight and the quality of the data feeding these systems. It is here, in the gap between aspiration and reality, that many firms are now doing the hardest work. The challenge begins with the foundations. AI systems are only as accurate as the data they process, and many organisations have found that their internal datasets are messy, inconsistent or incomplete. Years of spreadsheets, legacy systems and siloed information structures have created a patchwork that modern AI tools struggle to interpret cleanly. Companies that imagined www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link 39 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE instant insights are instead confronted with the unglamorous job of tidying digital backrooms. Data cleansing, labelling, documentation and standardisation have become essential steps in making AI deliver meaningful value. Far from being a purely technical task, this work forces teams to agree on definitions, ownership and processes, revealing inefficiencies that have quietly accumulated over time. Alongside the data challenge is the realisation that AI needs strong governance. Many organisations introduced tools quickly, only to discover that decisions about transparency, accountability and human oversight were unresolved. AI can draft reports, create risk assessments or recommend pricing structures, but it cannot explain the nuances behind those outputs without human interpretation. Businesses are now defining where responsibility lies when a model suggests a course of action that later proves flawed. Rather than relying on automated judgement, firms are building review layers that ensure each output is checked for accuracy, context and bias. This is reshaping workflows, with staff stepping into new roles as supervisors, interpreters and quality controllers of AI- generated work. The cultural adjustment is perhaps the most underestimated challenge. When AI arrives, employees often assume that systems will either take over their tasks or undermine their judgement. In practice, organisations are finding that AI works best when integrated into collaborative processes, not as a replacement. Teams need time to learn how to question AI outputs, understand limitations and know when to trust their own expertise. This shift in working style requires training, communication and reassurance, particularly for staff whose roles are changing but not disappearing. 40 ÁNext >