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11 ways to be a good employee-Charles Marcus

1. Plan your week on Sunday nightLook at your work calendar and plan your week on Sunday night or Monday morning. This would include important meetings, deliverables, a brief summary of things that are pending from last week and any tasks to be achieved during the week. Though this might look like a time management tip, at the end of the week, on Friday night when you re-visit what you have achieved over the last five days, the satisfaction is immense. 2. Undertake activities that you are passionate about even though it might not be in your job profileStart an initiative that you would love to do irrespective of whether it is required for you to do or not. Send a daily newsletter to your team on the topics that most of them will be interested. Do a presentation on the topic that you are passionate about. Organise a small sports event for your team. Call everyone in your team for a team coffee, breakfast or lunch break Appreciate colleagues in your team or in a cross-functional team who...

New Product Development

There is no correlation between the percentage of net revenue spent on R&D and the innovative capabilities of an organization—none. That’s not to say that R&D capacity isn’t important, but at the end of the day, innovation is generated by new ideas, not by messing around in the lab – Bart Becht – CEO ,Reckitt Benckiser Today, 15 “power brands”—Air Wick air freshener, Finish and Calgonit automatic dishwashing detergent, and Lysol disinfectant among them—account for more than half of the company’s net revenues. What’s more, 40 percent of total sales are from products launched within the past three years—products like Vanish Oxi Action stain-removing gel, Cillit Bang lime and grime cleaner, and Air Wick Freshmatic automatic air freshener. Affluent consumers in a hurry will pay a premium for product innovations like these, and Reckitt Benckiser churns them out at a rate of more than 100 a year, despite a significantly smaller R&D budget than its peers (about 1.5 percent of net ...

ENVIRONMENT

Place environment before profits . Save the planet . Reckitt Benckiser has implemented an environmental initiative called Carbon 20. The initiative, which was announced in November 2007, aims to cut the total carbon footprint of its products - from creation to disposal - by 20% by 2020. As part of the initiative the company has reduced by 70% the amount of plastic in the packaging of its Vanish cleaner. The Independent characterised the Carbon 20 initiative as "a typically savvy bit of marketing on the part of Bart Becht, the company's CEO. It observed that Reckitt Benckiser's initiative seemed to go further than similar green initiatives by other companies, and that it would lead to increased profits. The article quoted a city analyst who follows Reckitt Benckiser: "I was surprised by this. Reckitt has never been considered the most environmentally-enlightened company, they are typical red-blooded capitalists". The newspaper also spoke with Martin Deboo, an ana...