Football as a focus Despite these difficulties, Lens has been home to some fine football teams. Little wonder therefore that its smaller business sectors have adopted its June 1998 world cup fixtures as their rallying point in their project-supported search for a fresh interprofessional training strategy. The crowds expected here will firmly remind our businesses how customers anywhere should feel welcomed and attracted by the services on offer. In my own stores, this means, for example, tidy yet fashionable imaginative clothing displays. Project-inspired training to ensure the necessary attitudes and techniques is planned in due course.
Similar considerations apply to aspects of small business management.
Individual businesses have been drawn out of their isolation by the scheme and forced to think in terms of a collective challenge and common problems. Similar focal points in other project schemes include employee training for local environment conservation and the streamlining of food marketing to upgrade local produce. At least nine smaller firms in sectors such as plastics and ribbon manufacture will place special emphasis on job training for quality, new technologies and the search for appropriate export outlets.