How To Keep Your Employees Happy & Driven

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Employees|How To Keep Your Employees Happy & DrivenIf you are a business owner, hopefully, you are one of the people that realizes that the most important part of your business is your employees. Believe it or not, even in modern times, there are still a lot of business owners out there that put their employees at the bottom of the pile and more often than not, this comes back to haunt them.

In modern times, if you want to succeed in business, you have to not only do everything your competition is doing, you have to do it better, and for you to be able to do things better, you need the people on the front line to be working at their most productive.

Today, we are going to be looking at why your employees may not be performing at the height of their abilities, and why you may be doing things that cause this. After that, we are then going to be looking at some of the things you can do if you really want to get so much more from your team.

Why Your Employees May Be Slacking

As a business owner, we understand it’s going to be an annoyance if any of your team is underperforming, but, have you ever stopped to find out why they are doing what they are doing?

The sad truth is, while you may have an employee that is trying to get away with doing as little as possible, the chances are that the employee simply feels wasted and undervalued. While this may be difficult to comprehend, it’s actually one of the most popular reasons for an underperforming team member, and as you will see in the next section, it’s rather easy to fix.

So, if you are looking for a way to increase the overall atmosphere in your office and you also want to see your team perform at an all-time high, then maybe you will want to consider some of the tips below.

Offer A Good Benefits System

The first thing we are going to be looking at today is what you are offering to your team that makes them feel valued.

If you are one of many business owners that simply employs somebody only for them to find out that there are zero benefits and nothing to be gained from working at your company, then now is the time to consider making a change to this.

By offering things like Accuplan Benefits Services on top of medical and dental plans, you will suddenly see a change in the attitudes of your team. By giving your employees something that shows them that they are more than just a number to you, you will find that the productivity rate rises exponentially.

Offer Incentives

While we are on the subject of making the team feel valued, it may fall within your interests to offer your employees incentives for reaching certain targets.

Now, when it comes to incentives, it doesn’t really matter if it’s in monetary form or whether you offer an hour off, you will find that this is enough to increase the productivity of your team tenfold and it also promotes a little healthy competition in the office too.

While some business owners see incentives as bribery, it’s actually far from it. You have to look at things realistically when it comes to your employees and see that while you may bank most of the profits, they are only getting a very small portion of that for a lot of work.

When you offer them an incentive, it’s more a way of saying thank you for everything you do.

Nurture And Promote

The final thing we are going to look at is the opportunities that you give to your team. We understand that for some businesses it won’t be viable, but if there comes a time when you need to hire a member of staff, why not look internally and ask if a current employee would be interested in expanding their horizons.

While you may not have a team member that is qualified, there is nothing stopping you from offering them a route into a different career with you. By doing things this way, you already know how hard working the person will be, and it will also cost you less while the employee is training.

Many companies are now employing this technique, and it has been shown to not only increase productivity, but it also increases employee retention rates massively.

Paper To Product: Bringing Your Ideas Into The Real World

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |From Paper to Product|Paper To Product: Bringing Your Ideas Into The Real WorldPeople are great at coming up with completely new ideas, though far too few are able to act on their ingenuity. It’s not too hard to think of new products or inventions, but turning something like this into a reality can be much harder, and most won’t have any idea where to start. To help you out with this, this post will be going through the whole process from paper to product. Exploring each of the stages you will need to take on before you can bring a product to market, this should give you a much better idea of the path you should be taking, while also giving you the chance to get started on your dream product.

Research

The first stage in this process is going to involve some research. This will serve more than one purpose; giving you the opportunity to make sure that the idea doesn’t already exist while also ensuring that the idea will be possible in the first place. You can do all of this research online, and there are plenty of forums and communities around the web which can be used to help you to test your concept. If a lot of people think you’re onto a winner, this will be a good sign, though you should avoid giving away your idea if you think it will be a success.

Inspiration & Design

Next up, it will be time to start thinking about designing your product. This process should always start on paper, even if you aren’t very good at drawing, as this will give you an easy way to get your ideas into the real world.

The sketches you make don’t need to be perfect, but will serve to make it much easier to come up with the form and style of your product. Most designers will look for inspiration at this stage, using sites like Pinterest to look at other products to fuel their creativity.

Once you have a good idea of how you’d like your product to look and work, you can begin to create a 3D model of it. Tools like Solidworks are perfect for this, though they can be tricky to use and you may need to watch some YouTube videos before you’re able to make beautiful models with it. This sort of model will enable you to make the product very easily, as you will already have a CAD design for it, but it will also give you the chance to get an idea of what it will look like when it is made.

Most modern products involve some sort of electronics, and this is something you may have to design at the same time as the physical form of your product. Designing a PCB isn’t easy, and you may need to use a microcontroller, like an Arduino, to get started with this. Once you’ve managed to make a circuit and script which works, you can start to think about designing a dedicated PCB for it, though you may need to hire someone to help you with this.

Prototyping

With a 3D design made, the next stage in this process will involve some prototyping. This stage is crucial, as it will ensure that you are creating something which people will want to use, while also giving you a chance to test your concept before you spend loads of money on getting it made. Of course, though, you have to use the right tools for something like this, or you will end up wasting a lot of resources.

Companies like rapidpsi.com can offer rapid manufacturing services which will make it much easier to prototype your ideas. Using 3D printers, rather than regular CNC machines, companies like this are able to make products extremely quickly without having to invest money in special tools for the job. This gives you the chance to make a range of different prototypes without having to wait for months each time you make an improvement to your designs.

Testing will also be a big part of this stage. You can handle this largely by yourself, though it can be worth getting other people to put your products through hell to make sure that they work properly. Prototypes are usually more fragile than a finished product, but you will still have the opportunity to make sure that they function well, while also establishing the weak points of each product to make sure that they don’t break when they are used by customers.

The Manufacturing

After you’ve done some testing and are happy with the prototype you’ve made, it will finally be time to get one with manufacturing your product. This can be an expensive process, and there are quite a few different ways to handle it. Some people will want to make their product themselves, and will buy the machinery and tools they need to do it from home. For larger operations, looking to countries like China can be a good idea, as there are a lot of businesses in this part of the world which specialize in manufacturing for other companies.

In some cases, you may be able to get another company to buy your product from you. This can be trickier, and you won’t get the chance to work on your product anymore, but it can also make the whole thing far more cost-effective. Most people will be happy to see their product on the market, and it won’t matter how it got there as long as you’ve been paid fairly for it. Of course, though, this will be a last resort for a lot of people.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of bringing your product ideas into the real world. This process can be a difficult one, but the results will almost always be worth it. Even if your product isn’t successful, not many people can say that they’ve achieved something like this, and this makes it well worth all the work.

Advantages of Outsourced Answering Services

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Advantages of Outsourced Answering ServicesOutsourcing different aspects of your business can help you save time, money and focus. You can send your books to an accountant, your calls to an answering service and your intelligence technology management to an IT firm, while you concentrate on the core projects and tasks that build your company up. Some of the benefits you will see from outsourcing your answering and receptionist services include being able to extend your customer service hours, save money and focus your efforts.

Extend Your Call Hours

Many answering services offer call-in hours around the clock and on all days, with the phones being answered by real people instead of an automated system. This gives your customers the opportunity to talk to someone and resolve issues outside of your normal operating hours without you having to keep employees working at all hours. You can even find mobile apps from these services to help you keep track of messages and leads in one place. This can lead to better customer retention and higher profits.

Save Money

Outsourcing can save you money both in terms of salaries and in terms of space needed for the extra personnel. You will not have to hire and train employees to answer the phones and then dedicate a place in your building for them. An outsourced receptionist service will have many clients to help cover their costs as well as the beefed-up phone plans to keep up with everything. Many will offer personalized call scripts so your brand’s voice and culture will be presented to the customer when they call just as it will be when they walk in your office.

Focus on Core Activities

When you do not have to pay for a dedicated employee to answer your phones, you can more closely focus on the core activities that make your company great. For example, if you own a catering business, then having another company answer your phones will give you more time to develop new recipes and finish orders without worrying about the calls coming in.

Outsourcing can help startups survive the first few years of business with less overhead and can streamline operations for huge corporations. When you outsource your call answering with a receptionist service, you can see increased customer service and retention as well as lowered costs. This gives you more time to focus on other aspects of your company such as making new products. You can also extend your customer service hours outside of your office hours and help clients around the clock without paying overtime.

The Scary Journey Of Selecting New Leaders

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Every single business in the world will have at least three to four changing of the guards in each century. Out with the old and in with the new. Leaders have to be changed and replaced. Bringing in the next generation of managers, C-suite and other senior positions, is a daunting and even scary task. What’s at stake? Your company culture is by far the most important thing that is in the crosshairs. You need to maintain a solid culture that transcends time and generational gaps. It’s what makes your business unique and special in the industry. You will also need to bring in leaders that have the type of temperament you need to make tough decisions that ultimately allow your business to thrive and in some cases, survive.

Young incumbents and mentors

Every new leader that is brought into their position, must be given a mentor. This is a lot easier said than done as you may not be able to keep around the previous leader, long enough to show them the ropes. That’s why it’s beneficial to have a transitional phase, whereby the incumbent leader is taken under the wing of the outgoing leader. The outgoing leader will have overall authority but more and more of it will be passed to the incumbent.

The mentor will stick close to the young new leader, whether it’s a manager or a senior in a department. Make sure the incumbent is asking as many questions as possible so that small issues are nipped in the bud before problems arise. It’s general practice to keep it this way for about 12 months, but in some cases and depending on the role, it can be 18-24 months.

On shaky ground

Many young leaders will feel like they’re on shaky ground. It’s a good idea to provide them with seminars and content about leadership, so their knowledge of different techniques and mental toughness can expand. Providing them with a Keynote Speaker regarding leadership motivation is highly recommended. This type of speaker lives and breathes, supporting new leaders to become comfortable in the role and thrive on the additional responsibilities and pressure. Some of your leaders will be plagued with self-doubt and they will allow themselves to feel overwhelmed despite being great at their jobs. Don’t allow a spark to fade when you have the opportunity to fan the spark into a flame. Some of the best leaders in the world, started off not believing in themselves and weren’t able to handle the pressures at first.

Making tough recalls

As the boss, you have to make the toughest decisions. Sometimes it will involve demoting an incumbent leader because it’s either not the right role for them or, it’s too soon. Even if an employee passed all the managerial training, they might not perform well in the actual role. Give them time to get used to it, but if several months down the line you still see them making mistakes, you need to recall them from that role.

It’s quite a tense time when you are training, selecting and evaluating new leaders. But every business must go through this changing of the guard, so make sure you do it right.

Giving Your Employees All The Resources They Need to Work Better

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Employee Resources|Giving Your Employees All The Resources They Need to Work BetterWhen was the last time you checked that your employees had the right resources to do the job? Supplying them with the right resources is more than just making sure they have the correct equipment, although this is a major part of it too.

For a well-rounded employee to be able to do their job properly, how you treat them and understand their specific job role plays a big part in how they perform for you. No one wants to be paying employees who aren’t doing the job well or even at all. So, what can you do in your role as their employers to make sure they have all the resources they need to do the job?

Equipment

In every single job role you come across, there will, of course, be the need for equipment. This will take many different forms, depending on the sectors and type of business you are in.

Whether this is making sure you have a solid infrastructure in place for employees to do their jobs properly and deliver customer service, making sure you have the best epson drivers in the office for your printing needs or state of the art tech for workers who need to stay connected on the go.

Making sure you have provided staff with the right products, systems, apps and devices to do their job efficiently will play a part in making sure the job is done and done well.

Training

It can be tempting to skip out on making sure training is completed and completed thoroughly. Don’t. If you don’t make sure your team is well trained, then chances are, they won’t be able to perform as competent as you need them too.

Ignore the fact you are against the clock, have time restraints or any other issues and focus on making sure all your staff, new and old, are able and confident to carry out their job role properly.
Neglecting this will end up in sub-par customer service and corners being cut due to gaps in knowledge. So cut the mistakes and make sure everyone is one the same page

Motivation

Are your staff looking forward to the day ahead and today’s workload? Chances are if they don’t have the right support system in place or are over/underwhelmed and lacking in motivation they won’t be doing their best work for you!

Look at how you interact with staff and how you and the job itself comes across. Is there anything you can be doing differently or stop altogether? Staff feel more motivated to work when they know what they are doing is appreciated and their opinions and suggestions are taken on board.

Staff meetings are a great way to get everyone together to discuss new ideas and ways of working together as is one on one meetings. Take anything that is offered onboard and see how you can create a better working environment that fosters creativity and encourages people to work more efficiently and productively.