3 Things You Should Know About Comprehensive Background Checks

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | 3 Things You Should Know About Comprehensive Background ChecksIf you’re an employer or you’ve recently been offered a contingent job, you may have heard about comprehensive background checks. While the name may sound intimidating, background checks are a useful tool that essentially provide accurate information about a potential applicant. They help businesses make informed decisions about who they hire while minimizing their risks. If you’re curious about how comprehensive background checks work and what they cover, there are a few key things you should know.

1. It Helps Verify Your Identity

One of the main components of a comprehensive background check is the verification of your identity. In other words, it helps a prospective employer check that you actually are who you say you are in your application. This is important in helping employers avoid cases of employment fraud or identity theft. These checks will usually verify your full name, date of birth and social security number. Some checks may also reveal any other names you’ve been known under and your address history for the last ten to fifteen years.

2. It Details Criminal History

Another important factor that background checks reveal is an applicant’s criminal history. Many reports will go beyond local records to check multi-state records and sometimes even global terrorism records. Registries like most-wanted lists or sex offender lists are typically included, and results are usually cross checked to ensure accuracy. This helps employers avoid potential harm to themselves, their customers and their business.

3. It May Include Credentials and Credit History

While not covered in all background checks, a truly comprehensive background check will often include a check on an applicant’s credentials and credit history. The credentials check covers things like state licenses, institutional degrees and certifications, diplomas and more. This helps employers ensure that you have the credentials you’ve stated and you’re eligible and qualified for the job. The credit history check isn’t done by all employers, but those employers that carry it out may see your history of handling finances as an indicator of your responsibility. However, there are some states in which employers are banned from including credit history in your background check, so your location may make a difference in this area.

In today’s increasingly competitive business world, comprehensive background checks are becoming a standard part of the hiring process. It allows employers to verify information about prospective employees to make truly informed hiring decisions. Whether you’re an employer or an employee, a comprehensive background check plays a key role in helping keep business operations accurate and honest.

6 Tips for Building High-Performance Teams

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |High Performance Team|6 Tips for Building High-Performance TeamsIf you’ve been to any management seminar in the last few years, you may have heard the term “high-performance team” thrown around. But what exactly IS a high-performance team and why do you need one in your office?

While there’s no formal mandate to say exactly what a high-performance team is, it’s clear when you’re in one because everyone works together better. And, it’s clear when you’re not in one because everything is a struggle.

Creating a High-Performance Team

Creating a high-performance team doesn’t happen by chance; it involves hard work and picking the right people, even when you can’t always know that you’ve selected the right ones. It means looking at the leadership structure of the team with open eyes and being honest with your team about the style you want to work with.

Inspirational speaker and author of Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek, is famous for saying “people don’t wake up in the morning wanting to be managed”, and that couldn’t be more true for high-performance teams. Getting the top-down leadership right to begin with makes a huge difference.

What else can we do to encourage high performance out of our teams and turn a mediocre team into an incredible one? We have six tips that every potential high-performance team should follow.

Building Your High-Performance Team

1 Work With Personalities and Personal Strengths

The very first thing you must make sure of when building your high-performance team — or if you’re looking to turn around an under-performing team — is that you work with the personalities and the personal strengths of the people you have, not against them.

Personalities are a funny thing. Many of us have done the Myers-Briggs 16 personalities tests, which give an interesting insight into our personalities, but there are many more. Psychologists mostly agree that there are five personality traits, known as ‘the big five’. These are conscientiousness, openness, neuroticism, extroversion and agreeableness. Understanding how your team scores individually will allow you to see who will work properly together, as well as who won’t, and what tasks they will perform well on.

For example, someone who is high in openness is generally high in creativity, and someone who is low in agreeableness will probably be very detail orientated, but less creative. Knowing who scores highly and in what area will allow you to make sure the tasks are divided properly between the team members.

2. Collaboration and Communication

Good collaboration and communication for your team are vital, especially when it comes to project management and remote teams.

Remote teams, perhaps more so than those in an office setting, need to have open lines of communication. Whether that means you use a tool for keeping track of tasks, like Trello for example, or a tool for managing feedback from clients, or even a tool for managing your day-to-day collaborative calendars, getting the communication right is absolutely vital.

Open communication allows everyone to know where they are, what they are doing and who is doing what. It removes that “what is she doing?” or “why has he done this in that way?” line of questioning and speeds things up.

3. Rewards

Great teams need great rewards, whether that’s pizza on a Friday, a team building day every 12 weeks, or even just a congratulations where it’s required.

Building team morale helps when things are tough. For example, if teams know they are appreciated, they are likely to be higher in morale and happier to work harder. Be warned though, if a team feels like their reward is just a gimmick, like free pizza on a Friday, then it will backfire on you.

Your team is human, after all, and needs real responses to real-world problems, not fake gimmicks to trick them into working.

4. Risks

Risk-taking comes easier to some than to others. It’s usually easier for creative types to take risks than those who may be more logical, but taking risks as a team can pay off in the long run.

If you give your team the room to take calculated risks and to grow in confidence, it will pay back in dividends.

5. Personal Development

Personal development comes in all forms, but studies have shown that life-long learners make for happier employees and, as we all know, happier employees make for better team members.

There are not many people in high-performance roles who will be happy to plod along year after year without the investment they are due. It’s time to take this commitment further and really invest in your team.

Workplace coaching is great for this, and getting in an accredited coach to work with your team and instill a coaching culture in your workforce can make a huge difference to your whole team’s attitude.

6. Weed Out the Rot

This last tip is possibly one of the most important of all: it’s time to weed out the rot.

Everyone knows what this means, and everyone has worked with that colleague who just brings nothing to the table. They’re that colleague who is sullen and angry about everything; they are cynical and they can bring everyone’s mood down. Essentially, they are the rot that will set in and destroy a team.

Before you work on trying to find a way to get rid of this team member, try to figure out why they are like that. Of course, many people will be cynical and angry just because they are in the building, and it can’t be disregarded that some people just hate their jobs. But for some people, it is because they aren’t being challenged or supported enough.

If your company has a strong hierarchical structure, doesn’t support employees particularly well, has a lot of gossip and office politics, and doesn’t push people to better themselves, this can create resentment and low mood in employees, leading them to become angry and cynical and not productive.

High-performance teams are made up of all sorts of people and need a diverse range of thinkers to really achieve their goals. What kind of team will you build?

How to Increase Restaurant Sales: The Complete Guide

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Increase Restaurant Sales|How to Increase Restaurant Sales: The Complete GuideIf you run a restaurant, you’ll know exactly how competitive the industry is. There are over one million restaurants in the United States, and the projected sales for 2020 are expected to be $899 billion.

To succeed and thrive in your business, you’ll need to be savvy and innovative. You’ll need to find novel solutions to all of your marketing problems.

But exactly how do you go about building restaurant sales?

In this article, we’ll take a look at how to increase restaurant sales.

Increase Table Turnover Time

Is everyone who wants to come to your restaurant able to get a table when they want one? Having a full restaurant is great, but if there isn’t a high turnover of diners at the tables, then there’s room for improvement.

Often, the ability of a restaurant to increase sales lies in the speed of the service. If diners are coming in and it’s taking a long time to get them served, you’ve got a space in your restaurant that isn’t meeting its potential in terms of sales.

This doesn’t mean that you should rush your diners and ruin their customer experience. What it does mean is that you should be focused on taking their orders and expediting your service.

As soon as a table is free, it needs to be cleaned and reset for the next customers immediately.

Up-sell

Getting more customers into your restaurant is always going to be something that you’d like to do, but a great solution to increasing restaurant sales is to build on the size of your current customer order.

Asking your customers if they’d like to increase the size of their portion or suggesting different additional items that will compliment their meals are both great ways of up-selling and building the size of the order.

To make sure that your employees are up-selling to the best of their ability, carry out training so that they know the menu inside out. You should also teach them how to build rapport with the people that they’re serving.

Another great way of up-selling is by offering combos. If your customers are coming in and are just buying a main, get them to take a side too by creating special deals that build on their order.

Getting the Price Right

Your menu needs to be set at the right price. When you decide on the pricing, remember how much it costs to buy in the ingredients, to make the food, and serve it. In addition to factoring cost, you need to think about where your business is located and what the competition is doing.

Think about your target customers. How much do they expect to pay for a meal? If your prices are too high, you’ll miss the mark. If your prices are too low, you’ll sell yourself short and miss out on valuable profits.

Get the Decor Right

The look and ambiance of your restaurant are essential to its success. Your diners need to feel comfortable and at ease whenever they visit. If the decor and atmosphere don’t meet their expectations, it can end up ruining their meal.

Everything needs to be considered. Think about how brightly lit the dining areas are, consider whether the temperature of the room is okay, how comfortable the chairs are, etc.

Check out this restaurant furniture guide to find out more about selecting the right restaurant furniture.

Deliver the Very Best Service Possible

Things can go wrong in any dining experience, however, there is always going to be one way that you can overcome any shortcomings in your restaurant, and that is by delivering the very best service that you possibly can.

Great customer service provides a memorable experience and will leave a lasting impression on your diners.

Make your diners feel at ease. The more welcome they feel, the more they’ll relax. Impress them with the confidence that you can take their order. Suggest things that they might like from the menu and compliment them on their great choices.

When it comes to serving up the food, provide complimentary items. Bread or olives for the table or a free aperitif after the meal will make your guests feel special.

Help Your Customers Find You With Local SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way of improving where your restaurant’s website rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs). But if you want people to find your business online and visit you in the real world, then you need to harness the power of local SEO.

Local SEO entails getting your business listed on as many online listing sites as possible. These include Google My Business, Trip Advisor, Yelp, Foursquare, and many more.

By getting your restaurant listed on Google My Business, you’ll appear above the organic search results in the SERPs.

When you create your listing, make sure that your name, address, phone number and opening hours are all consistent with your website and with other listing sites.

Once you’re on these sites, do encourage your customers to leave reviews of your restaurant as this will enhance your listing.

Providing Offers and Happy Hours

Promotions and offers are a great way of enticing new customers into your restaurant.

Identify the times of the day or the week when your sales are slowest and run a promo. Happy hour offers where drinks or food are reduced in price work exceptionally well for many businesses.

Think about up-selling additional items from your menu during these happy hour promos.

Now You Know How to Increase Restaurant Sales

Improving sales in your restaurant needn’t take an entire menu revamp. Often, you can achieve this goal through great customer service, the right promotions, up-selling, and making your surroundings comfortable.

Now that you know how to increase restaurant sales, you can put all of these tricks and tips to good use.
For more great articles, make sure that you check out the rest of the site.

How to Buy a Small Business A Step-By-Step Guide

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Buy a Small Business|How to Buy a Small Business A Step-By-Step GuideIn 2018, people sold over 10,000 small businesses. If you want a business but don’t want to start one, buying a business can be a great choice.

You can find the right company that makes you excited about running a business.

But first, you should know how to buy a small business. Here are a few things to consider.

Determine What You Want

The first step to buying a business is to decide what kind of business you want. Think about if you would prefer a product or service-based business.

Consider if there’s an industry that you would prefer the business to be in. On the other hand, think about any industries you don’t want to work in.

You should also consider the business structure. A small business could be anything from a sole proprietorship to an S corp. Each structure has unique tax codes that you should consider when buying a small business.

Work With a Broker

If you aren’t sure how to buy a small business, consider a broker. You can find a business broker to help you find the right business for you.

Brokers understand the different types of businesses, and they can help you compare different options. Your broker can also recommend a specific business that they know is for sale.

While you can buy a business yourself, having help from a broker will make buying a small business easier.

Research the Business

Once you have a prospective business that you want to buy, you should research it. Learn as much as you can about the structure and the products or services the business offers.

You should also look at any financial records regarding sales, revenue, and debt. A small business may look good at first. But if they have a lot of outstanding credit, you may not want to buy it.

This is another great time to work with business brokers. They can help you go through the more technical
information to help you decide on a business.

Negotiate the Deal

After you research a business and decide to buy it, you have to figure out a price. The current owner may have a price they want, but you should negotiate.

You can use the information you gathered from your research to help negotiate a better deal. For example, if a small business has good sales but a lot of debt, you can leverage that.

Valuing a business can be difficult, so it may take some time to figure out the right price. But once you and the seller agree, you can move forward with buying a business.

Once you’re ready to buy a small business, you can sign the paperwork. That will transfer ownership to you, and you can start running the company how you see fit.

Deciding How to Buy a Small Business

Buying a business sounds like a lot of work, but it can be surprisingly simple. If you know how to buy a small business, you will know what steps to take.

And if you aren’t sure where to start, a local business broker can help. Then, you can navigate the process much more easily.

Want to learn more about running a business? Check out our other articles for more information.

8 Ways to Protect Your Business From Cyberthreats

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |cyberthreats |8 Ways to Protect Your Business From CyberthreatsEvery 39 seconds, there is a new cybersecurity attack. On any given day, there are around 80,000 cybersecurity attacks worldwide, equating to about 30 million attacks per year.

If you think your business is immune to cybersecurity threats, you’re wrong. Luckily, there’s a lot that you can do to protect your business from a cybersecurity attack.

Check out this guide to discover how to protect your business from cyberthreats.

1. Use Secure Passwords

A lot of times, cybersecurity attacks happen because of poorly chosen passwords. Creating a strong password is one of the easiest things you can do to prevent a breach in your system.

For a password to be strong it should:

  • Contain letters, numbers, and special characters
  • Be 8 to 15 characters long
  • Never be written down or stored in a nearby device
  • Updated frequently
  • Never contain personal information (Ie, birthdays, family member names, etc)

Make sure all of your employees know how to create a good password, and encourage them to change their passwords every 90 days or so.

2. Install Anti-Malware and Anti-Spyware Software

Installing anti-malware and anti-spyware software is another simple thing you can do to protect your business from cyberthreats.

When researching different software options, make sure you look for one that can run a full system scan on your computers. Also, you want to choose software that automatically updates itself and quarantines and removes malware and spyware.

While you may be tempted to purchase anti-virus software that comes with anti-malware and anti-spyware capabilities, it’s important to understand that a single piece of software is incapable of scanning and removing everything.

A multi-layered approach is the best way to secure your computer system.

3. Install Anti-Virus Software

In addition to installing anti-malware and anti-spyware software, you should also install anti-virus software.
This type of software continuously scans for viruses that are trying to break into your system files, emails, and operating systems. Just like quality anti-malware/spyware software, quality anti-virus software will run periodic updates.

When choosing an ant-virus software program, make sure you look for one that has daily-anti virus updates and a good reputation. You also want to double-check that the software program is compatible with your computer.

4. Use Email and the Internet With Caution

If your business does a lot of communication with email, then you especially want to be careful about what emails you open. While hackers can exploit an email in a variety of different ways, one of the most common things they do hide viruses in attachments.

If you receive an email from an address that you don’t recognize, don’t open it. Instead, delete it from your inbox immediately and add the address to your spam list.

You also need to take extra caution when using the internet, as even the safest websites can contain malware and spyware. One common way hackers lure internet users is by creating a fake website that looks just like a real website.

When entering a website URL, make sure to double-check the name of the website and make sure you’re spelling it correctly. Also, you should avoid clicking on graphics, popups, ads, and links to other websites.

5. Secure Your Wifi Network

Securing your Wifi network is another simple thing you can do to protect your business from cyberthreats.
If you leave your Wifi networks open, you’re giving hackers an open door to infiltrate your network and access your private information. So, make sure all of your business’ Wifi networks are private.

If you have a brick and mortar business that is frequented by customers, you should also create two Wifi networks: one for your business and one for your customers. This way, you don’t have to worry about your Wifi password getting into the wrong hands.

6. Backup Important Business Data

No matter how many steps you take to protect your business from a cybersecurity threat, cybersecurity breaches can still happen. Therefore, it’s important that you prepare your business for the worst-case scenario.

You should back up all of your critical business data and information. This way, if there is a cybersecurity breach, your business flow won’t be interrupted and your bottom line won’t be affected.

7. Train Your Employees On the Best Cybersecurity Practices

Knowing all of these cybersecurity protection tactics won’t do you any good if your employees don’t know them as well. As we mentioned earlier in the article, your employees should know how to choose a strong password and how often to change it.

But, the education shouldn’t stop there. You should also educate your employees on how to protect their data, set up a firewall, and how to recognize a security breach.

The reality is that most cybersecurity breaches are the result of human error, and all it takes is one mistake from an uninformed employee to compromise your business. While you can take on the cybersecurity training yourself, we recommend bringing in experts to help you, as they’ll be the most informed on the latest strategies and threats.

8. Conduct Penetration Testing

Last but not least, your business should conduct penetration testing on your computer systems.

Penetration testing involves simulating a cybersecurity attack in order to check for vulnerabilities in your computer system. Penetration testing comes with many benefits, including:

  • Detecting and avoiding security threats
  • Protecting customer loyalty and your company image
  • Evading penalties associated with breaches
  • To conduct penetration testing, make sure you work with a reputable company.

Are You Ready to Protect Your Business Against Cyberthreats?

Now that you’ve read this guide, it’s time to put these tips into action so you can protect your business against cyberthreats. Pretty soon, your business will be more secured than ever before.

Be sure to check back in with our blog for more cybersecurity-related tips and tricks.