How to Help Your Business Work Round the Clock

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Business Efficiency|How to Help Your Business Work Round the ClockImproving business efficiency and productivity should be one of your main aims as a business owner. It is entirely possible, providing you do sufficient research in line with your trade. For many of us, it can often feel like there are not enough hours in the day to finish every single detail on our to-do lists. However, it is possible if you work out how to maximise efficiency in the workplace. Keep reading to find out how you can help your business work round the clock.

Offer flexible working time

When doing research surrounding this topic, you probably want to learn how to completely maximise your time and add an extra hour to every day of the week. Whilst it is important to stay productive, every single industry has created the illusion that worth is measured upon productivity. Sadly, this isn’t beneficial for your physical or mental health.

Therefore, experts recommend that you recruit and hire employees within your means to help you run the business and keep everything in check. When it comes to the crunch, many business owners often see their products and services diminishing in quality as a result of doing everything themselves. A few extra pairs of hands will provide you with the opportunity to expand your business.

When it comes to timekeeping and rota creation, experts believe that offering flexible working time is a fantastic, manageable way to ensure your business works round the clock. No matter what contract you create, there will be something suited for everyone – even night-time work. Keep this in mind when hiring.

Look after your employees

As well as offering flexible working time for your employees, we also recommend that you do all you can to take care of them and provide them with adequate management. Research has shown that employees will work more productively and efficiently if they are happy within their role at work. This also benefits their mental and physical health as a result. With this, it is your responsibility to put measures in place to ensure they have exactly what they need. Happy and content employees will boost productivity in no time.

Invest in useful technology

Thirdly, you can help your business work round the clock by investing in useful tech. Thanks to the wonderful expansion and development of technology, we can use this to our advantage with businesses and increase productivity levels. For example, many businesses have jumped at the opportunity to use items like automated packaging machines from BluePrint Automation. There are so many benefits to industrial packaging machines – perhaps the best advantage is that they improve production speed.

Furthermore, when it comes to manual labour, there are legal requirements regarding breaks and downtime for employees. Choosing to use technology such as automated packaging machines eliminates this downtime and keeps your business working round the clock.

Choose an effective marketing strategy

Your business will remain efficient and profitable if you consistently attempt to widen and increase your audience and customer focus. Therefore, we recommend that you should attempt to choose an effective marketing strategy that draws customers to your products and services. There is an endless list of marketing services available and most are very affordable.

Opting for services such as email marketing and social media marketing will help you advertise your company around the clock. You can schedule posts on email providers as well as social media platforms. It is very important that you engage your customers where possible, and it’s useful if you make this recurring at all times of the day.

How do you increase business productivity and efficiency?

4 Ways that Businesses Can Improve Employee Satisfaction

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People |Employee Satisfaction|4 Ways that Businesses Can Improve Employee SatisfactionAside from clients or customers, employees are probably the most important people responsible for the success of a business. Happy employees lead to a productive work environment, great results, and happy clients. Unhappy employees lead to a high employee turnover, and less desirable results. So, it’s pretty clear that employee satisfaction should be a priority for every business out there. If you’ve noticed lowered productivity, or an increase in employee turnover, it may be due to the fact that your employees aren’t satisfied with their work environment. Keep reading to see what you can do to improve upon this.

Vending machines

It may seem like such a small thing, but for many employees, the small things are what matter. Most employees spend the majority of their time in the office, so making that a comfortable place that requires nearly everything they could want is a great way of ensuring happiness amongst your employees. If you’re able to acquire vending machines with healthier options – even better. Your employees will know that you care about them and appreciate the fact that you’re taking an interest in their health. Get in contact with a vending machine business to see what they can do for you.

Incentives

Effective incentive programs are a great way of increasing productivity as well as employee satisfaction. Employees may feel underappreciated if they’re going above and beyond and not receiving anything in return. One way to fix this is to offer incentives for employees. Incentives don’t always have to be financial, although financial incentives are definitely the most desirable amongst employees. Knowing that their hard work is being recognized and rewarded will certainly improve an employee’s opinion of their working environment. This will also likely lessen your employee turnover and thus lead to a more stable work environment.

Better medical benefits

One massive factor when it comes to employee satisfaction, is the benefits that they get. Do they get a pension? Do they get a discount? And, most importantly, how do their medical benefits look? Many businesses opt for giving employees a weaker medical scheme, as this is much cheaper. But investing in a better medical aid for your employees can only do your business good. You’ll have healthier employees, a lower employee turnover, and employees who are generally loyal and productive. This is also a way of showing your employees that you care, which will help build better relationships between management and employees.

Workplace counselling

Once again, this is a way of improving your relationship with your employees. Workplace counselling has many benefits, both for you and your employees. Employees who are struggling with their mental health may not be performing as they should, and as an employer, you want the best for them. Workplace counselling has shown to be very effective. Keep in mind that your employees may be hesitant about counselling in the workplace, but once you assure them that everything will remain confidential, they may be more open to the idea. This will definitely help your employees become happier individuals.

How to Use Video as Business Training Materials

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Video Training|How to Use Video as Business Training MaterialsUsing videos as part of your training resources is a no brainer in this day and age.

Videos can be a great way to increase the retention of information by trainees; in some cases, up to 90% of the information compared to written text alone.

It’s not just enough to film a PowerPoint, though; video content needs to be interesting and enticing to keep your employees on task.

Stick to One Topic

Just as your marketing team will tell you that every piece of content needs one, and only one, call to action, so too does your training video.

It’s better for everyone if your training videos are shorter and designed to tackle one aspect of the role rather than an epic feature-length video that covers everything.

As a business, you’ll want to make your training videos available to your employees to come back to if they’re going to, they are much more likely to do that I the videos are in short and easy to digest chunks rather than hours long and a little on the dull side.

Decide How You’ll Approach It

How you’ll approach your training materials and training videos is very much dependent on your company culture, but it’s important to remember that people learn better if they are entertained rather than just lectured at.

Very few lecturers and trainers can be charismatic and interesting while delivering a talk, but even the most uninteresting of topics can be made better when you spend some time considering how you’d like to present the material.

Don’t Be Afraid to Be Bold

Speaking of how you’d like to produce the material, there’s no reason why you can’t be bold with your training videos!

Include some epic b-roll, a few cinematic effects, and maybe even some sound effects to get the party rolling.

Most training videos will be internal, so as much as they need to be on-brand, you can afford to be a little looser with your brand than you would be in public.

Script and Storyboard Your Training Videos

Once you’ve got everything planned out, you’ll need to script and storyboard your ideas.

It’s a good idea to get them down on paper and make them official before you start, as this will be the key to keeping everyone on-task and keep the momentum up when you’re putting together your training videos.

One of the biggest bonuses of scripting and storyboarding is that you can plan exactly what to say and ensure that no important information is left out!

Stay Away from PowerPoint!

If you’ve ever seen the video ‘How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint‘ Ted Talk by David JP Phillips, you’ll know exactly what is meant by staying away from PowerPoint.

In this pandemic-hit era, many of us are used to webinars over Zoom and, although they are useful in these challenging times, it doesn’t mean they are exciting or interesting.

Ditch the PowerPoints and focus on the story of your training videos!

3 Strategies To Help You Listen to Your Employees

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Listen to your Employees|3 Strategies To Help You Listen to Your EmployeesYou must learn to get the balance right as a leader. When you are so determined to protect your business, this could be to the detriment of the people that matter, your employees. Many employees talk about wanting their voices to be heard, the fact is that they want someone to listen to them. Employees demand feedback, but they want support too. And this means that leaders have to be more aware of individual needs. What does it take to learn how to listen to your employees?

Be Mindful

Advisors like Paul Ognibene provide a treasure trove of information on being a great leader. But a great leader is not just someone who knows how to be in charge, they are someone who is very aware of their surroundings. This means that if you are not able to acknowledge the situation based on body language and other forms of non-verbal communication, you have to work hard on developing this intuition. Learning to be engaged in a conversation is not just about listening, it’s about understanding what you need to do to be present. We’ve all had conversations with people who are not actually in the room, despite being physically in front of you. And as a leader, everybody is keeping their eye on every move you make. If you ever appear disconnected, this will be to your detriment.

Learning to Engage

Learning to listen is not just about listening to what they have to say, but it’s about asking them to elaborate and encourage them to expand upon what they mean. If you start to engage yourself in a more active way like this, you will start to follow up with your employees. This gives them a signal that they know you are listening and paying attention, and it gives you the opportunity to check in with reality. It’s a habit that is so important, but asking questions could be a very simple way for you to remind yourself to engage. But it’s about making sure that you ask questions that encourage employees to elaborate.

Never Judge

You may think that you are someone who keeps your mouth shut until it’s time for you to speak. One of the grave mistakes leaders make is that they think that everything they say is important. The best leaders are those who make their followers feel that everyone is the same, including the boss. And if you judge others, not only are you making harsh criticisms about something different, exposing yourself as immature, but you are not listening. And if you are unable to embrace new approaches and merely judge what other people say, you will never adapt to change.

Remember, it’s about developing the skill. You may feel that external stresses are getting to, which hinders your ability to listen. But this is where you have to learn to take a step back. Running a business is not easy, and any external pressure can knock you off-kilter in an emotional sense. But if your employees feel that you’re not listening to them, this is a one-way ticket to low morale.

3 Design Tips for a More Productive Office Space

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Office Space|3 Design Tips for a More Productive Office SpaceWhen you are the owner of a small business, one of your top priorities is to help your employees be as productive as possible. There are many ways in which this can be accomplished. You might need to adjust your management style to help your workers be more productive throughout the day, or you might need to invest in new equipment and software geared towards increasing productivity.

You can help your employees be more productive that might not have occurred to you is to re-design your office space a bit. The layout, look, and overall feel of an office all play heavily into how productive a person can be when they are at work. An outdated and dingy office space will not be encouraging or functional enough to allow your employees to be as productive as possible.

If you are looking to improve your workers’ productivity and would like to start with the design of your offices, here are a few tips that can go a long way to helping you reach your goals.

1. Make Things Brighter

The first thing you will want to evaluate when you are re-designing your offices for maximum productivity is the amount of light in the space. If you are still working with outdated and depressing fluorescent lighting, then it is probably time for an upgrade.

The best thing that you can do is bring in as much natural light as possible. You will be surprised at the uptick in your employees’ mood when they can experience more natural light throughout the day. More energy, improved attitudes, and more can all be brought about with natural light.

Where traditional windows on walls are not an option, skylights are worth considering. By installing flat roof lights, you can reap all the benefits of natural light.

2. Incorporate Color

If your offices have maintained the same dull shade of white that they always have, it is time to incorporate some color. There are some colors that are proven to improve productivity levels when incorporated in the right way.

Colors that are more on the natural side of things like blues and greens can help you and your workers to feel more focused while on the job. Warmer hues are linked to increased creativity and intensity in the workplace.

3. Bring in a Bit of Nature

One rather simple thing that you can do to create an office design that is geared towards productivity is bringing in some plants. Not only can plants brighten up a space instantly, but there are several that can contribute to an overall improvement in the air quality of your offices, which is known to boost both mood and productivity in general.

Furthermore, when you use the right plants correctly, they can even help reduce noise throughout the office by acting as a natural sound barrier. Any clients or customers that enter your offices will also feel more comfortable in such a space.