So You Think Your Boss Is Breaking The Law

/in /by

StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article
Photo courtesy of Pixabay

In the movies, if someone suspects their boss is breaking the law, the conclusion to the story is pretty standard. The employee – sometimes after a crisis of confidence – reports their boss and ultimately triumphs. They stand at the end credits, a paragon of virtue and Doing The Right Thing.

The real world is very different.

If you suspect that your boss is breaking the law, handling the problem is not quite as simple as you might think. Your career is on the line; the personal finances of your family are on the line. Those facts alone are enough to make someone hesitate and wonder what they should do.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you think your boss, or the larger company, is doing something illegal, you have a number of options before you.

1 Ignore It

Upside: If you ignore the issue, you’re not going to get into any trouble — or potentially lose your job — due to reporting it. Ignorance is bliss, so you might decide it’s easier to just pretend you’re still ignorant of what’s happening. The choice to ignore the issue is a powerful one, but it might be the one that works best for you and your personal situation.

Downside: You could be affected by what they are doing. Let’s say you are a taxi driver and you learn that risks are being taken with the vehicle fleet maintenance, documents forged, cars that aren’t safe to drive being let out onto the road. Your silence could ultimately result in you having to seek out an attorney that has experience in treating auto and work-related injuries because you become a direct victim of their negligence. This kind of situation can happen in all fields; with white collar crime, you could even be implicated as an accessory, for example. If you think the idea of whistleblowing could damage your career, then you need to think through the potential consequences of suffering for their malpractice.

2 Report Them Anonymously

StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article
Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Upside: Though we know many famous whistleblowers, there are plenty of anonymous whistleblowers who still managed to make a change to company practices. This helps you to feel safe in the job without fear of reprisals, while still ensuring that changes are made due to your report. You can be completely honest with anonymous complaints because they can’t be traced to you, allowing you to be sure all the right areas are investigated.

Downside: You do have to consider what will happen if your complaint is followed up on by law enforcement or local government. If the entire company is engaged in illegal acts, you could easily find yourself without a job. Before you report, it’s wise to examine your career options and ensure you have a plan B if the company should close. It’s also worth remembering that no anonymity is one hundred percent complete all the time; there’s always a chance – however improbable – that your boss will find out it was you who made the report. You have to be certain of your facts before you make any report to an authority, so don’t make a guess: you have to be sure.

3 Confront Them

Upside: This is the most direct approach and thus can herald the best results. There is always a chance there is an innocent explanation for what you think you have witnessed. This option gives you the chance to find out the full story before rushing to any judgement. There is also the fact that your observations could serve as a wakeup call. Illegal or other nefarious activity is meant to be secret; if you have noticed, it might be a sign to your boss or the company that they are losing control of their secrecy. This, in turn, could make them examine their motives, and potentially change their ways.

Downside: It might end badly; you could be fired, or even pressed into being complicit in the illegal activity on pain of losing your job. This could put you in an extremely difficult situation, meaning you have to choose between what’s “right” and what is best for you and your family. It’s a good idea to make sure you have another option for employment, just in case your intervention is not welcomed.

There’s no doubt that discovering your boss or company is engaged in illegal or negligent business practices is troubling. Ultimately, you have to make a decision that is best for you; hopefully the options above will have given you something to ponder.

How to Help Employees Communicate by Email More Effectively

/in , /by

Email is still considered the primary communication tool in the business world. Today’s business landscape may have shifted further towards video conferences and short messaging platforms, but the majority of formal business communications are still conducted via email. There is no sign of emails being replaced by other means of communication either.

Despite the common use of emails, not all professionals know how to use them properly. This is exactly why we still see mistakes such as incorrectly using CC instead of BCC happening in the real world. As an employer, you can play a more active role in helping employees communicate by email more effectively.

Email-Related Training

Despite the importance of emails, most email etiquette and skills are learned through experience and real-world practice. Sure, there are a lot of resources and websites that specifically share email-related knowledge and tips. That said, very little formal training is provided in school or corporate training programs.You can reduce the number of mistakes your employees make when communicating via email by providing them with such training programs. They are easy to find and will even help employees fine-tune their email content for effective business communication.

It is also a good idea to provide employees with training on the tools available to them. In Outlook, for example, you can sort emails automatically, forward emails with certain marks to other recipients, and even automate everyday email tasks (i.e. adding a calendar entry for meetings and invitations).

The Right Tools for the Job

There are also additional tools designed to really boost email productivity and effectiveness. Customer Relationship Management or CRM platforms, for example, are capable of handling, logging, and documenting email communication. These comprehensive databases enable sales officers to keep track of their conversations with clients without ever missing a beat.

The same can be said for research tools. Let’s say you want your sales team to connect with new potential clients. Provide them with a tools such as The Email Finder to be able to research and verify email addresses. Click here to learn more about email verification can really boost your employees’ email productivity.

Monitoring

Monitoring is always a tricky subject to discuss. Is it ethical to monitor business emails sent from @yourcompany.com email addresses? Ethics debates aside, email monitoring is a proven way of boosting the effectiveness of business emails nonetheless.

As previously mentioned, CMS platforms can now keep track of email communications between sales officers and clients. That simple tracking feature is very valuable when it comes to developing strong relationships with clients since it allows your employees to personalize the tone of the conversation based on past emails.

Tracking also gives you, the employer, a clear picture of how emails are helping the business thrive. This, along with the previous tips we covered in this article, will help you assist employees in using their email addresses more effectively.

What Should You Do If Injured At Work

/in /by


If you have been involved in an accident at work, then there are a number of steps that you should take to ensure that you are completely covered, particularly if the cause of the accident wasn’t your fault. Workplace accidents can occur for a number of reasons – negligence from the company that you are working at, or a contracted company such as a cleaning company in your building, faulty equipment, or simple bad luck. Here, we’re taking a closer look at the steps you should take, if you’ve been involved in an accident at work.

Record It

No matter how minor the results of the accident, it is always imperative that you report it and a record of the accident has been made. This can help to ensure that the company are aware of a potentially impending claim that is coming their way, and to ensure that you are seeking appropriate medical advice from the on-site trained first aider. Depending on the industry that you are working in, there are a number of procedures that you may need to go through when you are reporting an accident, but this is imperative. For example, if you are in the construction industry, and you’re not wearing the protective gear that you have been given, then the outcome of the accident could be much worse than if you were. Having some form of record of the accident is also important if you are looking to make a claim against your company.

Go To The Doctors

Going to the doctors is important if you have a minor to severe injury that requires attention. Having this on your medical record will not only support your claim, but seeking appropriate medical advice will ensure that your best interests are kept to. While you may see a sprain as an insignificant injury at the time, it can lead to much bigger problems in the future, so it is important that you get any form of injury seen to immediately, before they become much worse. Even a minor cut could end up infected particularly if it occurred from metal, wood or glass, so seeking medical advice is critical.

Make A Claim

If you are looking to make a claim, then you’re going to need a record of your injury and the accident is going to need to be a result of the company’s negligence. Through this, relevant insurance or claim companies can fill out an accident at work claim calculator to help work out how much you should receive in compensation. There are a number of legal requirements that need to be met when making a claim, so it is important to seek advice prior to attempting to make one, so you are not left without a job and no compensation.

Having an accident at work can be extremely serious in a large number of cases, and these have caused life-changing injuries and in more severe cases, even death. Make sure that you know what to do and who to turn to in the event of an injury at work, so you can take appropriate action.

5 Tips on How to Better Your Time Management

/in /by

StrategyDriven Practices for Professional Article

In a world where it is getting difficult to spare even one moment for personal salvation, time is of the utmost essence. The world is progressing at a pace that is becoming more and more rapid daily. The days seem to be getting shorter and there are somehow not enough hours to deal with the huge bulk of tasks that await us. We all know how it feels like to wake up regretting the procrastination we thought wouldn’t have that big of an impact.

This is the reason time management is fast becoming a necessity instead of a choice.

If you want to be able to breathe without feeling suffocated, then you need to start working towards managing your time. It is the only way to make your day more productive without cracking under the pressure. Due to the rising need, time management has now become a process that must be treated like any other value-generating function. It has become a proper discipline and more people are working towards refining it.

Here are a few tips that will revolutionise your entire schedule and assist you in dealing with the daily stress without losing your sanity.

  1. Make use of resource planning software

This first tip is especially important for busy businesses. Resource planning software is a blessing when it comes to efficient time management. These tools assist you in planning out your day and completing your tasks on time. Any business is founded on the belief that time is money for everyone and that making the most out of it is everyone’s aspiration.

These systems are designed to save your valuable time and improve project delivery. This will help you delegate projects to the right people, improve the quality and speed of work, and take productivity to a new level.

If you’re looking to make use of resource planning software, an example I found that’s worth looking into is timewax (https://www.timewax.co.uk/) which is a highly proficient and reliable resource planning application for businesses of all sizes and nature. It is a multi-platform solution that travels with you wherever you go, on your desktop or your mobile devices, offering the freedom to work without wasting time.  If you are looking to give your profits a significant turnover, then Timewax is your go to time management assistant.

  1. Prioritise Intelligently

One of the secrets behind the lives of those who seem to have it all together is that they have learned the art of prioritising. Instead of allowing the daily workload and endless chores bring you down, make a list of all your tasks and then break them down into several categories for your own ease. Prioritising will help you plan your time in a better and more productive manner than if you haphazardly attempt to check items off your to-do list.

Here are four priority categories you can jot down and fill in according to the urgency of the tasks at hand:

  • Important and critical– Tasks that are high priority and must be done no matter what. These are the tasks you should start with.
  • Important, but not critical– These jobs are ones that seem to be important at first glance, but after a closer look do not make it to the list of tasks to be completed urgently. Note down a slot for each of these responsibilities and complete them according to your decided schedule.
  • Critical, but not important: These chores are a nuisance as they are not of any real value, but gain importance because of the ‘noise’ they make. Make efforts to delegate such tasks to someone else and if not possible, attempt to give them average precedence.
  • Not important and not critical: These are the responsibilities you can do without as they only clutter your day and make you busier than you actually are. It is best to delegate these tasks so that the time saved can be utilised for priority tasks.
  1. Learn to Plan Ahead

One of the worst blunders you can make to ruin your entire day is to jump in without having a clear picture of what you are expected to accomplish. The time you spend planning the events of your day is trivial compared to the time you will waste jumping from one task to another, desolately trying to accomplish everything. There are two time-frames for you to plan out your schedule, depending on whether you are a night person or a day enthusiast:

  • The night before: Take fifteen minutes out before you start your bedtime routine to note down the tasks that are waiting for you when you wake up. Getting up the next day with everything already planned out will give you a sense of calm and kick-start your day on a good note.
  • First thing in the morning: After getting ready to face the day, sit down and plan your day before leaving for your first assignment.
  1. Set deadlines

Even when our days are filled with an endless list of tasks, we still somehow manage to waste time procrastinating or doing things that we can definitely do without. Setting specific deadlines for every task you need to finish will help you keep your schedule and avoid losing precious time.

Try to set a deadline that is a few hours earlier so that you can take care of any tasks that emerge suddenly. It is helpful to challenge yourself and setting a reward for yourself for completion of the chore will do wonders for you.

Keep your eyes on the clock and do not let anything divert your focus and attention. Set rewards for completing your task on time.

  1. Utilise Your Downtime Efficiently

This certainly does not mean that you spend all of your downtime planning and prioritising further, as it will just elevate your stress levels and make you incompetent. If you find yourself stuck in morning traffic or sitting in the waiting room before a meeting, then finalising your dinner plans or putting together a grocery list will help manage your time efficiently. However, make sure you spend some of this extra time relaxing and catching your breath as overworking your mind will lead to premature fatigue before the day is even half over.

Time management is a skill that everyone needs to master. Be it a student attending music lessons after school or a business person running from one meeting to another. Stressing out about having too much to do in an inadequate amount of time will only result in you almost getting a brain haemorrhage!

Make use of these tips, get help where you can, invest in the right technology and watch your life take a turn for the better. You will be able to spend some quality time with your loved ones without having to feel guilty about sacrificing the time you could have spent on completing your tasks.

The Real Steps Towards Business Success

/in /by

StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article
Photo courtesy of Pexels

When you’re in business, things can start to go stale. This can happen in the early stages, before you’ve even fledged the nest of learning everything that you already need to know – or (as is the case in most instances) a little later on towards the end of your career. There are highs and lows in business, and success can come once, many times or not at all. Just because you’ve been successful once doesn’t mean that it’s not your turn again. It’s all about taking note of the building blocks to get yourself back towards where you need to be.

Take Note Of New Talent

Just because you’ve been your line of business for a long time doesn’t mean that things aren’t open to changing. There are always going to be new people walking in and out of offices all over the world, wanting to learn the exact same things that you did – but bringing so much more to the table. We are now in the world of ecommerce, where online trade is booming – Turn 5 and Steve Voudouris is just one example of taking something online and seeing your business take off, with Ford Mustang and other car parts being dealt independently. It’s as simple as that, but may need a bit of work to get on board with. Getting onto their (fresh talent’s)  wavelength and seeing what they have got to offer isn’t the end of the world, nor is it lowering yourself. It is instead being open-minded and thinking with a business brain.

Be Critical

You can be too critical in business, especially when it comes to the work of other people. You need to turn that criticism on yourself and see what you can work on to improve your process. It may be something as simple as waking up an hour earlier to get a clear mind ready for the day ahead, or perhaps you need to be more empathetic in your approach to employees. Don’t be afraid to listen to feedback and work on it yourself. That way you know that you are working upon the steps that other people have noticed that you need to take.

Don’t Reap Rewards

It can be easy to get too complacent with what you’re doing, or have done in the past. You need to keep yourself on your toes at all times and be prepared for change. Business is always changing, and those who have been in the game for long enough know this fact. Don’t take it for granted; instead, look for opportunities to really develop on what you know already. Don’t celebrate something until it is finally and completely a job well done; congratulating yourself along the way for a project that isn’t totally finished will only see you slog back to doing the basics that are required for you to get to the end. You need to be working at your best ability throughout all of your tasks, and so do your employees. Set a target and stick to it.