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Getting Your Office Space Ready for Staff Members’ Return

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Pandemic|Getting Your Office Space Ready for Staff Members' ReturnThe coronavirus and Covid-19 pandemic has seen many businesses switch to working on a remote basis. This has been extremely useful in terms of slowing the spread of the virus and keeping staff members as well as possible. Now, many businesses have found that remote working has actually been completely fine for their business. Staff have managed to stay just as productive and video call software has meant we’ve all been able to keep in touch for events such as meetings that would usually be carried out on a face to face basis. It’s not all too surprising, then, that many businesses have decided to remain permanently remote. It cuts out office costs and other overheads, making businesses more cost effective. However, some business owners are still eager for the return to the office. They like having a set environment where staff must turn up, act professionally and can get their work done while being overseen by management.

If you fall into the latter category, you may be anticipating a return to the office at some point this year, as vaccines are being rolled out and as we are getting ready for a return to life as usual. Here are a few things you can do to get your office space ready!

Deep Clean

If your office has been uninhabited for a year or so now, you’re going to have to conduct a deep clean before your staff head back in. Not only will this make sure that your office space is sparkling and bright for when everyone gets back to work, but it will ensure that staff can feel that it’s Covid safe and secure too. Generally speaking, the best option is to use professional commercial cleaning services, which will get the job done to the highest standard.

Redecorating

The office can feel a bit drab. You want staff to feel glad to be back to work. So, why not add a fresh coat of paint to the walls and make things look nicer for their return? This will boost staff happiness and maximise productivity. Again, this job is often best left to the professionals, so make sure to use a Commercial Painting Company.

Implement Covid Safety Measures

Sure, staff may be able to return to work soon. But this doesn’t mean that Covid is necessarily going to just disappear. You need to make sure that you implement Covid safety measures in the space still. This is important for general hygiene and to make staff feel comfortable too. Make sure that there are screens between desks where staff have to work in close proximity to one another. Make sure that there are plenty of hand sanitiser dispensers available. Make sure that staff have masks and that they wear them when walking around the office.

These, of course, are just a few suggestions to get the ball rolling. There are all sorts of other steps that you can take to get your office space ready for staff members’ return. Hopefully, some of the advice will be able to help you and will prove useful!

What Should You Look For When You Conduct a Background Check?

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | What Should You Look For When You Conduct a Background Check?If you are taking a look at applicants, you might be wondering who you should run a background check on. Ideally, you would like to run a background check on everyone. In actuality, background checks can be expensive, and you are probably only going to run background checks on people who you are seriously considering for an open position. As a result, you want to use the best background check possible. With the vast majority of companies running background checks on people they are considering for open positions, you need to know what to look for. What are the items that you should consider if you are conducting a background check?

Look for Signs of a Criminal Record First

Without a doubt, the most important element that you need to consider is the presence of a criminal record. Of course, being convicted of a crime does not necessarily make someone a bad person. On the other hand, if you are responsible for the actions of an employee, you do not want to place your other employees or customers in harm’s way unnecessarily. In addition to hurting other people, this could place the company in an awkward position. Remember that an applicant cannot be turned down because of the presence of a criminal record alone. On the other hand, an employer could turn down someone if the offense committed is directly related to the duties of the position. This means that the specific nature of the crime could make you a liability to the company. For example, if someone was convicted of theft and the open position was at a bank, this would be an issue.

Therefore, what should you look for if you are conducting a criminal background check? First, you should take a look at felony convictions. Are there any felony convictions present? If so, what are they? Then, you should look at federal crimes as well. These are separate from state crimes, which make up the majority of convictions. In addition, you should also take a look and see if the individual is a registered sex offender. That might be relevant to the open position.

If you are doing a deep background check, you may check other criminal records as well. For example, there may be information listed on the global homeland security database. Or, you may even pull up an international criminal history. Be sure to consider these criminal records as well, as they can be important.

Confirm Someone’s Identity

This may sound like it is superfluous. After all, you require people to produce a photo ID, don’t you? You even ask them for their social security number if you are hiring someone, right? Unfortunately, technology has made it easy to steal someone’s identity. Therefore, you need to make sure that someone is who they say they are. Why would someone lie about their identity on an employment application? Perhaps they are collecting benefits that may disappear if they got another job. For this reason, you should also confirm someone’s identity as part of a background check.

Don’t Forget About a Credit Check

Finally, you may also want to conduct a credit check as well. A credit check is important for positions that involve money management. If an applicant is going to be managing the company’s money, you want to make sure they can manage their own money well. If they cannot manage their own money well, how are they going to be able to manage the money of the company? Therefore, you need to order a credit check. Make sure the credit report is accurate. If you see any issues on the credit report, you may want to check with the applicant to make sure these are completely understood before moving forward.

Conduct a Thorough Background Check Before Hiring Someone

Ultimately, these are a few of the most important factors that you need to consider if you are conducting a background check on a potential candidate. Make sure that you have all the information you needed to make a proper hiring decision. Conducting a dive into someone’s background can help you make the right choice.

How To Backup Your Business Data

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StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article |Backup Business Data|How To Backup Your Business Data

Data backup is a crucial part of protecting your business’s continuity. If your only backup is kept on a single computer or a mobile, and this is then lost or stolen, then your business data will be lost completely. If you have paper copies of your business data, this isn’t adequate data protection. If your business premises were to burn down, or suffer from severe flooding, then the data that you need to carry on your business would be irretrievably lost. Data backup is an important part of any crisis preparedness plan for businesses large and small.

Data Loss

There are lots of ways to potentially lose your business data, and protecting it should be a top concern for your IT. You could lose data due to:

  • A desktop or laptop hard drive crash, or damage to your mobile device, which could render your data unrecoverable
  • Your computer or phone being stolen. Break-ins at businesses are common, and most stolen laptops or desktops are never recovered.
  • Data being accidentally deleted or deliberately deleted by an employee who has been let go.
  • Your computer being hacked by malware
  • Your only storage accounts being hacked
  • A ransomware attack could make your files inaccessible to you until you pay a substantial fee to get back in.

A Data Backup Regime Is An Essential

For proper data protection for your business, you must establish an effective data backup system. These systems should follow these three steps:

  • Backup your business data on a regular basis
  • Create backups on reliable media, such as through Media Duplication Services, or in the cloud
  • If you use media for backups, you must store the devices in a secure, off-site location

A good, simple rule to follow for business data protection is that if losing the data would prevent you from doing business effectively, you need to back it up. Desktop software programs can be reinstalled if they’re lost, but recovering the details of things like transactions or business correspondence is usually impossible if these files are lost in any way, or damaged beyond repair.

Data Archive Vs Data Backup

Most backups are done periodically and are short-term images of data for disaster recovery purposes. Archiving is different, and usually refers to the long-term storage of data that is no longer being regularly used by your business, but can be restored if somebody needs it, for example, data about a former client or a completed project.

Backup Critical Business Data

There are two important steps to successfully backup your business data.

  • Identify the critical data in your business that needs to be backed up
  • Implement backups of this key data on a regular schedule

Your data backup should include all of the files that you have created or modified, so they can be regularly backed up. For a lot of business, this will include everything from accounting files to emails.

To make backing up easier, more and more business applications are now available through the cloud, where you can run automatic backups. However, if you are using desktop (non-browser) applications, then these can be reinstalled from media or downloaded, so you don’t need to back these up.

Cloud Storage

One of the best ways to make your data backup easy is to use online backup services. This is just one of the reasons why cloud computing can be enormously beneficial to small businesses. However, you should keep in mind that cloud services can still be vulnerable to losing your data to problems like hacking or employee sabotage, such as password changes or deletion. To counteract this risk, it is a good idea to take occasional local backups of any data that you store in the cloud.

Local Data Backups

If you choose to save your data locally and are not using cloud storage then you can make the backup process a little more simple by keeping all of the files that you know will need to be archived on a single drive on your computer.

For example, perhaps you need to back up files from accounting, word-processing documents, spreadsheets, emails, and photos. Putting your account program, Microsoft Office, Outlook, and Paintshop Pro all onto a separate drive will make it much easier to achieve all the files that you have created or modified with these programs. All you will then need to do is backup that one drive or folder. Once you have identified the critical data that needs to be archived, all you have to do is install and use a backup software program in order to safely archive your business data on a regular schedule.

It’s a smart idea to backup your data every night. There are lots of different backup software programs on the market that will allow you to set a backup schedule to suit you that will automatically backup all your data for you, without you needing to get involved after the initial setup. Backup software that also zips and encrypts the backup data will help to save on disk space and will increase the security of the data.

You should only keep your data backups on-site if you are able to keep them in a fire-proof, waterproof, indestructible sage. Investing in backup solutions like a tape drive or an external hard drive and religiously sticking to your planned backup schedule won’t help you at all if your data backup copies are then stored in one place, and that place is struck by a disaster like a flood or a fire. To really be secure, you must store your backups off-site. Cloud backup doesn’t completely eliminate this worry but is definitely better than most physical locations for storage.

Some businesses choose to keep their data backups in security boxes at banks. The fee for a security box, if you decide to do this, is usually tax-deductible, which is a bonus to choosing to store your data in this way. Other small business owners choose to keep multiple copies of the backed-up records at the homes of different friends or family members. It doesn’t matter where you choose to store your backups, as long as the place that you choose for storing your business data off-site is secure, and that you have regular access to it.

Online Backup Services

For the ultimate in security, you need to make sure that you always use strong passwords for these online backup services, change those passwords on a regular basis, and ensure that your backed up files have been encrypted. As cloud storage is shared, cloud providers will normally encrypt user data automatically.

USB (Thumb) Drives

USB drives are always being improved and increasing in available capacity, making them ideal for quick data backups. They still don’t have the capacity that external hard drives do, but they do have a fast data transfer rate and are easily portable. You can backup data to a USB drive very easily and take it offsite to a secure location. As they don’t have any moving parts, USB drives also have the advantage of being very reliable.

External Hard Drives

For small businesses, buying and using an external hard drive for data backups is one of the most commonly recommended methods. External hard drives are usually pretty inexpensive compared to tape drive systems. They are also very easy to use. All you need to do is plug in the hard drive into your computer’s USB port. Most external hard drives come with backup software ready to go to help you.

Local Area Network (LAN) Storage

If you have a local area network (LAN), you could choose to also backup your files to another computer or server. However, if the backup machine is kept in the same location, then be aware that it could be vulnerable to being stolen or being damaged by a flood or a fire. To prevent theft from being a risk, you could install the server in a locked cage, cabinet, or closet, and be careful about who has access to it.

Tape Storage

If you have large amounts of data that need to be backed up, or want to make and store regular complete data archives to be stored on a long-term basis, then tape backups are the best option for you. They are very reliable and can store a massive amount of data.

Back It Up Or Risk Losing It

No business should ever run the risk of losing your business data. The best defense against a disaster like this happening to your business is by using a proper data protection plan. If you create a proper backup system that includes regular archiving and backing up your business data on a regular basis and backing it up properly, you will be able to make sure that your business will be able to stand up to whatever problems might come your way, and keep on working and trading successfully. Remember that you can never have too many data backups!

Spend some time identifying what data you need to backup, choose how you want to back it up and how often, and decide where to store your data.

How Damaging Can Air Leaks Be to Businesses if They are Not Detected Rapidly?

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |Air Leaks|How Damaging Can Air Leaks Be to Businesses if They are Not Detected Rapidly?Considering how much of an asset compressed air systems are to a wide range of industries, it’s a thing of wonder why any industry would be hesitant to monitor their machines for air leakages. It is estimated that $138m (£100m) is lost every year to air leaks in the UK, but it’s quite understandable why one would think that a tiny bit of air escaping won’t make so much of a difference to your business. Think again. Businesses could be losing as much as $832/year (£600/year) from a 0.1inch (3mm) hole.

Identifying air leaks is important because in addition to leaks being the source of wasted air/gas and therefore increased operating costs, they can also be the point of ingress for contamination to the system. Leaks will grow and worsen if restorative action is not taken, which means small leaks can quickly advance to high hidden costs.

How to Detect Leaks

Industrial machines have a high degree of background noise which can veil any obvious evidence of small leaks, making it difficult to understand the scale of leakage. This makes it a secret expense for its operators. Identifying and rectifying all the leak points will reduce operating costs and improve the delivered air/gas quality.

Learning if an air compressor is leaking is a critical aspect of its operation, here we provide some of the easiest ways to detect air leaks:

  • Listening for leaks is only possible during a shutdown when the entire system is so silent that massive leaks can be audible. Smaller leaks can be below the hearing threshold, making it difficult to hear the characteristic leaking gas hiss. However, this does not suggest that there are no leaks because even if leaks are heard, they can be very difficult to pinpoint, particularly in areas difficult to access.
  • Ultrasonic leak detectors enable testing of out of reach areas to determine if access is required to pinpoint leaks quickly. With a range of up to 8m, it allows operators to promptly survey gas distribution systems with detachable sensors to simplify testing in confined spaces.
  • The traditional direct method widely used is to wash over any suspected joints with a soap solution. If there are any leaks, bubbles will form and judging by the number and size of bubbles, and the technician can pinpoint the fault. While this is a straightforward method, it is very time-consuming as every joint has to be tested individually. There are also potential issues for contamination and corrosion.

Why You Need to Fix Leaks

Leaks do not just have detrimental effects on your annual energy expenses; they also decrease operating efficiency and cause productivity loss due to the inevitable drop in air pressure of the system. This could result in reduced equipment life and inefficient operation of tools that rely on compressed air.

Reasons why you should fix air leaks;

Inefficient Tools and Lower Productivity

Drops in air pressure resulting from leaks can significantly impact the productivity of machines by causing tools to operate inefficiently, which in turn creates an overall less-productive environment.

Reduction in Equipment Longevity

Considering that leaks cause a higher demand for airpower than what is typically needed, compressors need to cycle more frequently, which results in a decreased lifespan of your compressed air system. This could be very expensive. It can be avoided through routine maintenance and inspection, so leaks are identified and repaired.

Losses Due to Downtime

If your system is experiencing unnecessary demands, and maintenance is the result, you may be faced with downtime, which can severely hamper productivity — and eventually, profits.

To run a productive and profitable industrial facility, you must keep your air compressors working efficiently at all times. To that end, any air leaks that occur must be identified and fixed before such problems spiral out of hand.

Increased Production Cost

A poorly-operated compressed air system can cost more than water, electricity, steam or even natural gas. Air leaks also can slow a plant’s operation by using more power than necessary to supply compressed air.

4 Common Customer Service Problems – And How to Fix Them

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Customer Service|4 Common Customer Service Problems – And How to Fix ThemNo matter what kind of business you run or how many years of operation you have behind you, how you engage with customers can be the difference between running a successful brand and falling at the first hurdle. Excellent customer service is critical for keeping your audience on board and satisfied with your services, so to ensure you and your team are putting in 110% effort, here are some of the common customer service problems and what you can do to solve them.

Long Response Times

Many of us live busier lives than ever before, meaning customers simply don’t have the time or patience to wait for an answer. Whether they have a problem with a particular product of yours or need clarification on a matter, the longer they’re waiting for a response, the more agitated they will become. Thankfully, there are several things you can do to ensure the customer isn’t waiting too long, such as having enough members of your team to address queries whether it’s by phone, email, or social media, as well as devising pre-packaged answers to the most commonly asked questions which may help the customer. There are call center software providers like https://www.aceyus.com/call-center-analytics you can use to speed up the response time and track the customer journey from start to finish.

Not Listening to the Customer

When dealing with a customer, it’s vital that you listen to everything they say so they feel valued and appreciated. If you fail to listen, you won’t know what your customer needs which can make the situation worse. No matter what, make sure you have thoroughly understood the issue your customer has come to you with, and double-check the problem if necessary.

Customers appreciate honesty, so if you don’t have a solution straight away, it’s better to tell them rather than not giving any answer at all.

Transferring the Customer to Multiple Departments

Many of us can count on several hands the number of times we’ve been transferred to multiple departments across a company before getting to the right person. Not only can this be time-consuming, but the situation can also be incredibly frustrating. If you must transfer the customer to another member of staff, make sure you give the customer a reason for doing so and explain the present situation in detail, so they know where they stand.

Bad Attitude toward Customers

We will inevitably have down days from time to time. However, no matter how you’re feeling or what is going on in your personal life, anyone engaging with customers should always remain professional and attentive from start to finish. First impressions count, so if a team member is displaying a poor attitude to customers, this can put your business in a bad light. Regular training is critical for all employees, helping them to understand the code of conduct in your organization, what is expected of them when dealing with customers and brushing up on their communication skills and time management.

Whether you’re about to launch a startup or already run a business, understanding the common customer service problems and what tactics to employ to solve the issue will make sure your customers are always put first.