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7 Audits Your Business Should Be Carrying Out Each Year

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StrategyDriven Business Performance Assessment Program Article |Business Audits|7 Audits Your Business Should Be Carrying Out Each YearAudits are necessary for identifying problems with your business and making improvements. They are pretty much thorough inspections that focus on a specific area of your business. Financial audits are the most common example, but you can carry out audits on various other aspects of your business too from marketing to security.

In many cases, an audit involves outsourcing a third-party service. That said, you can carry out your own internal audits – providing that you know what you’re looking for. Many businesses do not carry out audits regularly. Some may never carry out audits at all. However, you should ideally be organising them annually. Below are just a few business audits that are worth carrying out each year.

Financial

A financial audit can help you to better understand how you’re spending your money, and can also help you to make sure that your records are accurate so that you declare the right amount of tax. Big companies will typically carry out a financial audit every quarter. At the very least, you should be carrying out a financial audit every year.

During an audit, you want to gather all necessary financial documents. Make sure that there are no missing copies of invoices, bank statements or receipts, and then make sure that all these records are stored somewhere safe in an organised manner (nowadays this is typically done digitally).

A financial audit can be a time for identifying late payments you may have forgotten to chase up. You can also look at exactly how much you’re earning and spending and work out if there are any regular outgoing payments that are worth cancelling or reducing.

Marketing

It can also be worth regularly carrying out marketing audits to measure the progress of your marketing. This could allow you to identify issues with your marketing so that you can make any necessary corrections.

A digital strategy audit could focus on aspects such as SEO, paid advertising and general brand consistency. When it comes to the likes of SEO, it could be worth taking steps such as checking for broken links, checking algorithm updates and checking competitor keywords.

After this audit, you can then make any alterations to your marketing strategy that are necessary. This could include everything from fixing brand inconsistencies to focusing on new keywords.

HR

If you are an employer, a human resources audit could also be worth carrying out. This can be an opportunity to check that you’re providing for your employees in the best way possible – and that your employees are serving you in the best possible way.
What are some things to check during an HR audit? Start by looking at your employee performance. Are any employees failing to meet targets? Are others exceeding them? Such data can help you to work with employees that are struggling, while rewarding employees that are exceeding targets. It could even be a chance to reorganise your team and their roles.

You should then look at what you’re offering employees and whether you could improve this. Are other companies offering better wages or better benefit packages? Are certain benefits not being taken advantage of? This could be a chance to reassess your benefit package.

Don’t forget to also schedule one-on-one meetings with employees. This could be a chance to raise issues with them and get suggestions on things to improve to make your employees happier and more productive.


IT

Every year, it can be worth inspecting your company’s use of tech to make sure that you’re using the right hardware and applications.

This is a great opportunity to get rid of old tech that is no longer serving you well and embrace new tech. Take the time to compare other hardware and software options out there and decide whether it’s worth migrating.

Try to identify common problems you may be having with your tech and use this as an opportunity to look for solutions. For example, if your company wi-fi is temperamental, it could be a time to look into a new internet service or wi-fi range extenders. Make sure to do your research when choosing new tech and take the time to train employees how to use this new tech.

Security

It could also be worth carrying out security audits to check that your company is as secure as it can be. This involves checking for vulnerabilities that you can patch up.

Examples of things to look at in a digital security audit could include password strength, software security (is any software about to lose support?) and data backup (how many of your files are backed up?). A physical security audit could meanwhile look into things like visitor records and window/door security.

Once you’ve identified security vulnerabilities, you can take steps to patch up these vulnerabilities. Make sure to alert employees of any security updates and train them to carry out any new security protocol that you introduce.

Health and safety

A health and safety audit can help to identify any hazards within your business that could be worth guarding against.

This could include fire safety, slip/fall prevention, air quality, PPE usage and possibly driver safety (if you have drivers working for you). If you sell a product, you may also want to consider how your product can be made safer.

A health and safety audit could help to identify safety measures that you need to invest in such as new fire extinguishers, better guardrails or new PPE. You could also use the opportunity to develop new safety protocol that you can train to employees.

Compliance

A compliance audit involves checking that you are complying with all recommended business laws and guidelines necessary to your company. This ensures that you cannot be fined or sued, as well as helping to possibly earn optional certificates or badges.

A compliance audit may be something that you can work into each of the above audits, rather than carrying out a separate audit for it (for example, data compliance checks could be incorporated into an IT or marketing audit, while employee law compliance checks can be incorporated into a HR audit). A commercial legal advisor may be able to help you identify areas of compliance to focus on.

How To Make Your Restaurant Eco-Friendly

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Eco-friendly restaurant|How To Make Your Restaurant Eco-FriendlyBecoming eco-friendly may appear difficult due to the number of adjustments required in your daily restaurant operation. However, implementing more sustainable methods in your daily food service operation can decrease food waste and save money. Restaurant giants such as Starbucks, KFC, And Mcdonald’s are making efforts to go greener, with a US study showing that businesses benefit from ambitious eco goals. Consider these tips to make your restaurant more eco-friendly.

1. Get seasonal with your menus

Learning the importance of seasonal menus is useful if you want to go green. And using seasonal produce is a straightforward approach to developing a sustainable restaurant menu. This can benefit your business in several ways. For example, seasonal menus ensure that there is always something new to offer. Additionally, ingredients are considerably cheaper, fresher, and more delicious. Consider growing your own ingredients if you have a backyard. Regarding food service, authenticity is key to beating the competition.

2. Eco-friendly cleaning products

Your restaurant’s cleanliness is one of the most crucial factors for its long-term sustainability. The truth is that there are more toxic restaurant cleaning products than not, and the costs can be prohibitively expensive. Fortunately, there are several affordable options to make your restaurant more eco-friendly. It can be useful to consider companies with green labeling when shopping for cleaning products. These are symbols printed on products or packaging to promote their environmental characteristics or quality. Using eco-friendly cleaning products is a sustainable way of meeting your present business needs without compromising safety.

3. Green packaging

Research shows that an estimated 14.5 million tons of packaging and plastic containers were produced in 2018 alone. The numbers have increased tremendously considering the recent increase in food deliveries and takeout, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic. Therefore, it is critical to adopt eco-friendly packaging to make deliveries sustainable. Since foam containers can harm the environment, it is advisable to pack your dishes in environmentally friendly containers. Your shipping and storage costs are likely to be lower since you use few raw packaging. Meanwhile, green packaging solutions are easy to assemble and pack and reduce labor costs.


4. Save water

Water costs can quickly add up in food businesses. From cooking to cleaning dishes, most restaurant operations require water usage. Check for leaks in all restaurant pipes to reduce how much you spend or waste on water. For instance, a leaking faucet can cost you thousands of gallons of water annually. You can also save water by serving water to only guests who request it and running the dishwasher only when it is full. Also, consider thawing food in the fridge rather than under a faucet.

5. Energy-efficient equipment

You will likely pay a lot in monthly electricity bills since most of the equipment you use in food preparation and cleaning depends on electricity. It is critical to perform regular maintenance on your appliances to reduce their energy consumption. That’s because optimally maintained machines are energy efficient. Also, consider buying energy-efficient appliances if your restaurant requires new ones. For instance, commercial undercounter freezers are highly energy-efficient, reducing energy bills and creating a cleaner environment.

Other things you can do to reduce your energy consumption include turning off appliances when not in use and using energy-saving lighting. Installing low flush toilets and using the air conditioner only when necessary is also advisable.

6. Composting

Many environmentally-conscious restaurants compost organic waste on-site or via hauling services. So instead of dumping them in landfills, organic waste is converted to humus for fertilizing crops. Humus is a better alternative for crop fertilization since some chemical fertilizers harm plants and decrease yield. To improve soil, you can reduce food waste by composting organic scraps like eggshells, coffee grounds, or tea bags. Your business can also benefit from creating a good recycling system.

7. Buy locally

It is expensive to purchase food items and have them transported from across the country. Instead, invest your time and energy into sourcing your food items locally. Locally sourced foods are usually those within a 100 and 150-mile radius from the farm. Doing this can save you money and guarantee the freshness and ingenuity of your menus. Additionally, you become more involved with the local suppliers and farmers in the community. Your business can also benefit from goodwill since you are perceived as a community partner.
Making your foodservice business more eco-friendly can benefit the environment. These tips can help you reduce your carbon footprint since you are likely to produce less waste and save energy in your daily activities.

Practical Ways To Minimize Laziness In Your Workplace

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Minimize laziness in the workplace|Practical Ways To Minimize Laziness In Your WorkplaceIt’s safe to say that no employer wants to work with a lazy employee. Not only do they waste time, but lazy employees can also do massive damage to productivity – at least, that’s what many employers believe, and rightfully so. But it’s one thing hiring a lazy person and quite another thing when a previously hardworking employee becomes lazy. Different factors in the workplace can cause workers to become lazy or act sluggish at work. Focusing only on hiring “active employees” will not necessarily be the solution if those factors still exist in the workplace. So are you dealing with an increasing case of laziness among your workers? Here are some ways to minimize the problem and bring out the best in your workers.

1. Create opportunities for engagement

Bill Gates said it best when he remarked that lazy people make the best employees. Bill Gates is considered by many as the epitome of success when it comes to running a thriving business. According to this business mogul, lazy workers only look for easier ways to get the job done. You can deduce that although some workers are perceived as lazy, it doesn’t automatically mean they’re unproductive. If they’re engaged appropriately, they always have the potential to do so much more. Bill Gates, for example, finds that he’s able to get the most out of lazy workers by testing them with the hard jobs because he expects them to find an easy way to complete them. Of course, this may not be the case for every employer, but ensuring that your workers are fully engaged is a great way to energize them and keep them from being slothful. The most important thing is to find the right employee engagement solution that will work best for your situation.

2. Give them more challenging or different responsibilities

Many employers contribute to laziness at the workplace without realizing it. If your workers have to sit around doing nothing, for example, you can expect some level of sluggishness to sneak into their working habits. In other words, you can sometimes attribute laziness to work not being challenging enough. If your workers follow a mundane and monotonous routine, they will get bored easily and may start being complacent with their work. As soon as complacency sets in, you can expect laziness to start lurking close by. One way to minimize complacency-induced laziness is to give more challenging responsibilities to your workers. Doing this will bring out the best in your hardworking employees. Another option is to switch up their tasks a little, so keep this in mind. Give different responsibilities once in a while or find ways to make mundane tasks more exciting.

3. Reward them

While it may help to give lazy workers tasks, there’s only a thin line between giving more responsibilities and becoming a hard taskmaster. So, find ways to reward your workers for the extra workload. Workers, in general, tend to have a poor attitude toward work when they feel they don’t earn enough for what they do. Even well-paid employees may lack the drive to do more work when they feel their extra effort will not be appreciated. Also, when less-motivated workers realize that their employers notice and celebrate hard work, that can push them to put in more effort at work.


4. Communicate with them

Communication is an essential key to good management. It’s important to first communicate with a lazy employee before you set challenging tasks for them. Different things can cause a worker to perform below par at work, and a lack of healthy and engaging communication will make it impossible to pinpoint what your workers are lacking. So, if you notice some of your staff becoming lazy, speak with them about it. Find out what the issue is and how best to address it. This is especially important if you have a capable member of your working team who has started underperforming suddenly. Next, it is vital to let the worker know that they’re an important part of your business, so keep this in mind. By taking the time to clear the air with a slugging worker, you can quickly create the morale booster they need to start performing at their best again.

But you don’t have to wait until workers become lazy before communicating healthily with them. Always ensure that you create a working culture that encourages communication.

5. Avoid giving special treatments and privileges

Workers who do nothing to earn their positions may sometimes feel less motivated to give their best. Also, workers who feel their positions are secure regardless of their lack of effort will find little reason to work above themselves. That’s why it’s important to give all your workers the same level of treatment – no special privileges.

Also, workers who notice that other employees are treated better than they are may feel discouraged to give off their best. And some workers who may not have gone through the same robust recruitment process as the others or may have secured roles they’re not suited to may lack the motivation to be their best. Plus, such special treatments can send the wrong signal to other workers and lead to worker satisfaction and even disillusionment.

6. Be a good manager to all your workers

Following the previous point, it’s important to be a good manager to every team member. Granted, some may be more talented than others, but everyone plays a role and deserves the same level of treatment. If you cannot deal with every staff member the same way, you’ll end up breeding discontent, contempt, and dissatisfaction. All these can drain worker morale and encourage laziness.

Also, it helps to set unique goals for your workers. For instance, you don’t want to assume that every team member will meet their appropriate deadlines on their own. Instead, set goals with deadlines attune with their strengths and weaknesses. This way, you can hold them accountable and, in the process, encourage them to work at a faster pace.

Simple Tips For Business Owners To Create A More Inclusive Workplace

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StrategyDriven Diversity and Inclusion Article |A more inclusive workplace|Simple Tips For Business Owners To Create A More Inclusive WorkplaceA diverse workforce is a strong workforce. The variety of experiences and backgrounds that your business could have will greatly benefit you as an employer and will naturally help your company find greater success. A major part of this is going to be the morale boost that inclusivity and diversity can bring to a workplace. It’s important to remember that simply being diverse is not the same as being inclusive. Diversity is where you have people from all different backgrounds, races, and genders, for example, as a part of your business. However, you can still fail to be inclusive by not offering the same opportunities to everyone. Here we have some simple tips for business owners on how they can create a more inclusive workplace for their business.

Get The Rest Of Your Leadership On-Board

Change doesn’t happen overnight and most certainly can’t be done alone. To bring your entire team to a stage where they are all considering diversity and inclusion to be a pillar of virtue within your business, you’re going to have to get the rest of your management team on the same page as you. You’ll have to first make it clear what your goals are with these ideas and discuss the ways in which you can all work together to promote these mindsets and ethics. There are many ways in which managers can be more inclusive, and this might include you having to educate certain members of your management team on these principles. For example, you could do this by offering special inclusive management training to your staff.


Offer Equal Opportunities

You should try to stay aware of ways in which your business might be biased towards certain genders or races. To encourage greater diversity, it may be worthwhile to offer to train female employees via a women’s leadership program. This will not only serve as a great opportunity for female staff members, but it will also help you gain more women in management roles within your business, helping to better level the playing field. Of course, you have to balance this well, as merit and skill should arguably play the largest part in promotions too. However, promotions aren’t always based on these things. In many cases, a promotion will be down to confidence, how much leadership likes a particular person, and in some cases, that person will be chosen based on an unconscious bias based on their gender, race, or even sexual preferences. It’s therefore very important to root out these biases and strive to make your company a better place for everyone.

Push For Inclusive Language

While you must be careful when trying to change the language used by others, you can do this subtly by leading by example. You and your managers and your HR department should start by using more inclusive language around your team. If questioned on this, your managers should be able to provide a calm and reasonable response as to why inclusive language can be important today, especially to marginalized groups within your business. Simple things like learning the preferred pronouns of your employees and avoiding gendered language at work can show respect for the individual. If you know someone is married, then it’s best not to assume if they have a husband or a wife, for example, and to instead simply say, partner or spouse.

How To Utilize And Maximize Warehouse Space

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StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article |Warehouse Space|How To Utilize And Maximize Warehouse SpaceOwning a warehouse for your business will come with a lot of interior design and planning should you want to maximize the space and make use of every square inch.

Should you use a warehouse for your business and realize that you are not utilizing the space properly to maximize warehouse efficiency, here are some great tips.

Install modular offices

Although you might think that a warehouse is designed for physical work and labor, it is always beneficial to use some space for offices. Having an office inside your warehouse will mean that you can have all members of staff work in the same place. This will help employees interact quicker as they can communicate in person and not have to rely on emails and calls should they be in different locations.

Likewise, having offices inside your warehouse means that you can keep an eye on all areas of the business to ensure it is running efficiently.

Asking for expert advice and support, you can transform your warehouse space into Allied Modular Buildings And Modular Offices so that you can utilize all of the inside space. These systems can be installed quickly and efficiently so that you don’t have to wait around for long while your space is being transformed. You will be able to revert back to working in no time and enjoy maximum space.


Store items vertically

Most warehouses have storage racks to store goods for easy access. Having wide storage units will only take up aisle space and limit the ability to move around freely.

Hence, to free up space and maximize the warehouse flooring plan, it is a great idea to store items vertically. Although items might be more difficult to reach, you can simply install secure ladders so that employees can access the item that they need no matter how high up it is.

Or, you could make an even smarter move and use modern technology to grab the goods for you by using a grab-and-go system.

Consider seasonal storage

Most warehouses will likely store all goods inside and in the same spot no matter what time of year it is. However, this is not useful if you only use certain items during certain times of the year. Why would you take up so much everyday storage space with items that you won’t use for months?

Hence, it is a good idea to consider seasonal storage. For instance, if your warehouse creates clothing and transitions between seasons, then you likely won’t need certain materials during certain times of the year. For example, you might not use wool during the summer months, so why allow it to take up everyday space?

To maximize warehouse space, simply store items away in external spaces during periods when they are not in use. It will allow your warehouse to utilize its space more purposefully.

There is no need to expand the warehouse to have more space. Simply installing offices in unused areas and storing your goods in a different way can instantly free up and maximize space.