Reduce the Risks in Your Workplace Right Now

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There are so many risks and dangers present in the workplace. As the owner of the company, it’s up to you to minimise them. It’s so easy to just coast along and tell yourself that everything’s fine and dandy. But sooner or later, your lack of safety precautions will catch up with you, and those risks will start to have a real impact on your employees and your business. Here are some great ways in which you can reduce the risks in your workplace right now.

Have Someone Oversee Safety Practices Each Day

Rather than leaving safety and security responsibilities up to each person as they carry out their work, why not hire a person to oversee all of those safety practices? They will then be solely responsible for all of the safety issues in the workplace. It will take a load off the mind of your other employees, and you will know exactly who to go to when there is a safety problem. Each day, they will be able to focus on this and nothing else. Although it will mean spending a bit more money on staffing, it’s something that could really be worthwhile.

StrategyDriven Human Performance Management Article
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

Set Rules for the Use of Any Dangerous Machinery

If there is any potentially dangerous machinery in your workplace, you should ensure there is a clear set of rules in place for using it. Everyone should know exactly what to do and what not to do when they are using machinery that poses them a threat. They should be kitted out with the right personal protective equipment. And you can even get lanyards for dangerous roles. These snap off easily so that they don’t get caught in any machinery that is being used by an employee. Make the rules readily available, and offer extra training too if necessary.

Clear the Floor

The floor is where the majority of the dangers lie in waiting in the workplace. Many people don’t take blocked walkways and cluttered floor space anywhere nearly as seriously as they should. If you want to make sure that the floor is clear at all times, survey it each week and look for things that could be hazardous. For example, things shouldn’t be stacked up too high near to where people do their work. When that’s the case, a fall could result in someone getting hurt. And fire escapes definitely need to be kept 100% clear at all times.

StrategyDriven Human Performance Management Article
Photo courtesy of Jeff Wilcox via flickr

Be Proactive, Not Reactive

This is a good general rule to follow when it comes to safety in the workplace. When you are reactive rather than proactive, you will end up not taking extra steps to improve safety until you’re prompted to by something going wrong. That’s far from the ideal situation to be in because it means that you didn’t take risks as seriously as you should have done in the first place. Assess your workplace and carry out risk assessments to spot problems before, not after, they result in someone getting hurt. It’s a sensible and safe approach to take.

It Doesn’t Have To Be Taxing: Simplifying Your Business Tasks

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Think of everything you have to do in your day as a business owner. Think of the mass of tasks and work you have to perform. Think of the systems you rely on.

When you stump it all together like that, running a business seems like hard work! And it is. There is no doubt about that whatsoever.

Now, technology moves at such a fast pace in the modern age. If you want your business to succeed, you’re going to have to build a good relationship with tech and understand exactly how it all works. You’re going to have to appreciate that your gadgets and computers are going to be outdated. You’re going to have to adapt to thrive and the future is now.

StrategyDriven Business Management Article
Photo courtesy of Pricenfees

Now, let’s return to the beginning. If you are adapting so your business can thrive, you’ve still got heaps of tasks to complete. It is now time to knit everything together and see how we can simplify your business tasks.

Let’s talk money first. Accounting software like Sage accounting online is going to save you a lot of headaches. Not only can you keep yourself in the know with your finances with some simple data entry, but it’s also going to be automated and can save you the hassle of replicating invoices and calculating your tax. What does this mean? Well, it means you can spend more time on your actual job than counting coins!

What more is there to know about money? Well, payment is crucial! Sites like Paypal can offer you a cloud-based payment solution that automatically exchanges payments into a currency of your choice – meaning you’re not the one heading to the exchange! This is an amazing solution whether or not you have a lot of overseas customers.

With accounting and currency exchange out of the way, there are already two heavy tasks dealt with. Now, it’s time to talk communication.

Basecamp is an amazing software package that can do it all for you. Basecamp’s Campfire organizes your internal communication and projects in a single dedicated place. The advantages of this are too often underestimated and having a single platform for multiple, yet linked, subject matter (like work) is a brilliant way to increase the productivity of your staff. The campfire app within Basecamp allows you to communicate instantly, like an old school instant messenger app, and in-real time and you can even link to work. This cuts a number of steps out the process and allows your workflow to be centralized with a single piece of software. There are no more messy and long email chains between staff members. Instead, Basecamp offers topic based message boards, instant chat tools, to-do-lists, staff check-ins and instant work reports. Not only can you simplify your staff’s communication process, but you can get everything moving forward in the same direction.

Communication, work flow, accounting and payment – four huge tasks have been broken down and simplified with technology – find out what else you can simplify and launch your business forwards.

3 Simple Steps to Immediately Improve Your Business and Life

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If you want something done right, you do not have to do it yourself. The cliché about this is wrong — unless that something is the thing that you do best. This might sound counterintuitive but DIY can be a trap for small business owners who wear too many hats. The only hat they should wear is the one that focuses on the core of their business.

Doing anything else is a waste of time, and time is the most important startup capital small-business owners have. Still, many of them do know how valuable their time is, and it’s worth much more than they realize.

The following three things are easy steps you can take right now to address the No. 1 problem most small-business owners face: time and resource management. These steps apply whether you’re trying to build the next Facebook or just balance your life better so you can spend more time with the people you care about.

1) Realize that “cheap” is not the same as “efficient”: It might be cheap to do something yourself, but unless it’s something you’re an expert at it’s probably not efficient. You have to put a price on an hour of your time to better understand what you should and should not be doing. Otherwise, you’re wasting a lot of it — and that’s something no business can afford. Time is worth much more than money. Luckily, the age we live in offers more opportunities than ever to build a team of experts on a tight budget. Once you have, you’ll be able to focus on what’s most important.

2) Embrace the idea that little is the new large: Things just keep getting better for David while they get worse for Goliath. Today, being small and dexterous is the biggest advantage anyone can have — and many Fortune 500 companies can’t do keep up. Small businesses can compete with bigger competition in ways they never could before. All it takes is adopting the new tools that are available. Do so and you’ll race past your bigger and slower competition and take their market share. Let them be the modern-day equivalent textile weavers in the eighteenth century. The only way to survive is to stay nimble and forward-thinking. Strive to be the first in your niche to automate what used to be costly and tedious.

3) Harness the new value chain: New technology and the old wisdom of the assembly line go quite well together. It allows you to build a team that’s more efficient, cost-effective, and profitable than you may have thought possible. It allows you to build and lead a team that is never doing mindless labor. Once you have the right people in the right place — including yourself — each person will help your business grow more efficient than ever before because they will all be doing work specific to their skill sets, as well as the needs of your business. The promise of the digital age is being realized with affordable human and technological resources just a click away. Now, even the smallest business can afford to hire a receptionist, a bookkeeper, and a personal assistant at pennies on the dollar compared to what it used to cost. Outsource all your small yet important jobs. Never work on your website again. Hire an expert to do it. Never write a brochure again or send a tweet (unless you love tweeting). Sites such as Upwork have thousands of freelancers who can do all of this and more — and they’ll do it better than you can. That’s a blessing, too, because it means you can focus on making your business the best it can be.

Small-business owners rarely fail because of a lack of effort, will, or talent. Far too often, they fail because they fall into the DIY trap. Sometimes all it takes to go to the next level is managing your time and resources better. Take these steps today and you’ll see immediate improvement in your bottom line and your personal life.

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About the Author

Justin E. Crawford is the founder of Agents of Efficiency and author of the international bestselling book, Live Free or DIY. Justin has been featured in over 200 major media outlets, writing and speaking regularly on the issues of growth hacking and startup & small business operational process refinement.

Impact of Office Lighting on Employee Productivity

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Improving your business day to day and over the long-term can be expensive and involved. But there’s an easier way to make work life better for your employees immediately and without huge cost: light.

The light in your office has a direct impact on mood and energy, as well as physical ailments such as eye strain and headaches. Most offices have too much artificial light, which makes it difficult for employees to respond to various tasks with the necessary illumination.

The solutions to this work light problem might surprise you. For one, more sources that are controllable enables employees to adjust the light as needed. Glare-reduction strategies can help, too, as can swapping in halogen bulbs for other types. Use this graphic to learn more about this impactful way to change your employees work day.

Click the image to see the whole infographic by Quill.com.

Impact of Office Lighting on Employee Productivity

About the Author

Eugene FeyginEugene Feygin is a Program Manager at Quill.com. While he is not working, he enjoys traveling, taking photographs and using Instagram.

What are the Best Collaboration Options for Modern Businesses?

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As businesses increasingly move their operations to digital platforms, and in particular to cloud space, even the most traditional staples of running an organization are being improved by embracing technology.

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About the Author

Gemma Walford is head of Sales and Account Management for Convene for the EU region. She has extensive experience of the Public sector and is interested in improving productivity and business change.