There are many different aspects that contribute to a company’s overall success or failure. The strength of the idea, the execution of those ideas, and, yes, the trust that is held between the company and the customers. This last point is actually pretty underrated. It has such a big impact on a company’s success, yet the trust isn’t just given — it has to be earned, and it can also be lost, if the business isn’t careful. In this blog, we’re going to take a look at a few key ways that you keep the trust of your customers.
No Hidden Fees
Nobody likes to feel like they’re being ripped off, or they’re being cheated. There’s sometimes a temptation to add extra charges to a customer’s order, because it’ll ultimately benefit the bottom line. But let’s be realistic for a moment. While adding a last-minute charge will boost your profits on a short-term basis, it’ll hurt them on a long-term basis. That’s because it’ll cost you a customer, and maybe even earn you some bad reviews. People much prefer to know the true cost up front, so make sure that’s what they get.
Be Honest
Even the best companies in the world make mistakes. There’s no such thing as perfection, after all. There’s sometimes a temptation to run from our mistakes, and we can see why — it’s much easier to bury your head in the sand, rather than confront an issue. But it’s important to be honest with your customers if there’s an issue that affects them. If you experience a cyber security breach, then let the affected customers know as soon as possible. It’s part of the duty of care you have to the customers that have trusted you with their financial information and other sensitive details.
Keep Pushing Forward
When it comes to your customers, you don’t want them to just trust that you’re not going to screw them over. You want them to trust that you’re the best in town. It’s all good and well to have customers that have a positive impression of your intentions, but if they don’t trust your capabilities, then there’ll only be so far that you can go. As such, it’s important not to rest on your laurels. Instead, keep on pushing forward. Your customers might like what you’re doing right now, but they’ll only feel the same way in five years if you’re continuing to push forward.
Stay True
Ultimately, it’s all about staying honest — to your customers, yes, but also to yourself. What does your company stand for? What principles guide you through the future? If you keep these things at the forefront of your mind, then you’ll find that it’s much easier to retain the trust of your customers, since they’ll have no reason to doubt your intentions. You’ll be operating from a place of sincerity. And if people know that what they see is what they get, then they’ll have no reason to doubt what you’re saying and doing.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/pexels-lukas-928199.jpg7951200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-11-05 17:00:212020-11-05 16:21:31How to Maintain the Trust Of Your Customers
A profitable Social Media Marketing Strategy should help you achieve the objectives you have penned out for your business. For this, it has to be dynamic to adjust to the variations that occur in the media every day. And of course, you must contemplate every novelty and detail in terms of Social Networks in order to get the most out of them. Use these strategies across the board with your website to ultimately boost your SEO.
Use data from last year to inform this year’s strategy.
See the success (or failure) of the social media campaigns you created last year, as well as the activity and engagement across all of your platforms. What type of content resonated the most with your audience? What social media website seems to be growing faster? You can do this by conducting a social media audit. An audit keeps you informed of your social presence to see what works and what doesn’t. Based on the data reports from the previous year, you may want to change your publication time to reach your target audience more and get more engagement. Or, you may want to focus on Facebook more than Instagram due to a more consistent return on investment (ROI) on one platform versus the other. The point is to allow the data from last year to give you a better orientation for the new year. For a comprehensive overview of all your social media metrics in one place, you can visit Hootsuite Analytics.
Look for inspiration in unconventional places.
We’ve already said it: a big part of social media marketing is keeping moving forward and coming up with new ideas to keep your channels up to date. The right way for creativity to flow is to look to others for inspiration. If your brand works significantly with imagery and innovative graphic solutions, you may want to look at a virtual photo booth that would translate well to your web page.
Take note of thought leaders and industry giants, but also strive to look outside of these grounds. Retailers generally have a large budget for social media and creative purposes, which allows them to try new things and push the boundaries. These brands also have a tangible product that they can showcase on their social channels. Brands like Everlane and Urban Outfitters are among the favorites. As of 2020, the top five social media trends are:
Paid social networks
Ambassador employee
Training for social networks
CEOs on social media
Sales on social networks
Of course, not all of them will be the objectives of your company or brand. For example, social media sales work well in the financial industry, where advisors need to build long-term relationships with clients. But it may not work very well in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, which is less reliant on relationships between leads and sales professionals. However, these are ideas that you can use and rework to ensure that your brand is hitting the social targets that you dreamed of when you began.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/jakob-owens-WUmb_eBrpjs-unsplash.jpg8001200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-11-05 16:00:172020-11-22 21:14:38Boost Your Social Media Presence For Future Success
In the global economy, there are always highs and lows. And when a country or the world is hit with a recession, it can be tough to survive. We can often tell when a recession is about to hit. However, we sometimes ignore the signs and then repent later. Ideally, your safeguarding should start the moment you get the hint that a recession is about to hit.
Here are five tactics to make your finances recession-proof:
1. Switch to a Frugal Lifestyle
We tend to spend more when we have more. But this lifestyle inflation is very dangerous in the long run, especially when the economy is hit with a recession. And developing a frugal lifestyle requires practice; it does not happen overnight. So, don’t wait for the next recession to occur. Instead, modify your lifestyle changes from today itself.
Observe your spending habits for a month. Identify the must-haves and the good-to-haves, and see where you can cut down your expenses. See the products which have cheaper alternatives, and see what you can replace. Gradually, you will become thrifty with your spending habits, and this habit shall be beneficial when the recession hits the economy.
2. Build an Emergency Fund
Savings is an integral part of personal finance management. No matter what, it is a necessity that you save a certain portion of your income every month and add it to your contingency fund. You may be tempted to use this fund during demanding times, but discipline yourself not to touch this fund unless there’s an actual emergency. Instead of using this fund for your regular expenses, you can opt for a credit line that offers flexible repayment options or a short term personal loan, depending on your requirements.
3. Pay Down Your Debt
The higher your debts, the more loss you will suffer during a recession. So before the recession hits, identify all your debts and try to consolidate them to pay them back. Most often, you may not have the liquidity or cash flows for repaying all the debt separately. Then you can choose a personal line of credit or a personal loan to help you get rid of your debt. This will help you save money in the long run with lower rates of interest too.
4. Hone New Skills
Instead of getting upset in a crisis, we should upgrade ourselves. If you see a recession coming up, diversify your knowledge base, and learn new skills that will help you earn income if you lose a job or if your business suffers losses. Several online learning platforms help learn new skills and add to your knowledge base.
5. Hedge Your Income Sources
When you have multiple income sources in a recession, it helps hedge your earnings and diversifies your risk of losses from a particular source of income. Be tactful while choosing multiple sources of income. You can study the recession-proof sectors, like education, medical, etc. and see how you can leverage these sectors based ontheir skills. You can even pull off some extra hours before a recession to make extra income in additional sectors. That way, your finances will remain secure due to risk diversification when a recession hits.
About the Author
Lily Tran is a content writer, working for MoneyTap, who writes about all things Finance. Her passion for credit, debt, loan & investment drives her to help readers get an insight about everyday finance.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/bookkeeping-615384_1280-3.jpg8501280Sharon Kastorianohttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngSharon Kastoriano2020-11-05 11:00:232020-11-09 21:14:275 Tips to Manage Your Finances Before a Recession
Turning something you truly love and enjoy into a flourishing business that generates a constant flow of revenue can be an exciting and fulfilling experience. Perhaps you’re currently unemployed, you’re looking for a side hustle to increase your earnings, or you just want to leave your job and become the CEO of your life by building a thriving empire that generates Millions like the famous Dan Peña did. The good news is that you can turn something you do for fun into a thriving and sustainable business. But that will require thoughtful planning, commitment, skillful management, and a business mindset. Here are 6 practical tips to help you get started.
1. Set a Clear Goal
Choosing to build a business out of your hobby isn’t a goal. You’re looking forward to working on something you truly treasure, but do you want anything else from that business? Are you planning to run it part-time or full-time? Do you want to create an extra source of revenue? Or do you just want to challenge yourself?
Answer these questions and set expectations for your business. Clearly outlining your goals can help you remain committed to turning your hobby into a profitable business empire.
2. Do Thorough Research and Pick your niche
When you’re building a business out of something that you’re truly passionate about, it’s easy to get carried away and skip the research part. It happens all the time with entrepreneurs who are in love with a business idea. Don’t fall into that trap. Instead, do thorough market research to ensure your business idea isn’t making sense to you alone.
Market research involves you collecting as much information as possible regarding your target customers, asking the right questions, analyzing potential competitors, and discovering your target market. It also involves knowing how to monetize your products and/or services. Corona forced the would to go online and you could ride that wave and create a business line Dan Peña but with live events and video streaming on zoom leveraging new platforms like stream.club.
3. Examine Your Priorities and Look at the Big Picture
How will you integrate your business into your everyday life? Being able to perceive the big picture will help you spot and tap into new opportunities. Here are the questions you need to ask yourself:
Would turning something you do for fun into a revenue generator be exciting, fun, and fulfilling?
Would the business generate revenue that can sustain your current lifestyle?
Would this business be a key to your financial freedom?
What other benefits will you gain from this venture apart from the cash flow? Perhaps you want to create awareness and build an identity for your online business. If that’s the case, many online business coaches out there will help you reach a global audience and position yourself as an authority in your specific niche.
Does it have the potential for capital growth?
4. Come up with a Business Model
Developing a business model is an important part of building a successful revenue generator. It’s easy to identify a problem, get an idea, and embark on product or brand development right away. But if you don’t have a clear way to monetize your product and/or service, you’ll never turn your hobby into a long-term, sustainable business.
You must strive to know the amount of money that will go into developing your product or service, the appropriate pricing, and the amount your target consumer is willing to pay. You’ll also need to know how you’ll sell your product or service. You may opt for a one-time purchase or adopt a subscription model. Other options for selling your product include leasing, crowdsourcing, franchising, and ad-revenue. Next, choose a platform that suits your target customers, products/services, and pricing strategies. As an example: if you’re a podcast enthusiast, Supercast is the go-to platform for monetizing your podcast.
5. Develop a Business Strategy
You might be great at your hobby, but without a well thought out strategy, you’ll never turn it into a profitable business. Having a good strategy in place will help set your new business for success.
What do you want your business to achieve in the long-term? Your answer to this question must be captured in your business strategy. Other things worth incorporating in your strategy include your offerings, your long-term and short-term goals, your business values, your value propositions, your financial projections, and your marketing strategies.
6. Implement Your Strategy
Now that you have a business strategy, the next step is to put it into action. To implement your strategies, you must accompany each of the strategies laid down with specific action plans and the relevant steps to help you reach the intended destination on time.
You must come up with the right action plans and be ready to act in order to implement your business strategy successfully. And if the strategy isn’t bringing the desired results, be prepared to adjust it, or adopt a whole new strategy altogether. Be sure to take advantage of the latest technology to make your business strategy implementation a bit easy. For instance, if you’re building an online fitness business, incorporating Sutra software into your site will help you stay on top of your schedule, sell courses, and earn money from your fitness videos. What’s more, you can use sites like reach.live to host live fitness events. In fact, Sutrafit like McKenzie started teaching yoga on Reach.live during a crisis.
Conclusion
Turning something you do for fun into a profitable business is a fantastic way to make your life more exciting and satisfying. But you must follow the above steps to successfully turn your hobby into a reliable revenue generator.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/lemonade-999593_1280.jpg9601280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-11-05 09:00:402020-11-08 17:36:42How to Turn Your Hobby into a Business
Personal development is crucial in building a holistic workforce made of leaders and employees who have the skills to succeed in all areas of life. This is because it looks beyond just job qualifications to include mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical development. This can be achieved by encouraging activities that build skills to reach the goals and full potential for you and your employees. The result- better, fulfilled and satisfied individuals, with improved strengths and talents for career advancement and personal and career goals achievement.
There are many benefits to gain from pursuing personal development in the workplace. You all are happy when you feel accomplished. When your employees know that you value their personal development, they become more engaged and committed, which leads to a low turnover rate and high productivity. You also become a good leader who can lead a team to achieve high results.
Here are ways that you can help yourself and your employees take on a personal development journey.
1. Encourage learning
Continued learning of new skills is very crucial in the journey of personal development. You can encourage your employees to learn new skills by offering incentives to sign up for classes or reimbursing part of their tuition fees. You can also plan for training such as the latest technologies in the industry. Invite key speakers in different facets of life to give talks in the workplace. This can be a good place for you and your employees to spot opportunities that can be beneficial to your lives. This should be inclusive of all employees. If you have employees in other countries, in Japan, for instance, hired through a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), such as NH Global Partners, or other providers, be sure to use their services to extend the incentives and training opportunities.
2. Allow flexible schedules
The traditional 9-5 work schedule is one of the biggest hindrances to personal development. People have to wake up early to beat the morning traffic, work throughout the day with little time to rest, and get back home late and tired to do anything else.
Allow a more flexible time where all of you can work in your most productive hours. You can also allow them to choose their best place to work from. This way, you all have the rest of the day to carry out personal development activities like attending a class or hitting the gym.
3. Encourage healthy lifestyles
Leading a healthy life is crucial in improving the physical fitness of a person, which is part of the larger personal development. You can encourage healthy meals at work by offering healthy snacks and drinks. If you have given a contract to a restaurant to provide lunch, ask them to serve healthy meals. In addition, encourage physical activities for you and your employees. For instance, you can start biking to work so that your employees can follow suit. Help them pay for gym subscriptions or even have a mini-gym at work complete with showering facilities.
4. Work on more challenging tasks
If a person spends a lot of time in his or her comfort zone, it can be very hard to move forward and grow to the level that one desires. Mostly, it is fear of the unknown that keeps people at the place that they feel comfortable. However, you can break this cocoon by encouraging your employees to take up challenging tasks. Be there to help them through by giving them timely and honest feedback. You can also assign another employee who is skilled in that area to help others through such tasks. Be sure to also take up such tasks from time to time.
5. Foster open communication
People thrive in places where there is open communication. This is because they are able to express themselves without fear of intimidation or punishment. They have no room to bottle up negative feelings, if issues or concerns come up in the workplace, they are able to table them and solve them amicably.
For starters, you can start by encouraging interactions in the workplace. Everyone in the office becomes confident with one another when they know each other better. During meetings, encourage everyone to participate in airing their ideas, opinions, or concerns. This goes a long way in developing public speaking skills.
Conclusion
A lot can be done to encourage personal development for you and your employees. Be sure that your workplace is built on a positive culture. Positivity yields so many other good results, and that is how you will have you and your employees shining all through.
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Business Programs
How to Maintain the Trust Of Your Customers
/in Customer Relationship Management/by StrategyDrivenNo Hidden Fees
Nobody likes to feel like they’re being ripped off, or they’re being cheated. There’s sometimes a temptation to add extra charges to a customer’s order, because it’ll ultimately benefit the bottom line. But let’s be realistic for a moment. While adding a last-minute charge will boost your profits on a short-term basis, it’ll hurt them on a long-term basis. That’s because it’ll cost you a customer, and maybe even earn you some bad reviews. People much prefer to know the true cost up front, so make sure that’s what they get.
Be Honest
Even the best companies in the world make mistakes. There’s no such thing as perfection, after all. There’s sometimes a temptation to run from our mistakes, and we can see why — it’s much easier to bury your head in the sand, rather than confront an issue. But it’s important to be honest with your customers if there’s an issue that affects them. If you experience a cyber security breach, then let the affected customers know as soon as possible. It’s part of the duty of care you have to the customers that have trusted you with their financial information and other sensitive details.
Keep Pushing Forward
When it comes to your customers, you don’t want them to just trust that you’re not going to screw them over. You want them to trust that you’re the best in town. It’s all good and well to have customers that have a positive impression of your intentions, but if they don’t trust your capabilities, then there’ll only be so far that you can go. As such, it’s important not to rest on your laurels. Instead, keep on pushing forward. Your customers might like what you’re doing right now, but they’ll only feel the same way in five years if you’re continuing to push forward.
Stay True
Ultimately, it’s all about staying honest — to your customers, yes, but also to yourself. What does your company stand for? What principles guide you through the future? If you keep these things at the forefront of your mind, then you’ll find that it’s much easier to retain the trust of your customers, since they’ll have no reason to doubt your intentions. You’ll be operating from a place of sincerity. And if people know that what they see is what they get, then they’ll have no reason to doubt what you’re saying and doing.
Boost Your Social Media Presence For Future Success
/in Online Marketing and Website Development/by StrategyDrivenA profitable Social Media Marketing Strategy should help you achieve the objectives you have penned out for your business. For this, it has to be dynamic to adjust to the variations that occur in the media every day. And of course, you must contemplate every novelty and detail in terms of Social Networks in order to get the most out of them. Use these strategies across the board with your website to ultimately boost your SEO.
Use data from last year to inform this year’s strategy.
See the success (or failure) of the social media campaigns you created last year, as well as the activity and engagement across all of your platforms. What type of content resonated the most with your audience? What social media website seems to be growing faster? You can do this by conducting a social media audit. An audit keeps you informed of your social presence to see what works and what doesn’t. Based on the data reports from the previous year, you may want to change your publication time to reach your target audience more and get more engagement. Or, you may want to focus on Facebook more than Instagram due to a more consistent return on investment (ROI) on one platform versus the other. The point is to allow the data from last year to give you a better orientation for the new year. For a comprehensive overview of all your social media metrics in one place, you can visit Hootsuite Analytics.
We’ve already said it: a big part of social media marketing is keeping moving forward and coming up with new ideas to keep your channels up to date. The right way for creativity to flow is to look to others for inspiration. If your brand works significantly with imagery and innovative graphic solutions, you may want to look at a virtual photo booth that would translate well to your web page.
Take note of thought leaders and industry giants, but also strive to look outside of these grounds. Retailers generally have a large budget for social media and creative purposes, which allows them to try new things and push the boundaries. These brands also have a tangible product that they can showcase on their social channels. Brands like Everlane and Urban Outfitters are among the favorites. As of 2020, the top five social media trends are:
Of course, not all of them will be the objectives of your company or brand. For example, social media sales work well in the financial industry, where advisors need to build long-term relationships with clients. But it may not work very well in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, which is less reliant on relationships between leads and sales professionals. However, these are ideas that you can use and rework to ensure that your brand is hitting the social targets that you dreamed of when you began.
5 Tips to Manage Your Finances Before a Recession
/in Managing Your Finances/by Lily TranHere are five tactics to make your finances recession-proof:
1. Switch to a Frugal Lifestyle
We tend to spend more when we have more. But this lifestyle inflation is very dangerous in the long run, especially when the economy is hit with a recession. And developing a frugal lifestyle requires practice; it does not happen overnight. So, don’t wait for the next recession to occur. Instead, modify your lifestyle changes from today itself.
Observe your spending habits for a month. Identify the must-haves and the good-to-haves, and see where you can cut down your expenses. See the products which have cheaper alternatives, and see what you can replace. Gradually, you will become thrifty with your spending habits, and this habit shall be beneficial when the recession hits the economy.
2. Build an Emergency Fund
Savings is an integral part of personal finance management. No matter what, it is a necessity that you save a certain portion of your income every month and add it to your contingency fund. You may be tempted to use this fund during demanding times, but discipline yourself not to touch this fund unless there’s an actual emergency. Instead of using this fund for your regular expenses, you can opt for a credit line that offers flexible repayment options or a short term personal loan, depending on your requirements.
3. Pay Down Your Debt
The higher your debts, the more loss you will suffer during a recession. So before the recession hits, identify all your debts and try to consolidate them to pay them back. Most often, you may not have the liquidity or cash flows for repaying all the debt separately. Then you can choose a personal line of credit or a personal loan to help you get rid of your debt. This will help you save money in the long run with lower rates of interest too.
4. Hone New Skills
Instead of getting upset in a crisis, we should upgrade ourselves. If you see a recession coming up, diversify your knowledge base, and learn new skills that will help you earn income if you lose a job or if your business suffers losses. Several online learning platforms help learn new skills and add to your knowledge base.
5. Hedge Your Income Sources
When you have multiple income sources in a recession, it helps hedge your earnings and diversifies your risk of losses from a particular source of income. Be tactful while choosing multiple sources of income. You can study the recession-proof sectors, like education, medical, etc. and see how you can leverage these sectors based ontheir skills. You can even pull off some extra hours before a recession to make extra income in additional sectors. That way, your finances will remain secure due to risk diversification when a recession hits.
About the Author
How to Turn Your Hobby into a Business
/in Entrepreneurship/by StrategyDriven1. Set a Clear Goal
Choosing to build a business out of your hobby isn’t a goal. You’re looking forward to working on something you truly treasure, but do you want anything else from that business? Are you planning to run it part-time or full-time? Do you want to create an extra source of revenue? Or do you just want to challenge yourself?
Answer these questions and set expectations for your business. Clearly outlining your goals can help you remain committed to turning your hobby into a profitable business empire.
2. Do Thorough Research and Pick your niche
When you’re building a business out of something that you’re truly passionate about, it’s easy to get carried away and skip the research part. It happens all the time with entrepreneurs who are in love with a business idea. Don’t fall into that trap. Instead, do thorough market research to ensure your business idea isn’t making sense to you alone.
Market research involves you collecting as much information as possible regarding your target customers, asking the right questions, analyzing potential competitors, and discovering your target market. It also involves knowing how to monetize your products and/or services. Corona forced the would to go online and you could ride that wave and create a business line Dan Peña but with live events and video streaming on zoom leveraging new platforms like stream.club.
How will you integrate your business into your everyday life? Being able to perceive the big picture will help you spot and tap into new opportunities. Here are the questions you need to ask yourself:
Would turning something you do for fun into a revenue generator be exciting, fun, and fulfilling?
Would the business generate revenue that can sustain your current lifestyle?
Would this business be a key to your financial freedom?
What other benefits will you gain from this venture apart from the cash flow? Perhaps you want to create awareness and build an identity for your online business. If that’s the case, many online business coaches out there will help you reach a global audience and position yourself as an authority in your specific niche.
Does it have the potential for capital growth?
4. Come up with a Business Model
Developing a business model is an important part of building a successful revenue generator. It’s easy to identify a problem, get an idea, and embark on product or brand development right away. But if you don’t have a clear way to monetize your product and/or service, you’ll never turn your hobby into a long-term, sustainable business.
You must strive to know the amount of money that will go into developing your product or service, the appropriate pricing, and the amount your target consumer is willing to pay. You’ll also need to know how you’ll sell your product or service. You may opt for a one-time purchase or adopt a subscription model. Other options for selling your product include leasing, crowdsourcing, franchising, and ad-revenue. Next, choose a platform that suits your target customers, products/services, and pricing strategies. As an example: if you’re a podcast enthusiast, Supercast is the go-to platform for monetizing your podcast.
5. Develop a Business Strategy
You might be great at your hobby, but without a well thought out strategy, you’ll never turn it into a profitable business. Having a good strategy in place will help set your new business for success.
What do you want your business to achieve in the long-term? Your answer to this question must be captured in your business strategy. Other things worth incorporating in your strategy include your offerings, your long-term and short-term goals, your business values, your value propositions, your financial projections, and your marketing strategies.
6. Implement Your Strategy
Now that you have a business strategy, the next step is to put it into action. To implement your strategies, you must accompany each of the strategies laid down with specific action plans and the relevant steps to help you reach the intended destination on time.
You must come up with the right action plans and be ready to act in order to implement your business strategy successfully. And if the strategy isn’t bringing the desired results, be prepared to adjust it, or adopt a whole new strategy altogether. Be sure to take advantage of the latest technology to make your business strategy implementation a bit easy. For instance, if you’re building an online fitness business, incorporating Sutra software into your site will help you stay on top of your schedule, sell courses, and earn money from your fitness videos. What’s more, you can use sites like reach.live to host live fitness events. In fact, Sutrafit like McKenzie started teaching yoga on Reach.live during a crisis.
Conclusion
Turning something you do for fun into a profitable business is a fantastic way to make your life more exciting and satisfying. But you must follow the above steps to successfully turn your hobby into a reliable revenue generator.
Personal Development: Help Yourself and Your Employees Grow
/in Professional Development/by StrategyDrivenThere are many benefits to gain from pursuing personal development in the workplace. You all are happy when you feel accomplished. When your employees know that you value their personal development, they become more engaged and committed, which leads to a low turnover rate and high productivity. You also become a good leader who can lead a team to achieve high results.
Here are ways that you can help yourself and your employees take on a personal development journey.
1. Encourage learning
Continued learning of new skills is very crucial in the journey of personal development. You can encourage your employees to learn new skills by offering incentives to sign up for classes or reimbursing part of their tuition fees. You can also plan for training such as the latest technologies in the industry. Invite key speakers in different facets of life to give talks in the workplace. This can be a good place for you and your employees to spot opportunities that can be beneficial to your lives. This should be inclusive of all employees. If you have employees in other countries, in Japan, for instance, hired through a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), such as NH Global Partners, or other providers, be sure to use their services to extend the incentives and training opportunities.
2. Allow flexible schedules
The traditional 9-5 work schedule is one of the biggest hindrances to personal development. People have to wake up early to beat the morning traffic, work throughout the day with little time to rest, and get back home late and tired to do anything else.
Allow a more flexible time where all of you can work in your most productive hours. You can also allow them to choose their best place to work from. This way, you all have the rest of the day to carry out personal development activities like attending a class or hitting the gym.
3. Encourage healthy lifestyles
Leading a healthy life is crucial in improving the physical fitness of a person, which is part of the larger personal development. You can encourage healthy meals at work by offering healthy snacks and drinks. If you have given a contract to a restaurant to provide lunch, ask them to serve healthy meals. In addition, encourage physical activities for you and your employees. For instance, you can start biking to work so that your employees can follow suit. Help them pay for gym subscriptions or even have a mini-gym at work complete with showering facilities.
4. Work on more challenging tasks
If a person spends a lot of time in his or her comfort zone, it can be very hard to move forward and grow to the level that one desires. Mostly, it is fear of the unknown that keeps people at the place that they feel comfortable. However, you can break this cocoon by encouraging your employees to take up challenging tasks. Be there to help them through by giving them timely and honest feedback. You can also assign another employee who is skilled in that area to help others through such tasks. Be sure to also take up such tasks from time to time.
5. Foster open communication
People thrive in places where there is open communication. This is because they are able to express themselves without fear of intimidation or punishment. They have no room to bottle up negative feelings, if issues or concerns come up in the workplace, they are able to table them and solve them amicably.
For starters, you can start by encouraging interactions in the workplace. Everyone in the office becomes confident with one another when they know each other better. During meetings, encourage everyone to participate in airing their ideas, opinions, or concerns. This goes a long way in developing public speaking skills.
Conclusion
A lot can be done to encourage personal development for you and your employees. Be sure that your workplace is built on a positive culture. Positivity yields so many other good results, and that is how you will have you and your employees shining all through.