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How to Help Your Business Work Round the Clock

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Business Efficiency|How to Help Your Business Work Round the ClockImproving business efficiency and productivity should be one of your main aims as a business owner. It is entirely possible, providing you do sufficient research in line with your trade. For many of us, it can often feel like there are not enough hours in the day to finish every single detail on our to-do lists. However, it is possible if you work out how to maximise efficiency in the workplace. Keep reading to find out how you can help your business work round the clock.

Offer flexible working time

When doing research surrounding this topic, you probably want to learn how to completely maximise your time and add an extra hour to every day of the week. Whilst it is important to stay productive, every single industry has created the illusion that worth is measured upon productivity. Sadly, this isn’t beneficial for your physical or mental health.

Therefore, experts recommend that you recruit and hire employees within your means to help you run the business and keep everything in check. When it comes to the crunch, many business owners often see their products and services diminishing in quality as a result of doing everything themselves. A few extra pairs of hands will provide you with the opportunity to expand your business.

When it comes to timekeeping and rota creation, experts believe that offering flexible working time is a fantastic, manageable way to ensure your business works round the clock. No matter what contract you create, there will be something suited for everyone – even night-time work. Keep this in mind when hiring.

Look after your employees

As well as offering flexible working time for your employees, we also recommend that you do all you can to take care of them and provide them with adequate management. Research has shown that employees will work more productively and efficiently if they are happy within their role at work. This also benefits their mental and physical health as a result. With this, it is your responsibility to put measures in place to ensure they have exactly what they need. Happy and content employees will boost productivity in no time.

Invest in useful technology

Thirdly, you can help your business work round the clock by investing in useful tech. Thanks to the wonderful expansion and development of technology, we can use this to our advantage with businesses and increase productivity levels. For example, many businesses have jumped at the opportunity to use items like automated packaging machines from BluePrint Automation. There are so many benefits to industrial packaging machines – perhaps the best advantage is that they improve production speed.

Furthermore, when it comes to manual labour, there are legal requirements regarding breaks and downtime for employees. Choosing to use technology such as automated packaging machines eliminates this downtime and keeps your business working round the clock.

Choose an effective marketing strategy

Your business will remain efficient and profitable if you consistently attempt to widen and increase your audience and customer focus. Therefore, we recommend that you should attempt to choose an effective marketing strategy that draws customers to your products and services. There is an endless list of marketing services available and most are very affordable.

Opting for services such as email marketing and social media marketing will help you advertise your company around the clock. You can schedule posts on email providers as well as social media platforms. It is very important that you engage your customers where possible, and it’s useful if you make this recurring at all times of the day.

How do you increase business productivity and efficiency?

Key Office Trends in the New Normal

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StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective Article |New Normal|Key Office Trends in the New NormalBefore the COVID-19 pandemic, companies were used to having employees commute to work every day and spending all day long within office premises. The coming of the pandemic toppled many age-old workplace institutions and norms as companies shifted to remote working. Businesses and employees had to adapt to new ways of working as the old norms vanished, ushering in a new age of novel technologies like Zoom.

Before the pandemic, only 12 percent of American workers were working remotely full-time. This figure is even higher than the six percent in the UK. Even with the vaccines’ distribution spurring some optimism of returning to normal business, experts have indicated that traditional office life and the pre-pandemic working station may no longer be attainable.

Flexible Working Solution

The working environment and culture, how we know it is changing every day, and many people are still figuring out the perfect set up. Remote working has seen workers set up serviced offices in their homes, while others share space with the rest of the family. Employees at major tech companies like Google and Twitter are already working from home as long as they wish, with an option of switching to remote working permanently.

In addition to protecting their employees, companies will have to rethink the office space and arrangement to maintain comfort and flexibility. Companies will also have to contend with some employees juggling between remote working and commuting to the office.

Wellbeing and Human-Centric Design

Another significant shift in the new normal will be creating office designs emphasizing employee safety and empowerment. The pandemic has shown the value of minding others’ health and wellbeing, and companies will be paying attention to this as they reset the office.

The post-pandemic office design will consider things like handwashing facilities, built-in social distancing, flow management, readily available PPEs, and hand sanitizer points. This will not only protect employees but will also boost employees’ confidence and alleviate anxieties.

The use of Technology

Office design will prioritize smart buildings that collect and share information on when and how to use different spaces. This is very important in the context of social distancing, contact tracing, and space rationalization.

Companies are installing touchless technologies and thermal imaging systems to safeguard employees from the transmission and allow easy movements around within the office premises. There are also desk booking apps that ensure only one person touches an individual desk each day.

Connectivity and Community

The new normal will see an upraise of design models that emphasize hospitality and leisure. There is a focus on amenities and communal experience to attract and retain the best talents. The pandemic highlighted the importance of interpersonal relationships and how interactions are essential both at work and in personal life.

Reassessing Company Values

The pandemic has forced companies to rethink and reassess their values and principles. The lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic will cause companies to execute necessary internal shifts to adapt to the new normal.

13 Apps & Ideas To Improve Your Company Culture

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StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures Article |Company Culture|13 Apps & Ideas To Improve Your Company CultureWhat is company culture?

Company culture essentially means the personality of a company; it includes all of the values, behaviors, and interactions of both management and staff. The company culture is reflected by how staff engage with their organization and how they relate to the business goals. The company culture is evident in many aspects of the business operations, including the office arrangements, the hiring decisions and the staff perks.

With a strong company culture staff will feel both valued and engaged. Companies with high levels of staff engagement are more productive and more profitable. By developing a strong company culture, you’ll also improve your branding and your reputation.

According to a study by Smarp, ‘companies that had the best corporate cultures, that encouraged all-around leadership initiatives and that highly appreciated their employees, customers, and owners grew 682 percent in revenue.’ There are many ways that you can seek to improve your company culture, so let’s take a look.

Tips to improve your company culture

1 . Offer Flexibility

When you offer your staff flexibility, you will boost productivity levels. Flexibility allows employees to feel free and creative, and this has a positive impact on engagement. There are several ways that you can offer flexibility, including:

  • Flexible shifts: Instead of insisting on a strict 9-5 work regime, try offering your staff a little more flexibility with their working patterns.
  • Remote options: Working from home has become the norm lately and many businesses are making changes to operate fully remotely. According to a survey on FlexJobs, ‘65% of respondents are more productive in their home office than at a traditional workplace.’
  • Special days off: You can offer flexibility by allowing your staff to take special days off. It might be birthdays off work or a certain religious holiday that they celebrate.

2. Staff perks

According to Employee Benefits research, ‘75% of employees are more likely to stay with their employer because of their employee benefits package.’ By offering staff benefits, you can improve staff loyalty, engagement, satisfaction, and retention. Staff benefits you could considering offering include:

  • Staff discounts: There are plenty of staff discounts you can offer your employees, whether it’s retail discounts, dining discounts, or fitness discounts. Staff discounts are an excellent way to ensure that your staff feel valued.
  • Healthcare plans: To look out for your staff’s health and well-being, try offering an attractive health care plan. When you offer a great healthcare plan, you’re more likely to attract and hold onto talented staff.
  • Wellness programs: Burnout and mental health problems are increasingly common, which is why it’s a great idea to offer a wellness program. Apps such as ‘wellspace’ can support you to offer a wellness program that prioritizes the mental health of your staff.

3. Regular one-on-ones

Get into the habit of having regular one-on-ones with your staff, use these opportunities to ask your staff for feedback, and give them any feedback that you may have. One-on-one catch-ups can be helpful to:

  • Ask your staff if there is any extra training they feel they might benefit from.
  • Discuss their goals within their role and within the company as a whole.
  • Create a roadmap to achieve their goals within their role.
  • Provide them with feedback on their progress and projects.

4. Social side

To improve your company culture, it can be a great idea to encourage a social aspect to your business. You can do this easily by hosting social events for your staff and management. Whether it’s team-retreats, dinners out, or drinks on Zoom, give your staff the chance to become friends and opposed to just colleagues. Building healthy relationships with colleagues can improve the morale and atmosphere at your workplace. During 2020, many businesses have no choice but to work remotely. Due to the coronavirus, many staff members may now feel more comfortable attending online social events.

5. Mentoring

To nurture the progress of your employees, it can be useful to offer a mentoring program. All you need to do is pair up your less experienced staff members with those employees who have a little more experience behind them. There are many benefits to offering a mentoring program, including:

  • Staff can learn from one another and exchange advice and tips.
  • Improve the relationships between your staff members.
  • Improve your in-house training regimes.
  • Peer-to-peer feedback can often be more well-received than traditional feedback.
  • Mentoring programs can help you to build a supportive community within your company.

6. Diversity & inclusion

To improve your company culture, it’s essential to think about diversity and inclusion. To build a diverse workplace, you must create a team that’s representative across different ethnicities, sexual orientations, and genders. Your team should also be representative of individuals with disabilities. To create an inclusive workplace, you must include that everyone is treated equally and included, without any level of discrimination or bias. To ensure that your business is diverse and inclusive, there are several things that you can do:

  • Unconscious bias training: This type of training focuses on helping individuals understand their unconscious biases and help them avoid accidentally discriminatory behavior. When we challenge underlying prejudices and seek to correct this behavior, we are better equipped to build an inclusive workplace.
  • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG provides instructions and advice on ensuring that your content is accessible. By following WCAG guidelines, you can make sure that your content is easily accessible for people with a wide range of disabilities. Such disabilities might include hearing loss, blindness, or learning difficulties. If you’d like to get your website up to WCA standards, then check out digital accessibility with AudioEye.

Diversity apps

Besides these ideas, you could also take a look at applications such as Blendoor. It’s a people analytics app that can help you to prioritize diversity as part of your recruitment processes. The software hides photos and candidate names in the primary stages, to ensure that recruiters cannot be accidentally biased.

Apps to improve your company culture

8. Jostle

This application is a type of ‘people engagement’ platform and employee intranet. The app was created to improve staff engagement by encouraging excellent communication and a positive culture. Jostle helps everyone to celebrate the successes of their colleagues and share workplace stories. Jostle’s best features include events planning, surveys and polls, collaboration, and employee recognition. With Jostle, you’ll improve the communication between your employees. It’s simple to target the info you need using employee type, location, or division. Further features of Jostle include matrix reporting, employee targeting, and workplace structures.

9. Quantum Workplace

Quantum Workplace is a type of employee engagement and performance management software. Using QW, you can access surveys, set goals, and take advantage of employee recognition features. The platform was designed to seamlessly fit management processes, and you can scale it to whatever your requirements are. Quantum workplace also has coaching features, so that you can make the most of the software. Other features of QW include analytics and feedback.

10. Lattice

Lattice is a people management platform which can support your company to encourage high performing and engaged teams. Using the software, you can carry out one-to-ones, set goals, use engagement surveys, and access insightful analytics. There are so many ways that you can customize Lattice, meaning that you can tailor this solution to your company culture. When teams are disengaged, it’s unlikely that they’ll reach their full potential or produce truly creative work.

11. Kudos

Kudos is a type of employee recognition platform, helping you to appreciate and value your staff. The tool has plenty of great solutions for employee recognition. The tool allows teammates to recognize one another’s achievements, which helps to boost engagement levels. It’s essentially a private social network that enhances communication between your teams. Kudos is also useful to represent your brand and to reinforce your core values.

12. Motivosity

The Motivosity application was developed to create a more fulfilling workplace experience. Using the platform, company owners can encourage higher productivity levels and help staff to each their true potential. Motivosity helps businesses to assign the right tasks to the right workers while boosting engagement. The platform allows staff and managers to show appreciation and recognition for workplace efforts. Further features of Motivosity include digital gifts, awards, organization charts, personality assessment, and milestone section.

13. Peakon

Peakon is a great employee engagement platform that can support you to improve your company culture. The app automates the collection of feedback, delivery, and analysis. Using Peakon, it’s simple for companies to be able to identify issues and deal with them appropriately. You can take a look at the highest performing teams, analyze their productivity, and use these insights elsewhere. When you increase your engagement, you’ll improve your company culture and see a greater ROI. Other great features of Peakon include trending dashboard, flexible scheduling, continuous monitoring, and personalized insights.

Improving your company culture means happier employees, improved branding, and, ultimately, higher profits for your business. Developing a strong company culture is a process that can take a little time. Most importantly, when you are recruiting new staff you should ensure that you are choosing individuals who are a good fit for your culture and company values.