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Creating A Corporate Culture Of Sustainability

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StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures Article |Sustainability|Creating A Corporate Culture Of SustainabilitySustainability isn’t just a crusade for eco-warriors or environmentalists; neither is it the latest trend on social media. The world has agreed to bring global warming to a halt, and businesses must act now to ensure they build a culture of sustainability throughout their business. Changing their core values and committing to reducing emissions.

Industry leaders now realise that there is an added economic opportunity within the fight to offer a more ecological and socially aware brand. Sustainability can enhance your relationship with the consumer and build more ground for trust. It shows your business has accountability which leads to honesty and to trust. The ability to act will help you attract your next generation of consumers, customers that prioritise ethical business practices. Your employees are also expecting you to shape up, with many of us making changes to our lives at home to help reduce global warming, it matters that our employers are doing their bit too.

It’s not possible to change overnight. You need to ensure there is a corporate culture amongst all of your internal and external stakeholders. From your shareholders through to your suppliers, every part of the business needs to believe in your focus to become a more responsible manufacturer, supplier or team.

Start by speaking to your suppliers and get to know how they are reducing their impact on the environment. Find out more on how your printer has worked to be more sustainable and what products they can offer to help reduce your carbon footprint. You may need to consider logistics, are any of the components you need for your product or services made overseas? If so, are you sure that the labor conditions are fair? Connect with your whole supply chain and find out where there are changes you can make, which will lead to a more responsible business.

You also need to talk to your shareholders. You may find that they are willing to help you invest in your sustainable future and put more money or time in to make that happen. Bringing your team together and discussing the changes you want to make to create a more responsible culture within the company could help you to highlight other ways you can improve your impact on the environment.

An area that can benefit you financially and your reputation is investing in new energy sources. Whether that is wind, solar or hydro, multiple renewable energy solutions are carbon neutral and will also lower the cost of your energy usage while protecting fossil fuels.

It’s essential that the consumer sees you act and that you communicate this through your branding and your marketing. It’s no longer enough to just talk about making changes you need to implement those changes and show your target market what you have done. This will attract respect, and you will find you have more trust from your customers. Even if your prices change slightly, it won’t deter your customers from using your services.

What Your Startup Needs To Do To Create Strong Business Relationships

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Strong Business Relationships|What Your Startup Needs To Do To Create Strong Business RelationshipsThe phrase ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’ is very relevant to business. Your business partnerships can either make or break your business, so working on creating strong relationships is key. Whether you’re building relationships with your employees, suppliers, or business partners, you need to understand just how important it is to build and maintain strong relationships now and in the future.

What does your startup need to do to create strong business relationships? Read on…

Diversify Your Networks

You need to get out of your comfort zone and force yourself to build connections outside of your immediate circle. See if you can nurture a relationship with at least one customer, supplier, and a competitor. You should then seek out people from other organizations that could be relevant to your business.

Give What You Want To Get From Each of Your Relationships

Your relationships need to go both ways – you need to give what you want to get. Offer to go above and beyond in order to build your relationships. Help people, connect people with one another, and share information. Others will be more willing to respond this way when you need help yourself.

Spend Quality Time On Key Relationships

Make sure you identify your key relationships and aim to spend quality time nurturing them. For example, make an effort to spend more time personalizing interactions with your key customers, as well as leaders who could make a big difference to your organization. The relationships you spend the most time on will generate immediate returns for you in the long run.

Apply Your Time, Brand, And Resources To Social Issues

Ideally, the network of relationships you’re spending the most time on will be people with shared interests, beliefs, and ambitions. Collaborating with them on helping social issues will turn them into advocates for your brand.

Edit And Reshape Your Networks Regularly

You need to ensure you are nurturing the relationships that are critical to your business regularly. However, you also need to ensure you are editing and reshaping your networks, too. If a contact is no longer useful to you, you should push them into your inactive network. Regularly identifying new relationships that could be viable is crucial. You might find that an ac do power supply manufacturer is viable to your business and a supplier you once had a relationship with is not. Keeping your network current and useful will stop things from getting confusing for you.

There’s so much more to remember about building strong business relationships. Here are some further pointers you can use:

  • More relationships are not always better – be selective about the relationships you form.
  • Over investment in relationships could take time away from developing your business – find a balance.
  • Introducing new elements to your network will allow you to find new perspectives, new experiences, and positive change.

You need to look at your business as a community, not an island. Build strong business relationships and review regularly for the best results!

Saving Cash in 2020: Your Quick Guide

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Saving Cash|Saving Cash in 2020: Your Quick GuideThis year is looking like a difficult one for individuals and families across the world. With millions out of work – and still more on a reduced salary, or on reduced hours – it can become difficult to make ends meet. That’s why, in this article, we’re going to take a look at the ways in which you can save you, and your family, some cash – ensuring that you’re not eating into your savings during this difficult financial period. With the right preparation, you’ll be able to reduce many of your monthly costs – as you’ll see below.

Your Subscriptions

When you check through your bank statement each month, you may come to find a few recurring payments that you feel are above and beyond what you can cover at the moment. These might include exorbitant phone bills, fees for membership organizations, or subscriptions to software or services. Look up how to cancel Adobe subscriptions, and how to shut-down direct debits you’re paying in order to reduce your total expenditure every month.

Food and Drink

Next up is the cash you spend on food and drink for your family. While it’s always nice to splash out on a takeaway meal, or expensive food from restaurants and cafes, it can sometimes be a little irresponsible to do so when you’re not earning a great deal of cash. Cutting down on what you spend on food and drink – and this includes alcohol, which can be expensive – will help you save for the future in a responsible fashion.

Bills

Many families across the US pay their bills in relation to how much electricity and heating, or air conditioning, they use. In these summer months, there’s less reason than usual to use your energy up in your home: it’s warm outside without being stifling, and it’s light for most of the waking day. If you can cut down on your energy usage in your home, your bills will reduce dramatically as a result.

Vehicle

How much are you driving at the moment? Are you able to cut down the amount that you drive, replacing some journeys with public transport, walking, or cycling? The amount of cash you spend on gas and vehicle repairs each year can really add up, leaving you with costs of over $100 each month. If you can, attempt to leave behind some of your driving so that you’re saving this cash to put towards more valuable investments.

Luxuries

Finally, if you’re beginning to worry about your cash flow in the future, it’s best to begin thinking shrewdly about what you spend your cash on, and where you decide to spend your expendable income. Everyone is different, with unique luxuries and a unique spending pattern. It’s up to you to see what’s essential and what’s a luxury, and to cut out the latter in your monthly spending. You can return to that luxury spending when you’ve found financial stability once again.

Use the tips outlined in this short article to cut out a good deal of your monthly spending, helping you to achieve financial stability for yourself or for your family.

Forget Balance: How COVID-19 Drives Home the Importance of Work-Life Blending

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Work-Life Blending|Forget Balance: How COVID-19 Drives Home the Importance of Work-Life BlendingAs COVID-19 began to move throughout the US, organizations reacted quickly to enable employees to “work from home.” For many leaders, this was a shock and they struggled to effectively adapt their organization to a blended world. The myth of work/life balance was prevalent in many companies as they failed to recognize the trends pointing to increased integration of work and life. The concept of work/life balance, or the separation between work and life, was dealt a huge blow with the outbreak of COVID-19. The novel coronavirus forced leaders of hierarchical, on-site, 9-5 businesses to acknowledge what should have been blatantly obvious: work and home life can no longer be looked at as being balanced but should be viewed as blended.

COVID-19 simply accelerated the trend that has been taking place for years. In my TEDx Talk, Blendification® of Work and Life, I highlight that social, technological, and economic impacts are forcing work and life together. The work/life balance myth has run its course. Here are some observations from the focus on work/life balance:

Work/life balance has become a cover for “look at how hard I am working.” Over the years, I have never heard anyone say, “I need more balance, I am spending way too much time with my family.” More accurately, it is the reverse. People are constantly saying they “need more balance,” which is code for “I am working too hard” or “look at how hard I am working.” They are typically bringing attention to their work ethic as if it is a badge of honor. As a result, work/life balance has turned into a personal proclamation about my strong work ethic at the expense of my personal and family life.

Work/life Balance creates an adversarial relationship between the two. When pursuing work/life balance, an adversarial or competitive relationship becomes prevalent. When this happens, people begin to keep score. It is not uncommon to hear people add up their work hours and become frustrated when they exceed what they consider “balanced.” The pursuit of balance is a futile quest. If you are pursuing your human potential, you cannot separate work and life. You will never achieve equilibrium between the two.

Work and home life do not happen in averages. Life happens in extremes, but we talk about it in averages. As someone once told me: “If I have one foot in a boiling hot bucket of water and the other in ice cold water, the average is fine, but I am not feeling fine!” That describes work and home life. There are constant demands that create the need to be in one area or the other. With fluctuating and conflicting demands, pursuing balance is unrealistic.

While work/life balance has proven to be a myth, blending work and life is more realistic and aligns with social, technological, and economic trends. There are two aspects to consider when blending work and life: the physical and the psychological. Here are some insights into each:

Physical Blending Work and Life

As the novel coronavirus swept the world, companies scrambled to create work-from-home capabilities. As mentioned, this accelerated the trends that were already taking place. Organizations quickly leveraged technology to enable a transition from working in an office to working from home. In some cases, this was done hastily because there were tangible deadlines and corresponding health consequences. As work becomes more integrated physically with homelife, here are ideas that will be helpful going forward:

  • Provide guidance to employees (directional and financial) in setting up dedicated workspace.
  • Make recommendations on boundaries to reduce “interference.”
  • Update policies and procedures with detailed expectations related to working from home.
  • With increased risk of technology and security breaches, make sure you have updated your protection and keep enhancing it since hackers see an opportunity in penetrating our data.
  • Maintain standards in work attire for those participating in online meetings.
  • Create dedicated technology-driven social events.

Psychologically Blending Work and Life

While most of the focus has been on the physical aspects of blending work and life, the true benefits of a blended life are psychological. The millennial generation has opened our eyes to the need to pursue our human potential by positively impacting the world. Given that we spend over 50% of our waking time at work or in work-related activities, we cannot possibly realize our human potential without incorporating work. As a result, the workplace becomes one of the primary areas where people pursue their potential and maximize their impact on society.

What happens at work, happens at home, and this inherent connection is key to creating a better workplace, better homelife, better customers, and better communities. When workplace organizations recognize the importance of growing and developing their employees—not just their job-related skills, but their personal and leadership skills—they will see happier and more fulfilled employees taking pride in their entire life. Here are some points related to developing the psychological aspects of blending work and life:

  • Develop, define, and disseminate your desired culture to make it so compelling and strong that it is alive when employees are working from home.
  • Align your culture with a motivating cause.
  • Create a strategic platform that sets clear strategic focus, outcomes, and actions that are connected to the organization’s culture and cause.
  • Cascade the strategic platform throughout the company through internal peer accountability groups (we call them Roots Groups in The Blendification® System).
  • Institute ongoing training and development around activating your employees’ human potential, leading to greater lifelong fulfillment.
  • Build an ongoing communication and operating system that blends your culture, strategy, and execution, linking employees’ daily work to meaningful outcomes.

The illusion of work/life balance has been revealed with the response to the COVID-19 outbreak. It is time to embrace the trends that have been taking place for years and leverage work to enhance employees’ lives, customers’ lives, and the benefits to their communities. Since COVID-19 accelerated working from home, business leaders now have the opportunity to increase their company’s impact by blending work life and homelife.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Dan BruderDan Bruder is the CEO of Fusion Dynamics Group, an international strategy and leadership consulting firm based in Colorado. He has an accomplished background in executive leadership and is a faculty member of Colorado State University’s Executive MBA program and the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Graduate Leeds School of Business. Drawing on his 30-plus years of leadership experience, he created The Blendification® System: Activating Potential by Connecting Culture, Strategy and Execution. The Blendification® System book is available on Amazon as well as through a series of workshops and keynotes. Learn more about The Blendification® System, at www.BlendificationSystem.com

Tips For Hiring In A Business

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Tips for Hiring|Tips For Hiring In A BusinessHiring staff is important and relevant to any business. How much of it depends on what you need for your business. Too many staff and you run the risk of being financially vulnerable, too few, and you restrict the ability to grow and thrive. Here are some tips for hiring in a business.

Know What You Want

It’s good to know what you want when it comes to hiring. If you haven’t got a job description outlined, then it can be a case of drawing in the wrong people, and then you end up starting all over again. It’s important to have your wants and needs in the job description and to have the role cemented before it gets distributed to relevant job boards and agencies. If you can be more precise and on the mark in the initial stages of hiring, then you reduce the risk of wasting everyone’s time and finding the right person. The last thing you want is to end up with someone who was never the right fit because you didn’t have all of the skills or duties of the employee outlined properly.

Assess The Skills & Experience Needed

Regardless of the company, the size or what industry it’s in, the skills and experience are an important part of the hiring process. You want to make sure that the person you’ve picked is capable of doing what you need them to do within the business. Whether you’re looking or plumbers who’ve taken plumbing programs for a handyman services platform or getting a new building manager, skills and experience are relevant. Just like the job description, it’s important to access what’s needed and to make sure that when you’re going through resumes, you’re getting rid of any that don’t match the criteria you’re after.

Look Out For Personality

Personality is just as important as the person fitting the job description. They need to be able to fit in with the company dynamic and they also need to feel like they are right for the company. If you’ve got someone that’s lacking in the company’s type of personality or doesn’t fit right, then it can cause problems with the rest of that staff and how overall atmosphere. So when it comes to hiring, be sure to get to know the person you’re interviewing, who they are, and what they enjoy outside of the workplace.

Introduce Existing Staff

Your current staff plays an important role of the hiring process because like mentioned above, the person you’re recruiting has to suit the team. With that being said, it’s worth introducing your team or an existing member of staff to the final few you’re interviewing. This can help to understand whether they’ll fit in properly and what the existing staff thinks of the individuals on a personal level. You don’t need to agree with their thoughts, but they are there to help come to the right decision overall.

Hiring in a business can be a challenge, and so it’s important to take it seriously and be detailed in your search.