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Employee Training Tips for 2020

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Employee Training|Employee Training Tips for 2020Employee training in many different industries follows a similar pattern. There’s book learning – we give our employees handbooks or guides so that they can read more about their jobs and learn more about our companies. And shadowing – new employees buddy up with a more experienced member of staff, or trainer, to learn on the job, watching, copying and learning from other members of your team. There’s no doubt that these methods are effective. We do learn from reading and copying other people. But, they aren’t the only ways to learn.

Offering your staff a more extensive range of training can help them to improve. More instruction can help new employees to settle, and older members of the team stay on top of their game. If you are looking to boost performance in 2020, some of these training tips and ideas could help.

Microlearning

Often, the problem is that we try to learn too much, too quickly. We struggle to take it all in. We overwhelm our minds. Many managers are guilty or overwhelming employees with new processes or information that they need to learn, and we often give them a relatively short amount of time to do it.

Microlearning can be much more effective. Give people small amounts of information, and give them the time to process it, before moving on. Spend time teaching in small chunks, utilizing coaching, testing and other teaching methods, and breaking everything down as much as possible.

Keeping lessons and training sessions short can also increase information retention. Nowadays, we have very short attention spans. We’re used to scrolling through social media feeds, reading very short statements and watching micro video clips. We’ve gotten used to accessing information in this way, and so our brains struggle to cope with more.

Lose the Dull Team Meetings

Team meetings can seem like an effective way to give all of your employees the same information in one go. It can seem as though this would save you time. But the majority of team meetings are exceptionally dull, and the majority of staff hate them. So, lose them. Have short daily briefings and one on one training sessions instead. If you do need a team meeting, keep it short, and try to make it fun.

Play Some Games

Sometimes, people forget things. Often, simple things. They just slip out of our minds. You might even find that many members of your team forget the same things. Creating games like bingo or puzzles with a crossword puzzle maker can help them to remember. Simple games like this can boost memory and increase knowledge retention.

Keep it Personal

Everyone learns differently. Getting to know your staff members, and learning more about how they work can help you to offer personalized training.

Create Training for Personal Time

More of us than ever are working from home, or on the move. Your team members might be reading training manuals on the train, and not at a desk. Tailor your training to suit this. Record podcasts that they can easily listen to on their commute, or film short videos that they can easily watch on their phones.

7 Ways To Finance Your Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article | Entrepreneurship | business finance | 7 Ways To Finance Your Business

Financing a business can be a big obstacle for new startups and established companies alike. It isn’t always easy or even possible to obtain funding through the usual channels, especially if you have no track record to show lenders or investors, and without the money required, it can mean that the business simply cannot succeed. However, there are some ways to obtain the money you need, and if you want to start or grow your business and need funds to do it, you can look at these options to see if anything will work for you.

1. Your Savings

It’s true that not everyone has any savings put aside, but if you do and there is enough, then you might consider using that money to fund your business. This can work out perfectly because there is no requirement for you to borrow the money from anyone else, and therefore your business won’t be in debt (although, of course, you will want to have the money paid back to you over time). You won’t be giving away any equity either, which is something that some business owners don’t like the idea of. Plus, if you do need to borrow more at a later stage, your business’s credit won’t be affected.

2. Your Investments

For those who like to make investments and trade, the profits made in this line can be something you can use to start your business or add funds to it when you need to purchase something specific that will, in turn, help you to make more money in the long-term. Investing doesn’t automatically mean that you will make a profit, which is why checking out the gold and silver price regularly and finding a good broker will help you. However, when you do make money, it can be ideal for your business.

3. A Business Loan

Possibly the first thought that will come into a business owner’s mind when it comes to finding money to fund their project is a business loan from a traditional lender such as a bank. It can work out very well, and with enough research, you will be able to find a variety of different loans with varying interest rates and special deals. You may not be eligible for all of them, however, and applying for too many loans all at once can damage your credit rating. Therefore, it is wiser to make appointments to speak to bank managers or investment advisors to find out what you can and can’t do, and what will work best for you. It may be exciting to find that you can borrow tens of thousands of dollars, but remember that this money must be paid back, and that can be the part that causes problems. Think things through carefully and only borrow what you know you can afford.

4. A Personal Loan

If your business has no trading record, it might be difficult to obtain the loan that you want, in which case a personal loan, assuming your credit rating will allow it, could be the ideal alternative. You take out the loan and then make a director’s loan to your company. The company pays you back each month, and you then pay your own lender back too. This way, you aren’t ever out of pocket, and you don’t have to worry about making repayments.

However, the vital thing to bear in mind with this kind of loan is that you are ultimately liable for it. It means that if the company cannot pay you for any reason, you still have to make the repayments for your loan. Make sure you have two or three months’ worth of repayments in a savings account just in case you need to pay the money back yourself.

5. Angel Investors

Angel investors are groups of people or individuals who use their money to fund businesses and projects that they think are interesting, have potential, and will bring them a profit. This last point is the most important of all because although angel investors do have the business’s interests at heart, their main aim is to make money from whatever they invest in.

The first step in obtaining an angel investor is to write an interesting and informative (and truthful!) business plan as this is what they will want to see before making any decision. You should also work out how much equity you are willing to give away in your business, and how active a role you want the angel investor to take. Some simply want to give you their money and leave you to get on with running the business, and others will want to have a more active role. It is essential you know how you want to do things before agreeing to anything, and don’t get carried away if someone offers you money; make sure you are happy with the deal first.

6. A Credit Card

Credit cards can be supremely useful, or they can be disastrous, and which outcome will depend on how sensible you are with their use. Funding an entire business on a credit card, especially if it is a personal one, is not a good idea; this can leave you in vast amounts of debt that you find difficult to pay off. Plus, the interest rates on credit cards tend to much higher than on other forms of borrowing such as a loan from a reputable company. However, for smaller business expenses a credit card can be ideal, as long as you pay as much off the balance as possible each month. Paying just the minimum amount will mean you spend a lot more than you would need to otherwise, and it will also take you longer.

7. Friends And Family

A loan from a bank or other lender might not be possible if you or your business don’t meet specific criteria, and an alternative might be to borrow money from friends and family. Ideally, you should have a loan agreement drawn up so that everything is legal, and so that everyone knows what is expected of them. This way, there can be no disputes, and you will know how much to pay and when, just as your friend or family member will know how much of a return they should be able to make.

5 Ways To Extend Your Marketing Reach In 2020

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 5 Ways To Extend Your Marketing Reach In 2020

Creating a buzz around your business or your latest product is vital these days. With competition in all quarters, having a multifaceted marketing campaign will ensure you get the widest reach and the best conversion possible.

Whatever the concept, brand, or item that you are selling is, finding the right vehicle to reach the desired segment of the market is crucial.

With social media trends changing on such as a frequent basis, running a standard campaign on the tried and tested lines may not always cut it.

If you are looking for a fresh and contemporary marketing campaign that will provide you with the widest reach, here are some of the top suggestions of getting the message out there in 2020.

Setting Up A Social Media Challenge

One type of marketing campaign is to set up a viral campaign on social media sites such as Facebook. Check out 5 day challenge ideas for some further inspiration.

Having a series that runs for a few days will keep people coming back and will also encourage them to partake, comment, and share

Invest In Snapchat Or Instagram Filters

Filters on social media offer a great way of subtly getting advertising messages into a vast segment. If you want to broaden your reach to an exciting consumer market that is very much on-trend and looking for the next big thing, creating social media filters are a great way of doing this.

Hold A Flash Mob Event

Holding a flash mob event in a busy crowded area such as on a high street or in a shopping center will allow you to create lots of opportunities for viral footage to get out. With many people more than willing to post every happening event on social media through both stories and news feeds, it would not be hard to encourage anyone who was there witnessing or taking part to pass on the word for you.

Creating event-specific hashtags which are seamlessly communicated throughout the flash mob, will mean that people know exactly what tags to use on sites like Instagram and Twitter.

Utilizing Smart Speaker Technology

With one of the fastest-growing segments of the tech industry being the smart speaker, is it time that you focused your marketing campaigns on this area?

With many homes having them, smart speakers offer a window into people’s lives. The learning capabilities to provide targeted marketing are very high and this is an area that is worth exploring whatever line of business you are in.

Rise Of The AI

Chatbots are here to stay. With seemless messaging across all social media platforms, you could be creating marketing campaigns based around this technology. With the ability to adapt and learn as they go, artificial intelligence chatbots allow you to really engage with your consumers in a way that you previously would not have had the people power to achieve. With many wide ranging applications, chatbots should be central in your marketing strategy in 2020.

How We Prioritize at Sticker Mule

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | How We Prioritize at Sticker MuleOrganizations are the sum of their decisions. Those that prioritize well prosper and those that don’t falter. At Sticker Mule, prioritization is the most important thing we do. Our growth accelerates as we prioritized better, but there’s always room to improve.

What prioritization is not

Most literature on prioritization is terrible. It leads you to believe prioritization is about time management or how to use to-do lists. This way of thinking neglects that priorities are what make or break businesses.

Consider that Amazon started as a bookstore in 1994 and grew to $147 million within 3 years. Today they employ 500,000 people who handle $200 billion in revenue. They picked the right projects and grew at an extraordinary pace.

Other retailers had different priorities and either failed or are much smaller. Walmart could be Amazon, but they did not prioritize the Internet and now they are worth half as much.

What prioritization is

Prioritization is picking the right tasks to maximize impact. That means finding high impact tasks and avoiding low impact ones. Usually the highest impact tasks are elusive. We don’t know the highest impact projects we could pursue right now.

Prioritization might sound stressful, but it’s not. Most tasks won’t affect us. Consequently, we shouldn’t stress about the backlog of tasks we “need” to do. We need to keep our minds free to pursue high impact ideas, when they present themselves, by neglecting low impact ones.

Prioritization categories

It’s unproductive to precisely categorize every task, but it’s useful to roughly classify them in your mind. Prioritization improves with practice and thinking about these categories helps us improve.

  • Growth vs. costs – It’s generally better to use our time to grow revenue than reduce costs. Time is finite. Cash isn’t.
  • High vs. low impact – High impact is better, but completing lots of low impact tasks can be worthwhile if we complete them quickly.
  • Enduring vs. temporary – Tasks that provide enduring value are preferable to those that deliver value temporarily.
  • Definite vs. potential – It’s better to pursue improvements with definite benefits than those with potential.
  • Short vs. long term results – Quick wins are preferable, but you can build competitive advantage pursuing ideas that yield results in the long term since others tend to neglect them.
  • Related vs. unrelated tasks – Sometimes related tasks are completed more efficiently when grouped together. For this reason, we often do low impact tasks that pair well with high impact ones.
  • Estimated time to complete – All else equal, tasks that can be completed faster are preferable.

Questions

Ask yourself these questions periodically to improve your ability to prioritize:

  1. What’s the most impactful thing you can work on?
  2. Did you correctly identify the problems you are facing?
  3. Do you know the most important problem to solve next?
  4. Can you replace any planned tasks with better ones?
  5. Can you delete any especially low impact tasks entirely?

Conclusion

We aim to embed a passion for prioritization into our culture. If you think similarly and want to join our global team, we are hiring.

About the Author

Anthony Constantino is the cofounder and CEO of Sticker Mule. A factory guy at heart, Anthony oversees an operation that spans 16 countries in 4 continents with customers including Google, Facebook, Twitter and many of the world’s best brands. He’s determined to make Sticker Mule, already the Internet’s favorite printing company, the absolute best place to work and shop.

Who Benefits Most From Workplace Safety Regulations?

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | Who Benefits Most From Workplace Safety Regulations?There were nearly 3 million workplace injuries and illnesses reported in 2018. Workplace safety has never been more important.

But who benefits most from workplace safety regulations? Although they’re implemented to keep employees safe, they offer major benefits for employers too.

But are they as comprehensive enough?

Keep reading to learn more about which workplace safety regulations matter most and who they protect.

How Workplace Safety Regulations Benefit Employers

Safety regulations are created by government agencies to ensure that organizations meet minimum safety requirements to reduce risk on the job. By creating workplace safety regulations, employers protect themselves from penalties for noncompliance.

Although you should go above and beyond when it comes to protecting your staff, you’re only required to meet the minimum standards.

These safety regulations also provide guidelines for creating your own policies and best practices. You can also reference these regulations to identify holes in your current plan.

It’s important to keep in mind that some safety issues, such as worker fatigue, aren’t often addressed in workplace regulations. There’s no concrete way to measure employee fatigue, which can put that employee, other staff members, and your business at risk.

All you can do to prevent worker fatigue is to educate your staff on managing risk fatigue and offer time off, breaks, and other support and resources.

It’s your legal obligation to create a safe, healthy work environment for employees. Failing to do could result in major financial and legal trouble.

How Workplace Safety Regulations Benefit Staff Members

Workplace safety regulations protect employers from incurring penalties and fines. For employees, the benefits are more personal.

Having safety regulations in place means you’re receiving at least a minimum level of protection against workplace hazards and dangers. Regulations ensure that your health and wellbeing are valued. You can also fall back on these regulations if your employer is treating you unfairly or you’re working under unauthorized conditions.

Employees shouldn’t rely too heavily on the regulations that are put in place. Just because an organization is compliant with the standards doesn’t mean there are zero risks. Avoid getting complacent in your role.

This could lead to a serious accident or injury. If you’ve already incurred a work-related injury, the doctors at https://workerscompdoctor.com/ can help evaluate your condition and explain your rights.

Holes in the Plan

One of the biggest problems with workplace safety regulations is that they’re sometimes unrealistic and only cover the basic needs of staff. Most people agree that the scenarios outlined in the regulations don’t accurately depict day-to-day working conditions. Some of the information and standards may not even apply to your position.

Most regulations leave a lot to be desired. Just because an organization is compliant, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safe.

Some people argue that the answer to who benefits most from workplace safety regulations is the government agencies who hand them down. The regulations are often vague and created in a more generalized manner, leaving gaps in the specific needs of both employees and employers.

The Answer to Who Benefits Most from Workplace Safety Regulations Might Not Be Who You Think

You might think that the answer to who benefits most from workplace safety regulations is the employees. While these guidelines do protect their basic safety, they don’t address everything.

Companies should use these workplace regulations as guidelines for creating more comprehensive and industry-specific safety practices. Workplace safety is a major concern for both leaders and workers and shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Want more tips on boosting your job performance? Check out our blog for tips, videos, and advice on succeeding in business.