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Two Simple Ways to Make Your Small Business Look Professional

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Launching a Small Business|Two Simple Ways to Make Your Small Business Look ProfessionalIf you’re on track to launch your own small business, it can be tempting to dive straight in and announce yourself to the world before you’ve got all the bells and whistles that go with a legitimate company. While that go-getter energy might mean you hit the ground running, you might miss your chance to nail that all important first impression. If those early months are as busy as you hope they’ll be, you may never get around to making sure your business looks as slick outwardly as you know you are. The two simple tips will help you avoid looking unprofessional.

Get Yourself a Proper Email Address

Even if your business is totally legit, asking your clients to contact you via a Gmail or Yahoo address signals to them that at worst, you don’t care about their privacy or security of their data, and at best, that you are not a professional outfit. It doesn’t cost much these days to secure a business email account, especially when you consider that this small fee will pay off in terms of customer trust. Email hosting for small businesses is a good option if you want a professional email address on a platform you are accustomed to. Depending on which web hosting service you use for your website, you may be able to select an add-on to obtain a business email that corresponds to your domain name. Whichever route you go, move on from that Hotmail address before you start communicating with customers!

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Launching a Small Business|Two Simple Ways to Make Your Small Business Look ProfessionalCreate A Professional Website

These days a website is non-negotiable if you want people to take your business seriously. Yes, some companies only have Facebook pages, but bear in mind that not everybody uses Facebook—Millennials, for example, certainly use it less than their parents. Younger people these days prefer other apps like Whatsapp and Snapchat, so if you’re hoping to market your product to younger generation, you’d be crazy to limit yourself to Facebook, or any social media platform. And don’t worry about making it super modern – a simple, clean website that accurately describes your business is more than enough to start off with. As long as your webpage informs your audience of who you are, what you offer and where to find you, it will be adequate to announce to the world that you are open for business and are here to stay. You don’t have to be a tech nerd to make a website these days. Sites like Squarespace can do a lot of the work for you, allowing you to spend your precious time on your business. Whatever you do, make sure you don’t launch your website until it is complete! Pages that say ‘under construction’ are a really bad look, as they undermine the impression you’re trying to create of a stable going concern. Once your company finds its feet, you may want a more elaborate website, at which point you could look into getting a custom built website to suit your requirements. Hiring a professional web builder can be costly; don’t take that step until you calculate that the outlay will pay off in terms of sales.

Whether you’re on the brink of your launch, or just getting set up as a business, make sure you announce yourself properly by taking into account these tips.

2 Ways You Can Keep Your Employees on Your Side

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StrategyDriven Management and Leadership Article |Managing Your Workforce|2 Ways You Can Keep Your Employees on Your SideYour employees are your business’s main asset. Without them, the work that you need to get done day in, day out won’t be complete, the money that you need to make in order to turn over a profit won’t get made, and your job will be made ten times harder as you seek to carry your company’s burden alone. Without your workforce, your business is nothing.

For this reason, keeping your employees on your side should be one of your top priorities. Lose your workforce’s trust and loyalty, and you’ll find it increasingly difficult to continue trading.

Here are two surefire ways to keep your employees on your side.

Stick by them when things get tough

Life is not all plain sailing. Everybody comes across hurdles and bumps in the road as they grow and progress further, especially when it comes to their profession.

Unfortunately, this means that even the most skilled and hard working of your employees will, at some point, face some sort of trouble in their career. If you want to keep them on your side, you need to stick by every one of your staff members when things do, in fact, get tough for them. Doing so will showcase just how dedicated you are to them and their ongoing progress in your business. Safe in the knowledge that you have their best interests at heart, your employees will instantly feel more appreciative of you and, thus, more inclined to work harder for you.

One way to stick by your employees is to get them legal assistance whenever they are need of it. Even if they have suffered an injury at work and they are claiming against your negligence, standing by your employees and making sure they get what they deserve will no doubt prove how dedicated you are to them. Bare them no ill-will, get them partnered up with a personal injury lawyer NYC, and make sure that they get is owed to them. If you play ball in this instance, you might even be lucky enough to settle the case out of court.

Be transparent at all times

Transparency is key when seeking to keep your employees on your side. How could you expect anything less? Why would anybody trust you if you’re not straight or truthful with them?

When it comes to establishing transparency in your business, you should:

  • Establish a set of core values
  • Never make selling an end goal
  • Keep your door metaphorically open at all times
  • Be an open book
  • Always seek to respond to your employees in a timely manner
  • Remain open to the opinions and suggestion of others at all times
  • Create a community feel in your workspace (and in your online space, too)

Your employees are the lifeblood of your business. Without them, as comprehensively stated, you have no business. It is essential, then, that you keep them on your side at all times and at all costs. To do this, you should stick by them when things get tough, and you should always be transparent with them.

5 Steps to Take if an Employee is Injured

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |Safety Program|5 Steps to Take if an Employee is InjuredEven if your business has the best safety program in place, it’s still possible for an employee to be injured. Pressure can cause employees to cut corners or be careless in their work. Injuries in the workplace can happen at any time, and it pays to be prepared. How you and other employees respond to the injury can make all the difference. Knowing how to respond is crucial for the employee’s wellbeing and the future success of your business. Workplace injuries impact the employee, their family, staff morale and your business’s bottom line.

Here are five steps you should take when dealing with a work-related injury or illness properly.

Get Appropriate Medical Treatment

The highest priority, when an accident has occurred is to get the appropriate medical treatment for the injured employee. If the person is seriously injured, consider dialing 911 immediately. If the injury is not severe and their life is not in danger, it could be treated in house, or they can be transported to the nearest medical care facility for treatment. Your insurance provider may have provided you with a contact telephone number that provides 24/7 access to an injured employee hotline. Registered nurses will then be able to provide medical guidance over the phone for workplace injuries or illnesses.

Secure the Accident Scene

Once the employee has received medical attention, your next priority is to secure the accident scene. This is to prevent further injury and for investigative purposes. A formal investigation may have to take place by local law enforcement or the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). Anything involved in the accident should also be secured and saved as they may be needed during a subsequent investigation. If you’re worried about the legal implications of an injury in the workplace, you should consult with a personal injury attorney such as Abercrombie, PA.

Collect Facts

It’s important to gather facts about the accident as soon as possible. All details and facts will need to be included in any reports that have to be made. Record contact information of who was injured, what happened, where and why it happened and the medical treatment that was provided. Contact information for any witnesses will also need to be recorded.

Complete the Paperwork

You will need to complete an incident report as quickly as possible while it is fresh in your mind. If you want to make a claim under your worker’s compensation insurance policy, you’ll need to file it within 24 hours. This can usually be done by email, phone, or by visiting their website.

Develop a Return-to-Work Program

It depends on the injury, but an accident at work could lead to an employee missing time from work. Therefore, you can implement an effective return-to-work program to help keep workers off long-term disability and potentially lower related costs for you as an employer. Work out whether there are opportunities for transitional or modified jobs so that your business can accommodate employees who have been medically cleared to return to work but will be unable to perform their previous duties.

Dodge The Issues That Cause A Young Company To Crash

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Business Success|Dodge The Issues That Cause A Young Company To CrashDid you know that over ninety percent of businesses fail in their first year on the market? This shows you how risky setting up a company can be. It’s very much a lottery whether your company is a success and survives for the long term or even beyond the first couple of years. Why is this? Well, first, there’s the competition. Thousands of new businesses open each year and it makes sense that customers are not going to buy from them all. Instead, they are going to pick the ones that are providing the most appealing options or the best price. In some cases, it’s possible that the winner won’t have either of these factors on their side but will still come out on top. We’ll discuss why that might happen a little further down.

The good news is that once you open your business on the market, you can avoid most of the issues that cause it to fail. This can be related to financial decisions, marketing and promotion or the routes you take to build up your brand. Let’s get started and we’ll begin by exploring visibility.

Poor Visibility

If your business fails, then it could be because you have a poor level of visibility. Visibility is all about how easy it is for customers and potential customers to find your business online. This will depend on your marketing efforts and how successful your campaign has been. Some businesses have no trouble getting to page one of the SERPs for their targeted keywords. Others will struggle to get to page ten and most consumers won’t even get up to page two. The bottom line here is that if you don’t make the right choices with your promotion and marketing then you will be dead on the water.

Mistakes here can be both minor and complex. For instance, a minor mistake is thinking that marketing is one and done. It isn’t and you should be thinking about incorporating it into your monthly business budget. A more complex mistake is based on the type of campaign that you choose to run. Ultimately, you need to make sure that you are taking steps to run a targeted promotional campaign. Unless your business is already successful, you’re not going to be able to focus on every area of the market. You need to research your target audience, identify where they are online and build your marketing campaign around this. For instance, you don’t need to include every social media network if your target customers don’t use Facebook and Instagram.

Overspending

It is possible that you are overspending in your business. If you end up in the red running your company, then you’re not going to last much longer on the market. You need to make sure that you are keeping your business books healthy. While a business can start with zero profitability and making a loss, this is never going to be a sustainable business model. Instead, you need to think about working to ensure that you are making money with your company. So, how do you avoid overspending?

Well, first, you need to make sure that you are aware of the issue. You can do this by hiring an accountant. An accountant will be able to keep a check on spending in your company and make sure that you are staying in the green. They can also help you keep your business model more efficient by telling you where you can afford to reduce spending as well as where you might need to increase it. A lot of business owners will avoid hiring an accountant in an effort to save money.

It’s certainly true to say that an accountant can be expensive, particularly if you take one on fulltime. However, you can save by outsourcing this solution to another business. That way you can cut the cost and still have an expert on the phone whenever you need their advice.

If you are not going to hire an accountant, then you at least want to make sure that you are using an online digital solution. The software can be used to track your spending, keep a check and manage the books. This is also useful when the tax man comes around.

Running Out Of Money

Of course, it is possible that you are making a profit but you’re also running out of money in your business model. This will usually be the case where the budget isn’t enough to sustain the high levels of demand. The instinct here will be to cut back and make sure that you keep costs down by limiting your business model. However, this will typically be a mistake. If you do this, then what you end up with is a business that is unable to grow and that remains stagnant. Customers will quickly turn away from a company like this because you won’t be able to offer anything new or interesting.

Instead, what you need to do is make sure you are injecting more cash into your business model for expansion. Once you fund the expansion you can use your new levels of profitability to pay the cost. You may be able to attract the interest of an investor to fund your business growth. If you can’t do this, you will need a loan. You can explore things like Ondeck loan reviews to find the right option here and ensure that you are getting a good deal. Be aware of interest rates as well as fees as this will determine whether a loan is the right choice for your company.

We hope this helps you understand some of the reasons why a business may fail on the market. If you take this advice, you can avoid some of the common problems and ensure that you don’t have to worry about your business taking the next hit. Instead, you can rise from strength to strength, growing your company. Remember, to ensure longevity, you need to have a plan for your business in place. Always start with a five-year plan and then build from there.

Why You Need to Boost Productivity in Your Office

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Productivity|Why You Need to Boost Productivity in Your OfficeWhen you run a business, there’s a lot that you need to think about. You might start your day with a massive to-do list, that only seems to get longer as the day goes on and more problems are brought to your attention. Every time you cross one thing off the list, two more jobs might get added. You might have to spend time dealing with customers and suppliers, as well as keeping your team members happy and coming up with new ideas. Your days are busy, and it can feel as though there is no time to take anything else on.

On these occasions, finding ways to boost productivity might not seem like a priority. But it’s usually one of the very best things that you do. Believe it or not, increasing your own productivity, as well as the productivity of your team on the whole, using an online data room and other tools, can help you to deal with all of those other issues, and simplify your days. Let’s take a look at just some of the reasons why you should commit to boosting productivity.

To Get More Done in Less Time

Getting more done in less time is something that many of us dream about. It would both give us more free time, letting us take more time off to do the things that we love, and allow us to spend our time on more creative enterprises and finding ways to improve and grow our business. If you had to spend less time on menial tasks, you would be free to spend more time doing the things that you enjoy, or more creative pursuits that only you can do.

Being more productive is the answer. If your whole office were more productive, everyone would get more done, with less time wasted and spent unfocused. Everyone could work shorter days, take longer breaks and spend more time doing the things that push your business forward. Get more done in less time, and you’ll also have the chance to earn more money.

To Keep Your Staff Happy

Staff morale and productivity go hand in hand. If morale is low, and your staff are unhappy, they won’t be able to work productively. They’ll be unfocused, they’ll waste time and procrastinate, and their work will be poor. Each task will take longer than it should.

But, equally, a team that works productively will be happier. If they’ve got more time, and they feel as though they are working well, getting a lot done and making the most of their time, their mood will be improved. This can rub off on the rest of the team.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Productivity|Why You Need to Boost Productivity in Your OfficeTo Reduce Mistakes

Working more productively can also mean that fewer mistakes are made, which again, will increase productivity further as less time is spent redoing things and correcting errors.

A productive team that is happy, motivated and focused will make fewer mistakes. They won’t be flustered or confused. They’ll feel positive and confident. They won’t doubt themselves, and they’ll be happy to ask for help or guidance if they need it.

To Streamline Processes

These are another two that work hand in hand. If your office systems are streamlined and easy, your staff will be able to follow them easily, making fewer mistakes and working well. Thus, boosting productivity.

But, a productive office that makes fewer mistakes and is less flustered will be able to streamline their own work. They’ll be able to find better ways to do things, to cut unnecessary tasks and to find their own ways to work, which suit their style. Give your staff the freedom to work their way and productivity will be boosted.

To Improve Quality

A productive workforce that makes fewer mistakes and is confident in their own abilities will do quality work. The standard of work will improve, and your customers will be able to tell the difference.

So, we can see that boosting productivity is a must, but how are you going to do it? Well, a few techniques that you could try include letting your staff take regular breaks and allowing them to work more flexible hours. Keeping your workspace bright and open and operating an open door policy. Being an understanding boss, who your staff are happy to come to and confide in, will also be a big help. Other things that you could do include removing negativity from the office, increasing natural light, adding plants and other colors and simplifying systems, so that peoples jobs are as easy as possible. Really, you need to try things out, to see what productivity-boosting ideas work best for your company and your team.