Archives for July 2021

How To Make Your Small Business More Efficient

July 2, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

If you run a small business, you are already aware that you need to keep a well-oiled machine. Having everything running smoothly and efficiently ensures you keep up with your competitors and have customer retention. However, the reality is not every business is as efficient as it could be. Many companies have serious efficiency problems that can cause a loss in revenue of up to 30 per cent. This means that there is a lot of cope for improvement. Every business owner should constantly be looking for ways to make his or her business more efficient. Whether that be through new technology or the parking of specific tasks. A business owner needs to be open to change in order to keep up with the ever chafing nature of modern society. Anyway, listed below are ways to help you make your small business more efficient:

Image from Pixabay

Tasks Audit

Go through your business forensically and create a report of every task that is conducted. If you have employees, ask them about their day to day activities and ensure that every task is in your report. Once you have a thorough understanding of all the tasks performed daily, weekly, even monthly, you can mark them primary, secondary, tertiary, and superfluous. If possible, the aim here is to cut redundant tasks and reduce the frequency a less necessary task is performed.

Automate

If you have any tasks that can be better performed on a computer, go for it. The initial expense of an automated system being install may set you back a little, but the time saved will pay dividends. A worker wasting time on a mind-numbing sorting email task, for example, is pointless. People are better when they are more challenged. They feel as if they are worth more too.

Engage Staff

In a small business, it is relatively easy to be on first name terms with your staff. Ensure that you make an effort to engage with your staff. Perhaps a ten-minute meeting every day or at the beginning of the week would help. Find out how they are and if there is anything you can do to help them in their jobs. Make sure you listen, and if need be, make changes off the back of their suggestions.

Outsource

Be honest, are the skills you have in-house up to every task? You may find that you or your employees are struggling with a task that would make more sense if you outsourced. This may be something you do not need to do every day, so when the task rears its head, you’re relearning how to do it every time. Or perhaps your IT security is lacking. Outsourcing to a professional can save you time, money and make your business more efficient.

Get the Right Suppliers Ever been let down by your suppliers? Is delivery time becoming an issue? Products of less than par quality. Well, as you already know, competition in this world is fierce. Don’t blindly buy from the same supplier every time. It may be in your best interests to shop about, get a better deal. Maybe your engines or fleet of vehicles would perform better if you buy red diesel drums, for example.

5 Things Every HR Professional Needs to Succeed

July 1, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

When you want to become a successful HR professional, you’ll need to do more than passion to lead the human force. What’s more, you have to go beyond graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology or human resources management.

A successful HR employee is someone who delivers good quality on every task they work on. This professional also makes sure to avoid committing costly errors or mistakes that can ruin the image and reputation of their organization.

If you’re a professional looking to achieve great success in the world of human resources, take note of the following tips:

Become a Great Leader

There’s a common saying that great leaders are born, not made. This adage applies to HR professionals. You have to stand on the front lines to guide employees as you represent the human force of an organization.

Develop the following qualities to become an admirable leader in the human resources industry:

Appoint training leaders for each department or division to know which areas and who requires training, as well as ways to conduct training.
Work closely with department managers to find out and take note of their concerns and needs. Spend time working with different departments, so that workers will not feel intimidated by your presence.
Solve complex legal management and employee issues and prevent a crisis from occurring.
Assist workers in finding areas that require improvement and come up with specific action steps.
Put the preferences and interests of employees first.

A great leader takes initiative, not control. If you want to succeed as an HR professional, take note of these pieces of career advice: be willing to offer tasks and answer on behalf of the team, stay curious by asking questions and guide employees remotely.

Understand and Master Conflict Resolution

Hiring talent is just one aspect of learning how to become a successful human resources professional. You’ll also need to manage talent on your current team.

This means being great at solving problems and resolving conflicts. Sometimes, things become uncomfortable between workers. As an HR professional, you should know to fix the problem with the least amount of conflict possible.

You could start by learning about the best practices for conflict resolution. These typically begin by addressing the issue with authentic questions, a calm atmosphere and open communication. Refrain from overcomplicating situations.

Balance Professionalism with Thoughtfulness

One of the biggest challenges that HR professionals face is being thoughtful while still maintaining a sense of professionalism.

You’re working in a people industry. This means that you’re going to face a lot of upset employees, angry candidates and hurt feelings.

Striking the right balance between professionalism and thoughtfulness is not a skill that you can necessarily learn in a training program or course. It’s something that you will need to hone over time in your current job.

You can achieve the right balance by first approaching situations with a sense of professionalism. Make sure you maintain this while refraining from crossing any personal lines.

When necessary, add thoughtfulness to your conversations with employees. Make sure that you stay calm and be approachable in any situation. Avoid injecting your personal opinions.

Understand the Values and Goals of Your Organization

Remember that HR managers act as a link between the employees and the company’s management, among other things. You need to make sure that you have a solid grasp of the company’s values and goals, so that you can effectively communicate them to current or potential workers.

What’s more, you should meet with executives and managers occasionally. Take the time to have a dialogue with the heads of each department. Ask them three things:

Where they like to be in the next 6 to 12 months
What tools and resources they need to become successful in their job
What their current goals are and how they plan to achieve them

By doing these, you’ll know how to communicate those goals and values to aspiring job candidates who are looking to join your organization.

Embody a Constant Desire to Learn New Things

People today are living in a digital world where technology changes quicker than they’re able to keep up with sometimes. As a human resources professional, you have to possess the desire to learn new skills if you want to succeed in your career.

This entails the following:

Enrolling in a course that will help you refresh HR skills or learn new ones
Looking for a mentor who can help you grow in your job
Staying on top innovative HR technology and industry trends

Long story short, you need to stay up to date on the latest and greatest in the field of human resources.

Follow these five tips to become a successful and more effective HR personnel or leader. Remember that you should work hard and continue to learn new things, so that you can achieve the success you want in your career.

Freelance Coaching: How To Attract New Clients

July 1, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

As a freelance coach, it can be quite difficult to attract new clients in to your small business, which is why it’s important to get your approach and your look right. Often times, first impressions will count for everything for a potential new client.

Consider Offering Free Items

One sneaky and unique way to attract new clients, is to offer freebies for signing up to you, or incentives in general. People always love free things, and if they happen to be something connected to your industry or expertise area, then it’s a win-win.

Offering free perks is a great way to help establish your brand especially if you’re new to coaching and the area in general. Of course, once you’ve established yourself and have a growing client list, then you won’t need to give away freebies, as it could actually become detrimental to give away so many goods.

Marketing Is Everything

The best way in which you can help yourself to attract new clients is by looking at your marketing strategy. Traditionally, you may be thinking of a vast office dedicated to plastering adverts across a city, or creating a video, but modern marketing is simpler.

As a coach, you can create your own social media posts, which you could promote with various offers and incentives. Or you could work with a coaching site that offers perks and marketing for coaches in general.

If you’re looking for clients, you should contact A Guide For Your 20s who offer a service at one low annual rate that helps promote your coaching to over 30,000 people each month. They will be able to explain all about marketing for coaches, and how you could benefit from their services.

Build Your Own Network

Having your own network of people within your industry is a great way to help grow your client list itself. That means connecting with associates, referral clients, other coaches and of course your current client list.

It’s likely that if you provide a good service, then your clients will promote your business without even asking, either by word of mouth, reviews or praising on social media. The more people that know about you, the more likely people will approach you without you even having to lift a finger.

If you feel like your current network list has reached its maximum reachability, consider establishing new connections, such as at a business event or forum, where you can meet influential people who can help you grow.

Improve Your Digital Space

The most important thing to consider when it comes to improving your coaching reachability, is to have a space online in some way. That could be with various social media accounts promoting your business and showing what you’re about, or utilizing a website for bookings, reviews and examples of the service.

This will be the first thing people check out about you when they hear your service and want to know more. If you don’t have any online presence, but another coach does, they will most likely go for that coach over you.

Retaining And Attracting Top Talent Through Workplace Flexibility

July 1, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

To boost productivity, most employers are after employees who can adapt to different situations and take up various tasks that arise time and time again. As an employer, you will view such employees as significant assets for your business and work hard towards retaining them.

You know you can count on them when a need arises. It doesn’t matter if the employee’s job requires them to embark on cross country moving; they will oblige and proceed. This will save you from having to undertake the recruitment process now and then.

How Can You Offer Workplace Flexibility?

By now, you may have realized that top performers are attracted to a flexible workplace. This helps them maintain a solid work-life balance. Generally, you can offer your employees flexibility by;

Ensuring to incorporate paid leave to rest and rejuvenate when they need a break from work.
Realizing that you have employees and not robots therefore working hours are reasonable
Allowing your employees to work remotely now and then, provided they have the necessary resources.
Offering flexible arrival and departure times provided they achieve the recommended working hours.
Allowing them to choose and control their work in shifts.

Image by Taryn Elliott from Pexels.

How To Meet The Demand For Flexibility By Employees

To ensure that you can attract top performers for your company, you will have to meet the demand for flexibility that employees seek. This means that you have to create policies that align with flexibility. Here are tips on how you can meet employees’ demand for flexibility.

Start Small

As you initiate flexibility in your firm, don’t stretch yourself too much. Start with baby steps by allowing one flexible act at a time. You can have specific days designated for remote working to see how things will turn out.

Take Advantage Of Technology

Nowadays, there is a wide range of tech tools that you can use to implement a flexible working environment. You can incorporate them in your firm to help operations to continue running efficiently without disruptions. In addition, ensure that your employees get guidance on how they work, especially if you include a time and attendance tech tool.

Define Incentives With Goals

To avoid being taken advantage of, ensure that you align the incentives you are offering with visible outcomes. This way, even if an employee is working virtually, they cannot manipulate the hours they have logged on and present visible goals instead. You will also not have to worry about them clocking in or out.

Eliminate Discrimination

Ensure that everyone knows that they are allowed to take advantage of the flexible working program you are offering. This will ensure that none of your employees is uncomfortable taking advantage of a flexible working schedule. In addition, they will then be able to embrace and support one another.

The good thing about having top talent working for you is recognizing the importance of effective communication in a firm. You will still be able to manage them effectively. Communication will still be constant through email, texts, and conference calls.

You will also experience an increase in employee satisfaction. This will help you retain your top talent. Remember that most people are interested in establishing a solid work-life balance since it makes them happier.

Effective Tips To Get a Job in Another State’

July 1, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Photo by Fauxels from Pexels

Finding a new job can be a daunting task, especially in a different state. In addition, this kind of job search requires a different strategy than searching in your area of residence.

People are always moving because of various reasons. For example, you could be thinking of changing your job, joining your partner who got a new position in another state, maybe you want a lifestyle change or to be close to your loved ones.

Whatever your reasons for moving are, you will need a plan for it. As well, you will undoubtedly need the services of Allied Van Lines Canada to help with the logistics.

However, when looking for a job in a different state, you need to begin actively searching for jobs before moving.

How To Find a Job in Another State

There are a few steps you can follow to maximize your job search.

Do Your Research

You can research depending on your reason for moving. For example, suppose you are moving to join your family or a partner already working in the new state. In that case, you need to take your time to understand the job opportunities available in line with your profession, what the top industries in the area are, and how competent you are to stand out among other applicants.

If you are moving in search of better job opportunities, it is essential to research your industry’s location, the average salary to expect and the general cost of living. Then, with the findings from your research, narrow down your options to at least two areas for an efficient job search.

Sign Up for Email Lists

After identifying your choice of companies to work for, subscribe to their email list to receive their job opportunity alerts. Alternatively, you can subscribe to an email list of a job website that posts job opportunities in your selected location and then keep an eye on your inbox.

Update Your Resume

Once you sign up for email lists, you need to work on your resume. It is essential to fine-tune your resume with all skills and qualifications and the latest work experience to set you apart from other applicants. Remember also to update your address accordingly.

Prepare Your Cover Letter Template

Your cover letter is your one shot to impress the hiring manager. It is your introductory tool, so take your time to create a template that you can easily customize with every job application.

Start Networking

Reach out to other professionals in your industry for job opportunities. Connect with your college alumni network to see if any of them know about any job openings in your new state.

You can also join market forums of your industry on social media. In addition, you may find jobs posted on social media pages.

Do an Online Search

Make Google your best friend. Search the internet for job openings in your new state. This is where you will find websites for companies that you would love to work for. Get their contact information and reach out to them to inquire about any open positions.

Conclusion

After you have done all these and more, take a deep breath. Relax and hope for the best.