Category Archives: Business Advice

We’re all far more knowledgeable about climate change and the situations challenging the globe than we were even ten years back and the effects are undoubtedly beginning to make themselves known. We realize that modifications have to be made and we find ourselves looking to giant international companies and federal governments to be the spearhead. While you may have a go at doing your little bit in the home, perpetually placing your containers into the recycling collection and the like, how eco-friendly is your business? If you are in charge of a small business, you might just be tempted to presume “it’s hopeless, I will not make enough difference” but, if everybody got out of that state of mind the advances would certainly be huge. On this page are some ways you can swiftly make your small business more environmentally friendly.

Another advantage offered by hiring an environmental specialist is that they can aid companies get to chosen ecological ambitions. These normally consist of using a lot more recycled products, sourcing components from sustainable agriculture, or adopting renewable electricity. This is most valuable for organisations that wish to pull in prospects looking for organizations that focus on being sustainable.

Create A Sustainability Group For Your Agency

It’s possible you may like to consider forging a sustainability club for your office. This is a group that can equip you to achieve even more with regards to becoming more sustainable and magnify interest among other personnel. Projects for the group can entail things such as helping to advise in relation to purchasing choices on environment-friendly products, and energy-efficient products, in addition to empowering a recycling project that could be more successful.

Design A Number Of Green Plans Of Action

Question whether you can revamp any one of your business practices by switching to more environmentally-safe options. Develop an interim plan of action that you can launch instantly and a long-range arrangement for the next year to 5. Appraise environment-friendly tools, fitouts as well as processes that are less wasteful, and think about the roles your employees have to handle to help your company in becoming more eco-friendly. As an example, swap paints which contain an excessive amount of volatile organic chemicals(VOC’s) for low-VOC options. Commit to water-saving advances like drip-irrigation and automatic sprinkler systems for external landscaping, along with water saving w.c.s and systems that recirculate hot water in restrooms.

Invest In Tech That Will Conserve Power

The use of fossil fuels releases a lot of toxic pollution in addition to exacerbating global warming. You can diminish your input to it by cutting down on the level of resources consumed by running your business. For instance, you can purchase more recently developed technology for your office or assembly processes that have been manufactured to be economical on electricity. Invest in automated hvac, air-conditioning as well as lighting systems to make sure you’ll have peak effectiveness. And finally, buy outlet timers that shut down energy to apparatus when they are not in use.

Use Post-Consumer Waste (PCW) Paper Product Lines

Switch to PCW (post-consumer waste) paper, paper merchandise, as well as packaging. Whenever practical, skip paper totally, but if you have to publish, make sure you’re using environment-friendly paper. Well-intentioned firms might look for a recycle logo on a box of paper, but this is an unregulated classification. Only PCW paper is made entirely from the papers we throw in our recycling collection each day. Constructing PCW recycled paper wastes 45% less energy and in addition results in half the wastefulness of the traditional paper-making approach. Choosing packaging branded as 100% PCW certifies that you are choosing products with the lowest impact. If 100% PCW isn’t readily available where you are, try to find alternatives with the most PCW content as possible, plus make sure you make it a habit to salvage all your paper scraps, don’t be condemning them to the dump.

Take the bull by the horns and examine just how you can make your firm more eco friendly. You never know, your environment-friendly credentials could effect an inflation of your client base and even an escalation in those all-important sales numbers.

A lot of businesses, including small-scale ones, produce a high volume of waste each day. This is undeniably something that can be unhealthy for the environment if it isn’t handled effectively. It is necessary that you do all that you can to make certain that your trash and waste are managed properly every day. Right here are just a couple of suggestions to assist your firm to get going and become green:

As governments around the world move toward a better level of sustainability, businesses are required to adjust affairs to follow up-to-date environmental compliance edicts. Due to the complexity of environmental affairs, many firms may be well served by hiring an ecological advisor.
It doesn’t matter what niche or scale a company is; there are green questions to keep in mind. As having a healthy and balanced world is a major mission for numerous people.

Keep Your Team Members Captivated

Consistent employee education as well as involvement are integral for making your company go more environmentally-friendly. Publish environmentally-friendly business approaches by means of email, in person and in company newsletters routinely. Likewise, give employees more environmentally-friendly pointers for their domestic duties. Consider granting “green” incentives to magnify the degree of personnel involvement. For instance, you might offer employees that carpool a fuel card once a month or distribute top quality products to workers that actively support environmental schemes.

Find The Right Suppliers

Opting for providers that make use of eco-friendly and sustainably sourced components is a worthwhile approach you can lead your business in. Whether it’s recycled paper, reduced VOC paints, or responsibly sourced timber, when you choose these providers it serves to establish a stronger market for them. The larger demand causes a lot more firms to jump on the bandwagon.

Get A Power Audit And Come Up With Simple Changes In Your Business.

The Department of Energy claims, plugging drafts and fissures in your house can trim up to 20 percent off your hvac amount. Lots of states perform cost-free energy audits, and some may finance various remediations! (You can search free energy audits together with the name of your state for more information).

Commit To Being A Paper Free Workplace

We inhabit a digital age yet continue to waste far too much paper. Rather than producing paper bills, receipts and statements to clients, have paper-free be your typical method. This way customers can request paper copies if needed, and yet the majority of people won’t, as all that may be completed on the net. You won’t be using up paper that will only be thrown away by a lot of consumers, but you still do have the capability there for people who want it or need it. Choose to have your own company correspondence supplied online instead of via the postal service where feasible, over time try to have a paper-free office. According to https://www.forbes.com/ lots of enterprises around the globe are already developing this, so yours could definitely do the same.

Shifting to become a sustainable business and showing off your eco-credentials can accomplish wonders for the public image of your label. When patrons are certain of your commitment to being eco-friendly, they will certainly be more happy to spend a premium amount for the services or product you offer. The shrewd consumer of the modern day likes having knowledge of the derivation of the merchandise they acquire, whether this is comprehending exactly how their new furniture was sourced and constructed or discovering the distance their orange has actually been in transit.

The business world today is saturated with products that are similar, and if your product is in competition with several others within the same market, it can be difficult for you to gain an edge over your rivals. What then should you do to beat your unrelenting competitors? Experts suggest that you should find a way to distinguish yourself so that you can stand out from the rest of the crowd. In other words, you should find your point of difference and highlight it so that your product or service can be uniquely attractive to the customer.

Whats a point of difference? Its a characteristic of a product or service that establishes differentiationthe term differentiation is used in business to refer to the way in which a product or service of a particular company differs from that of its competitors. If your company makes a particular consumer product, why would a customer who’s walking through an aisle in the supermarket pick your product and not the one next to it? If you can answer that question, then you have found your point of difference. Before we discuss various ways of finding your point of difference, lets first clarify the benefits of having one.

Benefits of having a point of difference

As weve mentioned, a point of difference makes your product or service stand out, and as a result, consumers take notice. For example, if yours is a delivery company, and your point of difference is that you deliver in less time than your competitors, customers may prefer your service because it saves them a little time. If you run a grocery store, your point of difference could be that you sell organic’ or locally sourced’ produce, and this could attract customers who are particular about what they consume. If you run a taxi business, your point of difference could be that you only use cars that are highly fuel-efficient. That one detail about your business could lead customers to pick you, and it could significantly increase your market share.

If your differentiation strategy works well enough, it could lead to increased brand awareness as well as higher levels of brand loyalty. This can be a major advantage, especially if your company makes several products or provides a number of services under the same brand. A person who buys your product today because of your point of difference may come back tomorrow to buy your other products because yours is the brand that she now prefers.

How to find the right point of difference for your company

To find your point of difference, you need to ask yourself what are my companys core strengths? After you have identified what you are good at, you can work from there and create a more articulate point of difference. Your strength could be that you provide exemplary customer service, your product is superior in one very specific aspect, or that you have a great brand story that could endear you to your prospective customers. After you have discovered your strength, make sure that it is the first thing that people know about your brand. Create a marketing campaign that testifies to your strength, and put the word out there. If you have a good enough marketing strategy, you may even be able to make your point of difference synonymous with your brand (a good example of this is Whole Foods, which has managed to make its brand synonymous with fresh healthy organic food).

You can also create a point of difference by aligning your brand with a cause that people care about. These days, consumers like to buy products from companies that share their values. Your point of difference could be that a certain percentage of your profits goes towards a particular charity or a project that makes a real difference in people’s lives.

Another way to create a point of difference (particularly for companies that provide services), is by creating a positive company culture. If your employees interact with your customers on a daily basis, the quality of those interactions could be your point of difference. People always remember if they received great service at a particular restaurant, or if they had a pleasant conversation with a customer rep. Warm and friendly employees can be what sets you apart from your competitors.

Some businesses have been able to create a point of difference by making their customers feel like they are members of an elite, exclusive club. For example, American Express has managed to carve itself a niche in a market that is dominated by MasterCard and Visa by giving lots of perks to its clients. If you make customers feel like they are part of a club or a family, they are more likely to be loyal to your brand.

Finally, for your ‘point of difference’ strategy to work, you can never compromise on quality. Consistency is important if you want your point of difference to register in the mind of the customer. If you franchise your brand or outsource some of your services, make sure that whoever you partner with cares enough to uphold the reputation of your brand. Your point of difference is a standard that you must live up to every day.

Corporations around the world donate billions of dollars to charitable causes every year, most of which goes into providing food, shelter and medical services to the poor. There is no question that this is a good thing for the community at large, but the surprising benefits of charitable giving by companies and businesses are those that they themselves gain. It may seem counterintuitive, but when corporations donate their money and other resources to charitable groups, support community projects, and initiate sustainability programs, the good that they do comes back around to benefit them as well.

You may wonder, how can generosity benefit your business? Well, it has something to do with how your own employees perceive your company. Employees are more likely to have a positive view of a company if it puts its resources into making a real difference in the world. The fact that your company is helping people makes work more meaningful for your employees. They will be happier, more fulfilled and prouder of their work, and theyll be more inclined to increase their productivity. To help you better understand how corporate generosity can improve your employees productivity, lets look at what experts have discovered so far.

Corporate generosity fosters a positive company culture

A good company culture makes employees feel like they are part of a community. While corporate cultures may differ from organization to organization, there are some components that are the same, and a generous spirit is one of them. Most corporate cultures instil in employees the idea that they are part of something bigger than themselves, and that they are working towards a greater cause. When a company gives generously to worthy causes, those assertions becomes true, and employees start believing that the company is truly dedicated to its culture and mission.

Of course, charity isn’t the central focus of most companies unless they are non-profit organizations but when they involve their employees in organizing charity events and initiating community programs, their employees become more engaged. If a company gives its employees opportunities to participate in charitable events, it will end up creating a strong tradition that will instil in the employees a sense of ownership over the company, and a sense of pride over their jobs, both of which will increase their appreciation for the companys culture and make them more dedicated to their work.

Most companies are generous givers, but they could still step up their efforts

Generous giving has been a practice of many companies for years, but some companies arent too keen on it. Giving back to the community is something that every company should try to do, not just to buy some goodwill with their customers, but also to show their employees that they care about more than just making profits.

If you want to organize charity events for your employees, any time of year can work, but events like that are more meaningful and more memorable when they are organized around holidays. Most people tend to be more generous around holidays, so when the company they work for is the same way, they’ll believe that it shares their values. Employees are more likely to love their jobs if they feel that their values and the companys values are perfectly aligned.

What you should do to foster a culture of generosity in your company

Employees prefer to work for generous organizations, so you should highlight your companys generous spirit by articulating it in your mission statement. If your mission statement claims that you want to make the world a better place, generous giving can help you achieve that goal. Its good for your employees to see you living up to the words of your mission statement because reports indicate that businesses on a mission tend to be more successful.

Finally, maximize your employees involvement in your charity plans. Let them be part of the decision making process and the organizing. You can ask them to take a vote on which charities you will be backing, or which community programs you will be initiating. Allow them to contribute in whatever way they can, and give them the time to do what needs to be done to make the charity plans successful. When your employees get to participate in a meaningful charity event, theyll feel that they are part of an organization that does good, and theyll work harder to make that organization more successful. In other words, theyll be more productive.

Many people dream of the freedom of handing in their resignation and opening their own business. But before you do, to set yourself up for the best chance of success, you need to do your research and make sure you are as prepared as you possibly can be. In the following article are several helpful tips for you to consider.

Be Professionally Minded

You must do your research and make certain that there is an unquestionable niche target audience for you to sell to and make a profit. It’s not an insignificant investment to work for yourself, so make certain your company has sound foundations and is seriously marketable, not just a hopeful dream.

If you can afford to, open up a separate phone line for your budding new business. This will help keep you looking more professional as you won’t be mixing up customer enquiries with family phone calls. While this expense would be able to be claimed out of your business taxes at the end of the financial year, if money is too tight in the beginning, make thorough files of business-related calls so you can deduct a fraction of your monthly phone bill.

Talking about being professional, make sure your work environment is safe. A bare minimum would involve having a smoke alarm, fire extinguisher and making sure all your equipment is properly set up and safety guidelines are followed. While it’s understandable that many new businesses need to cut corners on some expenses, if it puts you or others at risk it’s simply not worth it.

Make the Name Right, and the Domain

Decide on a brand for your company that will make sense to your prospects, remember that success is about interesting your customers, not pleasing yourself. Regardless of whether you’re all set to host your small business’s website, buy your domain name as quickly as you’ve worked out what your firms name will be. Aim for a straightforward yet catchy name as this combination has shown to be the most effective.

Managing Your Cash Flow

You must be reliable at managing your cash flow and outgoings. How well you manage cash flow has a remarkable impact on your complete success. Figure out what can wait and what is required to be paid immediately. When it’s close to the end of the financial year it’s a good time to make purchases you can write off against this years tax, this is referred to as tax planning. You can find out more about that in this post. One of the very best strategies to track costs as well as professionally take care of your invoicing is to make use of a cloud accounting system. Cloud based bookkeeping has changed accounting making it easier to maintain accurate documentation for tax obligation requirements. There are a vast range of options offered when it comes to cloud based accounting systems, and this post goes over excellent accounting tools every new business should think about.

Delegate Where Possible

Striving to stop raised costs by doing a whole lot yourself is a newbie mistake in operating a business. The bottom line is, a lot of new business owners who try to do a whole lot on their own never save much in the way of finances, and they just find themselves being impeded, doing activities that are not the key expertise of their business enterprise. By getting caught out believing that doing everything themselves can conserve their profits, they spread themselves awfully thin and it could come to be a costly error for them and their enterprise. As an example, does it make sense to expend your time cleaning and sterilizing your own firm, or might you be better off paying for a cleaner? If you count the total time allotted for sanitizing and cleaning and gave this amount of time on your business’s key aptitudes, you would likely find out you earn more than you dispense.

Ideally, what you’ve learned in this short article will help you set out on the right foot and keep ahead of the game. If you wish to succeed and stay there you need to continually be on the lookout for current information and facts. Learn what you can and accumulate game plans that you’re able to utilize to be the best.

Everybody considers being his own boss at one time or another. You have likely thought of it too. Making your own work hours and being answerable only to oneself is liberating, however it’s at the same time a frequently difficult and steep learning curve. Keep reading below to discover some tried and tested principles that will provide you a far better possibility of being successful in growing your very own business from home.

Make Certain Your Household is Onboard

You will want to have your household in accord prior to moving forward with a home-based business. It can be high pressure and time consuming to operate a service out of your residence. If your family isn’t in agreement, it may make it a lot more demanding and tough for you to succeed in running a service from where you live.

Separate Work-Time from Friends and Family Time

Set limitations as well as borders around the house during the course of your work-time to keep the family members far from the home office. Don’t allow family to frequently disrupt you when working. Relentless interruptions inhibit productivity, so make sure you clearly explain to every person when you are doing business and emphasize no disturbances. Be firm with this because if this is not honoured your shot of successfully working from your house is substantially curtailed. Numerous home based organisations are working with various applications to create order around both work time and family time.

Make a Work Place at Home

Allot a specific part of your house that you can setup to manage all the tasks relating to your new venture. You need to have adequate elbowroom to make certain that everything can be organized. This will certainly keep things in order, as being organized in a home based business is essential to being successful.

Master Your Own Efficiency

Establish daily objectives that you intend to achieve every day. You’re no longer being employed in a firm with managers and people in charge scrutinizing you to check that you are being constructive, you need to handle this for yourself when you do work from home.

Bookkeeping and Finances

Having your finances accurate is important. Monitor your expenses to conserve money. This includes matters like business trips, your web service, vehicle expenses, a portion of utility costs and so on. Make sure you know what is allowed to be claimed in the relevant taxation laws for your region. Even if the numbers are tiny, it’s unreasonable not to claim all relevant taxation deductions. Store all receipts, failing to keep invoices can lead to lots of confusion and frustration in the long run. Be sure to keep receipts safe in case you happen to be audited.

Do Financial Planning

Financial planning is a vital part of building a home business. An account of your predicted takings and costs can be really valuable. This should in addition lay out future activities of your organisation’s various economic areas. You will need to deliver your best speculation concerning future sales, sales and profits. These projections are going to present you with an indication of future finances to plan where your organisation is heading. Inside of this it’s worthwhile to see how your business can take advantage of tax planning as well.

Find Out If Your Local Bylaws Affect Your Business

You have to see to it that you are in keeping all the local zoning legislations and regulations. You could very well wind up with penalties as well as interventions which can cripple your progress if you aren’t on the ball with this. You need to also maintain good personal connections with everyone in your locality.

Professional cleaning businesses don’t just handle a business’s housekeeping needs, they also make certain that quality cleaning and sanitizing is done at the same time.

The four accompanying points outlined in this article provides evidence of exactly how contracting out to a professional cleaning company can be a better and more profitable way for a business to manage its cleaning needs.

1. Value Efficiency:

Outsourcing sanitation and cleaning is an extremely cost-effective approach to maintaining a high standard of cleanliness. A specialist cleaning servicey will provide & procure all cleaning materials, refillable solutions and cleaning equipment. Additionally, your business is saved from all the expenditures associated with recruiting; engaging, screening, and cleaning training sessions. Furthermore, all management and organizational procedures are professionally managed by the cleaning firm, saving both money and time.

2. Ease of Solution:

All housekeeping efforts are the duty of the cleaning contractors brought in. This in effect amounts no stress over regulating the responsibilities of hygiene cleaning and maintenance activities. This leaves the business free to hone in onto the fundamental issues of the business.

Also, when a company selects outsourced cleaning services, cleaning and sanitizing happen regularly as scheduled, not to mention that all managerial issues become the problem of the contractor, so if the cleaner either becomes sick, ceases work or takes a leave of absence, you remain unbothered. An expert office cleaning company will be entirely in charge of its team resources and would make certain that the cleaning services are rendered steadily and assuredly all through the year.

3. Expertise, Experience and Training:

When a firm contracts out cleaning duties to any kind of professional business, it means cleaning will be carried out by accomplished and also well-trained people that know what they are doing. A competent and well-qualified commercial cleaner will implement tried and true cleaning systems, working with the best materials and chemicals and some even use green cleaning options these days.

And remember – Clients will make judgements about a workplace and how a company is functioning, based on how clean and fresh the workplace is. Key areas that clients will notice are restrooms and the staff kitchen.

4. Business Can Focus on Core Issues for Revenue Generation:

Managing an organization well means prioritizing the main business issues. Switching focus to wiping, emptying waste bins and also tidying up washrooms or any variety of other hygiene maintenance tasks, is not the most productive way to spend your staffs time. It will certainly not make any difference to sales. Even though, it is essential to keep up a disinfected, and well-maintained workplace setting, using an outsourcing service for this purpose can be a budget-friendly option and leave you and your expert staff free to pursue core business activities.

On top of that adequate sanitizing is unlikely to be done by non-professionals, putting your staff at risk of illness, which will make your staff’s efforts less profitable.

Every organisation requires a leader who’s heading it in the direction of its target destination and clear away from any icebergs, but what is it that takes place if the business owner gets unduly consumed by the multitude of small elements, loses track of the bigger picture, as well as where the company is really headed? It’s an awfully common pitfall for the owner of SME ventures. We talk about a multitude of crucial parts of business that might be of aid to entrepreneurs wanting to make sure their venture is going in an advantageous direction this year.

Get Organised

The physical setting where we work not only helps to mark out our connection to work but also, the calibre of work that we are responsible for. An organized office quickly influences a person’s frame of mind which subsequently guides their actions. A messy office causes mental fog, chaos, as well as hindering the flow of work that is most productive for the company. One of the fundamental components of the art of good management is seeing to it your workplace is healthy and also pleasant. In short, a tidy and well-organized office is so much more potent.

Purposely Cultivate a More Beneficial Work Culture

Business has to do with team effort, and one of the largest concerns for a business owner is to make sure all departments in their business operate in tandem so as to deliver the strategic targets of the enterprise. Leadership in your business (or failure to lead effectively) will affect a myriad of elements of your business, including things like workforce turn over, office culture, motivation of everyone along with the whole direction the enterprise takes.

Workplace culture includes a whole lot of things integrating mindsets, values, interactions and behaviours. Workplace culture is evolved by a lot of factors including leadership, individuals hired and an organisation’s agenda. However the pivotal factor upon your work culture is undoubtedly the skill of your leadership team in leading. Leadership establishes the tone and imparts the context in which all of the other areas of your business appear. Proficient leadership generates effective management processes and the ability to lure and enlist the ideal employees. By beckoning first-rate talent, facilitating engagement and holding on to your top employees, an organisation increases efficiency right through the enterprise.

Stick to Your Most Effective Business Capacities

Attempting to protect your business from extra expenses by doing every single thing yourself is a beginners mistake in running a business. The fact is, the majority of entrepreneurs who attempt to do every little thing by themselves don’t save much (if any), financial resources, and they just become delayed, doing actions that aren’t the primary capabilities of their establishment. By falling into the trap of believing that doing the whole thing themselves will spare their budget, the focus and energy given to each task becomes watered down and meagre and it could in fact become an expensive blunder for them and their firm. For example, does it make sense to devote your time cleaning and sterilizing your own firm, or would it be a better choice booking a corporate cleaner? If you add up the total hours filled cleaning and doing maintenance and spent this amount of time on your core business capacities, you would most likely discover you accrue a lot more than you pay.

Business management ensures proper running of the business.The manager ensures there is time saving and also cutting down production and other costs.This aims at giving a higher profit.

1. Cost efficiency

Simply slashing budgets is no longer a viable option in organizations that have become leaner in response to global economic conditions during recent years. There simply is not much left to cut. However, in order to thrive, organizations still need to maximize the efficiency of the costs they do incur and profit they generate. And BPM is a driving strategy towards maximizing cost efficiency by streamlining business operations and collaboration, automating repetitive tasks, improving product quality and reducing corporate risks.

Comindware BPMS combines process management and workflow management with task management and built-in real-time reporting and analysis, so teams collaborate more effectively within both routine workflows and profit-generating projects and bring their projects to fruition within budget, with reported cost savings of 30% to 50%.

2. Business agility

A trend in BPM is toward more nimble processes that respond to organizational learning in the marketplace. This has led to a greater demand for ultra-flexible tools that are easy to design, change and deploy. Generally, agility incorporates the following elements, all of which are facilitated by Comindware:

• Process management: With Comindware BPM, process management comes in the form of workflows that you can change on-the-fly. You can re-use workflows wherever you need to and customize them as you go.
• Rule management: As work management moves into an unstructured, collaborative age, rules management will be the way to stay properly governed, visible, and compliant, while keeping processes on track. Comindware features on-the-fly rule configuration for each department, function or project (whether structured or unstructured), as needed. This provides unique flexibility not seen in other work management tools.
• Integration and automation: Comindware offers comprehensive solution that support process and case management as well as pre-integrated with Project Management. The fact that this all sits on one organization-wide database means that the company has full control, full visibility and full real-time reporting and analysis capability.

At conclusion

Could your organization benefit from improvements in the following areas?

• Increased customer satisfaction and shorter time-to-market for products and services
• Greater efficiency (and cost savings) with existing applications and processes
• Greater team satisfaction as collaboration and best practices are improved
• Full transparency of all activities across the team and organization

Sourced from: https://www.comindware.com/blog/leadership/benefits-of-business-process-management/

To manage your business hire the right people and pay them well.The aim is to have a loyal staff team.this creates consistency in service and it also saves on recruiting and training charges.

You don’t have to be a fortune 500 (or even a fortune 500,000) company to take advantage of these tips for good business practice. In fact, some of the best small businesses have evolved and succeeded by implementing some of these principles.

 Hire the Right People.

If you are technically proficient in your field but lack marketing knowledge and expertise for example, then be prepared to hire the right people to fill in the blanks. This will start the trend of people beating a path to your door. The next trick is to keep them coming back and referring their friends.

 Don’t Hire your Friends!

This may seem obvious to some, yet I’ve seen it done over and over again. Not only can it compromise (and in some cases destroy) a perfectly good friendship, but it can do the same to the business.

Sometimes, it works. But hire with caution, and a heck of a lot of communication (both in the friendship and business). Be prepared to wear different hats while at work and after work.

 Hiring/Promoting From Within isn’t Always Good.

Although promoting from within encourages staff to “reach for the stars” and gives certain personality types something to work for, it isn’t a good idea to categorically hire from within. Sometimes the skill sets just aren’t there within the existing employee base.

Good Business is in Consistency.

This could be the very key itself to good business practice. If you do nothing else, be consistent. E-Myth is an excellent book by Michael Gerber centered around this crucial concept.

Consistency is what franchises are built around. McDonald’s pioneered and epitomizes this idea. When you walk into a McDonald’s anywhere in the world, you know exactly what you are going to get when you order a quarter pounder, right down to the exact ingredients, quantities, and order of toppings.

 With consistency, professionalism, proper planning of strategies, and alignments with the experts, you can run a top-notch successful business. Don’t reinvent the wheel, or ever find yourself saying “my business is different, I don’t have to follow that rule”. Because the wheel is pretty darn efficient, and I’m sorry to say, your business just isn’t that different. Good business management equals good business. Period.

Sourced from: http://www.wisebread.com/six-tips-to-good-business-management

Just how can organizations accomplish genuine progress in the commonly opposing aspects of employees health and wellbeing efficiently? Unearthing an answer to this dilemma is incredibly powerful for high-performance leaders, because stressed out personnel are proven to be less productive than generally happy employees.

To understand more in regard to this phenomena we spoke to Stuart Hayes, who is the owner and Chief Executive Officer of Stuart Hayes Leadership, an authority in how you can stabilize efficiency along with wellness in corporate settings.

To begin with Hayes asks leaders to contemplate the repercussions of stress in the work environment and compare that to the outcomes possible where well-being is present:

One: Performance of the Staff

Anxiety, stress and also pessimistic emotions results in workers attention being preoccupied and a reduction in mental clarity. On the other hand happier team members have more clarity and are a lot more switched on, purposeful and resourceful;

Two: Management of Public Relations

Tension and negative feelings can cause personnel to feel bitter or resentful and this may lead to a lowered level of dedication in critical customer support roles … whereas generally more satisfied personnel relate much better with clients and are superior supporters of their brand.

Three: Health and wellbeing

Stress and also negative emotions may bring about ill health. In contrast happier people are both healthier as well as are more satisfied with what they do;

Four: Company Morale

Stress and negative emotions result in problems with an increase in personnel turnover … contrast this with happier staff who have a tendency to feel more ‘connected’ to both their firm as well as their colleagues, and as a consequence generally stay for a longer period.

Five: Alignment with Business Strategy or Change Initiatives

Strained or negative team members are both less likely to line up with the teams strategy and at the same time they’re more likely to oppose transformation that is needed. In contrast affirmative and happy workers are creative, interested, instigate improvements and are inclined to be much more accepting of both the present methodology and also change.

So what is the answer?
To really help employees to take care of pressure and to attain improvements of the variety mentioned, business enterprises are more frequently making use of office well-being resources, even though not all such resources work or translate into performance returns.

“Realistically, accomplishing long-term increases in both productivity and also health and wellbeing necessitates a whole lot more than just making it possible for a little work flexibility or engaging a wellness presenter. These are really just ‘box ticking’ remedies and are never going to deliver the kinds of results businesses need. In fact, it is this box-ticking approach that is the most usual reason health and wellbeing programs fall short,” says Hayes.

From Hayes observations, he points out that guiding groups to strengthen their satisfaction and experience of work and the outcomes they attain from their work is in fact, the same thing. “The aim should never be the creation of a health and wellbeing program alone. Rather, it should really be the generation of a distinct culture in which responsibility together with wellness are foundations. What this involves is that we take responsibility for changing the way our staff respond to pressure and bad emotions, transforming the way our team relates and communicates with each other, and ensuring everyone is naturally lined up to the team’s larger targets. This is the heart and soul of an excellent culture.” He said.

While it is well documented, mindfulness is being effectively made use of by numerous organizations to help workers be more accepting of and more effectively deal with stress and undesirable emotions, what is not so widely reported is that some of the latest research shows that our brain and heart continuously connect with each other and that our heart can be used to move an individual’s moods from unfavorable to favorable, and that our heart’s sphere of influence makes a quantifiable effect on other individuals in a persons vicinity. This epitomizes the cutting edge of H.R. development and leadership.
“It’s funny in many ways, because we all have a heart, we all have a mind, and all of us experience these things naturally, however the increasing emergence of studies that shows that the heart and mind work together is incredible,” he says, who’s now devoted the lion’s share of the past seven years to examining this relationship, the way it is pertinent to office environments. Consider the following facts:

First: When interacting with a great leader, an individual’s brainwaves will actually ‘synchronise’ with the leader. This is a result that does not happen when the aforementioned individual speaks with, say, various other members of their crew. The effect of this enhances team interaction.

Second: Both the brain as well as the heart emit electromagnetic signals that can be measured a distance away from the body, however interestingly, the electromagnetic radius of the heart is significantly more powerful.

Third: The size of the heart’s range varies, in association with the individual’s disposition;

Fourth: It’s possible to engage the heart in practices that measurably lift the effect of negative feelings both within a person as well as within those people who are near them, causing adjustments in both people.

Any person involved in leading a team under pressure, or anybody required to incorporate changes in a company, or who would like to accomplish high-performance outcomes in much easier ways, can certainly benefit from a one day concentrated leadership workshop being run on this topic.

The workshop is called Leading to Improve Performance and Well-Being and it guides participants in practical ways, so leaders who are working in very competitive and demanding situations can achieve definite progress in the usually polarized areas of group well-being and team effectiveness.

Do you have a calling from God? Being a Christian life coach is all about making sure you are making a difference in the Kingdom of God and at The Coaching Connector many Christian Coaches, Business Coaches and Life coaches are sharing ideas, debating techniques and helping clients .

Go on a journey.
Being a Christian life coach has many responsibilities. It’s a fairly new role and the main thing you need to do is to make sure your faith with God is always in the middle of your coaching relationship.

Make a difference.
A life coach makes a difference in the Kingdom of God! They help people find out what they want to do with their lives. They lead people on the right track, to be motivated. They believe in everyone and never giving them up when times are down. They pray for everyone constantly and help them build their basic foundations in life.

A Christian life coach is similar to a personal trainer by helping people with the transition of their lives or targeting a specific objective. They encourage people on what to do and lead them on the right direction. They also act as an advisor with difficult problems and help them change for the better. The only difference is that Christian spirituality is always present in their coaching.

Be strong.
As of the moment, life coaching does not have clear objectives as a occupation. But no worries, God has given you everything for you to face on any challenges that you face. You can perfect your abilities and skills to improve growth and development. You would be improving your work-life balance. Reflect on your day-to-day activities and give insights to people. Always remember God is always there to support us.

Start researching on it.
Do your research. Being a life coach can be a bit vague at first but once you research more on it, the better your understanding on what a professional Christian life coach is. If you’re lucky, you can interview and converse with other life coaches in your area and find out more about what they do and how they got started.

Does it require learning or training?
There are many trainings or programs that you can participate and sign up. You can either pick your trainings with a professional trainer or at a school. Make sure it meets the requirements of the International Coach Federation, as it is recommended that you participate in a genuine training program for you to get certified. It is required to have a minimum of 60 hours to be credited as an Associate Level Coach through the ICF or the International Coach Federation.
The learning doesn’t stop there. Once you get certified and graduate, you can be credentialed. Once you become accredited, you are considered as being licensed counselor.

Just like a doctor, once you become a coach, you can choose what your specialization is. It could be about family, relationships, marriage or even business. It depends on what you’re familiar with and what you can offer to other people.

Spread the word.
Once you’re ready to be a life coach, let the world know and make a difference to people one by one. With the help of your family and friends, you should be able to promote your services to others. It’s usually best if you start with free seminars at church or even go online to find your target audience. Remove your nervousness and trust in God and his plans for you.

If you want to be a Christian Life Coach, just remember that you just need to utilize and apply everything that God has given to you. It’s how you develop your talents and being able to help others. According to 1 Thessalonians 5:11, “We are called to encourage one another and build each other up.” Being a Christian life coach is amazing and life-changing. Be one today and make a long-lasting difference in the world.

Coaching is on a personal level compared to consulting. Moreover, it is less emotional than therapy. Executive and business coaching as referenced by The Coaching Connector is concerned with being the best version of a person as a leader. It directs one to follow a track through the help of a coach.
Executive coaching assists company employees and in managerial positions in mastering the necessary skills for transformational leadership.
Working with an executive coach seems to be like having a business discussion. There are also instances when the environment seems to be confiding in a therapist. Moreover, it also feels like the person is subjected to training and practice like running a track in high school. Former Google CEO Erich Schmidt and Microsoft CEO Bill Gates both stressed the significance of executive coaching. Top speakers, chess grandmasters, school principals, world class athletes all have coaches. Here are the ways executive coaching can help revolutionize companies.

Clarifies and Communicates Vision and Mission
Executive coaching can be a great help to leaders in companies who have great ideas but do not clearly communicate them. This is a common situation and specialists have the capacity to utilize active listening to assist leaders in formulating the vision and mission into words that will be understood by the team. If the team members cannot understand the mission and vision, then things will not take place.

Creates a Culture that Supports Improving Continuously
A leader or a company, that works with a coach, shows that that leader of company values improvement continuously, and does not plan to curb growth and learning. This clearly shows the message that the company wants to develop a culture of continual development; moreover, it also provides the tools needed by the team to practice and implement continuous improvement.

Clarifies the Real Reason that Holds the Team Back
A sports coach can pinpoint why a players swing is incorrect. That individual can also diagnose that something holds back a person. He might show that a person has beliefs that are not applicable to the current scenario, or that a person has blind spots about certain abilities that stops one in seeking ways to improve.

Helps Develop and Refine Specific Skills
A leader might already have the knowledge that he needs to work on a specific skill like delegating. A coach can assist one in developing that skill. Coach specialists have the expertise when it comes to training, explaining, role-playing, and providing the necessary skills into practice on a day-to-day basis. Coaches help one in specific skills as well as in leadership.

Improves Business Results
The best thing about executive coaching is that can assist the business to have better sales and marketing results as well as making one a better leader. It also instils a specific corporate culture that will boost the company to a better future. As a better leader, a team can be kept focused on significant business goals and the best ways to go there. These results involve greater revenues, better efficiency, and lower costs.

Considered as a Great Investment to the Leader and the Organization
Whatever the kind of team that a person leads, a leader cannot be effective if he is not trained in the necessary skills for the job. However, training is not enough if the leader does not practice those skills and develop these. Training, implementation, and commitment are the three things that a leader must have in order to revolutionize companies.

A company can decide whether or not to invest in executive coaching. A company that works with an executive coach that has a great track record will result to a higher probability of developing a great corporate culture.

If you are running a business, you may find staff augmentation to be a good practice. Also referred to as contract engineering, contingent workforce hiring and on-site design services, it is an outsourcing strategy that can staff projects and responds to business goals. This technique involves the evaluation of the current staff in order to determine which added skills are necessary.

An obvious advantage of this technique is that it can leverage resources. It can also utilize contract workers and outsourced services. Its primary objective is to deal with the staffing requirements in the company.

According to statistics, this industry has reached about $45 billion in 2015. The advancements and ubiquity of information technology resources as well as the narrowing margins and declining rates of companies in need of these services have brought about the demand for staff augmentation.

Staff augmentation in the field of information technology (IT) entails the allocation of technical resources, which are typically offshore. It is also a service in which the provider augments the workforce of the client with skilled persons. However, it is still the responsibility of the client to deal with the staff as well as the work that they do.

Software developers are usually hired, depending on their technical background and skill set. Through these staff augmentation services, companies that may need application development on various technology verticals can take advantage of a one-window solution.
At present, nearly every company that specializes in IT uses staff augmentation to create their products. Some of them use it as a strategy while others use it as a tactical measure. Nevertheless, engineering organizations optimize it for better business results.

Benefits You Can Get from Staff Augmentation

Your company can benefit from this strategy in a variety of ways, such as the following:

Cost-effectiveness

Only a few companies are able to afford the requirements of engineering organizations for the purpose of meeting high demands with internal resources. A lot of successful companies make use of strategies in which they form an engineering staff to a level of 85% of their peak needs. The other 15% is taken from Service companies that offer adept engineers who possess the necessary skill sets for a variety of projects.

You have to note that success can be achieved when you are able to identify the core competencies of the products being developed as well as hire the services of engineers who have the right skills for building internal organizations. The rest of your needed resources can be outsourced externally.

One of the most common mistakes that people make when comparing the costs of internal resources with resources that are brought in from another company is the cost simplification. You should not only consider the salary and the rates of external resources. Instead, you have to consider the payroll taxes, salary, vacation, cost of benefits, employee utilization factors, and costs that may possibly be involved in downsizing.

Risk Mitigation

Staff augmentation is also ideal for situations in which companies are not completely sure if they should allow themselves to grow or consider downsizing. The companies that have this problem may still need to hire more staff for a short-term basis in order for them to produce the products to be sold on the market. It may not be ideal to hire permanent or long-term employees due to the risks involved. These companies may have issues with regard to public relations and finances.

Special Skills

A company in need of specialized skill sets for finite projects may not be in favor of hiring new employees or training their current ones for such projects. So, what they can do is augment with contract engineers who already have the knowledge and experience necessary for the task.

Having resources like this allows the company to pursue the project without experiencing any hassles or delays.

For example, a small company that needs to develop integrated circuit devices within twelve months can resort to staff augmentation instead of hiring new people or training existing employees who do not have much knowledge on the subject. Hiring and training employees would only cost the company a huge sum of money.

Follow this 4 Part Process from a Leading Melbourne Based Business Coach to Cause Positive and Enduring Change in Your Company

In an enterprise, the majority of us have been advised at some point in time that, “if you’re not moving forwards you’re actually moving backwards.” In essence, this goes straight to the heart of why change is vital to a positive and sound business. Well balanced businesses move with the times and reinvent themselves. Weak companies struggle against change, stagnate and then fade away.

Change is the central component of growth and in business change demands vision, a driving team as well as a tight context if it is to be produced successfully as well as favourably. This is why successful leadership is so essential in an organization.

However while taking a look at change, it is necessary to not chuck the baby out with the bathwater because, on the flipside to change is the importance of consistency which is likewise essential, specifically in processes that relate to product, quality control, revenue or even, to an extent, organic development.

So, these two opposing principles should exist together in a healthy business. How do we create that? The answer is to appreciate the fact that successful businesses require both change and consistency. Change being the realm of business leaders and consistency being the realm of managers.

Thinking about this pair side-by-side, it is not hard to see why consistency along with change (or for that matter business managers and business leaders) are typically testing to bind together. In this article, I’m going to examine the core aspects of effective leadership including how these elements combine to yield positive and enduring change. As a professional leader, the formula I use to deliver this adaptation involves an easy but powerful four step procedure which I strongly recommend, here it is:

Part 1
Pose the Questions that Challenge

I sometimes wonder whether it is harder to recognize where you’re truly starting from or where you are specifically attempting to reach! As business people and entrepreneurs, we are inclined to succumb to the temptation of viewing our business endeavours through coloured glasses and neglect to consciously recognize where we are starting from – our ‘point A’.

Acknowledging your actual point A is tough stuff: it is solely achieved by having the guts to distinguish, ask, then honestly address every one of the confronting questions that apply to your business, your approach and also how you’re proceeding towards it. You know the questions; they are the same ones you often stumble over when they hit you out of the blue at a party!

My suggestion– pull on your thickest skin, have somebody else to distinguish then ask the questions that have to be asked … and don’t allow your vanity to hinder the honest self-questioning that ought to come after. It may make the difference separating your success from your failure!

Part 2
Identify and Feel Your Reason Why

Identifying both the specific details of your ‘change vision’ (your ‘point B’) and also the specifics of your true, core reason for change is likewise challenging. If there is an absolute number one key for achieving favourable and also lasting change, though, this is it.

Without specifics, your vision (Point B) is simply a dream. Without a deep and authentic reason as to why you want to chase after your vision, you will certainly have a hard time to inspire many people towards it. People need to share your passion. To inspire your team, you have to be able to move them, emotionally. Fortunately, those co-workers who do share and welcome your vision will certainly stay with you and become the driving force for creating it. This is why great leaders recognize the carrot is mightier than the stick.

My suggestion– identify the kinds of men and women you require to cause your change vision. Spend enough time to ascertain specifically who they might be then what it is about your vision that may excite them.

Part 3
Create a Simple, Straightforward Plan of Attack

From here on, the cornerstones of your success are adhering to what works, keeping it simple … and then continuing to fuel the interest that binds your driving staff to your vision. Having already clarified your ‘why’, assigning undisturbed thinking time to recognising the vital components of your ‘how’ is essential. My tip – try to include your driving team in this process:
– Identify the repeatable activities that will achieve your objective (keep these simple).

– Recognize both the resources you have readily available and also the resources you will need (actually require!).

– Ascertain the finite list of things that could block your progress. Create contingency plans for the ones that are truly precarious.

Part 4
Attain the Positive and Sustainable Change You Seek

Staying on course and achieving positive and sustainable transformation is a 99% leadership and 1% management mixture of fuel, context and accountability.

The fuel part is PR in its purest form. Its objective is to build and then maintain momentum: communicate the vision, teach the simple, repeatable steps, celebrate successes … and ultimately teach your driving team to do the exact same things. Each reinforces that the change vision is bona fide and that the group’s approach is the most suitable one.

Significantly, as leader, the code of conduct or ‘context’ you develop around your team as well as its behaviour is critical to their ability to unify and then attain outcomes. Your group will look to you to uphold this code at all times and as you do it will certainly start to take a life of its very own.

This is where keeping on track and also achieving positive and enduring change needs your individual commitment, courage as well as discipline: being consistent with the message you teach and also getting in touch with your team in an authentic fashion when delivering it is important.

Your capacity to produce and cultivate a solid context is directly commensurate to your capability to do these things, and with a solid context your group will self-manage; self-align; move mountains; and then generate the positive and sustainable changes you are looking for.

My recommendation– Take a deep breath and then be prepared to be human, to acknowledge shortcomings and to be open to change yourself. When you have the guts to do these things, you will be valued and also followed as a leader in a far more compelling fashion.