If you’re a small business owner, then you must know that knowledge is key for business growth. Read these small business management tips now.
Tag: business tips
Meetings, gatherings, and events may play a major role in your business. This means it’s important to find the right conference room rental. Read for details.
The hybrid work model is gaining popularity more now than ever! So what is it exactly and how can it best work for growing success? Read on now.
Business succession planning includes a lot of different factors worth thinking about for the future. If you need help with this, here’s a guide to read as a start.
When it comes to growing your business and standing out, a design thinking workshop may just do it! Read further on all the details to know.
It’s always helpful to learn different hiring practices in today’s world, and how to improve your current hiring system. Read further.
What’s a virtual business address and how is it beneficial to the growth of your company? These are important questions to ask, especially during a time when remote work is happening more than ever.
A toxic workplace environment is a legitimate cause for concern, both for worker health and overall productivity. It’s essential to avoid these environments; read the ways below.
As we become more aware of how office culture can impact our personal lives, and the lives of those we work with, it becomes increasingly important to be retrospective about how we treat each other at work, and how simple changes in interaction and management can greatly boost morale and profitability.
While many managers and executives wish to maintain a positive and healthy office environment, they may be unwittingly contributing to a toxic work space. Below are seven important tips to preventing the growth of a toxic workplace environment.
1. Don’t Cater to Bullies
The workplace can be harsh. People don’t go to work to play, and ideally, they should feel motivated to get things done. Part of that can mean feeling immense pressure on some days, striving to achieve things that might not, at first, seem plausible. To bring out the best in people, managers and leaders must learn when to push, and when to give.
But there are other aspects of the workplace that are often harsh without needing to be, breeding a lack of trust in the management and undermining morale and productivity. These people often move up into higher positions within many corporate organizations, while leaving others in the proverbial dust.
Abuses of trust are a clear example, where employees who are superficially loyal to the management may go out of their way to emotionally sabotage those around them, vying for individual and selfish benefits while catering to the boss’s needs. It’s important to recognize the brownnosers and the troublemakers and to make it clear that undermining others is not a viable path to promotion in your organization.
2. Provide an Outlet for Feedback
This can be hard without proper feedback and truthful, reliable information. That is why commanding a certain level of transparency and urging others to speak up about misuses of power is important.
While many might worry about the image of essentially promoting ‘snitching’ and an office environment wherein employees can be free to complain about each other, the ultimate goal is not to cull people but to build a cohesive team of people who trust one another.
Doing so is impossible without giving everybody the ability to speak up about one another, to avoid individual abuses of power or toxic behavior.
3. Give Credit Where Credit is Due
When something is done well, it’s important to give credit to the right person, and doing it properly. Another problem with a toxic workplace environment is that people may try to claim credit when it isn’t deserved. Or, they may make false claims about how certain ideas came to be, and how certain decisions were made.
Managers should keep in mind:
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- Which employees have been historically trustworthy and reputable
- Which employees are more likely to stay quiet and keep to themselves
- Properly give credit whenever credit is due
Even those striving for approval will likely get the shot they need to prove themselves, without feeling the need to undermine others.
4. Point Out Mistakes, But Reward a Job Well Done
Managers are often tasked with fixing problems and preventing messes, but if you perceive your role as a manager as being one to crackdown solely on the bad and lay in wait for mistakes, you’ll often find that your employees and workers begin to feel as though they are walking on eggshells.
They begin to fear taking any risks because there is no incentive to doing extraordinarily well. On the other hand, there’s also a good chance of catching flak whenever a mistake is made.
Subvert this by addressing mistakes but rewarding useful input. The best way to promote creativity and innovation is to incentivize risk-taking and out-of-the-box thinking, even if it doesn’t always pan out.
5. Remember That Employees are People
People are individual in nature and don’t always fit a particular mold. It’s easy to come to quick conclusions about a person’s character, but sometimes, it takes the right environment to properly allow an individual to flourish.
Some people thrive in a traditionally toxic workplace environment, easily capable of manipulating their way to the top. Others do very badly in such areas but have the potential to be amazing workers and top earners, should they have the right environment to unlock their potential.
Managers should strive to create teams that give each person ample opportunity to thrive, which can be very difficult; but by talking to your employees and recognizing their unique traits, strengths, and weaknesses, you can have a better idea of how you might structure your office and your organization to allow everyone to feel comfortable with their tasks and positions.
6. Avoid the Pitfalls of High Stress
Work is stressful, and there’s a lot of benefits to stress. We’re ultimately meant to do best under a certain amount of pressure – but too much, and we crack. It’s hard to tell what too much means, however, as that is entirely subjective. While incentivizing hard work is good, there are certain pitfalls to consider and carefully avoid.
If you necessitate extreme stress, for example, by suggesting that overtime is necessary to avoid potential termination or demotion, then you’ll find yourself stuck with a toxic workplace environment. You’re then struggling with absenteeism, a high turnover rate, and workers who perform much worse than before.
If you rely entirely on your hardest workers, you might find that they’re picking up the slack for everybody else.
Make sure you are employing enough people to deal with big projects and extremely pressuring deadlines. Reward those that go above and beyond, so long as it’s evident that they are not sacrificing their health; and remind them to take breaks, when it’s clear that they’re beginning to burn out.
7. Bigger Space Can Help
Space is important. Offices shouldn’t feel cramped – but there should still be some form of design in place. Completely open offices can be chaotic and unruly, leaving many to struggle with noise and a lack of concentration.
Finding a healthy middle ground is important but avoid cubicles and other office plans that further isolate workers and leave them feeling unmotivated or inconsequential.
For many companies, coworking spaces offer an excellent middle ground as a great place to work while offering plenty of amenities most smaller companies might not be able to afford in an office of their own.
Taking action with your ideas should be fun, not stressful. So to ensure you have everything you need, follow this ultimate business plan checklist.
With the onset of a new year, it’s time to reflect and strategize, taking into account the lessons of 2020, and how they shape your company’s or idea’s path forward. When taking stock of your business (or concept) and both it’s short- and long-term goals, the most important thing is to create a quantifiable and actionable plan.
Business plans are both the ideal way of quantifying an idea, as well as reflecting on past progress or failures and how they changed your company.
Why Bother with a Business Plan?
Business plans are usually thought of as the first step towards turning a spark into a business, but they’re also worth revisiting and revising, particularly after the challenges of last year.
As managers and entrepreneurs enter the new year, it’s important to take stock of a company’s strengths and weaknesses, take the opportunity to explore and study the competition, and consider how or where the company might be able to attract new clients, funding, or investments. A solid business plan acts as the distilled essence of what your business is, what it’s done, and where it might go.
But to create a solid business plan, you need a solid structure, and a foundation built on data and research.
Your Business Plan Checklist
Like any lengthy document, a business plan needs structure.
First, you should identify what audience you’re trying to target with your business plan – is it an internal document for management? Is it going to be primarily used to inform existing investors and secure new ones? Is it an elaborated mission statement to attract clients?
Then, you will need to address questions that your audience might have. These would be the individual sections the business plan will consist of each clearly answering a potential question with clear data. In general, a business plan checklist would look like this:
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Describe Your Company and Industry
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Depending on your audience, the first section of the plan will consist of an overview of the company’s purpose and its role in the current industry, as well as general information on the industry to help provide context for the company’s state and future.
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What Are Your Prospects in the Current Market?
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After going into detail on what the company does, it’s time to go into detail on the state of the market, and how your company is adapting to recent changes or aims to improve in light of sudden developments.
With the pandemic, countless industries have had to rapidly shift towards remote services, safe delivery mechanisms, rapid digitalization, and better software integration with mobile devices, among other concerns. How has your company adapted, and what are its prospects in the current market?
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What is the Competition Up To?
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No business plan is complete without an unbiased and objective view of the competition, particularly how it serves customers and clients in your area, and how you can further differentiate your business from other successful businesses around you.
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How Are You Operating?
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The next critical part of the business plan is a concise and comprehensive overview of its management and production, from how individual teams and departments are managed, how the organization itself is structured, how workplace policies such as remote work, coworking spaces, and work-from-anywhere policies have been implemented as a result of the pandemic, and how delivery mechanisms have been changed or implemented to ensure safety.
Another question is scaling – if your company is growing rapidly as a result of the shift towards digitalization, how are you planning to keep up with growing demand or a wider audience?
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How Are You Marketing Your Products and Services?
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The marketing portion of the business plan should report on the success of previous campaigns and tactics and plans in light of how the market has changed, and how demand is shifting.
Who are your customers, and what are they most likely to want? Can you identify what it is that they might want that they themselves aren’t aware of? And if yes, how can you leverage that to gain more sales?
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How Healthy Are Your Finances?
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How have your sales and revenue been holding up as a result of the pandemic, and what kind of growth are you projecting for the new quarter? A financial overview is often the most critical portion of a business plan for many investors who want to see raw numbers, and want to know how you’ve been holding up over the pandemic, and whether you have the potential to continue to grow your business.
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Create Your Management Summary
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The last thing you should work on should be the first thing in the plan – the executive or management summary, providing a concise overview of the contents of the document, the state of the business, and the purpose for this plan.
Essential Rules for a Well-Written Business Plan
It’s easy to go overboard with the jargon and flourish and turn your business plan into a wordy brochure. But shareholders and investors are people too, and their eyes glaze over just as easily as any other customer or client. You must keep your audience in mind when writing your business plan, and understand that there are a few key rules to follow:
1. Stay Concise
Avoid repeating yourself and avoid the use of industry jargon that might not make any sense to a general audience of investors and financiers. Save the flourish for your marketing campaigns, and focus on short, simple bullet-point answers for critical questions that you imagine the reader might ask.
Source your information heavily with references based on real market research, but don’t drown the reader in unnecessary data – keep it informative, and in the service of an actual point (such as explaining the potential demand for your niche or product based on market trends and surveys).
2. Focus on Your Differences
When describing your business and how it fits into the industry – especially when considering your competition and other similar companies – focus on what differentiates your company or idea from others and focus on the specific niche that you’ve carved out or plan to carve out for yourself.
In a world where modern technology gives us access to products and services from all over the globe, focusing on what sets you apart from the competition is more important than ever.
3. Provide Authoritative References
Regardless of whether your business plan is written to attract investment, reassure or maintain investors, or just to give you an updated overview of the company and its direction for the near future, it’s important to provide trusted references for the information you’re including in your plan.
We tend to try and focus on the positives when discussing an idea we’re fond of, or we tend to lean towards defending our practices and business, even when the writing is on the wall that a change of direction is long overdue. Reliable data is important to back up your belief in your business and provide readers with more than just a sense of your passion for the company.
Conclusion
The ultimate business plan serves as a referential document used to reflect on the company’s progress. In addition, to give a thorough insight on its unique purpose in your industry, as well as provide direction for the future.
Sure, there are plenty of startup resources to look into, but which ones will you need for a path towards success? Read below for the details on the 5 important ones!
The modern-day startup is defined by its resourcefulness and adaptability, and the spirit of global connectivity. Competition is fiercer than it has ever been. But the opportunities for collaboration and remote connection are greater than ever to boot.
To outperform the competition, reach the most people, and dominate the local market. Startups today must leverage existing and upcoming technologies, and manage a global talent pool.
Any aspiring startup in today’s climate will also have to deal with the century’s greatest economic challenge: an ongoing pandemic. In times like these, it’s important to focus on what works best, and shed what’s non-essential.
Here are our five startup resources you’ll need for success.
1. The Right Workspace
The completely remote business model works for many companies, especially in the digital and tech industries. But these models aren’t applicable to all businesses. There are still many startups that rely on face-to-face business, and there are companies that see benefits in working from an office that cannot be mimicked in a completely remote setup.
Working alongside one another can improve performance and efficiency in communication, allow for spontaneous collaboration and interaction, make it much easier to train newcomers, help stave off burnouts caused by isolation, and speed up project ideation, planning, and execution. While remote work will absolutely play a greater role from now on for both productivity and safety reasons, some tasks are still best coordinated in person.
But any old office setup would be unsuited to the challenges and dangers posed by the coronavirus, which is why new ideas are necessary to help prepare the workplace, and those who work in it. Once workspaces are retrofitted to accommodate their workers, there’s still the issue of limited space. Social distancing and dedensification play a critical role in minimizing the effects of the virus.
Coworking spaces are ideally suited to implementing all necessary safety precautions while providing the perfect environment for small teams to return to work together. They include combining remote collaboration with face-to-face communication, acting as spokes to the hub in a wheel, and ensuring that startups can leverage existing safe spaces to get back to work without endangering their team.
2. Remote Collaborative Tools
Any lean startup seeking to make the most of the challenges and limitations of this year will rely heavily on remote collaborative tools. This is of course to communicate between on-site teams and workers staying at home.
Collaborative tools are the connective tissue of any aspiring startup. In addition, enabling instant communication across oceans and making it possible to collaborate on projects regardless of physical distance.
Whenever face-to-face collaboration isn’t possible, it’s time to turn to tools like OBS for screen capture. Also, Microsoft Teams for documentation and ideation, Trello for planning, Zoom for meetings, and so on.
3. A Feature-Rich Helpdesk
Customer service and support are critical. Especially for startups where early experiences between a company and their first customers can result in thousands of new sales, or a ruined reputation.
Beneath viral social marketing, glowing customer reviews, and an enviable following online lies the nitty gritty legwork of swiftly and efficiently addressing customer complaints and problems. In addition, troubleshooting errors, and conveying – as best as possible – that you care.
Managing all this without the digital infrastructure to do it efficiently can be soul-crushing work. Not to mention resulting in countless wasted hours. An effective helpdesk and customer support solution is a critical investment for any startup looking to create a long-lasting and loyal customer base.
4. Designs and Designers
Startups need consistent quality branding and marketing material that is up to snuff with the competition – or better yet, beats it.
There are plenty of platforms and resources dedicated to promoting designers and artists skilled in creating entire design suites for startups. Being in contact with a designer you know, someone who you feel best encapsulates what your company means to you in a visual sense, is an important resource.
5. Market Research Tools
Analyzing and capitalizing on data is critical for any startup trying to get a leg up in today’s market environment. That’s where market research tools become really important. From analyzing trends for content and marketing purposes, to drafting, sending, and compiling data from surveys to the customers and potential customers you serve and will serve.
Identifying and recruiting testers is just as important. Especially when you want to make sure your product is developed to suit your target audience, and not flop on day one. There are many different platforms and services to help you get as much insight into your customers as possible. These include free tools like Google Trends and Crunchbase to paid local surveys.
Other Startup Resources
Concrete startup resources vary greatly from industry to industry, and business to business. You might need more people at work and hands on deck. You might need to focus most on better equipment, or a hygiene plan that lets you operate better during the ongoing crisis. Or a plan that attracts critical investment. Perhaps you need more immediate financing to help your business off the ground. Or, what you need most is to focus exclusively on promoting your business locally. And attracting clients currently dissatisfied with the services that are available to them.
Identifying what you need the most and investing in that need requires a keen eye and a tactical mind. As well as a knack for leadership. Especially now, when many are worried about their jobs and the prospect of surviving this crisis as a smaller company.
Even more important is the ability to reflect on the one thing that never truly stops growing: experience. Do you have the capacity to sit back and analyze your failures? Or are you going to repeat them?
Running a business is never easy. And neither is weathering the negativity and opposition constantly in place against you and your dreams. That’s why the two most important resources, past even experience, or reflection, are motivation and support.
Never forget the humanity behind your business, and the importance of promoting that human element in everything you do. From inspiring your coworkers, to forging that human connection with your clients and customers, and finding fulfillment in the everyday process between a startup’s early days and that first taste of true success.
Read More:
Employer Branding: What Is It and How Can It Grow Your Business?