Blog

Every business should make a conscious effort to apply eco-friendly practices to its infrastructure. For the sake of argument, we’re talking about infrastructure in the sense of the physical structure of your business. This includes things like business premises, warehouses and so on. 

What can you do to these elements to make them more eco-friendly? 

As it turns out, there are plenty of ideas that will help you create a greener business:

Electric car charging ports

Encourage your employees to drive electric cars by providing them with EV charging ports at your premises. You can install as many of these as possible in the car park, letting people plug in and charge their vehicles while they work. It’s a good idea to lead by example as well, driving your own electric vehicle to and from work. 

In fact, you can supercharge this idea by providing electric vehicles as company cars if people want them. There are even schemes out there that can help you provide your employees with discounts on great electric cars. As a result, you help your business lower its carbon footprint. 

Renewable energy sources

As a business, you will consume massive amounts of energy every single day. This means the demands you have on the national grid are substantial. Think about all the equipment you need to power for hours on end! To counter this, you should attempt to find renewable energy sources to power your business. 

The most common idea is to install solar panels. The great thing about commercial properties is that they usually have lots of space on the roofs for many solar panels, allowing you to provide your entire business with free and clean energy. If you have industrial buildings, powering warehouses through renewable energy is totally possible as well. This is an easy eco-friendly practice that improves your infrastructure by reducing your business’s demand for energy from the national grid. 

Energy-efficient lighting

Perhaps the easiest way to implement greener infrastructure in your business is to install energy-efficient lighting throughout your premises. LED lights are much better for the environment as they consume less electricity. Combine this with your renewable energy and your business should barely use non-renewable energy to power its lighting. 

In fact, you can go one step further than this and choose lighting options with sensors. These lights stay off unless movement is detected in the room. It means that areas of your business can stay unlit unless they need to be. This prevents cases when you forget to turn off the lights in one area of your business, using up energy when nobody is there. 

Clearly, there are plenty of eco-friendly changes you can make to the infrastructure of your business. And, we’re only talking about some of the changes to the structural elements of your company. You can take things even further by looking at implementations relating to you and your employees. For instance, setting up a recycling program can help you limit waste sent to landfill sites. There are loads of things you can do to actively prevent your business from harming the environment. 

While you always want to maintain a safe and comfortable workplace for your team, you also need to consider events and how you will protect guests. If you’ve ever hosted an event before, you know that it can be a lot of hard work, so having safety measures in place will reduce stress and contribute to a successful event for you and your attendees. With this in mind, here are four ways to keep guests safe at your next event. 

Arrange for Crowd Control 

Large events will produce large crowds, but you don’t want everyone to be jostling against one another. To avoid this, outline crowd control measures that make it easier for people to navigate the event. Examples of effective crowd control include one-way systems and staggered entry, which will minimise the number of people waiting outside before the event. 

You should also consider parking requirements, especially for outdoor events where drivers could lose control of their vehicles. A designated car park with secure Armco barriers will highlight the different vehicle and pedestrian zones and ensure people and vehicles remain safe. 

Be Upfront About Safety Policies 

Although social distancing and other pandemic measures have been relaxed, there are still some people who need peace of mind surrounding your safety protocols. While it is now a choice to wear masks and follow safety guidance, being upfront about your safety policies will add confidence and increase attendance. 

Send a message in the days leading up to the event about how you will ensure safety. You can also put up signs around the event highlighting specific measures and set up hand sanitiser stations for people to wash their hands as they go around. 

Work With Qualified Security 

A qualified security team is crucial for any substantial event. While the chances of professionals getting into aggressive disagreements are slim, you still want to reduce liabilities by employing certified teams to monitor the event. 

This security is also beneficial for controlling the crowd in emergencies. If you need to evacuate the building, the security team should know the correct protocols to keep everyone safe and get them out swiftly. 

Follow Up For Next Time 

You can always be better than your last event, so a final way to keep your guests safe is to follow up with them and get their thoughts. You should have their contact information available, which allows you to send out a post-event email and survey requesting their feedback. 

There is the risk that many people will ignore this, so you can sweeten the deal by offering discounts to the next event or allowing them initial access to tickets before the general sale. When you receive the feedback, consider how you can implement this in your next event. 

Safe and Secure 

People want to feel safe wherever they are. As the event organiser, it is up to you to arrange all the protocols that ensure total safety and security for everyone who passes through the door. If you do, you can look forward to repeating the event in the future and build your reputation as a business owner who knows how to look after their guests. 

If you are fortunate enough to be able to have paid business expenses as part of your job, the last thing you should be doing is abusing the privilege. Managing business expenses is not always easy, especially as you need to be very clear on what you can and cannot claim and when you can and cannot claim it. Knowing the best practices for claiming your business expenses will help you to streamline the entire process.

Whether you are allowed to claim for your travel, your accommodation, your meals, even the entertainment while you’re away, you need to get this right. Managing your business expenses takes the right software, the right distance matrix API documentation, and it also takes knowing that your boss is going to trust you to get the job done. If you are able to have expenses while you’re out at work, use these tips to manage them properly.

• Make it a policy. Give this one to your boss if they haven’t done it before, but the very first step towards ensuring that you can manage your business expenses is to have a policy about them. The policy should dictate a clear and fair expense policy for everybody in the company who is eligible for them. It should be reviewed periodically to ensure that it is up-to-date.
• Only gather what is necessary. When you are putting together your business expense claim, only add receipts for things that you know you’re allowed to claim for. Don’t waste the time of the finance payroll department by trying to claim for things you already know you’re not allowed to. It’s a good way to speed up the process of submitting your expenses reports, and being paid for them.
• Get your expenses in on time. A good management technique for your expenses is to make sure that you submit them by the date you were told to submit them by. Don’t be that person that tries to submit them too late and then get annoyed when you don’t get them paid back to you on time.
• Have them double checked by management. A good way to manage your personal business expenses is to make sure that your manager double checks them for you so there are no delays in paying them back to you. If you have one person swiftly checking the expenses for everybody, it’s a faster process.
• Bring on the software. We talked about having the right distance matrix API documentation, and this is to check the distance when you’re travelling. If you know you are travelling the right way for the right length of time, you’ll know exactly what expenses you should claim back for. Instead of accumulating all of your receipts and expense reports, have the right software to check them for you. It makes it so much simpler.
• Make sure you understand when you’ll be paid. Everybody wants the expense of the day after submission and that’s never going to be the case. Speak to your manager and find out when you should receive your expenses back. Of all people, your management team should understand that people are waiting on this money and they can’t always afford it  out of pocket.