Creating a Productive Workplace Environment

When you run a small business, you want your workforce to be as productive as possible. After all, you’re paying them to help bring your business forward. Now, there are various things that you can do to ensure that your employees are proactive individuals. A lot of the work lies in the recruitment process. You can interview, receive references, and take a look at potential employees’ previous track record in order to gauge whether they will be a hardworking individual. This is logical. But there are certain aspects of encouraging productivity that lie entirely in your hands as a small business owner and manager. One that we will focus on for now is creating a positive work environment for your staff to work in. Believe it or not, features of the space that employees engage with on a daily basis can have an astounding impact on the quality of work that they produce and their attitude in general. So, if you want to make your office space as positive as possible, read on for a few tips and tricks!

Declutter

Offices can easily become overrun with clutter. Anyone who has ever worked in one will be able to vouch for that. When you combine numerous individuals’ paperwork, stationery, and other essentials, you quickly end up with messy desks and drawers. Now, it’s up to your employees themselves to keep their personal working spaces tidy. Whether they choose to keep their own space clear or not will be down to personal preference. But it’s up to you as a leading figure amongst your workers to keep communal spaces clean and tidy. This could include meeting rooms, storage cupboards, and break rooms. So why is it so important for communal spaces to be neat? Well, studies have found that mess can provoke feelings of stress and irritability, and if your workers are stressed and irritable, their minds aren’t going to be focused on their work. It’s as simple as that! Simple storage solutions could include organizers in drawers, shelves in cupboards and other areas, and filing cabinets. But if you have larger belongings that you need stored off-site, make use of secure local business storage solutions.

Lighting

Now, lighting doesn’t tend to be the first thing to spring to mind when you start to consider productivity. But it can massively impact your worker’s output. Research has shown that the harsh, bright lights that are so often used in many major corporations’ office spaces invoke feelings of stress and depression, while “cool light” can actually trigger productivity and creative thinking. Luckily, natural light is a form of “cool light,” so you’re not going to have to invest in any expensive specialist lighting! Just opt for office spaces that have large windows and ensure that they aren’t blocked by blinds or curtains. It’s as simple as that.

While these are just two methods of instilling a productive vibe into your workspace, they are extremely effective, and both should be seriously considered, as they could create a harder working staff base and significantly boost your profits!

Contacts N’Contracts: Working With A Freelancer Effectively

The key to running a business effectively is knowing how you establish relationships with other people. Now, so many companies outsource their skills to contractors and freelancers, the onus has been on the entrepreneur to be as amiable and accommodating to freelancers and contractors as possible. But, the temptation to treat a contractor or freelancer as second fiddle to permanent employees is easy, but it doesn’t help to establish a proper working relationship with a freelancer. So how can you do this?

Schedule Check-Ups

Communication is vital to having an effective working relationship, so by scheduling regular catch ups with these freelancers, either via video call or Skype, you can ensure that they are on the same page as you. If you don’t want to be so hands-on, there are document sharing tools, like Google Docs, where you can give notes and feedback on to a freelancer’s project.

Look For Feedback From The Freelancer

To ensure that the door swings both ways as far as communication is concerned, looking for feedback from a freelancer gives you important notes on how to progress with freelancers and contractors in the future. And while it’s something that benefits you more after a project is done, if you can implement this into the company culture prior to hiring a freelancer, this is going to benefit you a lot more throughout the process. But, it’s also going to help the freelancer, as they will feel more relaxed, and more inclined to speak up if they feel there’s an issue, rather than keeping quiet so they can get paid.

Choose Your Freelancers Carefully

This is a very difficult approach because if you’re looking for the right person, it’s important to do enough research into a freelancer’s past experience, which can be done by asking for a portfolio or references. But you need to make sure that you are watertight as far as the working process is concerned. So it’s best to hire someone who has an inherent knowledge of the freelancer process, so they can slot right into the working format. A lot of this is to do with the Statement Of Work as well as signed contracts. You can find more at The Weisblatt Law Firm for information on contract drafting, but by picking people with this professional experience, rather than gambling on a novice, will help you to develop a good quality product.

Be More Than A Boss

Instead of just being a person who barks orders, try to be a mentor instead. To build a lasting relationship with a freelancer, by providing proper resources for them to work, you are going to get better results from them, and they are going to engage with the process much more. It sounds simple, but this is where your knowledge of relationships is going to serve you well. Being a manager isn’t just about telling people what to do and where to go, especially when it comes to hiring freelancers. These people have a unique insight and are free from the company process to actually give you truthful opinions as to if you’re doing a good job and doing the best for your business. So, the next time you work with a freelancer, don’t underestimate them!

Reasons Your SEO Campaign Is Failing

If you are not getting the results you had hoped for from your SEO campaign, you need to get to the bottom of why this is happening. This is especially the case if you are slipping down the search engine result pages. With that in mind, read on to discover some of the most common reasons why SEO campaigns fail, so you can get to the bottom of where you are going wrong with yours.

You are handling your SEO campaign in-house and you do not have the required experience – There is only one place to begin, and this is with handling your SEO campaign in-house when you do not have the experience to do so. When you consider the importance of SEO today, you see why this is not something whereby you can simply cut corners. You need an expert service. You can find out more about this at https://figmentagency.com/landing/seo-surrey/. Make sure you do not go for the first or cheapest company you need either. You need a business with a good reputation and lots of experience so that they can change your SEO campaign for the better.

You have not give yourself enough time – A lot of people expect to implement an SEO strategy and see results overnight, it does not happen like this. Getting to the top pages of Google and other popular search engines takes time. You need to be patient and you need to constantly work on your strategy if you are to achieve good results and maintain them.

You are only focusing on keywords and link building – Needless to say, keywords and links are two critical elements of SEO. It is good that you are giving them the attention they deserve. However, if your website is suffering as a consequence, this is where you are going wrong. SEO is about user experience. Your website needs to be easy to use, quick to load, and optimised for mobile usage. If it not, this is why your SEO campaign is failing.

You are using outdated SEO practices – You can discover more about the outdated SEO practices you need to avoid here: https://searchengineland.com/13-outdated-seo-tactics-terrified-285353. SEO is something that never remains stagnant. After all, the Internet is constantly developing itself. Therefore, you need to keep up with the latest trends and techniques if you are to harvest good results. Approaches such as keyword stuffing and other black hat techniques must be avoided at all costs.

As you can see, there are a number of different reasons why SEO campaigns fail today. Hopefully, you have been able to get to the bottom of where you are going wrong with your search engine optimisation efforts. Don’t panic, though, if you have noticed the errors mentioned above. You simply need to take action so you can rectify the problem as soon as possible.