Category: Marketing blog

As a startup company, built on nothing but enthusiasm and entrepreneurship, you just have to cut some corner whenever you can. It might sound bad, but to be frank, you just don’t have all that much of a budget to splash about when just starting out. You have to make do with the bare minimum while remaining actually functional and efficient, which may be a tough balance to strike. No matter what kind of business you will be running, chances are you will have to purchase quite a few PCs, either to perform the main purpose of your service, for example, web design and anything slightly demanding, or just office PCs for your employees to do typical work office work on. Dependant on that, you might be able to get your work PCs on the cheap, or you will have to allocate some of your budget towards them after all.

Can you save a lot of money on PCs?

If your business is one which strongly depends on the performance of your PC, you might not be able to cheap out all that much. Say you need to do a lot of 3D rendering, or maybe video rendering, a pretty damn decent PC at least will be needed to save you time, and your employee’s sanity. If you want to just get some generic office PCs with no ridiculous specs to do your generic office things like writing the odd word document, handling emails, browsing the web and maybe the occasional spreadsheet and presentation, then you are in luck.

Refurbished PCs?

When looking for office computers, the best thing you can check out straight away, are refurbished PCs. You can find several websites online which sell refurbished computers, for a lot less money than you would probably expect. Refurbished PCs are obviously not brand new, as the name suggests, they are fixed up from whatever issue they had previously and put back together to be sold again. They will never be as good as a brand new PC right out of the store, but they basically are the next best thing and for a more than accessible price.

Keyboards

Other than the PCs themselves, you have to worry about all the peripherals needed, the most important ones being the mouse and keyboard. While there are all very nice and fancy mechanical keyboards available on the market nowadays, they do often fetch quite the hefty price which is why you should (at least for now) stick with the good ‘ol tested membrane keyboards with the now-classical switches made by companies which have been involved in Membrane Switch Manufacture for years on end. Mechanical keyboards are indeed making a comeback, but one should not discredit the fact that the large majority of businesses around the world still use membrane keys for much more than just keyboards. Calculators monitors, remote controls and air conditioners to name a few mostly still use them. So do not feel like you are providing your employees with something of terrible quality and you’re being cheap, not at all, you just are not going all out yet.

Finally, Mice

Computer mice should not be an issue to find for extremely cheap in the slightest, especially when buying in bulk. While roller mice were the original standard and are probably the cheapest to get if you even manage to find some, that technology is most definitely showing its age. Instead, just stick with normal optical mice for everyday office use

For any business to succeed, there are certain things needed in the recipe for success. One of which is making sure that your business is legal. There are plenty of things that you need to be abiding by to make sure that the business is legal, such as keeping copies of records and expenses, offering at least the minimum wage for any employees, as well as making sure that your business abides by any relevant laws. Take for example, an office that you work out of or a physical store that you sell out of. Are you making the environment safe and accessible for people from all walks of life? If someone with a disability was to apply for a role within your business, if they were qualified enough, would you have to make changes to make things accessible for them, for example? If you would have to make changes for employees or customers, then you’re not currently in keeping with the law.

So if you think your business needs a bit of an overhaul to make sure that it is in-keeping with the law, then there are some things that you could do to make changes. It will keep your employees and customers happy, leaving you able to get on with the core of your business and expansion.

• Think about the main entrance to your store or office first of all. If people will have a hard time even getting into the building, then things need to change quite quickly. It may just be that there is a different entrance for customers with disabilities and for people that can’t access it through going up stairs. If so, then it needs to be clearly signposted so they know where to go. If it isn’t obvious, you are going to lose those customers as they won’t be able to get into the store.

• Along similar lines, if there isn’t an alternative access point for them, then you need to make a way for them to be able to get in the building. It could be that you build a ramp to have alongside steps, or fill the steps in to make the whole thing a ramp. It could be installing an easy-access lift, like from Terry Lifts, for example. Just start off this overhaul with the entrance of your office or building and then go from there.

• If you’re hiring an employee, and your office has several floors, is there a way for them to get up the stairs? If not, then it needs to be looked at. It isn’t always going to be practical for to get an internal lift installed. So you need to look at options. If they can only be on one floor, then you need to make sure that you have everything that they would need on that floor. You can’t have bathrooms on the second floor if you don’t have a lift, as an example. So it could mean getting a respite room, and a bathroom put in on the first floor, rather than installing an elevator. Have a look around your office and see what might need to be changed.

• Permanent rooms, such as bathrooms, and storage rooms, should having signage on them that is bright and obvious, as well as in braille. You may not have any employees that are blind, but you could have some that are have a visual impairment like cataracts or reduced vision in one eye, for example. If you have a store, then anyone could walk through the door. It needs to be accessible for them too.

• Are the doors in your office hard to open? Come to think of it, are the handles on them quite high up? If so, this can be hard for someone in a wheelchair to open. In many instances, employers will change the doors or handles, and even add in an accessibility button that can just be pressed and the door opens by itself. The same can be said of a shop door, for example. A bank, for instance, is quite right to have some heavy doors. But they just need an accessibility button that helps them to automatically open when needed. With so much technology at our fingertips, it seems a shame to not be using any of it to help our business premises to grow.

• Are service animals accepted in your place of work or establishment? If you don’t know if the customer has a service animal, then there are two questions that you can ask yourself; does the customer need the animal because of a disability? And second, what work or tasks does the dog know how to do or has been trained to perform? From there, you can assess whether the dog is needed or not. Just make sure that you have clear signage to say that service dogs are welcome in your store, for example.

• All workplaces and premises will need to have an emergency plan. But what happens in the case of people with disabilities? You’re not meant to use elevators in the event of a fire. So what is the plan if there is one? In this instance, you need to think about safe zones, especially if there are multiple floors to your office or building. Where could someone with a wheelchair be left and kept safe, until they are able to be rescued? Fireproof doors could be a consideration, for example. Second of all, you need to think about writing the plan out and educating the rest of your team about the process. If you’re not on duty and there is an emergency, would everyone else know what to do?

Businesses can make things much easier on their employees or customers that have disabilities. It increases your potential customer base, as well as the talent that you can recruit for your workplace. Simply put, it will pay dividends to make your workplace accessible, as well as it making good business sense to do so.

When it comes to owning and operating a firm, there are many variables to consider. Your financial standing, your appeal to investors and your shareholder returns are all some of the most important things to consider. However, in the pursuit of good financial standing, you can neglect some of the most important issues to get right. Too many firms focus solely on the legal parameters they must hire their staff in, develop an adequate working culture and then leave the rest to the staff. Of course, that’s mostly all which is required from you if you’re looking to achieve targets and guarantee a reasonable low staff turnover.

However, like anything, this could and should be optimized from the bottom to the top of staff rankings. Too many firms will look at their annual performance, and upon choosing the pursuit of more growth, will simply burden their workforce with more difficult targets. This can demotivate employees faster than the drop of a hat. It’s important to understand why this is, and how you can communicate and work with your employees for greater performance.

As always going with the tide, not against it, is the best way for anything to happen naturally. With this in mind, we’d like to suggest some of the best ways to guarantee staff performance increase, retrieving more positive labor output for your money long term:

Optimize Their Toolset

When it comes to interfacing with the daily tasks they must carry out, employees often benefit from the most updated ways of conducting business. Innovations in online development and intra-business connection allows for faster communication, faster inventory management and financial handling. Not only that, but communicating with customers or clients is easier than ever through a range of online support platforms.

It’s important to understand where the benefits lie here, and how you can go about improving them. For example, in large stock-handling jobs, where huge lists of itemized issues must be found, making sure that you provide your employees with mobile computers to faster take stock of inventory. Not only that, but making sure these tools are well maintained through a service such as Mobile Computer Repair can help you avoid downtime. When time is money, you’re sure going to feel the lack of optimized tools harshly.

Communication

You need to enact a social policy within your firm. It can be condensed to one word – listening. Listening to your staff and providing a direct route to consideration of ideas will help your staff feel valued, and it will allow the best ideas to rise light heat balloons to the top. It’s important to enable this structural means of employee feedback, as they are in the front trenches and often know what’s good for the bottom of your firm more than ever.

This will quickly help you understand whether your requirements you expect from your staff are achievable or will stretch them too thin. Giving weight to the rational advice they give will motivate them to give it, but keeping an awareness about less great ideas will prevent them from approaching you with something petty or simply not worthwhile.

Analyze Internal Metrics

With the ever-increasing nuance and refinement of internal IT systems, it can be instructive to use this information generated by employees to optimize time in your office. You are often able to view the user information and online visitation of your employees. This data can be used to identify working trends in the office. When are they most productive, and when are they likely to sit back and waste time?

For example, if you notice a heavy spike of YouTube content just before the shift ends, consider switching up late-day tasks to help your employees become more effective, and give them a break from the large block of work they are getting tired of by closing time.

This information can also be used in trialling ways. When installing or testing out a new IT environment or software package, you will be able to assess how quickly your employees are able to grapple with the new system, and provide additional training if needs be. With the development and constant innovation of the technical world, it’s crucial to ensure your employees are comfortable with their workplace terminal.

Analyzing metrics of performance within your firm, and listen to the feedback from your employees, will allow you to choose the most suitable resource to conduct your work from. Comparing and contrasting that to your last digital environment will help you ascertain if the environment is really worth it.

Hopefully, these humble yet effective tips will give you a heightened awareness of how you can develop your staff’s working ability.