Tips To Look After Your Workforce

When it comes to your workforce, there’s a responsibility as a business owner and employer to ensure they’re safety comes first. There are plenty of things that you can do in order to keep your staff’s health and wellbeing in check. Here are some tips to look after your workforce.

Provide The Right Safety Equipment

The right safety equipment is essential within the workplace because if you’re not supplying it, then you are likely to get into trouble if someone gets injured. So whether it’s purchasing a heavy duty sack truck to help with heavy lifting or doing risk assessments around the workplace, it’s all very much necessary. The operations or buildings team in your workplace should be taking the necessary steps to ensure everyone within the workplace is looked after at all times, and any problems that occur should be dealt with accordingly. Putting the right safety equipment in place is going to help every one of your staff members to keep safe and to avoid anything bad from happening that could see them off work.

Encourage Break Times

Break times are important, but not enough of us will take a break during the day, especially when it comes to the lunchtime one. Whether it’s to do with the workload or the expectations that are put on staff to work through their lunch, this needs to change. Your staff are going to burnout throughout the day if they don’t have a break, so it’s always good to encourage breaks when it comes to the seniority levels of staff members and as a company. If lunchimes can’t be taken due to work loads, then more staff will need to be hired.

Have Regular 1-2-1 Meetings

Regular catch-ups with your staff can be beneficial to making sure everyone is feeling happy and healthy. It’s also good for management to have a better relationship with all the staff that they work with and manage. Being able to have stronger relationships within the workplace can certainly help to iron out any issues more effectively. Use these opportunities to spend time getting to understand and find ways to improve your staff member’s happiness for the job. If they’re not happy, it’s going to be a safe environment for them to open up and discuss their feelings.

Create A Happy Atmosphere

A happy atmosphere is going to be a productive one and so you want to think about what you could do as an employer to make this environment a lot more positive. Think about the layout and decor, as this can all have an influence over a person’s mood. Make sure everyone is getting along fine and that there’s no tension or animosity amongst colleagues. A happy environment is only going to benefit you as a business.

Looking after your workforce is something that’s very important, and it’s one where you need to ensure it is always a positive one regardless. Use these tips to help improve your workplace and to make it a better place.

How To Increase Sales In Your Fashion Boutique

Women’s fashion is a crowded market. Being able to stand out from that crowd and distinguish your brand from the rest, is key to success in fashion retail. But without the big marketing budgets of the high street names and the designer labels, how do you make a name for yourself? 

The digital age has levelled the playing field somewhat when it comes to marketing. It’s now possible to earn brand recognition and get your products to your ideal audience with a fraction of the marketing spend that was once required. 

If you run a fashion boutique and are looking to grow your brand presence and sales, then take a look at the following tips.

Consider Using Google Shopping

 If you’ve searched for something you want to buy yourself lately, chances are you’ve typed a few keywords into Google and browsed the first results that have popped up. But have you noticed that the very first items presented to you tend to be Google shopping results?

Remember that your own customers are likely to shop in a similar way, so it’s a good idea for you to get your own products listed as Google shopping results to secure high rankings and promoted posts. There are so many proven benefits that come with doing this. Firstly, small businesses tend to use Google shopping for the sheer amount of traffic that it can drive to sites.

Google is the largest search engine in the world and appearing right at the top of its results can funnel potential customers to your website. Secondly, Google shopping targets customers extremely effectively. This means less wasted investment on your side of things, as you’re likely to attract the attention of people with genuine interest in buying your products.

Thirdly, Google shopping can encourage more clicks. Most listings on there are paid ads, so people are likely to just opt for the first ad they see – which could be yours! Check out this guide on What is Google Shopping for more information on this potential money making move!

Essential Equipment for an Efficient Warehouse

Warehouses need the right equipment to run efficiently. There should be equipment for storing inventory, lifting and moving things around, and both packaging items and disposing of waste. If you’re organizing a warehouse for the first time or you need to make sure that you have everything that you should have, there are some essentials that you should put on your checklist. Take a look at the suggestions below to stock your warehouse well.

Storage Systems

Of course, any warehouse needs plenty of storage. The storage systems that you use will likely depend on what it is you’re storing and how much warehouse space you have. You will want to store large items differently to lots of small items, for example. There are shelving units, pallet racks, flow racks, cantilever racks, and other types of storage that may be useful. Consider how to store as much as possible and have the access that you need.

Lift Equipment

Lifting and moving things around are essential parts of processing things in your warehouse. Firstly, you may need hand trucks and service carts to move things manually through the warehouse. A heavy duty trolley can do a lot of work, and you can find them in a variety of sizes. Pallet jacks are useful for lifting and moving pallets around, while you might want to consider the use of forklifts too.

Dock Equipment

When you are receiving materials and products, you need to move them quickly from your dock doors and through your warehouse. Dock equipment helps to improve efficiency, often by making the transition between different levels easier to manage. You can use dock plates and boards, edge-of-dock levelers, yard ramps and other docking equipment that will help you to make your docking area more efficient and a safer place to work.

Conveyors

Conveyors make it faster and easier to move things through your warehouse. They help to increase efficiency and can be used to move items both horizontally and vertically. Flexible conveyors can be used to help maximize the use of space. They can be expanded while in use and made more compact when you want to put them away. Gravity conveyors use gravity to move things around, while motorized conveyors add more power.

Bins and Containers

Keeping your warehouse neat and tidy is important. It ensures your warehouse workers are safe, as there is less risk of tripping over anything, and it makes your warehouse more efficient. Bins and containers in strategic positions help to ensure employees throw things away into the correct containers, instead of dropping things on the floor. As well as using them for waste, you might use them for the storage of packaging materials.

Packaging Equipment

Packaging equipment makes it possible to package orders more efficiently. It can be useful to have a range of equipment, including packing tables, scales, stretch wrap machines, and strapping and banding equipment, depending on what type of products you are packaging.

Get your warehouse in order by making sure that you have all of the above equipment for a more efficient space.