Office Maintenance Tips For Busy Managers

Many office-based businesses consider maintenance to be of secondary importance. They aren’t factories, so the topic rarely comes up. 

However, offices require more maintenance than you might expect. Sure, they don’t depreciate in the same way as an oil rig might, but they still encounter considerable problems. 

In this post, we take a look at some essential office maintenance tips for any office. With these, you can keep employees motivated, productive, and safe. 

Follow An Office Maintenance Checklist

It’s a good idea to follow a regular office maintenance checklist to ensure that you cover all bases. If you don’t approach the issue systematically, then you may miss things. 

Check the following: 

• The architectural elements, including masonry, arches, and walls
• The plumbing system, such as water-using equipment, waste pipes, and water supply
• The fire safety equipment, such as smoke and CO alarms, as well as fire extinguishers
• The HVAC system, including axial fans, vents, and air ducts
• Your office equipment, including furniture, electronics and kitchen appliances
• Your doors and windows
• Your lighting systems, fittings and fixtures

Maintain Office Air Quality 

Ensuring that air quality remains high in your office is essential. Over time, electronics can attract dust and this impacts the quality of the air that you breath. 

Don’t place electronics equipment near large air ducts. Also, avoid placing any equipment in front of ducts that could disrupt the flow of air. If you can’t open windows, you can use air purifiers to remove dust and other particles from your office environment. 

Check For Heating And Air Conditioning Issues

Heating and air conditioning systems are remarkably temperamental. Systems fail with surprising frequency, particularly if you use them continuously. 

Here are some tips for keeping your people comfortable:

• Keep your office temperature between 18 and 23 degrees C. 
• Adjust thermostats so that they are in-keeping with the season. 
• Run office temperatures slightly higher in the summer and lower in the winter, given the type of clothes people are likely to wear. 

Also get smart thermostats to continually monitor your systems, ensuring that your office temperature is correct. If you notice a fall in your utility bills, you’re probably on the right track. 

Keep Your Office Furniture In Good Condition

Functioning office furniture is essential for general office maintenance. Perform regular inspections of desks and chairs to ensure that they meet the needs of your employees. Always use ergonomic furniture to avoid injuries. 

Refurbish Your Facilities Regularly

Some offices haven’t updated their interiors since the 1970s, and it shows. Employees don’t like the working environment, and clients wonder whether the company’s budget is being stretched too far. 

Of course, sometimes a lack of money is the core problem. However, in many cases, it is simply the result of oversight. Companies don’t think a great deal about how their offices reflect their brand. 

Try refurbishing your office by: 

• Including more open areas for team discussions
• Replacing old computers that cause workers frustration
• Repaint the walls and refresh other office facilities with bright, warm colors that reflect your brand

Why Communication Matters in Business and How to Improve…

Communication is a part of life. It’s necessary to maintain relationships in your personal life, but it’s also a vital part of running a business. You need to be able to communicate effectively with employees, customers, suppliers, and freelancers alike. Failing to communicate, especially if it’s a systemic problem in your business, can lead to disappointment and failure. Here’s why communication matters so much and how you can improve it in your business.

The Importance of Communication

We communicate with people to make connections with them and to pass on vital information. Without this ability, society would never have been able to progress as it has as humanity wouldn’t be able to collaborate and work together.

The same thing applies to communication in business. The most obvious need for communication is likely between employees, owners, and managers. If the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing, then a company can’t run smoothly. Good communication can ensure that errors get spotted and dealt with quickly and it keeps morale in the company high. 

You also need to be able to communicate with your suppliers, vendors, and any businesses that you outsource to. Both parties should be able to put their expectations out there so that there are no nasty surprises or misunderstandings that can wreck a business. Good suppliers are precious, so keep them happy and you’ll be more likely to succeed.

Finally, you should keep your clients and customers informed on what’s going on in your business. People appreciate transparency, especially when they’ve paid money for a product or service. Despite what seems obvious, even letting them know of potential problems can help customers to trust you more and remain on your side. Good communication equals good customer service, which means that your precious customers will stick around.

How to Improve Your Communication 

There are several ways to ensure that your business doesn’t have a communication problem. The first option is to look at the methods of communication in your company. The world has opened up in the past few years, giving people more options in this field.

The gold standard of communication is in-person meetings. You can read tone, body language, and facial expressions, and you feel as if you are really getting somewhere. When that isn’t possible, a video conferencing meeting can work as well, as well as allowing you to meet up no matter where you are. 

Emails and instant messaging are other great ways to communicate, especially if you want to convey information quickly and efficiently. Emails tend to be more formal, while instant messaging allows you to get an answer instantly.

As well as looking into the way you communicate with people, it might be worth improving your communication skills. A communication skills trainer like Lindsay Tighe can help you and your employees to learn how to communicate more effectively and maintain a positive attitude in the workplace. This way, things can continue to run more smoothly. 

Ten Tips for Driving Website Traffic

When you are running a business in the digital space, you need to consider how you are going to get your traffic to your website. Your site is visible for all to see, and you need to ensure that you are putting the work in to make it happen. Website traffic doesn’t build up overnight; it takes time to make sure that you are getting the right traffic to your site and you have to do what you can to get more eyes onto your site. 

Your website is going to be a big part of your business and using Google SEO traffic strategies will help you to build up that audience that you need. The harder you work on this, the better results and return you will get from your customers. Asking your audience what they want to see from you is a good place to start, but here are ten tips for driving website traffic! 

1. Start a blog. Believe it or not, a blog is actually one of the best things that you can do to drive traffic. It is a long slog to build your blog and keep churning out valuable content. Regular blogging is going to be a big deal for your business, so make a point of hiring someone to write for you if you don’t have the time to do it yourself. Not only will it improve your odds of appearing in search engines, it’ll ensure that other sites pick up and link to your business and content. 
2. Make sure that you are active on social media. If you post regularly on your social media business accounts, you’re going to expand your business and ensure that you know what your audience wants from you. Posting regularly on your social media is really going to help you to contact the relevant audience that you’ve been looking for. You can also make sure that you join the right groups and bring your content in front of new eyes all the time. If you consider how many billions of people are on social media, you’re really going to be able to extend your reach to different corners of the globe rather than just the local area.
3. Be a guest. Posting on other people‘s websites and guest blogging is really going to help you to showcase your site to a brand-new audience. If you ask other bloggers to swap blogs with you, you can post on their site and you can host some of the blogs they have written, too. Not only does this help you to get in front of a brand new audience, it’s going to help you to reach out and show what you are made of. You’re going to be doing something nice in return, but your content getting out there is the goal.
4. Make sure that your website is visible. We talked about driving traffic, but if you don’t put your website link everywhere that you can, you’re going to slow that traffic down. Promote your web link on your email signatures, your business cards, your vans and vehicles, your company uniforms – everywhere that your website is increasingly visible both on and offline the better. Your website has to be seen if you want to drive traffic, so let’s make sure that you can get it out there in big bold letters.
5. Be a part of Google My Business. If you want to ensure that you are seen, you can add so much more content to your profile for free when you have a Google My Business profile. This could even include a list of the products that you sell and this can increase the likelihood of people taking through to your website. Nobody wants to see a business name and not know what they do, so if you ensure that you claim your Google My Business profile you can talk about whatever you like. 

6. Make sure that you have an email marketing list. Email marketing is not dead which means that you need to have a button on your website for people to input their information. While you are selling out on email marketing, make sure that you are adding value by showing people emails and content that they would like to see. You can run a survey to help you with this, reach out to your audience and ask them what they would like to see. Email marketing really is worth its weight in gold and if you’re not sending regular emails to prospective customers, you’re losing out.
7. Consider video marketing. If you have noticed that the rise of online video marketing is going up, you might be more on the ball than you think you are! Instagram reels are turning into the new TikTok, which means that everywhere you look people are using bite-sized videos to sell things. YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world, so you could repurpose your best blogs as videos with links back to your website.
8. Answer questions and become an authority online. You could get online and make sure that you are signing up to question and answer websites to answer people’s questions. Not only will you be able to market your business, you can talk more about what you know. This makes you an authority in your sector and this is exactly how you can pull in some new customers
9. Considered influencer marketing. You might have seen the rise of influences on social media which means that you can utilize the audience and their influence on the rest of social media to bring traffic to your website. If you have an ecommerce website, you can even give influencers discounts and free products to help to drive sales and gain actual reviews.
10. Use your marketing budget for paid advertising. You can have a small budget towards paid advertising on search engines and social media to promote your site to audiences that may be interested. It doesn’t have to cost much, so make sure that you put a small amount into your budget so you’re not wasting too much cash.