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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Employee Morale|Raise Employee Morale With These Tips

Raise Employee Morale With These Tips

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Employee Morale|Raise Employee Morale With These TipsYou’ve clicked on this post because you’re interested in learning how to raise employee morale in your business. You’ll soon see a range of useful tips to try, but first, we want to explain why employee morale is important.

If employee morale is low, it means nobody has the motivation to work hard. Your productivity decreases and you struggle to make sales and gain new customer acquisitions. On the other hand, if employee morale is high, everyone is fully motivated to work towards the collective company goal. Productivity goes through the roof, ensuring you make lots of new sales and gain loads of new customers.

Keeping that in mind, here are the tips to help you maintain and raise employee morale all-year-round:

Feedback sessions

A good way to raise employee morale is by holding one-on-one feedback sessions with each employee. Talk to them about their performance and let them know what they’re doing well at. This praise will really keep them in a good headspace and let them realize that their work is being noticed by you.

At the same time, it’s a good way to provide constructive feedback on things they might not be doing so well at. Be sure to go hard on the praise before and after giving some constructive criticism. The whole aim of these sessions should be to help your employees get the most out of their talents while also boosting morale by giving them a metaphorical pat on the back.

Share the success

Has your company achieved something special lately? Did you hit your sales targets for the month? Have you had a positive article posted about your online? Victories should be shared with your employees as they helped you achieve them.

Sharing success lets everyone feel part of the team. Again, it’s recognition for a job well done. Employees will appreciate that their work is being noticed – and they’ll also feel extra motivation as there’s proof that what they’re doing is good. You create a company environment that’s full of positivity because the successful moments are shared as a collective. Thus, employee morale goes through the roof.

Do things as a team

Often, employee morale is low because the whole team feels disjointed. People don’t feel as though they have a place, so their attitude changes. You can help people feel more like part of a team by doing things together. There are loads of different ideas you can choose to put this into action.

For example, go on a monthly meal together as a team. Or, go out for drinks as a group. You could even host your own party or gathering on special occasions. Find party rentals to get loads of cool games and activities, and it will be a great team bonding session. Things like this will help people get to know one another and feel more attached to the business. It’s impossible to have low morale if everyone gets on and there’s a friendly atmosphere in the workplace. These events or gatherings will help you achieve this.

Create a fun work environment

Lastly, employee morale will go down the drain if your work environment is terrible. Nobody will have high morale if they don’t look forward to going to work. On the flip side, if your work environment is fun and cool, employees will look forward to work.

So, you need to try and make your workplace a relatively fun place to be. Think about little perks you might be able to introduce. Simple ideas work really well. For instance, install a coffee machine in the office so people can constantly get free drinks whenever they want. Maybe have a little chillout area with beanbags and comfy chairs and encourage your team to take breaks. Yes, breaks actually boost productivity – think about that! You could even go a step further and have a table tennis table or pool table for people to use when they’re not working. If people enjoy where they work, their morale is likely to be a lot higher than those that don’t.

Just like that, you can increase the morale of your employees in the workplace. To reiterate, employee morale is more important than you might think. If your business has been struggling, it could be down to the way your employees approach work. Morale could be low because people don’t believe in the company or feel like they enjoy working there. Use the tips above to rewrite the script and create an office that’s full of highly motivated employees!

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Adopt a beginner's mindset|Five Steps to Adopting a Beginner’s Mindset for Your Business

Five Steps to Adopting a Beginner’s Mindset for Your Business

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Adopt a beginner's mindset|Five Steps to Adopting a Beginner’s Mindset for Your BusinessBusinesses often hire consultants to take a “fresh look” at things. It’s usually helpful to add an outside perspective to the inner workings of a business. But what if you could add a fresh perspective without having to outsource?

A beginner’s mindset is a Zen philosophy based on this logic: if you think you’re an expert, you’re more likely to dismiss the most obvious answer. And sometimes it’s the obvious answer that solves the problem.

When I’m new to a team or a company, I use that beginner’s mindset to learn by asking questions, understanding why things are done a certain way. Through that understanding the team and I can then develop new solutions that save time and money or create greater efficiencies or develop better processes. Here are a few ways you can implement this with your teams.

Break it Down

If a business process seems broken, analyze each step. Start with the basics.

Author James Clear emphasizes a beginner’s mindset for productivity in “Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results.” According to Clear, successful habits are developed gradually. For example, if you aspire to be more physically fit, you should start with a simple goal of putting on your running shoes several days in a row. The first two minutes make or break any habit, Clear says.

At Freeman, we streamline our supply chain by taking a beginner’s mindset and breaking down the process. The first step was to manage our inventory. Eventually, we transitioned to a national model with eight regional fulfillment centers, evolving from a local market model to a regionalized footprint.

Focus on the Why

Let’s say you own a car dealership and sales for compact cars are declining. Instead of brainstorming about promotions or marketing, you could ask your team: why do we sell compact cars? You might discover you’re selling them because they were popular 10 years ago, and nobody stopped to consider whether that was still the case. Asking the simple “why” brings you back to the beginner’s mindset, allowing you to reexamine your procedures from a fundamental perspective.

Remove Fear of Failure from the Equation

Fear of failure is one of the biggest obstacles people face in work and in life. People don’t worry about being perfect during their first day on the job, because they don’t know how to do anything yet. If you don’t know how to do something, you can’t fail — that’s the mindset you need. If you’re stuck, write down everything that could possibly go wrong, solve for it — then go forward.

Forget Perfection

Perfection is not the goal of the beginner, as beginners simply want to learn and get better. This is the key to success: constant improvement. Because perfection is impossible, holding yourself to that standard will only disappoint you.

Nobody has ever created a perfect company, nor trained a perfect employee.

Legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi said, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

Get Up if you Fall Down

Remember when you learned to ride your bike? You were a beginner. You knew you’d fall. But you also knew it would be impossible to learn how to ride unless you climbed back onto the seat. This lesson applies to the business world. Every failure is a learning experience that will help you achieve your goal, just as falling off a bike was a learning experience that taught you how to ride.

Nobody is ready to fall. But the more you fall, the better chance you have to succeed.

As Arianna Huffington said, “We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.”

How can you apply a beginner’s mindset to your business?

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Janet DellJanet Dell is President and COO of Freeman, where she leads all Freeman business operations across the globe. With expertise in global sales, digital transformation, process improvement, and worldwide client management, Janet has the background and the vision to guide Freeman into a new future. She is a dynamic and empathetic leader who has succeeded by putting people first in the process of transformational leadership. She encourages her teams to embrace change through constant communication, continuous learning, pragmatic thinking, tenacity, and by cultivating and inspiring her teams to redefine live events. Janet joined Freeman in 2018 as EVP and first-ever Chief Growth Officer. Her dual-role leadership made a tremendous impact on strategy and performance. Her efforts to refine business processes, streamline systems, and adapt go-to-market strategies for a digital-first world positioned the company for growth. Before Freeman, Janet served as CEO of Marsh ClearSight, a global leader in risk, safety, and claims management software. Prior to leading Marsh Clearsight, Janet served as Marsh’s COO of Global Sales, where she was responsible for driving organic growth. During her tenure as Marsh Global Sales COO, the company’s annual new sales topped more than $1.2 billion and global new business doubled. Janet has been recognized as a Woman to Watch by Business Insurance magazine and has received several awards for product technology innovation. She is a proud graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she earned a business degree in finance, investment, and banking.
To learn more visit, www.freeman.com. Follow Janet on LinkedIn.

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Effectively manage your business|How To Effectively Manage Your Business & Team

How To Effectively Manage Your Business & Team

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Effectively manage your business|How To Effectively Manage Your Business & TeamRunning your own company can be tricky and challenging at times. There is no playbook for achieving success quickly or having all the right answers.

You must have strategies in place that help you overcome challenges and achieve what you set out to do in a timely fashion. It’ll take hard work and dedication on your part to be an inspiring leader and valuable business owner, but with a little focus, it can be done. Learn how to effectively manage your business and team so you can be more productive and not let roadblocks or obstacles get in your way for too long.

Communicate Goals & Expectations

Be as transparent as possible if you want to effectively manage your business and team. Communicate your goals and expectations and make sure everyone is on the same page. Once you determine your goals, make sure you achieve them by investing in OKR training at your company. It’s an excellent way to set yourself up for success and will allow you to take your business to the next level. It’s going to help you give clear direction to every team and individual, and you’ll find you can better align your employees to your corporate goals this way.

Be Consistent

It’s also important that you’re consistent in your management style and with your team if you want to be a better leader. As a business owner, you’ll find others look up to you and trust you more when you stay true to your word and follow through as you said you would. Consistency will help your employees know what to expect from you, and you’ll likely notice they better anticipate what’s next and can be more proactive. Encourage the same behaviors you want to see from them so that you can build the company culture you desire.

Recognize Hard Work

Effectively manage your business and team by recognizing hard work. Give credit where credit is due and let your employees know you value and appreciate them. Call people out when they do a good job or go above and beyond to keep your employees happy. Reward impressive performance and behavior with bonuses, time off, and lunches or meals. The more public you are about it, the more likely it is to motivate other employees to want to follow suit. However, always be consistent and fair in doing so because you don’t want to be viewed as playing or having favorites.

Encourage New Ideas & Creativity

Another tip for effectively managing your business and team is to encourage new ideas and creativity. Make innovation a priority and be receptive to different ways of working and approaching the same problems. It’ll help cultivate a culture of the sharing of ideas, and you’ll likely find that you all work better together as a team when everyone feels heard.

Encourage all opinions and ideas, so that each person feels like they can make a difference and improve the organization.

Make Use Of Technology

As a business owner, it is essential to be able to effectively manage your team. This means being able to delegate tasks, set deadlines, and make sure that everyone is on the same page. To do this, you need to have a good understanding of what each member of your team is capable of. You also need to be able to stay organized and keep track of everything that is going on. Luckily, several different technologies and team collaboration software can help you manage your team more effectively.

Conclusion

This advice will help you become a more effective boss and leader at your company. Your employees will perform better and likely stick around longer when they trust and look up to you. The good news is that there’s always room for improvement, so it’s never too late to be a better business owner and help people enjoy their work.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Entrepreneur Skills|The Skills Every Entrepreneur Should Have

The Skills Every Entrepreneur Should Have

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Entrepreneur Skills|The Skills Every Entrepreneur Should HaveAn entrepreneur is someone who starts their own business and is responsible for building it up from the ground. As you might imagine, this is by no stretch of the imagination, but if you are determined to make it work, you have every chance of doing so.

Something else that will help you to have the best possible chance of succeeding as an entrepreneur is having the right skills. Some of the most common skills that entrepreneurs require are inherent, but most of them can be learned, so if you are willing to put the time and effort in, you could acquire abilities that will help you to run a much more successful business in the future.

With that in mind, here are some of the most important skills every entrepreneur should have:

Inquisitiveness

In order to come up with great new ideas and solve pressing new problems, you really do need to have an inquisitive mind that is always thinking about things, how they work and how they could be improved. This is probably the most important skill to have.

Communication

Successful entrepreneurs like Jonathan Sears, and Bill Gates if you want to be successful in business, you need to learn how to communicate as effectively as possible. From being able to pitch an idea to investors to directing employees how to handle a work project, and of course, dealing with customers, you are going to be doing a lot of talking one way or another, and the more eloquently you can put your point across, the more successful you are likely to be.

Time management

When you are turning a business, there really aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything that you need to do. It is your job as an entrepreneur to find the time, which means you need to have excellent time management skills, Of course, you can hire other people to help you (and you should) but if you aren’t able to fit everything you need to do into your daily schedule as efficiently as possible, you really will struggle.

Resilience

Being an entrepreneur is hard. Not all of your ideas will land, some of your big dreams will fail, and you will fall short of many of your goals. If you cannot handle those things, you will ultimately be unsuccessful in business and feel terrible in your personal life. If, however, you can handle the rejections, stresses, and bad times and learn from them, you can come back better and stronger and ultimately lead your company to great success.

Mathematics

If you want to do well in business, you need to be able to raise funds, create business plans, work out your bottom line, and a million other things that require the ability to think mathematically, Obviously, there are lots of tools that can help you with this these days but if you have an innate understanding of mathematics, you will find it a whole lot easier to succeed.

If you have all of these skills or are able to work towards developing them, then you are fsr more likely to succeed as a modern entrepreneur.

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start a business from home|What You Need to Start a Business from Home

What You Need to Start a Business from Home

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start a business from home|What You Need to Start a Business from HomeIn the modern world, more and more people are taking the option to launch a business from the comfort of their home. However, before you really get started, you need to make sure that you are set up for success. There are several crucial elements that can make all the difference here, and we will be focusing on some of them in a checklist to help you get started. Of course, all businesses are slightly different and are going to need different things, but we are going to speak in relatively general terms in the following blog post.

The Right Office

Your office will act as the nerve center of your business, so you need to do everything that you can to make sure that it is properly set up. Ideally, you will have an office with a closing door, but if this is simply not possible, you should try to find a quiet corner of the house where you are really and truly able to concentrate. You will need the right lighting, as well as soundproofing as much as possible. If you have other people living at home, you should try to set up a system of setting up some office hours to ensure that you are able to concentrate as much as possible. You also need to think about the office from a decorative point of view. For example, the color scheme and the little trinkets that you set up around the place can make a big difference in helping to boost your productivity levels.

The Best Equipment

There is plenty of equipment that is going to help you to run your business in the best way possible. To begin with, this means the basic things such as a desk and chair. However, you should also think about the technical aspects of your company that will make all the difference, including a good quality laptop, a residential internet service provider, headphones, a keyboard, mouse, printer, etc. You certainly do not want the equipment to be holding you back, but this also does mean that you necessarily have to spend a fortune, to begin with. Over time, you always have the option of investing more into your company as and when this is required.

A Strong Business Plan

If you do not have a clear plan in place for your business, it is a bit like you are scrabbling around in the dark without a clear sense of direction. For this reason, it is highly important that you get your business plan sorted out. As well as the general sense that you want your company to have, you should also go into further detail about the individual aspects of your business that are going to make all the difference, such as ensuring that you have some clear financial projections, as well as having done sufficient market research to work out exactly where you are going to pitch yourself in a potentially competitive marketplace.

A Winning Mentality

The next crucial aspect of significantly increasing your chances of success is ensuring that you have a winning mentality. If you fail to do this, it is all too easy to find yourself in a situation in which you are already defeated before you have even gotten properly started. To begin with, this means having a clear sense of discipline in working out when you are going to be working and how much time you expect to dedicate to what you are trying to achieve. Surrounding yourself with the right people can make all the difference in ensuring that you are able to continue picking yourself up when you are down. After all, the best businesses are not truly able to achieve success without experiencing some bumps in the road.

A Clear Sense of Routine

The next aspect of your business that can make all the difference is having a clear sense of routine. This means setting out exactly what you would like to achieve in the day that you have in front of you. Setting out regular to-do lists can certainly help in this regard. You should also clearly try to set some office hours during which you are able to work. If you do not make your company a clear priority, you can easily end up in a situation in which it starts to slip further and further down your priority list, and you are not able to give it the time and attention that it deserves.

All of these different elements can really make a big difference when it comes to starting a company from home. First of all, there is the office itself, which you need to set up in the right way. You may need to take a bit of time and experimentation before you get it properly right. Beyond this, there is also all the equipment that you will need for the successful running of your company. Think about the essentials to begin with, and you can always start to build up from here. Remember, there may well be times in which your company needs some reinvestment.

So far, we have only talked about the physical elements of the office environment that can make all the difference in the success or failure of your venture. However, beyond this, you are certainly going to need some things which are altogether more abstract. For example, you need to a business plan that you can follow. This does not have to remain fixed all the time. In fact, you may want to give it some updates and refreshes along the way. You also need to have the right mentality that is going to help you stand out from all of the competition that you have out there. Finally, you need to establish a clear routine that you are able to follow that will certainly help out when it comes to achieving everything that you would like to from your business, which could be a little or a lot.