Feeling isolated while at work is something an increasing number of people experience in their lives. Studies suggest loneliness in the workplace can pose health risks as harmful as obesity or smoking. For both business owners and employees, here are some effective strategies that can help to make you feel less alone.

Encourage face-to-face communication:
Technology can often be to blame for an increased feeling of loneliness among workers. While it does enable greater workplace collaboration and digital connections, it can create the opposite effect when overused. Face-to-face and phone interactions create deeper and more meaningful connections with co-workers. Instead of sending an email or instant message, consider picking up the phone or walking over to your colleague’s desk to talk to them instead.

Have virtual get-togethers:
With a rise in remote workers in an increasingly digital and flexible working environment, sometimes face-to-face interactions are not always possible. To help create more personal connections among your workplace, employers may consider organising virtual meetups over applications like Google Hangout or Skype to enable remote workers to feel a part of the team.

Cultivate workplace friendships:
Regularly organising social events outside of work can help staff to create more meaningful relationships with each other. This can also break down barriers between an employer and their employees, encouraging company loyalty and a sense of community. Activities you may consider include team lunches, after-work drinks, or group sporting activities. Employees who have more friends at work are more likely to be happier and consequently more productive.

Having a well-planned and engaging social media presence is nowadays a core aspect of marketing. With 77% of consumers more likely to buy from brands they follow on social media, it is important to plan your content ahead of posting to maintain a successful social media campaign, avoid any mistakes and ensure posts will help you achieve your business goals. Creating an effective social media calendar will often involve four key areas that can help you make the most out of your social media presence.

Key information:
This is normally presented in a table format that provides details of what is being posted, such as the date and time for posting, content type, hashtags, the image and text to be posted and what platforms it is being shared on. It is also useful to integrate an evaluation section you can fill in after each post has been made that provides information such as reach, engagement, shares, comments, reaction, follower increase/decrease. This can be done on apps like excel, or specialised social media calendar templates online.

Social media audit:
Before planning out the rest of your content, look back on your current social media pages and see which posts and platforms are working the best, how often you’re posting, what the goals of each network are, what should be changed or improved, and how people are responding to the content.

Plan content strategy:
It is a good idea to have a strategic content plan rather than just sharing whatever you feel like. This can involve determining which topics your content can cover and when, investigating the needs and wants of your audience and catering to them, and what order posts should be shared in.

Content check:
When planning future content, remember that posts that may be relevant now may not be so appropriate by the time you actually post them. Check if any of the content is out of date and whether it can be updated or should be deleted. For more variety, try planning posts around a special event or holiday that is coming up to make content more interesting.

As the pandemic pushes businesses to run their usual operations online, it can be hard to make sure that your virtual teams are working efficiently and productively. Here are some tips to ensure your employees are communicating and working effectively despite being physically distanced.

Use multiple communication tools

The best way to make sure your team members are staying vocal and communicating with each other while physically apart is to use online communication tools. With the surge of digital communication technologies, remote team-building has become much easier as there are a multitude of social platforms to choose from.

Using business messaging platforms as well as programs for conference calls and screen records is helpful in establishing methods for how employees can share their ideas. Setting up different communication channels for separate teams and projects can also help in keeping your digital workplace organised yet communicative.

Include overlapping work hours

Although it may be tempting for employees working from home to work around their own personal schedule with flexible hours, it is important to schedule your employees with overlapping hours so that they can communicate effectively, similar to regular in-office operations. Having your employees work in-real-time together will help prevent miscommunication problems, quick task completion and bring them closer together.

Work with a schedule

Similar to overlapping working hours, the flexibility that comes with working from home may mean employees become unorganised and unaware of their team member’s roles and tasks. As a result, it is important to create a working schedule which all employees have access to and must follow. Constructing a routine for employees to work with, especially in the case of regularly scheduled meetings, reviews and catch-ups, will help employees remain productive and conscious of usual business operations despite being online.

Running a business is hard enough without having to chase up payments from your customers. Here are some measures you can take to prevent yourself from having to deal with the profitability imbalance, negative client relation, and legal ordeals that come with chasing up owed debt.

Research the customer:
Before you enter into an agreement with a client or other businesses, make sure that you know who you’re dealing with and do some research. There are government certified websites available to check whether a company is registered and legitimate. Find out about their history, make sure they are reliable, still in operation and to look for any bad reviews and other people’s experiences with them. Look out for those who ask for discounts or complain that your fees are too high. If you get the idea that the client may not pay, consider avoiding the job instead.

Have a signed contract:
Regardless of how much you trust your client, it is still a good idea to have a written contract in place so that everyone is on the same page and you have evidence to refer to in the case of a dispute or confusion. The contract should consist of the terms and agreements, payment schedule, preferred payment method, the exact product or service to be completed and late payment policy. This will encourage your client to make their payments on time, and will also come in handy if any legal action is required in the event that payment isn’t made.

Have a good invoicing system:
Make sure that you invoice customers quickly with professional and easy to understand statements. This helps you keep track of your customers and helps your customers understand the payment requirements. You can set payment terms and policies to ensure that you will be paid how you and your customer agreed.

Ask for deposits or instalment fees:
If you ask for a deposit and the client does not want to pay, it shows that they are probably not trustworthy and may not be willing to make a full payment. If the client does pay you a deposit or instalment fees but does not make a final payment, then you will not have wasted as much time and effort on this work than you would have otherwise.

There is a growing demand for new employees as businesses open their doors again. However, a bad hire can damage the reputation of your business, impact the work environment and may force you to restart the recruitment process. Small businesses can be especially impacted by the significant expenses involved in hiring new employees. Business owners may want to consider using the following tips to avoid employing a bad hire.

Developing a culture fit

You may find that your business has a unique corporate culture that your employees thrive in. The best way to assess this is to have your team members meet the potential hire to allow both parties to understand the kind of culture that exists in your workspace.

Using this information to screen potential employees during interview stages improves your chances of finding a candidate who is likely to fit well into your team.

Role definition

While a culture fit is more likely to screen candidates who fit within your business’ values, it is key that your new hire is able to succeed in their actual responsibilities. Consider reviewing your job posting to make it more specific, relevant and gives the candidate a clear idea of what they can expect from this role. The job description should ideally include more specific key technical competencies, necessary soft skills, expected deliverables and revenue targets that the hire is expected to meet in that role. Detailed job expectations can also help in evaluating the employee’s performance in the future.

Effective on-boarding

If a new hire seemed like a good fit, but is not performing well, employers may want to examine the on-boarding process within the company. Failures in the on-boarding stages can include a lack of communication or expectations from the employee to work independently and without guidance within the first few weeks of employment. Consider communicating clear deliverables and establishing a point of contact for the employee for any support. Your new hires can also be a valuable source of feedback on your on-boarding process and help you identify gaps in your hiring stages.

Handling mis-hires

Finally, some businesses may still find that they ended up with the wrong person for the job. Hiring managers often have a large responsibility in hiring the wrong person, so treat termination as your last resort. Before immediately removing a poor fit from your business, consider having a conversation with the employee about their issues with meeting their deliverables. Some issues can be solved with appropriate skill training and workshop sessions, or simply moving them to a more suited role within your company.

Do you work in an industry where there is a lack of talented staff despite the demand for it? How can you ensure that job-seeking talents will want to work with you over all the other businesses in the industry? Here are a few tips to boost your chances!

Personalise your recruitment process:
Talented candidates are no longer satisfied with detached, vague and uninteresting job advertisements. Your job description needs to be inviting to those in the job-hunting market who are sifting through hundreds of advertisements a day. The most effective way to do this is to address your candidates personally.

Ring them up upon receiving an application, talk to them about their experiences and accommodate for any needs they might have during the recruitment process (e.g. adjusting interview times and how an interview is conducted). Make sure to converse candidly with your candidates, try to get to know them beyond their professional qualifications, and earn a reputation having a considerate and interaction recruitment process,

Be clear and concise about what you have to offer:
Most job seekers are looking for jobs with certain conditions in mind. Whether this is a pay rate, the business location, expectations of further career opportunities, always try to be as clear and concise as possible when describing your open role and other important business details. By prioritising clarity and including specific expectations, only the most interested of job-seekers will contact you and apply for your job with full knowledge of how to do the job right.

Flexibility is key:
In order to attract the most talented of job-seekers, it can be more beneficial to prioritise the candidate’s desires over the business’. Offering flexible working conditions such as adjustable working hours, accomodating work arrangements (e.g. standing desks) and work-from-home opportunities will incentivise potential talents to choose your organisation over others. Sometimes, these flexible working conditions may even convince talents to choose you over other businesses with higher salaries or other benefits.