June, 2012 | BizSieve.com

Using the Downed Economy to Find Quality Contractors for Your Business

In a struggling economy, it becomes more important than ever for companies to make smart staffing choices that will be cost-efficient and practical. For some businesses, this means carefully balancing how many employees you maintain and how much work they’re expected to complete. Overworked employees have reduced productivity, while hiring too many people can negatively impact your bottom line.

Using Contract Workers to Increase Productivity

In cases where the work requirements exceed your current staffing, hiring temporary workers on contract positions can be a great alternative. Due to the economic downturn, more people have turned to freelancing either as a supplement to their current jobs or as a replacement for jobs that have been lost. This means that skilled workers are available to hire on a temporary basis as your projects demand without needing to pay for full-time employees.

Here are a few reasons why hiring contract workers can help your business:

You don’t need to pay for benefits for contract workers, so you can save long-term costs for maintaining your employees.
You can budget enough to complete certain projects without needing to worry about maintaining employees long-term, saving you substantial money over the course of a year.
Contract workers often have specific areas of expertise and are highly-skilled in those areas, making them a better choice for certain projects than your full-time employees.
Hiring contractors removes some of the stress from your existing employee base, increasing their productivity and improving their morale.
Letting contractors go at the end of a project does not have the same associated loss of morale as laying off full-time workers.

Hiring part-time workers isn’t always the best choice for all companies, but it’s often a smart strategy during high-stress times when your business has a heavy workload or specific needs. If you need high-quality, specialized work during certain times of the year, it’s worth looking into hiring part-time workers to complete these projects.

Considerations When Hiring Contractors

Of course, when hiring freelancers and other temporary workers, it’s important to use the same care and consideration you do whenever hiring any other employee. Indeed, it can be smart to assess your contractors more carefully as there are few guarantees of where else the employee may be working. They may be moonlighting for you while working full-time for a competitor, or they may be using their time with you to gain skills or knowledge for a different position.

For these reasons, it can be a good idea to have contractors sign a non-disclosure agreement. This will help protect your information and prevent the freelancer from spreading any trade secrets he discovers while under your employment.

Of course, the majority of contractors are honest and will not divulge any proprietary information, but it pays to be careful. You can also check with other businesses in your field to see if they have any experience with contractors; they may be able to provide recommendations or warnings about freelancers in your area and line of work.

About the Author: Randy Hutcherson is a freelance blogger, who writes about business management topics. If you are interested in furthering your business career, Randy recommends checking out the school with the best online MBA programs.

Giving Cards to Your Visitors and Customers to Get More Business

Using cards is a fantastic way to get repeat customers and to generate leads and gives your business a far more professional seeming edge as well. Despite this, handing out promotional cards is something that many companies don’t consider and is generally one of the lesser methods used for marketing. Here we will look at it in detail, and at why it is such an effective form of promotion.

What Are Promotional Cards?

Essentially promotional cards are cards that you can give to a customer or a lead in order to try and increase their interest in your business or to get them to come back. The card can literally be a flier or an advertisement, or it can offer someone money off or a special deal. Lastly it might be an ‘ID Card’, a ‘Loyalty Card’ or a card that they can buy as a gift card for someone else.

Benefits

There are many benefits to this. First of all, even if your card is simply just a promotional one for your business with no special deal or membership attached, this is still a highly effective way to market. This is because it gives your client something to remember your company buy that they are more likely to keep on them. If you give someone a flier, then this will mean that they probably simply fold it up and put it in their back pocket in order for it to ultimately be ruined in the washing machine. Likewise you might give someone a promotional flier and find they quickly bin it.

However a card is of course made from a much more high quality and sturdy piece of material. This then means that someone who has been given it is much less likely to dispose of it and far more likely to keep it permanently. Chances are with a card that they will slip it in their wallet which will mean that they see it each time they go to get out money and which will mean it avoids the bin as an eventual destination.

Because the card is high quality too, that then means that the promotional card will be seen as a high quality product – which in turn will mean that the association with your business becomes a favourable one. They will look at your card and they will think – this is a high quality business. And of course that’s what you want them to think.

Furthermore, if you then include a special deal or an offer on this card, then that means that they will likely have it to hand when they first think about using your business and this in turn means that it will actually encourage them to use your company – as of course is the intention in the first place.

Meanwhile these cards are also able to be given to other people and that will mean that someone can actually actively promote your business for you. A gift card or a discount card is a nice gift to give to someone (which a flier is not) and so it’s a perfect way for you to attract more business to your site/shop/restaurant.

And finally if the card has an ID element, such as the person’s name or a picture (if you have facilities for your own card printing) then this will enable you to make the person feel ‘involved’ in your business and even almost committed to using your services.

This guest post was written by Brian. He recently got his company to use membership cards for their customers and needless to say the loyalty points got customers coming back for more.

Sustainable Leadership

Many organisations know how to make a profit, but there is more to running a business than simply making the cash tills ring. Those at the top of a business need to recognise this, and ensure that a healthy organisation is one that builds on the principles of thinking long-term, effective leadership and communication, and nurturing relationships.

It’s easy to think about what needs to be done now to clinch a deal or grab that next lucrative contract, and many workers have the skills to negotiate this, but effective and sustainable leadership is much more than that. So, where does an organisation start?

Knowledge and awareness

Sustainable leadership can only be achieved if the leader is aware that they need to think in a long-term way. They need to know who the organisation is, what its goals are, where it’s heading and how they want to achieve success. It’s a complex process and involves engaging with managers and other members of staff to gain insight and input into how things are being run. Having the skills to manage and monitor this alone is crucial, and often requires external assistance.

Developing skills

Many managers need to develop and hone their skills to become effective leaders. They need to keep abreast of the latest ways of thinking to maintain market competitiveness. Leadership development training is critical to sustainable success and can give leaders the opportunity to inspire others to go that extra mile in their work and to connect strategy to performance. It can help develop skills to allow leaders to connect people to their organisations, see how they fit in, modify change in behaviour and create shared commitment to achieve specific goals. Leadership development enables leaders to communicate to all members of staff the wider picture of how the organisation operates, aside from the day-to-day operations and how what they do contributes to the organisation as a whole. Thinking long term about the business also helps to foster good internal and external relations, retaining both staff and customers.

Action plans and setting goals

Sustainable leadership can only thrive if a leader outlines plans and goals for the organisation, rather than just letting things happen. Recognising what these plans and goals are takes time and commitment, and is often achieved with the help of executive coaching, where professional assistance can be given to help glean out exactly what these plans and goals might be, and where the company is heading. Often, the use of executive coaching not only improves leadership development skills but also unlocks potential and ideas that may have not come to fore without outside input. Sometimes leaders are so wrapped up in the here and now, that they can’t necessarily see the finer detail and how all these pieces of details fit together like a jigsaw.

Sustainable leadership requires expertise to communicate long-term thinking to all members of staff, dispelling the notion that business success is only about the profit share. Long-term market growth and maintaining competitiveness are all vital ingredients for a sustainable, successful business.

About the Author: This post was written by James Harper on behalf of Performance1 experts in leadership development and executive coaching. Please follow this link to find out more about executive coaching and leadership development.

How Waste Management Jobs Can Help Redesign the Energy Use of a Business

How companies manage waste is a core element of their entitlement to the ISO 14001 mark, which signifies a commitment to the development and maintenance of sustainable working processes. Waste management jobs are therefore a key part of the business’ ability to become consistently environmentally aware – a fact that bleeds over both into that business’ CSR and overall sustainability quotient.

The management of waste is a far more pressing problem than most readers would probably believe. Landfill sites, never much vaunted in the first place thanks to their unsightly nature, their ability to harbour serious diseases, and their potential production of noxious or toxic gases, are running out – and so with nowhere left to put the refuse we accrete, we’re having to start thinking of other means of dealing with the issue.

Waste management jobs are largely focused on getting as much of a company’s rubbish as possible either reused, recycled or turned into energy. Where none of these options are possible, the waste must be compacted to the smallest possible size – which is either done through incineration or through physical compaction.

Incineration must be properly managed in order for it to be both effective and environmentally sound. Obviously a by-product of waste management jobs in which incineration is a common practice, gas and ash both present pollution hazards – though properly managed they may also be used to provide various forms of energy, for example through heat or pressure.

Waste management where incineration is a legal requirement (crematoria, for example) comes with a whole load of subsidiary concerns. High temperature gas management is a skilled activity in its own right, requiring the design of a system capable of filtering hot gas to remove all contaminants before it finally passes into the air.

Waste management jobs require highly qualified and experienced candidates, who are able to determine the particular waste management needs of their industries and businesses. Every sector has its own materials and waste producing processes – so every waste manager must be capable of approaching the waste problem from a practical as well as a theoretical standpoint. It’s only by creating waste management procedures that answer the needs of the business as well as those of the law that any real progress can be made.

Waste management jobs are therefore carried out in concert with other environmental professionals – particularly ecologists, who are able to advise about the environmental impacts of different kinds of waste managing.

Part of the waste manager’s job, in concert with these other professionals, is to understand the potentials of the waste itself – both good and bad. Good waste potential includes the possibility that it may be turned into energy, or that it may be recycled and used in future manufacturing. Bad potential includes the possibility of lasting damage through “hard to kill” substances – like some aggressive dioxins, for instance, which can have serious consequences of the environment and which may be created as a by-product of trying to manage the waste in the first place.

About the Author: Lisa jane is a freelance copywriter and environmentalist. He’s currently working with Ends Job Search promoting a variety of jobs including waste management jobs and specialist jobs in the conservation sector.

The Different Types of Advertising Mediums

Advertising is the promotion of a business service, product or event carried out primarily to increase brand awareness, improve sales or raise awareness about certain products and events. Advertising is an essential part of any company or business, and is usually allotted considerable support, resources, strategy and funding. There are many different advertising mediums, all of which serve a variety of different purposes in different locations.

Advertising is mainly centred around achieving the following aims and goals for the majority of businesses:

Increasing the buzz-value of the brand or the company.
Increasing the sales of the product/service.
Introduction of a new product, service or event.
Creating and maintaining a brand identity or brand image.
Communicating a change in the existing product line.

The main forms of advertising used to achieve these are print, broadcast and outdoor advertising.

Print Advertising (Magazines, Brochures, Newspapers, Fliers)

Print media advertising has always been one of the most popular advertising options, mainly due to its audience reaching capability and proven history. Newspapers and magazines sell advertising spaces in various parts of the publication to businesses who wish to promote products, events or make announcements. The cost of print media advertising can vary considerably depending on the location of the advertisement in the publication (front page, above or below the fold, full page/half page etc), the quality of the materials that wish to be used (glossy ad or plain paper and colours) and the amount of times the advertisement is to be featured over time.

Broadcast Advertising (Internet, Radio, Television)

Broadcast advertising has risen in popularity with the expansion and improvement of audio/visual technology over the decades. Television and radio advertising has been popular since it was first available, and the internet is now one of the most used forms of advertising. Broadcast advertising can rely on eye catching images, videos and audio to gain attention and popularity, but is often the most expensive form of advertising available.

Outdoor Advertising (Flags, Banners, Building/Fence Wraps, Billboards, Events)

Perhaps one of the most effective and cheapest options, outdoor advertising is a popular and reliable form of advertising. Outdoor advertising has the advantage of being constantly on display, allowing for greater reach to a wider audience who might pass its location every day. Outdoor advertising can be used in a variety of different ways to raise brand awareness, promote new services and products, or provide information about upcoming or current events. Outdoor advertising utilises creative and eye catching designs of various logos, colours, images and sizes to gain attention.

Outdoor advertising can be tailored to specific purposes, and be used over a wide area to promote a business to a greater audience of potential customers. Particular types of outdoor advertising include event signage, building wraps, construction signage, fence wraps, vehicle signage, banners and flags. Outdoor advertising is also effectively used to promote events that are up and coming, or provide information and attract attention to specific amenities and services during the event itself.

Advertising in these mediums is a great way to improve and expand your business, and each variety can provide different results to different audiences and locations.