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Business cards have been a staple of business networking for generations by this point, and it is one of those things that every business needs to get right if they want to be taken seriously by other businesses. To get it right, it can’t just be a perfunctory way to convey your name and contact details; it also needs to illustrate your company’s brand identity too.

For your business cards, they need to have all of the relevant information as well as an up-to-date representation of your company’s current branding. Brand consistency is key with a business card, as you’ll often get given cards or give them out yourself in a situation where dozens of others will also be giving them out, such as at a networking group or at a convention, and you want yours to stand out and also provide confidence that they’ve gone to the right place.

Business cards will also generally be made from high-quality card or a plastic based material. This is for two reasons; they last longer, and they look and feel more expensive and therefore serious.

With all of these attributes that you need to get right, you may wonder how you can go about getting the perfect business cards. Many businesses choose to pay graphic designers for their trouble, and there are some advantages to this. You get a quality assured service, the result of which will be a card that you know will be able to compete with the best around. Alternatively, you can use the ever increasing number of websites that make design work, even as a layman, easy.

Some websites, in particular, specialise in making the creation of business card designs really easy. You will be given a wide range of options to choose from, with a variety of materials on which to put your design, different inks styles and colours, font types, and colours. They will also have numerous design styles available to draw inspiration from, that will make your design process much simpler.

While this is a good option, you likely won’t end up with an original business card if you do it this way, and it may look slightly unprofessional. If you’re a new business and/or short on funds, though, it may be just what you need.

All commercial cleaning service specialists are required to have their public liability insurance, however, you also need to ask for a copy along with their police clearances so that you feel comfortable opening your office to them and to avoid misconduct and theft. Their staff should be wearing identification cards or badges while working to make sure that they have the authority to clean your office.

A commercial cleaning company Northampton should always be geared up for anything and provide services to cater for small and large cleaning requests alike. When you are ready to hire commercial cleaners you should ask them about their packages and how they go about individual tasks to see if this will be appropriate for your specific needs. They may ask you what jobs are priorities to do their best to suit your needs and procure the best customer service possible.

Some of the services that a commercial cleaning company Northampton usually offers:

– Window / carpet/ kitchen / bathroom / office cleaning

– General cleaning and spring cleans

– Sanitary Fillers

– Bathroom and kitchen repairs

– Deep tile and grout cleaning

– Floor buffing

– Rubbish collection

– Pest control

– Basic maintenance

– Recycling and shredding

– Lawn Care

– Garage/car park cleaning

– Graffiti removal

– High pressure cleaning

These services can be purchased as a package or individually, most cleaning companies tailor the range of services according to your budget. You may also request a”green” cleaning procedure which uses products and methods which are less toxic and better for the environment. This is a better option because environmentally friendly products are safer than industrial cleaning products and better for the wellbeing of the company and others, especially customers.

If you search for cheaper commercial cleaning companies make sure that you know about the experiences of their customers so that you can assess whether or not they are credible and reputable, if not they are not it is not worth the risk. Remember, the cleaners may go through your staff’s personal items, to avoid this hire a well recommended and professional company even then it still may happen so watch out.

If the cleaning staff do their job correctly but you feel that more cleaning is required you may want to schedule a weekly or monthly larger cleanup to keep your company in ship shape. You can also ask the cleaners to specifically clean a particular part of your office/home once a week and others twice a month. The amount of cleaning and how regularly in a specific area is entirely up to you, just remember that you are hiring them not vice versa and it is best to keep an eye out to ensure the jobs are done to a correct standard.

Finding a quality commercial cleaning service provider can be both expensive and time-consuming. With so many cleaning service companies in operation, it can be hard finding a reliable and good quality cleaning service company. Avoid unsuccessful results and find a quality commercial cleaning service that will keep your industries sparkling clean and give you piece of mind.

For some, the idea of unfamiliar cleaners entering your factory or office premises is an invasion of privacy. While others would debate that piece of mind, energy, and time saved by having a cleaning service is well worth the alternative.

In order to have an effective business strategy, it’s important to observe the following:

Assess & Criticise:

Your business strategy should be adaptable to change, especially in today’s economic climate.

Take the plan that you currently have and expand it to assess all the key parts; once you have identified those key parts, break them down into a list. In order to think forward, and too see if your list of objectives lines up with the economic trends, you can start by looking back at the trends over the past 10 years and analyse the growing or shrinking economic trends; will there be a market for you to build your business around in the future, or will the trend decline until there is no longer a market for it. Be critical and keep adapting your strategy to survive in this economic climate for the foreseeable future

Remain focused on results:

Remember to remain focused with your business strategy, don’t get sidetracked with un-necessary and costly deviations when adapting your strategy; it’s important to remain realistic and stick to a reasonable time-frame for reaching goals. Focus on the results you have so far, and move forward with those.

Take action:

You don’t need to plan everything and overthink everything, just have a viable and realistic strategy that you will work with; learn your previous attempts and take the necessary action to survive in business.

If things don’t go according to plan that’s ok, adopt a trial and error mindset and continuously tweak and adapt your strategy to corner the market and get ahead; over time you will master your strategy and be able to predict changes better and adapt to them.

Because of the mass immigration of EU workers to this country, we now have a situation where some workers don’t speak any English in the work place which causes problems; the effects of miscommunication’s can be damaging. This is a problem primarily in Logistics companies where the on-site agencies have staff that are multilingual and have hired two people through a type of buddy system where one of them speaks English but the other may not know any at all; this is fine if they always work together, but when the worker who can’t speak English has to interact with workers who can’t speak their language then we start to have problems.

Don’t fret though the problem is solvable! Rather than wasting money trying to train up transient workers in English proficiency, or rejecting workers because they can’t speak any English that may be highly productive workers. We can instead start training up existing Supervisory level staff to be multilingual instead, by paying for them to undertake one or more different language courses; the main languages spoken in the work place such as Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Russian.

Not only will this make those supervisors more valuable to the company, it will open up new doors for the company and make the workflow a lot more productive without miscommunication’s.

In addition to this you will also have transient workers that have worked for the company for some time on temporary contracts, but you have not really looked through their files to see what else they are capable of. So if you take some time to assess those workers, you may actually find that some of them are already multilingual and can speak 4 or more languages as well as English; these workers are a gold mine and if they are able to be trained up to a high level like supervisor they will also help take your company to another level.

Of course the next challenge is training up the supervisors to effectively manage the workers into groups where those who can’t speak English will only be working with those who can speak the same language as them; this way when native English workers are hired to work, they will work effectively with those who can speak English and communication will flow correctly, with a good level of productivity.

Deadlines are important, staff should adhere to them then move onto the next project without objection to keep the business moving forward; this has been the way business has operated in most companies for many years now, but does it really work?

To start we have to take note that we have been going by quantity over quality for a while now, and maximising the output of a resource by restricting their workflow to tight deadlines to ensure something is done on time and correctly. But we are talking about people here that we are using as a resource to get work done, if you push people too far they eventually break down when overloaded and the downtime can cost a company a lot of money when they have to replace them; the downtime and cost will vary depending on the job and the level of skill of that person.

We have to take into account that we have people with different neural structures that do not think in the same way, and who do not function correctly when they don’t have time to assess and think abut what they are working on, thus reducing their creativity; this usually gives an outcome that’s at the very basic level of what’s expected.

What we should be doing is allowing flexibility in the work place and providing variation so there is freedom to think and be creative. This in turn will produce a much better result and the outcome will always be so much better than expected; if you challenge employees enough and keep them motivated by team challenges you lower the level of tensions in the work place and add an element of fun which actually makes a big difference and employees will like the work they are doing a lot more.

Using this approach you open up new doors to those with different neural structures who will have more time to think and come up with fresh ideas and better ways of working; imagine their potential when they are able to unleash it.

A name plate is commonly used to identify a person’s name, his title, a product on the shelf, a company and even a location. Name plates have been used for many years for the above reasons and also to market a specific product.

They are manufactured in many different varieties to suit the customer’s needs. Some are made out of different materials, also in different sizes and shapes. For example they can be made out of wood, metal, plastic and even on laminated paper. Metal name plates tend to be used by most offices to serve this purpose. And some may contain the name and title of an employee or the office, sometimes to point to which way the restroom, stairs or the exit is. They are made out of different materials and mostly made out of those that are impervious to tarnish and decay I.e. Stainless steel, aluminium and brass. They are commonly used because of their durability and the flexibility of metal to be branded. Name plates are not permanent and can be changed to suit the office one holds and name change. Some people also use name plates for personal reasons. They are also used for vehicular identification. Most of the name plates are used to identify an engine or an electronic device that cannot use a plastic sticker for its identification. (more…)

Often businesses tend to list all kinds of things in a job description for a particular role, to try and find a candidate that has a broad area of expertise, even if many parts of what they have listed in the job description are not even part of the job, or have been something that comes up rarely and not often.

It’s ok trying to cover for all aspects of the job, and potential aspects to make it easier for the employer, but by doing that you could be turning away a potential asset who has some of the skills and experiences you required, but not all of them.

There is no real way of knowing if the person you have in the interview is lying about their skills and experiences, and in many jobs it’s the liars that get those jobs and wing it as they try to learn what they don’t actually know on the job. Often those who tell the truth are not seen by the employers, as they are looking at them on paper and not as a person.

Employers should assess what’s an acceptable level of risk to them and their business, and if they find somebody they loved in an interview and has the right personality, but is lacking in some areas, they should take advantage of that asset and hire them; there is always room to accommodate and to aid them in training on the job so they will have those skills and experiences, thus growing with the company.

Besides hiring a person with a rock solid work history with many years in the field could also opens up whole other issues, such as stubborn people who know what they know and become difficult to adapt to certain changes, and even difficult to work with in the workplace.

Your All Time Solutions to Your Fleet Business

Whether you are operating a medium business or an enterprise fleet business you need to have the right information to ensure that it becomes profitable and efficient. Erecting and maintaining a fleet takes time, knowledge and resources. You need someone to assist you in running your fleets efficiently and with ease. Irrespective of whether you are operating commercial fleets, mixed fleets, government fleets or above the road trucking the fleet management solutions can come into place to help you in the management. With fleet management solutions you will be able to;

1. Lower the fuel costs of the vehicles by keeping an eye on the drivers.
2. Enhance customer satisfaction by responding to their needs quickly.
3. Improve your driver’s performance.
4. Keep a track on your vehicles that are loaded with valuables.
5. Improve your vehicle maintenance.
6. Improve your customer focus.

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There is a large market of highly efficient multitasker’s out there who may be unable to work full time, and/or unable to get the part time hours they need to match their lifestyles. These people are mums, whether single or coupled, they will mostly be willing to do something on the side to generate a little extra income.

The problem with home working opportunities is that the pay is usually awful, and the jobs that say they will pay more usually turn out to be scams or home working opportunities with catalogues companies that will involve a lot of time and effort to generate any leads; leads that may or may not lead to a sale.

With the current economy businesses may need to cut back on costs and will ultimately have to make redundancies to save money, then redistribute the workload to others still working in those departments. This may seem like a good idea of cost cutting, and if those other workers were under performing with an easy workload then this may work out well. But in most cases this will ultimately lead to poor productivity as other employees get overloaded from the extra work and ultimately burn out, resulting in time off and already overworked staff to fill in; it just won’t work long term and essential employees may just give up and quit.

The way to solve this problem is to outsource the extra work load as and when required at a low but reasonable rate of pay, but target the work towards mum’s and make it interesting. There is a wide range of different tasks from sales and marketing, data entry, typing, proof reading and ad-hoc filing that you can outsource (with ad-hoc filing clerks, this usually involves hiring somebody to come in to the company and sort the files out when required, then terminate the short contract when they have finished).

Normally companies hire agency workers for these tasks, which is ok if a company is prepared to take a risk with a range of unknown workers with varied skill-sets. Though a more viable solution would be to have dedicated home workers on the books that a company can build relationships with and know they will be reliable and get the work done; always have at least 2 or more on the books depending on the requirements and touch base with them every month to ascertain their availability as time goes on.

Also when a company has slow periods they will balance off the work within the company in the various departments that normally handle similar tasks, and the work won’t need to be outsourced. This way a company can save a lot of money and won’t have to pay redundancy costs and a fixed weekly wage or monthly salary as a result of having full time staff to do those jobs.