Category: Leadership

One challenge most business owners and office managers are very familiar with is the lack of space. No matter the size of your office space, you’ll find that you need more at least once in your time at the workplace, if not repeatedly.

While it is rarely possible to move workspaces and actually increase the size of your office, it is possible to maximize whatever space you do have. Not only does an organized office mean more space for people to move around in, but it has also been shown to boost productivity and reduce wasted time among employees.

You will, of course, need to personalize your strategy to fit your space and organizational needs. However, there are some tips you can keep in mind.

Cut Down on Paper

It’s not immediately evident, but paper takes up an enormous amount of space in an office. From filing cabinets and printers to binders full of physical documents, the amount of paper you use quickly adds up.

While it may not always be possible to shift away from using paper, cutting down on your usage where possible can help free up a lot of physical space. One advantage is that the legal system is catching up with these needs – electronic signatures, for example, have the same legal validity as physical signatures in much of the world. This reduces the barriers to ending businesses’ dependence on paper.

Purge the Space

This step is, in many ways, the other side of the coin to cutting down on paper. Not only do businesses use a lot of paper for official documents, but many companies also have the habit of storing these documents in filing cabinets, no matter whether they are needed or not.

While going paperless is a great first step, it doesn’t do much for the paper you have already accumulated around the office. By going through the heaps of documents you have stored, there’s a good chance that you’ll discover that much of it can be shredded and destroyed.

Depending on what you have accumulated and over how long, this could undoubtedly take a significant amount of time. However, once you’re done, you’re sure to be taken aback by how much you didn’t need and the sheer amount of space that is now free for use.

Consider Dynamic Partitions

Dynamic partition walls allow you to constantly reconfigure a space, redesigning it to meet your changing needs. For example, you may not need large meeting rooms more than once a week. Designating a permanent area for this limits the amount of space your employees have during the rest of the workweek and forces you to work in a smaller space.

Dynamic office partitions provide an easy solution to this challenge. You can leave a space open for employees when it is not in use and create a private room when the necessity arises. Additionally, as the team here points out, these walls don’t get in the way of the HVAC system, so you don’t need to worry about the logistics. More than that, for the benefits they provide you, they are surprisingly budget-friendly.

You can find dynamic walls in a variety of styles and colors, allowing you to customize them to match your workspace’s existing design. Furthermore, they are available in numerous materials, including glass, aluminum, bamboo, acrylic, resin, wood, and more.

Think Vertically

So, you may not have a lot of floor space – but that doesn’t mean you don’t have vertical space you can use instead!

Vertical space can be filled with shelves and wall hooks, perfect for storing items neatly instead of messing up the look of the office. Additionally, using a little floor space can pay a lot of dividends in terms of vertical space – one great storage solution, for example, is a wall of bookcases. These take up significantly less floor space than filing cabinets do and allow you to display important files just as well. More than that, they can be used to store other items and are easier to access than cabinets.

You can even use vertical space to provide personal storage for your employees, which will allow for more efficient usage of their desks while still allowing them to personalize their space. If you have cubicles, use the vertical space provided by the dividers to create stackable areas or dry-erase whiteboards where they can work easily.

Furnish Strategically

When furnishing an office space, it’s important to think strategically. While bulkier chairs and bigger sofas may look better, they also take up a lot of space and can make your office feel cramped.

Instead, consider investing in space-saving furniture. Alternatively, look at multipurpose furnishing options, so you can cut down on the number of pieces you need to have in your office. Some options you can consider include foldable and expandable tables and chairs, mobile furniture that can easily be transported around a space, and smaller desks that take up less space.

Embrace Natural Light

So, this is admittedly a bit of a cheat. Sometimes, no matter what you do to maximize space, your office will still look crowded. Aesthetics play a significant role in any workspace, as a better-looking space will be more attractive to current and prospective employees.

While you may not be able to shift locations completely, you can use natural light to make the space seem bigger. Aside from making the area look better, an increase in natural light also has health benefits for employees, including a reduction in issues such as headaches and eyestrain.

Natural light can also increase the retail value of space and boost productivity. In fact, a survey found that access to natural light and the ability to see outside is the biggest office perk that employees look for. Without enough natural light, workers report feeling gloomy and tired, especially if they do much of their work on electronic devices like computers.

Office organization can be challenging, especially if you’re working with a small space or one that is not big enough to meet the business’s growing needs. However, with a few clever moves, you will soon find that your workplace is actually much bigger than you ever thought possible!

The best way to work with your team is to ensure there is a culture of trust, transparency, and communication. As with all teams, you want to be able to monitor workload, quality, and productivity. Now that many of our work lives have changed dramatically in the last year, we are facing new challenges and experiences. One of those is learning how to track your remote workforce. It can be difficult to do this in a way that promotes positivity and trust among your team. Here are 7 ways you can keep track of your remote workforce.

Deadlines

When setting your team tasks, set them with a deadline. This gives them the motivation to complete the task on time and can deal with any moments of procrastination they might be feeling coming on. Setting a task without a deadline can give them the room to take their time even if they can get the task done fairly quickly. By setting an expectation from the start, they are more likely to complete the task within the set time frame.

Set Rules And Precedents

Putting together a set of rules and working with your team to do this, can be helpful. Coming up with ways for them to organize their time and increase productivity can help you ensure they are meeting deadlines and have the right mindset and space to work properly.

One strategy to employ is to ensure that everyone is online at the same time during a certain period of work. This could be to attend meetings, check-ins, or to collaborate effectively with their team. If your team’s productivity begins to decline, you can then think about bringing in stricter measures. If their productivity is not affected or is even increasing, it’s probably a sign that having their own autonomy is helpful for them.

Time Tracking

One way to ensure tasks, projects, and workload is completed on time is to use a time tracker. You don’t necessarily need to monitor every aspect of their working day. Monitoring your workforce productivity using a time tracker to track their progress on a project or their working hours can help you get a clearer sense of how well they are working. If they appear to need further support or help, you can offer this before it gets too late.

Honesty

Everyone has a different home life, in comparison to the office, some might have children, live with extended family members, or have duties they need to attend to. By encouraging them to be open and honest about their situation, you can come up with working procedures and schedules that work for both of you. A collaborative effort is beneficial for both you and your team.

Daily Report

At the end of each working day, you can have your team offer a summary of their day. They can highlight their wins, losses, and progress. This is an easy way for you to track their work and gives them an opportunity to reflect and see how they can do better.

Accountability

Set clear expectations with your employees. They will be more likely to deliver high-quality work on time if they know what is expected of them. If you have been clear with them and they continually fail to meet the set expectations, you can hold them accountable. Holding them accountable will mean different things for each workplace, but it is important in order for your employees to stay on track.

Transparency

When your workforce is remote it can be hard to figure out the line between what is considered intrusive and what is simply management. A workforce that feels heard, understood, and appreciated is more likely to produce great work compared to a workforce that feels they are being spied on. That’s why fostering a culture of transparency is key.

Ensure your team is involved in and well aware of any changes. They can be involved in planning, awareness, and even coming up with new ways to keep themselves accountable. It should be clear to your workforce that your aim is to ensure that all the work gets done on time, and to a high standard. The more involved and the more transparent they are, the more motivated they will be.

Use these 7 ways of tracking your remote workforce to cultivate a culture of honesty and transparency. A workforce that collaborates and understands the expectations laid out for them, is a much more productive workforce. Encouraging individuality within the context of a team and achieving common and individual goals will ensure a workforce that’s productive and healthy. 

Is your business now at the stage where you need to start hiring employees? If so, here are five crucial things you need to know.

1. You Need an EIN

First off, if you are hiring employees for the very first time, you need to obtain an Employer Identification Number. The nine-digit number is unique to your business. You can obtain it from the IRS. Basically, your EIN is used for reporting information about your employees to state agencies and reporting taxes to the IRS.

2. Providing Your Employees with Their W-2 Forms

The W2 Form is used to report wages, compensation, and taxes annually for each of your employees to the federal government. Copy A of the form needs to be sent to the Social Security Administration. And employers must send employees their W2 forms before January 31, for wages and taxes paid the previous year. The W2 Form is pretty simple to complete and there is HR software that can help you with the process. You will enter information that is already available in your payroll records and need some additional information like your State ID Number and EIN. Check out this insightful guide on how to complete a W2 to make sure you get it right. You will also need to complete Form W4, which is used for federal income tax withholding.

3. How Much to Pay?

Before you start hiring employees, you need to know how much you can afford to pay them. If you are working in an industry with clearly defined pay scales, then you should stick to those rates. Otherwise, the amount you pay needs to be calculated in relation to your other business finances. You also need to decide what benefits and insurance packages you want to provide. Hiring employees can be a lot more costly than you think, so make sure you work out the costs and create a budget before you start advertising for roles.

4. Defining the Position and Writing a Job Description

Once all of the background nuts and bolts of hiring someone are out of the way, you can focus on finding the right employees. Quite simply, to find the right workers, you need to clearly define what you are looking for.

Begin by clearly defining the available position and break it down into the tasks and duties the role involves. Next, make a list of the skills the ideal employee should have for your available position, and consider whether the applicant should have experience and/or qualifications. You also need to consider other attributes. For instance, if the role involves customer service, you will need to ensure the candidate is friendly, outgoing, and can handle angry customers in a calm manner. When you know precisely what you want out of your employee, you will be much better placed to find the right person. You will also better know what questions to focus on during the interview process. But before you get to that, you need to write a job description. Use all of the above information about the role to create a job description and do not forget to include a little about your company so you can ensure the right candidates apply.

5. Background Checks Are Crucial

You could find an applicant who seems to be the ideal person for your role after reviewing his or her resume and meeting the candidate in person at the interview. But unless you perform a background check, you cannot be sure that the person is right for the job. An effective background check is one of the most important steps when considering who to hire. You should check work references, educational credentials, and criminal history (learn more here). If you do not, you could regret it.

No matter what kind of business you run, it’s extremely important that you provide your customers with a convenient method of paying you for your goods or services. You can be a freelancer, an exporter, a consultant, an engineer, or a seller; in any case, you’ll need a solid payment system so that your customers don’t have to jump through hoops to acquire your services. If you want to have a global reach then it becomes critical to give some form of payment system to every customer all over the world. However, due to the varying nature of payment options in every country, it becomes a difficult task to accomplish.

You can try to leave it up to your customers to find a way to pay you, but this is a tried and tested recipe for disaster, as there are many others who’ll be willing to offer them a better deal with an easier checkout process. You can also rely on third-party vendors to collect payments for you, but they’ll take a significant cut out of your hard-earned money. This is why you need to establish a payment system that will make it easier for your customers to pay no matter where they are in the world.

Today, we’ll be looking at a few tips which will help you identify the areas that you need to focus on in order to build a worldwide payment system for your brand. Once you’re done with this article, you’ll have a fairly good idea of what to do next. So let’s get to it and find out how you can maximize your profits by making payments easier for your customers.

1. Conduct Intensive Research

Since this is a rather huge step for your brand, you’ll want to ensure that you choose only the best option available. It’s also very important to choose the proper payment methods because it’ll be a long-term feature that you provide. You’ll need to look at the costs associated with setting it up, the method of transfer also known as funding practice, monthly fee, and additional charges levied by your payment gateway provider. Once you properly research all the options available, you’ll be able to decide which one to choose based on your needs.

2. Multiple Payment Methods

It’s always a good idea to provide your customers with a variety of payment methods. Many websites provide only one or two payment methods which might be enough in most cases, but you don’t want to take any chances which is why you should try to incorporate a range of payment systems so that your customers can find at least one that they can go with. It’s a good idea to include major credit cards, some debit cards, direct bank transfers, and any other payment methods that you deem worthy. This will greatly increase the accessibility of your website by providing the customers with various options to make payments.

3. Make a Payment Form and Integrate It

There are many different types of payment forms used by online stores, you could easily refer to one of those if you’re having a hard time coming up with original ideas. A payment form generally involves the amount a customer is paying, any applicable discounts or promotions, any applicable taxes and deductions, the information of the customer, the delivery address, and the details of the product or service being purchased. These are all important points that help a customer verify their order before finally placing it. You’ll have to integrate this payment form seamlessly into your website so that the overall experience isn’t hampered, and it functions optimally. 

4. Hire an Expert

It’s not necessary that you do everything for your business yourself. Sometimes, we have to take external help and in this case, it’s certainly needed very much. A programmer who has plenty of web development experience can easily integrate the payment system on your website. It’s recommended that you hire an expert because they can perform the integration with a guarantee of success. Whereas, if you try it yourself without having any experience, you’re more than likely to screw it up. You can’t afford to make mistakes in this area since you depend on this system to be paid and any minor mistake can literally cost you a lot. So, invest in an experienced web developer and that’ll be just a small investment when compared to the potential benefits of hiring them.

5. Testing, Debugging, and Launching

This is the final step in the process of setting up a payment system for your business. You need to make sure that the system is operating properly as needed before you launch it for public use. The testing will help you identify any bugs and that’ll help you to rectify the issues. Debugging is usually even more important than development itself as it can take a lot of time, and it ensures that the final product is error-free. After you’re done with the process of testing and debugging, you can finally do what you’ve been waiting for and launch the payment system. It’ll serve to make both sending and receiving payments easier so that you don’t have to say goodbye to your profit and your customer doesn’t have to go through a difficult process.

These are some of the basic steps that you need to take in order to properly implement a payment system. There are many minor steps in between that haven’t been covered due to the vast nature of this topic. However, these steps should provide you with a solid outline for successfully implementing your payment system. It’ll not only make your payments much faster, but you’ll also be able to reach potential customers all over the world. Expanding your reach will have immense benefits for your business as you’ll be able to charge more and deliver the same services to different corners of the world. If you’re serious about growing your business, then you should give it a sincere thought and consider whether you need a global payment system or not.

You must understand your clients to operate and scale your business successfully. That is why it is essential for any company providing products or services to conduct user research. The feedback helps lay the foundation for your design strategy and create products that your clients will love. 

So, what is user research, and how can it help you scale your business? It is the process of utilizing user research methods and questions to identify areas where a business needs to improve in providing products or services to enhance user experience and satisfaction.

The primary factor businesses need to pay attention to when conducting UX research is observation, understanding, and analyzing. 

Observe your subject: 

You must always keep an eye out for non-verbal cues as they give you an insight into how they are feeling about your product and services.

Understand:

You need to understand their mental capacity. For instance, their expectation of the products and their anticipation when using a product.

Analysis:

From the information you’ve gathered, try and identify patterns and trends. These are the things that will guide your design strategy for upcoming products.

With that in mind, what are the best user research methods and questions to use to get the best feedback? 

Once you have understood the primary factors to consider and have concrete information then you can proceed and conduct User research to grow your business.

There are several UX research methods. These include:

• Usability Testing
• User interviews
• Online surveys
• User Personas
• User Groups

As a business, it is wise to implement all the research methods. Conducting various research studies will give you a clear indicator of your market perception from customers. The type of user research method you opt for depends on your overall research objective. You will also need to understand the difference between qualitative and quantitative research.

Qualitative research explores the reason and motivation behind user actions and involves applying methods such as usability testing, user groups, and user interviews. 

On the other hand, quantitative research involves gathering measurable data such as how many items were purchased or the number of visitors who put your product on their wishlist. Having understood the definitions let’s dig deeper.

Suppose you are looking to grow your business, it’s advisable to apply both methods. In this article, we will discuss usability testing methods and their benefits to businesses.`

What is Usability Testing?

Usability Testing is when users test a product to make sure that everything is working as expected. Your product should be working from start to finish. Usability testing helps you identify issues that may arise as your product is in use. It helps you identify potential pain points before launching the product.

Most businesses recruit people to test their products by asking them to complete certain tasks in the presence of observers who watch, listen, and take down notes. You should start testing your products early and continue testing until the launch date.

The main goal of usability testing is to pinpoint any problems, collect qualitative data, and determine users’ overall satisfaction with the product. It also helps businesses learn what areas they need to improve to enhance user experience and satisfaction.

However, there are numerous usability testing software and platforms, so companies should always choose the best for their specific needs. This ensures that you get helpful feedback from your user research to help grow your business.

What are the best practices when performing usability testing?

Use a minimum of five to eight test users:

Testing with five users will help you identify the largest percent of the product usability issues. You will have an unbiased opinion from the majority of the test users who will be a representation of how your product will be received in the market.

Involve your team in the testing sessions: 

Since you will hold several testing sessions until you can launch the product, let your team involved with the production, such as the developers or designers, be a part of the testing team. This is because they have the expertise and will quickly identify and suggest how the problems should be addressed.

Your employees should be the first people to test the product. They are dedicated to their work and can identify pain points fast. They are also aware of emerging issues in the industry and can suggest ways to better the product.

Keep your findings short and to the point: 

After each usability test, make sure to report the results and focus on the most important ones. In most cases, people pick the top three positive comments and three product problems.

So, this is how businesses should conduct usability testing:

1. Identify the products you need to be tested and why. For example, it can be a mobile application or a website.
2. Identify your target market
3. Create a list of tasks you want your test subjects to work through
4. Recruit the right participants/ test subject. Ensure that they are a representation of your target audience. It is best if your participants comprise some of your most active and loyal users, infrequent users, and those who have signed up for trial at one time or another. 

When you evaluate the data from each of these three groups, you will find out the changes you need to make to scale your business.

5. Choose the right people from your team
6. Apply your findings

You will always get helpful feedback from your participant only if you apply the right usability testing tools.

How does usability testing benefit your business?

Usability testing has a ton of benefits for any business, from startups to large corporations. It is helpful in all levels of the company as it helps you provide an improved product experience for your future clients. It also helps ensure that your participant completes the tasks in a reasonable timeframe.

Through usability testing, businesses can identify the changes that need to be made to their design and implement the tests’ feedback. It also provides them with an unbiased opinion about their product, real-time and authentic reactions of the participant as they browse through your product.

User Questions

After identifying your UX research method, the next step is to develop user questions. User questions are also known as a maturity assessment, help you to measure the maturity of your users in or more areas. Your questions should be based on why you are conducting business research; in this case, you want to scale your business. Some of the questions you could ask your target audience include:

1. How did you discover our business?

The feedback from this question will help you figure out how most of the people or businesses using your products find you. It will also help you determine the most effective channels of acquiring clients because you will only grow your business by getting more users. 

Once you know where most of your customers come from, this enables you to save on your advertising costs on other platforms and focus more on where the jackpot is. 

You can further get accurate information by using your customer relationship management (CRM) to determine the channels that have brought you the most customers.

2. How would you feel if our business or products were discontinued?

This question is to determine your market reach and fit. If your business is well received in the market, 40% of your participants should be disappointed if your products get discontinued. Provide a field where they can give a lengthy response and say why they would feel that way. However, if your market fit is less than 40%, use the feedback to improve your products and services. 

3. What would be your alternative product or business if ours is no longer available?

This question will help you determine who your competitors are and what you need to do better than them. 

4. How has our business or product benefited you?

This will help you determine the main benefits your clients derive from your products. It also clues you how your products or services benefit your users if you were unaware.

5. Have you recommended our business or product to anyone?

This will show you how good your products are and how clients describe your products or services to others.

6. How or where do you think we should improve to meet your needs better?

This is the most important question during user research as it gives you an idea of where you are falling short, allowing you to fix the gap, thus improving user/product-market fit. The insights gathered from user research methods and questions will help businesses make informed decisions about improving their products and services to accommodate their clients’ needs better. 

It will also help them determine where to direct most of their company resources to capture and retain loyal, infrequent, and prospective users, thus growing their business.

Final Thoughts

Business success is tied to customer satisfaction. So, conducting user research will give you insight into how your products or services are perceived in the market and the areas you need to improve to attract and retain a good customer base.

Running a successful business is not a walk in the park. There is a lot of info that you require to be able to manage a business and conducting user research is a very critical part you should pay attention to. You need to ensure that you carefully select your UX research method and prepare your interview question based on your goals. With the above information, we have shared we hope you will have an easy time when conducting your user research.