With just a couple of days to go until Christmas Eve, there’s a good chance many of your staff are beginning to wind down – unless, of course, Christmas is your busiest time of the year. If things do slow down over the festive period, you might be taking things easy yourself, or even on holiday already.
But what if you need people to stay switched on over the holidays? Especially in that ‘dead zone’ between Christmas and New Year? Here are some tips to help keep things ticking over.
If your business is closing down over Christmas, and you’re looking forward to clocking of for an extended festive break, you’ll no doubt already be winding down and counting the hours until you can switch on the out of office. The trouble is, switching off completely means there’s a chance you’ll come back to a packed inbox and a full answerphone.
But a little bit of preparation before you break up could help your colleagues to keep things ticking over and make sure you come back to an organised office that’s ready to take the new year by storm.
December 4th sees the return of Small Business Saturday, the one day of the year where customers are encouraged to rebel against the retail chains, overlook the massive online shops, and buy from local stores instead.
This year marks the ninth anniversary of the event, and all small businesses are being encouraged to get involved, from family butchers to online sellers.
As we’re all being encouraged to get back to the office, so the state of the space we’re going back to has become all the more important. Although we may have been cramped into a spare room or even the corner of the living while working from home during the pandemic, we were still working from home and able to reap the benefits of that.
But if we’re going back to the office, who wants to be cooped-up in a partitioned workspace? If you’re not interacting with colleagues, you may as well be sat in that cramped corner of the room at home.
So could an open plan office layout be the answer?
It’s Monday morning and, if you’re anything like me, you’ll have struggled to even get out of bed this morning, never mind get showered, dressed, fed, and into work – it almost makes you wonder whether Monday mornings are actually worth going into work for.
Of course, there will be those of you out there who spring out of bed on a Monday morning, relishing what the working week has in store, and while job satisfaction has a lot to do with it, your natural body clock and work cycle can’t be underestimated.
So if you’re looking for a good reason to request flexible working so you can stay at home on a Monday morning, read on…
It feels like the switch has been flicked to ‘winter’ and the shorter, colder days are well on their way.
It hardly seems like any time at all since we were all enjoying the heat of the summer out of lockdown, asking if you let your staff dress down in summer, and offering advice on how to help your smartphone survive the heat.
But suddenly we’re well into October, and there are Christmas adverts on the TV. And the Daylight Saving Time is due to end in a few short weeks.
The changing of the seasons can also lead to feelings of depression, if you suffer from Seasonal Affect Disorder (SAD), here’s how to combat the symptoms of SAD. And if you struggle to drag yourself from under the duvet during the darker, colder months, here are some top tips to help you wake up in winter.
It’s no secret that many in government and and at the top of some of the world’s biggest companies want us to stop working from home and return to the office. It was only a matter of weeks ago that a government minister floated the idea that civil servants who work from home should be paid less than those that work from the office.
Meanwhile, Google has stated that it will be handing out pay cuts to US staff who opt to work from home full time.
We think it’s a terrible idea, and employees need to be treated like grown ups – just because you can’t see your staff, it doesn’t mean they’re not working. And what’s the point in adhering to a strict nine-to-five workday?
On the other hand, there is definitely a disconnect when working from home, and we do lose those moments of serendipity when a casual conversation turns into a winning idea for your business.
But it’s all about balance.
Every one of us has a winning business idea in us, but it takes a big leap of faith to make that move to turn that winning idea into a viable startup business.
Although thousands of businesses start up in the UK every year, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that more than half of all businesses (57.6%) don’t make it past the five-year mark – a good innings, but that’s a lot of work to eventually wind things up.
And while there’s loads of advice out there on why and how you should go all in for your own startup, there’s not much out there that offers up reasons why you shouldn’t.
But we’ve found some. First though, let’s take a look at how many businesses start up each year.
Here at ConferenceCall.co.uk, we pride ourselves on being the UK’s best conference call service – calls to anywhere in the world, for up to 100 participants, can be set up quickly and easily, and our crystal clear sound quality and in-call controls mean no-one will miss a second of the meeting.
And if you have to take minutes, our in-call recording feature means you can go back through the entire call after its finished, to pick out key points and actions.
Find out why we’re the UK’s best conference call service.
Handshakes are taken very seriously in the business world – too hard, and you’re a go-getting alpha-type who would sell their own granny to get to the top; too weak and you’re a simpering subservient, simply asking to be crushed, probably by someone whose handshake is way too hard.
But forget all that anyway, because the pandemic has all but killed off the handshake, leading to a confused system of fist bumps, elbow taps, and meek waves.
So, before we get into how to give a professional handshake (it will be back), let’s take a look at some alternatives…