Custom headwear is considered to be more than just an accessory because it can also express a passion, a trend, or a brand. Remember that headwear is a famous piece of custom apparel. Custom bucket hats allow you to display your company logo or even design to the public. Besides, custom bucket hats with logos are inexpensive when compared to other kinds of promotional materials.
There are some businesses that utilize personalized design to create a product inventory while others build promotional materials for potential customers. This article discusses the different ways you can grow your business with custom bucket hats.
Outfit your employees with custom bucket hats
One of the best ways you can start developing your brand image is to outfit your workers in custom uniforms. There are some studies that indicate that most customers like uniformed workers because it’s easy to identify them.
But this doesn’t mean that you need to outfit your staff members in expensive clothing. Instead, you can decide to use custom promotional headwear, such as custom bucket hats with logos printed on them. In this way, customers can easily identify the staff members when they visit your store. Regardless of whether your staff members choose to wear them outside or in the store, these hats can make many impressions and even familiarize potential customers with your business or brand.
Connect with your customer by using freebies
Many businesses tend to focus on increasing sales. Therefore, they usually overlook the opportunities to connect with potential customers. It’s a good idea to give custom bucket hats with logos of your business to your customers.
There are some studies that have shown that customers believe that gifts are a great way for a brand or business to interact with them. Most customers like the brand that offers them promotional gifts. Hence, giving out durable promotional materials, such as custom bucket hats ensures that the relationship lasts for a long.
Give influencers custom bucket hats
Collaboration with online influencers is also a great way you can take advantage of social media platforms. They can simply post their pictures while wearing your custom bucket hat or even give your business a shout-out by informing their followers about you.
But it’s crucial to work with the right social media influencers. You should not just choose anyone because they have many followers. Instead, you need to make sure that they are compatible and have the right audience.
You should note that an influencer with millions of fans can sometimes fail to help you, especially if their followers don’t like your services or products. If you have a restaurant, then it doesn’t make sense to work with pro gamers because their followers are only interested in entertainment.
In such cases, it’s a good idea to find a food blogger for your brand. Besides, you should also make sure that the type of content is relevant to the brand image you intend to project. When you do this, there are good chances that you can expose your brand to a large audience.
Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.
As a startup or an SMB, you need to do all that is in your power to win an uphill battle against your much larger counterparts. Sometimes, this means producing a product of greater quality, performing a superior service, adding in a few extra features or just lowering your price. Still, what if all of this is not enough. Well, the only thing you have left is trying to boost the overall productivity of your team. One of the ways to pull this off is by providing your employees with an optimal work environment. Here are several office design trends that might be of huge help to you in a year to come.
1. Personalized office space
According to one statistic, a happy employee is 12 percent more productive. Nonetheless, this raises another important topic of how can you make someone comfortable in an office. In order to reach this goal, you may need to start emulating a bit homelier atmosphere.
Of course, even in the most traditional offices, you can see employees holding pictures of their loved ones on their desks or even displaying a personal memento from a vacation somewhere in the corner. So, why not take this one step further and add a wall picture or a pot plant? Furthermore, why not use your dining room fridge to display some personal achievements and accomplishments of people around the office? In no time, this can create an image of your brand being more than a company – you can turn it into a real family.
2. Sit stand desks
In the past, a lot of companies flirted with the idea of introducing standing desks. This ergonomic trend can boost the productivity of your team, as well as make them overall healthier. By reducing the risk of obesity and, therefore, also type 2 diabetes, you are also doing your employees a huge favor. The greatest problem with this trend is in the fact that, to a lot of employers, this looks like too much outside-of-the-box solution. Luckily, in 2018, one of the hottest office design trends will revolve around height-adjustable sit-stand desks, which can allow you to experiment with this idea as much as you’d like.
3. A dynamic space
Another great way of beating the mundane structure of the traditional office is by introducing the idea of a dynamic office space. The main trait this office has to possess is easily moveable furniture. Here, you need as many lightweight furniture pieces as you can get in order to be able to customize your workplace at the moment’s notice. Apart from this, you might also want to favor furniture with wheels and lazy bags. Finally, going with an open floor plan is a more than welcome idea, seeing as how it will give you even more freedom in any future customization you decide to undertake.
4. A clutter-free space
Finally, while neatness was always an important trait of office design, in 2018 it will be taken one step further. Namely, in order to create a truly open office, you need to make sure it is both visually and physically accessible. In other words, you need to make an office that is easy to move through, without distracting other people.
This, however, depends on two major factors, the amount of space you have and the number of items you need to cram in it. For those who are currently operating from a bit tighter office, yet hate the idea of discarding furniture pieces and appliances they might need in the future, there are other options. Looking for a company like Supereasy Storage that handles transportation, loading, and storage at the same time might be the best possible solution.
While some of the above-listed trends may seem like something completely revolutionary, neither of them can be described as new. Nonetheless, while standing decks are an idea that dominates in certain circles, it is not as widely accepted as it could be. In the following year, by slightly altering this trend, it might yet come one step closer to reaching its full potential. Same goes for the other three trends, as well. By the time they become mainstream, every single one of your competitors might start copying these trends, so why not try to pioneer in some of these groundbreaking ideas yourself?
Read More:
Dealing With A Debt Relief Officer For A Better Assistance
Making Your Office Safer For Workers
Office Spaces – Which One Is Right For Your Business?
7 Ways To Stop Spending So Much On Printing In Your Business
Five Reasons Why Freelancers Should Use A Coworking Space
Organizations across the world are facing the brunt of rising commodity prices and increasing procurement costs. Executives are hard-pressed to make a tangible difference to supply chain profits. But cost-cutting is adversely affecting investment decisions and chances of expansion across the board. Read further to know the top Reasons Why the Automation of the Procure-to-Pay Cycle Is Critical.
Technology enables companies to look offshore for cheaper resources and raw materials. Procurement has become a more important process than it had been before and geographical boundaries to availability are diminishing. The procure-to-pay cycle is considered a crucial strategic operation, in which expenses need to be closely monitored.
10 Reasons Why Automation of Procure-to-Pay Cycle Is Critical
Organizations need a comprehensive approach by which operations are aligned to lower procurement costs. Every department needs to be made accountable for its costs and effective use of assets. This is only possible through automation, which includes monitoring of requirements and expense optimization. It helps to procure the assets at competitive prices. Automation of your procure-to-pay cycle can bring immense benefits to minimal investments. Here are 10 of them.
1. Save time
Automation means faster cycle times. An Aberdeen Group report found that organizations that have implemented e-procurement initiatives have halved their transaction cycle time. This means faster order processing, instant approvals, and better decision-making. The future belongs to organizations that have automated systems, as speed, efficiency, and effectiveness of procurement solutions provide a competitive edge in the market.
2. Save money
Big savings are now possible with manual procurement fading into the future. Shortened procurement and fulfillment cycles reduce administrative costs and improve staff productivity. Employees can use their time more strategically instead of pen-pushing. Consolidation of orders from different departments results in manifold advantages like decreased cost per transaction, reduced maverick spend, increased negotiation power, and volume discounts.
3. Reduce errors
Automation ensures better accuracy. Multiple receipts, documents, and bills are no longer in the picture as vendors log in their quotes and departments key in their requirements. Endless matching and re-submission of documents are no more the order of the day. Clerical errors are minimized and you can identify the best and worst-performing assets and other variables to plan for the future.
5. Be compliant
Automated procure-to-pay solutions ensured standardized procurement practices, pre-negotiated pricing and real-time data that ensures compliance. Maverick spending comes down to zero as procurement managers look out to established vendors who provide better prices than the rest. Standardized equipment and products are bought only from vendors that ensure compliance across the board.
5. Improve negotiations
Large volumes are open invitations for vendors who can provide discounts and still get better profit margins. When there is the consolidation of requirements from different departments, procurement managers and executives are better placed to negotiate stronger terms that deliver profits.
6. Get vendor visibility
Automated procure-to-pay solutions provide better visibility to the procurement process and ensure single-window clearance. Vendors do not need to meet multiple stakeholders and fill up diverse forms just to quote the price. All they have to do is log in to the cloud-based system and fill up the electronic forms.
7. Be better informed
Procurement policies can easily be accessed and any deviations can be instantly red-flagged. Executives, vendors, and agencies just need to access the procure-to-pay system for clarification about the process and polices to ensure compliance.
8. Communicate completely
Procurement communication is never blocked as every transaction leaves an audit trail. The information that can be accessed immediately upon authorization and the entire pipeline is better managed.
9. Enhance control
Executives and managers have access to real-time business data that can instantly refer to the financial health of their organizations. With automated procure-to-pay solutions, you can access all spending with the click of a mouse. Minute information that can change purchase decisions for the betterment of the company is available. Detailed control of the process helps limit spending and stick to the budget.
10. Gain the competitive edge
Reduced costs, increased accuracy, better control, and transparency give you a smart, streamlined, resourceful supply chain. The smarter purchasing decisions boil down to better financial health that can give you a competitive edge in the market.
Automation helps you to build a smarter procure-to-pay system. It is imperative that organizations move on from cumbersome manual operations to cloud-based automation systems to streamline their supply chain and procurement processes.
Expensing platforms are easy to use and adaptable automated systems which facilitate procurement, invoicing, and expense management. With Expensing procure-to-pay systems, the procurement process becomes better streamlined, with faster cycle times and better control and visibility.
Image Credit: stampli.com
Read Also:
Reasons to Support Nonprofit Organizations That Help Save the Environment
How To Choose A Practice Management Software For Your Law Firm
It’s the end of your first day. You’ve completed a plethora of online applications, psychometric tests, digital interviews and hopped through all manner of recruitment rings of fire – and you’ve landed the job of your dreams. Or so you thought… But do you know what are the ways to prepare a new employee?
You arrived at your fancy new office, but there was no one to greet you. After waiting near an hour, your co-worker-to-be apologized and took you to your desk, only to find it hadn’t been cleared. Grimacing that your equipment hadn’t been set up, your ‘guide’ spun you around the office’s sea of blank faces. Did they even know you were starting? The awkward acclimations were interrupted by an irritated-looking administrator who lugged a thick binder of forms to fill in. You missed lunch with the gang.
After finally navigating through all the red tape, the person you were meant to shadow was never notified so you were given menial tasks to pass the time, while they were in an important meeting with a client. You stared at the clock, waiting, waiting, waiting.
With the day over, you’re just sad you didn’t get out sooner. Wait – is this really your dream job?
New hires expect and need their onboarding to run smoothly. The above scenario sounds like an exaggerated horror story, but in a survey, Cezanne HR asked new employees about their onboarding experiences and was shocked to find:
52% didn’t know what to expect on their first day
30% didn’t have a buddy
8% didn’t meet their managers
23% didn’t have a desk ready
6% didn’t get told about health and safety regulations
5% didn’t have data security training
6 didn’t have a laptop or computer.
Great onboarding is extremely important. It increases retention and reduces staffing costs. It delivers an engaging experience for new hires, so they connect with the organization and colleagues from the moment they’re given the offer. Also. it should turn first-day new employee anxiety into genuine excitement. It should make them feel prepared for the new job and welcome!
Of course, no one said it’s an easy process, and orchestrating the activities to get onboarding right is time-consuming for everyone. In addition, the burdens of paper-based systems or dancing between data spreadsheets, such as Excel, allow important processes to slip through the cracks – which shouldn’t happen in a modern workplace. However, with the right HR software, you can make new employee onboarding engaging and straightforward, while automating and streamlining the admin involved in bringing on new hires.
Here are the ways to prepare a new employee:
Stay in touch after the job offer
It’s very important for a new employee to engage with employers from the moment they’re hired. This can go beyond a simple email. Make sure you consider the following:
Welcome portals are a very common feature in HR software because they do precisely that: they welcome people. Welcome portals act as an information hub and enable constant communication. They are a platform to share all essential details, including the new hire’s start date, office location, and contact details. It’s also a great way to prepare the new hire by letting them know how their first day will be structured and what their first projects will be.
Make sure you send your new hire links to any documents they need. Provide them with essential advice including what they should bring with them on the first day or week, including items like their passport, P45, national insurance number and other relevant work documents. You could use your HR software system’s welcome portal to deliver this information and advice.
Get the paperwork out of the way in advance of the first day. Signing a lot of forms can delay more pressing tasks, such as the relevant introductions, training, and the new hire’s first projects. HR software can be especially effective here. Instead of wasting time filling out form after form, new hires can sign documents electronically. It streamlines admin processes and makes everything available in one place – and it can all be done before the starting date.
Making use of welcome portals and their visual content is a powerful way of engaging with new hires and allows companies to add photos and embed company videos – it might be a hello from a CEO, or a video demonstrating the company’s culture, or brand values and goals. Portals can also allow new hires to self-serve, adding a profile, information, bank details and the like.
Moreover, all information you collect should flow straight through to your HR system. Cloud HR solutions should come with onboarding modules that are simple to set up and accessible 24/7. Storing information in one place also cuts back on the task of re-entering the same data into multiple systems.
Prepare the desk
When your new hire’s first day comes, ensure you’ve got a plan:
assign someone to receive and greet them at the door
put in an order with IT and prepare all the relevant equipment: a computer, phone, email, and network access, and office supplies
moreover, ensure security and compliance policies are explained as appropriate.
Spread the duties for onboarding tasks across different departments. For example, the IT department might be responsible for setting up the new hire’s laptop and email; the finance team might organize payroll, and the line manager will arrange inductions as well as check-in meetings. HR software’s task management systems can help significantly here.
HR software makes it much easier for these departments to fully understand their roles in the onboarding process. Task managers and checklists make use of notifications, meaning important processes don’t get forgotten about. It gives an overview of what’s been done and what needs doing.
Involve your employees
Send the first-day welcome announcement to the organization and share the news of the new hire with the team. Give their name, title, and something that distinguishes them: it might be a hobby or interest, for instance. This allows current employees to easily see if they have anything in common, making everyone more prepared for the big day. Moreover, give your current employees details of the new hire’s background, making sure the new employee’s biggest strengths are acknowledged.
Find a peer and assign them to mentor/buddy the new hire. This will help the new hire to get settled and to be comfortable enough to ask any questions that are on their mind. This also helps build relationships with the team, integrating the new employee into the company significantly faster.
Also, consider explaining who’s who – HR software can create a staff directory mapping this for you. This will help your new hire to familiarise themselves with their co-workers and assists them in directing their queries to the right people from the right departments, so they don’t feel like they’re barraging their mentor with questions.
Planning welcome social help breaks the ice, too – and not just between the company and the new hire. From team lunches to company happy hours, both new hires and current employees can benefit from getting to know each other in a more open and casual environment, building stronger relationships and channels for collaboration.
Establish a formal training program
The importance of setting a clear and comprehensive training program can’t be overstated. Doing so helps prepare and motivate the new hire for the first day and sets a precedent for the weeks and months ahead as they approach their new projects. Such a structured program does much to ease their potential short- and longer-term worries. Indeed, the HR portal assists here, too. By being able to provide access to important training documents, setting out a comprehensive program schedule through calendars, and by making use of notifications to make clear to current employees what is expected of them in the onboarding process and when. On top of this, it’s an effective and simple way for new hires to view set assignments and tasks, as well as their own schedules.
Check-ins
Check-ins are a series of regular discussions between managers and employees about their progress. They are:
ongoing and build a rapport, setting short and long-term goals
an extremely effective way of ensuring employees are continuously aware of their professional development within the company, allowing them to express any concerns and ask questions, and
they form a crucial part of the onboarding process.
At the end of the first week, give the new hire the opportunity to ask any outstanding questions. This helps demonstrate your enthusiasm towards the employee’s start beyond just the first day and will help set a clear and lasting relationship between the new hire and the company.
HR software can make continuous performance reviews and check-ins an integral part of company culture. Cezanne HR, for instance, provides a seamless and engaging way of recording conversations, achievements and agreed goals or outcomes, so it’s easier to ensure everyone is aligned.
The right HR systems are equipped with performance management functions that allow employees to make use of their flexibility and to collaborate in an online forum where others can easily and securely request feedback, record check-in conversations, and track outcomes.
Poor onboarding is a wasted opportunity
The benefits of great onboarding are infinite. It reduces unnecessary barriers that might otherwise inhibit the new employee from settling in or performing at their best. It gets new hires up to speed swiftly and immerses them in the company’s values, vision, and culture.
Furthermore, great onboarding protects your new investment. A robust, systematic onboarding process boosts new hire retention by 50%, and new hires that experienced strong onboarding are 58% more likely to stay with the company for more than three years.
Why would you waste all your efforts with a dissatisfactory onboarding process?
Onboarding can be the difference between a quick and costly new employee turnover, and a long and lasting productive relationship.
Above are just some of the boxes to tick to ensure an engaging onboarding experience. Do you have any more? Let us know!
Read Also:
Fastest Growing Company, on Creating the Best Place to Work
How Private Hire Insurance Takes You Out from Problems?
