Business/Entrepreneurship – The Big Words Blog Site

Stop Handling These 4 Company Calamities By Yourself

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. There are some issues that you can’t fix on your own as a business owner. In many instances, trained professionals are needed depending the nature of the problem. The following contributed post is entitled, Stop Handling These 4 Company Calamities By Yourself.

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As an entrepreneur you have a gut instinct to do everything by yourself. You came up with your business plan without any help; you handle the day to day running of your company without a worry. However, could you be taking on too much at once? When you step back and look at the ongoing issues you’re dealing with, you might suddenly feel a sense of overwhelm. Whether you’re struggling with budgeting or battling with IT troubles, you shouldn’t have to be dealing with these problems on a daily basis. Think about the following company calamities and see how you could prevent them from spiralling out of control in the future.

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1. IT Glitches

Every business owner has been there before; your IT system crashes and you spend hours and hours on the phone with a company that has no idea how you operate. This type of problem can be expensive to fix, especially if you are paying a company on an ad hoc basis. Outsourcing IT to a trusted company who understands all the ins and outs of your business might just be one of the best things you can do. When disaster strikes, you can feel at ease knowing that there is someone ready to fix the glitch in an instant.

2. Payroll Problems

When you are in charge of paying all your members of staff, you are bound to make mistakes. Instead of grinning and bearing this type of pressure, why not hire a bookkeeper or invest in reputable payroll software. Issues and disputes can be dealt with by a professional and you won’t have the overwhelming responsibility to pay everybody on time.

3. Marketing Mistakes

As a business owner, you want to have a strong handle over all aspects of advertising. However, you cannot expect yourself to deal with everything by yourself. You might need to hire a digital marketing expert or a social media whizz to help you with your online campaigns. Dealing with marketing problems can cause you a huge amount of grief, especially when you aren’t an expert in this field. Hire the relevant help you need and make the most of their talent and expertise!

4. Branding Blunders

You want to avoid branding mistakes at all costs, especially when you are first starting out. Seek out advice from a professional designer, writer or business coach and you will soon be able to put brilliant branding techniques into place. As long as you have a clear idea of what your business represents, there are so many people who can help you.

When something goes wrong you will always have an overwhelming urge to fix it all by yourself. By hiring some extra help and accepting that you can’t possibly do everything, you will have a much smoother business operation. So stop stressing yourself out and accept the help you need. Dealing with company calamities are not your main priority; you should be focusing on improving and expanding your company for the future.

4 Tactics That Are Guaranteed To Lower The Running Costs Of Your Business!

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. A key to successfully running a business is keeping costs low. Doing so will ensure that your business will survive and thrive. The following contributed post is entitled, 4 Tactics That Are Guaranteed To Lower The Running Costs Of Your Business!

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How much it costs you to run your business matters. After all, its money that comes out of your profits! That is why it is so vital that you keep the running costs of your business as low as possible. Something you can get some sound advice on in my post below.

Work from home

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Working from home doesn’t just save you money, you can put your feet up as well!

First of all, you can save a whole heap of money by choosing to run your business from your very own home, rather than setting up formal premises. After all, you won’t have to pay for a lease or pay separately for utilities either, as this will be included in your home bill.

Happily, there is a vast range of business that can be run very efficiently from a home office. These include creative enterprises such as graphic design, illustration, and writing. Although you can be equally successful when working from home with more entrepreneurial options like reselling and setting up your own online store as well. Something that makes the lower-cost work from home option a smart move for many businesses.

Shop around for the lowest priced supplies

Next, if you are looking to reduce the running cost of your business, then you absolutely need to look at how much you are spending on office supplies. After all, even if you do choose to work from home, you will still need certain things to ensure you can complete the tasks you have.

To that end, shopping around for office basics like ink cartridges, paper, post-it notes, and folders at the lowest price you can find is crucial. In fact, by saving pence on a single unit of supplies for the office, you can actually accrue a considerable saving over just a year! Something that will ensure you have fewer cost to remove from your profits.

Understand your tax forms

No one is too keen on filling in tax forms for their business. However, doing so in the correct way can actually save you a lot of money. In fact, there are two ways that this can happen. The first is that if you correctly fill in your tax forms and return them on time, you will avoid having to pay a fine.

Secondly, many costs, including supplies, can be claimed on your tax form. Something that means they get taken off the final amount you will be taxed for. In fact, if you are working at home, you can even claim for part of your utility bills, thus saving your business even more money!

Outsource on demand

While it may be tempting to employ a large workforce, so every possible need is catered for, there is a more cost-efficient way of doing things. Its to outsource tasks you don’t specialize in or do not have time to complete, to someone else. This being an option that while costing money in the short term should save you over the long haul because you won’t have to pay out a salary to so many people.

Of course, fewer salary payments, and a reduction in the other running costs mentioned above means more profit for your business. Therefore you really can’t afford to ignore this guaranteed money-saving advice!

Will Your Business Event Impress Your Guests

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success, and two key focuses are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. At some point you might want to host a business event. During such events you want to make the best possible impression on your guests. The following contributed post is entitled, Will Your Business Event Impress Your Guests.

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What would your dream business event look like? Would it be the epitome of aesthetics? Would it be filled to the brim with industry professionals? Would it be calm and casual, where your networking feels like real mingling? Well, now’s your chance to set these kind of events up!

Running a business event that’s good enough to impress each and every guest is going to be hard. It’s going to be a challenge, especially as a small business, and there’s going to be a lot of planning involved. So, in the interest of making this process a little easier on you, here’s just a few ideas you might want to employ, to make sure you’re setting the foundation just right.

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Start Your Planning Early

You know what doesn’t impress? A mishap. Sure, dealing with a mishap shows off how resourceful you are, even under pressure, but on a night like this? You’re going to want to make sure your event goes off without a hitch.

So it’s key to start planning early. Your Event Planning schedule needs to start months in advance, and even a year if possible, to make sure there’s enough time to get everything in order. You’ll need time to secure a venue, and to get in touch with as many guests as possible. You’ll need to factor in time for changes in the plan, and you’ll need to make your staff aware of the big event looming on the horizon, to make sure they can all work that night.

Create a Buzz Around Your Event

Creating a buzz means your event is going to be a hotspot for the night; it’s going to be marked on quite a few calendars, and reach the ears of executives up and down the country (or at least, the county!). And to do that, you’re going to need to market before the event, and during it as well – you never know who might be a latecomer!

Creating a buzz creates a hype, and that’s what gets attention. If your business event is being advertised all over the place, with a bit of mystery, and plenty of shine, people are going to notice it. So make sure there’s at least 6 months of marketing to go through, before the event actually happens.

Curate the Guestlist

And finally, one of the best ways to impress is to curate the guestlist. You want the right people to attend, and that means the guests need to be relevant. They need to be within the sector you’re advertising for, and they need to be interested in what’s going on during the night. You’re going to want to get into the niche, and to make sure all kinds of people within it are interested in coming along, to make sure your guests are diversified enough.

The event you’re planning to host and run can be absolutely amazing, as long as people know about it, want to come to it, and have an interesting night at least!

How Can E-commerce Stores Reduce Their Costs

Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. Much of today’s business is done via e-commerce. There are numerous benefits to doing business using e-commerce. The following contributed post is entitled, How Can E-commerce Stores Reduce Their Costs.

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When you’re in the e-commerce business, it’s not just important to reduce your costs to ensure they’re not too high — it’s necessary. While these types of businesses are relatively easy to get off the ground without having much money in the bank, as soon as you’re looking at reaching a level where you’re professional/it’s a full-time job/it’s providing a full income, it’ll be a case of spending money to make money. Fortunately, there are a few tried and tested ways to reduce costs and boost profits, as we see below.

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Reduce The Number of Returns

Making a sale is a cause for celebration, but only if it stays that way — if it gets returned to you, then that’s not a sale. That’s just one expensive journey for whatever it is that you’re selling. While you’ll be unlikely to reach a 0% return rate, there are things you can do to limit the number of returns coming your way. It all begins with your product pages. The more information there is on there, the less likely it will be that the customer will have an “oh, that’s it?” moment when it arrives. For clothes, don’t just put sizes — put the actual dimensions.

Get Finances In Order

There are many reasons why you should get your finances in order, one being that it can help save money in other ways. You’ll find it much easier to get better deals on just about everything if you have the paperwork that shows your finances are healthy, and that your business has staying power. There can be different costs for the same services, depending on the strength of the company — take a look at ‘what is high risk credit card processing?’ to get a better understanding of how. Once you’ve got your money in shape, you should see more favorable rates across the board, thus saving you money.

Repeat Customers

Many businesses are forever trying to bring new customers on board, but actually, it might be a better option to look at getting repeat custom from existing customers, rather than appealing to new people. It costs significantly less to market towards people who have used your website before, than it does to educate and entice new customers. These people have already used your service once — and they could be likely to use it again, too. In the process, you’ll have reduced your marketing budget, or at least used it more effectively.

Postage and Packaging

You’ve got to get your packages out there to your customers, but are you doing it in the most effective way possible? There are plenty of ways to package and ship your items, and if you’re offering this service for free, then it’s important that you find a system that doesn’t cost all that much. Take a look at using other companies from what you’re currently using. You can take this approach with all suppliers, actually — there might just be a cheaper way to get the same goods and services.

Benefits Of Self-Erecting Crane Hire For Businesses

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. In most modern countries, construction is a major business. Depending up what’s being built, a construction crane may be required. Thus, owing a crane for hire business could prove to be very lucrative. The following contributed post is entitled, Benefits Of Self-Erecting Crane Hire For Businesses.

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The majority of construction companies opt to hire canes rather than purchase them. This is of little surprise. After all, it proves to be much more cost-efficient to go down this route. Furthermore, the hassle is minimised because you do not have to deal with crane storage or maintenance either. In addition to this, when you consider the wealth of different construction tasks performed in the current day, you see why the same crane cannot be utilised for every task. For example, if you are in a busy and awkward setting you may require a mini crawler. Nevertheless, no matter what type of crane you purchase there is one quality you should always look out for and this is the ability to self-erect. Read on to discover the benefits you will reap if you opt to hire self-erecting cranes…

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• Small footprint – One of the main reasons businesses like utilising self-erecting cranes is because of the fact that they sit on a very small footprint. They also don’t need much when it comes to foundations either.
• Silent operation – In addition to this, most self-erecting cranes tend to run virtually silently. This is extremely beneficial when working in areas that have high populations. You will be able to get on with the task at hand whilst causing little disturbance to anyone in the area, especially those that are working as well.
• Fit into tricky spaces – Another way in which self-erecting cranes can make your task easier is because they have the capacity to fit into tight areas.
• Quick and easy mobilisation – Efficiency is enhanced dramatically because these types of cranes do not take very long to set up. In fact, most people find that they can have their crane working on-site within a mere one hour of its arrival. This ease of mobilisation is something which is highly sought after by companies today.
• Cost efficiency – Self-erecting cranes also present you with the possibility to lower costs as well. There are several ways in which this is the case. One example is the fact that you will take advantage of low siting costs. In addition to this, you don’t need to worry about any reinstatement costs either.
• Accuracy – These cranes present you with perfect accuracy via delivering materials to the exact spot required.
• Improved health and safety – Another benefit people tend to overlook is the fact that they will benefit from enhanced health and safety on their site. This is because there is a lot less manual handling involved in the operation of the equipment, making it much easier for your site safety plans. This is extremely important because as you know; it is your duty to ensure you provide a working environment which is as safe as it can possibly be.

To conclude, when you take these seven important benefits into consideration it is quite easy to see why so many construction companies opt to hire self-erecting cranes time and time again. There are no real disadvantages associated with going down this route.

When Others Want You To Fail – Keep Yourself Focused

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success, and two key focuses are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Business in a lot of ways is competition and it’s critical to understand the keys to making your particular operations successful. Knowing what to do at the key junctures can pay big dividends later. The following contributed post is entitled, When Others Want You To Fail – Keep Yourself Focused.

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While it takes immense optimism and positivity to establish a brand and hope to develop a business from an idea – it can be that fervent competition makes certain markets anything but. Despite their size, Coca Cola would likely be quite content if other drinks manufacturers decided to close up shop. By default, as good business sense, it’s natural for other businesses to wish an end to your operation.

This can come from undercutting costs and taking a loss in order to outbid you in the market, corporate espionage, directly suggesting they are better than you in marketing, and a range of other tactics many of us see businesses pull all the time. However, as a small business, it’s unlikely your local area is going to be awash with this kind of trouble.

It’s worth keeping in mind how your strategy will evolve in this direction, though. Thankfully, there are many measures that anyone can put in place to ensure a better and more competent sense of business development – despite the hidden negative wishes of others. It’s all to do with refocusing. Let’s see what that might look like:

Refine Your Game Plan

Sticking to, or refining your game plan can be worthwhile from time to time. This is because in the intense measure of planning and development you’ve likely had to experience, it’s easy to get sidetracked, particularly if having to defend yourself from criticisms, or overcoming a failure of a launch. Going back to the most time-honored elements of your plan can be worthwhile, because then you can separate the wheat from the chaff and begin anew with the ideals that hold some value.

On top of that, becoming refocused and understanding what really matters can help you avoid the deep emotional turbulence you might feel when having to justify your business to others. This way, you’ll only have to justify it to yourself, and the results you focus on. Refocusing can be a great goal for any person’s headspace.

Use Professional Help

It can be that using professional help to get you to the next step can fuse your business acuity with the acumen of a professional service. This is especially worthwhile for those who might not have the deepest of business experience yet still want to gain professional results. For example, commercial buyers agents are often the best bet to utilize when hoping to find an incredible commercial property, one that keeps you focused on the task at hand and enables you to set up in the perfect environment.
Business consultants, lawyers, outsourced health and safety personnel, all of these might further help you isolate the issues that you might have previously experienced and help you refine your goals and set about committing to the straight and narrow. This can seem like an overly ambitious goal, but it’s incredibly worthwhile and deeply human to wish to revive immediately. If you can do that, you’ll be quite stunned as to the positive results you can achieve in this direction.

Set A New Standard

It can be hard to find comfort when being set against by all competition in the marketplace, but there’s no reason why you need to stoop to that level – and you might sometimes actually subvert that into something good. Like a prism taking light and showing multiple strands of color, you may be able to foster business goodwill by acting ethical to a fault.

For example, championing a new means of developing a product could seriously get you noticed, and can help you avoid the bad publicity associated with certain competition. Let’s bring this down to a humble level. It might be that the other cafes in your area are quite happy to use battery-farmed eggs and instant gravy or other forms of low-quality food. While it might eat into your profit margins, ensuring that you use the best of produce, that you take time with each coffee or meal served, and that you champion your branding in that direction can do something similar to killing with kindness – and that’s killing with better standards.

There’s almost no better revenge than ensuring your business is on the straight and narrow path, and focuses on making its output as good as possible. If you can do this, then setting a new standard becomes the exceptional norm.

With these tips, we hope you’re better able to keep your business focused and direct from its heart – no matter the social challenges that come your way.

Reasons Why Customers Don’t Trust Your Business

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Trust in business in key, especially the trust between you and your customers. Building your customers’ trust can be the difference between your business thriving or struggling which is why it’s critical that you maintain it. The following contributed post is entitled, Reasons Why Customers Don’t Trust Your Business.

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Being liked is important in the business world, but it is trust that will secure long-term loyalty. People are much more likely to buy from a brand that they trust, even if they don’t like them, than a brand that they like, but aren’t sure that they can trust. All companies strive to make a good first and lasting impression. The trouble is, good intentions don’t always work out the way that you planned. With that in mind, here are six reasons why customers don’t trust your business.

Products Differ From Descriptions
When marketing materials mislead consumers, whether it be intentionally or not, it can cause a lot of problems. After all, customers will have bought your products because of the promises that you made about them. If none of those promises can be kept, then a lot of people will have spent their money for nothing. Only promising what you’re sure you can deliver will prevent this issue.

Return Policies Are Complicated
Although purchasing a product that you don’t need isn’t an ideal situation, it is one that can be easily solved by a simple and prompt return policy. If a customer tries to return a product to you for a refund, and they find it to be a difficult process, it will result in a lack of trust. It may seem like a counterintuitive solution, but making it easy for customers to get their money back is helpful.

Only Cash Is Accepting
Making payments using a credit card offers a lot more protection than paying cash. This is why many consumers prefer it. Unless you’re a very small business, no customer is going to understand why they can’t pay with their card. Because of this, you should invest in credit card processing. This will make payments quicker and easier, as well as safer for everyone.

Extra Fees Sneak Up
Charging a late payment fee is an effective way to ensure that consumers make payments on time. That being said, this will only work if you warn customers about the charge. Although these fees might mean more money in your pocket, they will damage the relationships that you’ve built with your customers. Warning them about the fees, however, will show you care about them.

Lack Of Customer Reviews
A customer will always trust another more than they do you. This is why many people read reviews before they decide to make purchases. If you’re missing reviews on many of your products, it can put customers off from buying them. Providing an incentive, like a discount code or free gift, should be enough to convince buyers to leave reviews after making their purchase.

Complaints Are Always Ignored
Having no reviews can often be worse than receiving bad ones. After all, when you get bad feedback, you’re given an opportunity to respond to it. In this response, you can tell customers exactly how you intend to improve. The problem is, many businesses don’t bother to do this. Rather than ignoring your customers, you should talk to them, especially on social media.

Building trust with customers can be difficult, but breaking it is very easy. To avoid doing so, ensure that you don’t make any of the mistakes listed above.

3 Tips For Your Online Business

Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. Most business is conducted online today. You online business strategy is there are part of your business that you have to keep sharp. The following contributed post is entitled, 3 Tips For Your Online Business.

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Whether you are just looking into starting up your online business, or you have been established for some time, these tips will stand you in good stead to make some savings both in terms of costs and time, and help to ensure that your business continues to thrive.

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Make the best use of technology

There are IT solutions to cover pretty much every conceivable area of your business nowadays, so do ensure that you make good use of them all.

As your business is run wholly online, this is an area that you simply have to invest in, and it might be worth getting an IT consultant involved. You need to maintain the highest levels of security and ensure that there is minimal downtime.

It is then worth using technology to assist you with the administration side of your business. Rather than having to run things manually or employ someone in-house to take tasks on, you will find you can get accounting software, payroll services such as CloudPay and bookkeeping apps that can take care of everything for you. These options will not only be speedy, but also highly effective, freeing you up to focus on your business.

Maximise your traffic from every source

Many an online business has been built on one primary source of traffic, and then has sadly crumbled as that source dried up.

Take the recent Instagram changes, where business profiles receive less exposure as an example. Businesses that gained most of their traffic and promotion via this social media channel have suffered significantly and are now scrambling to gain traction on other platforms or elsewhere.

As such, you need to be ensuring that you are covering as many bases as you possibly can with your marketing and lead generation. Online businesses can do very well from social media, but spread those efforts out more evenly. Utilise Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter equally and closely monitor all content to understand what you are best sharing.

You should also always work to maximise your SEO, as if done correctly, this can be relied upon to deliver long term traffic to your website. This will not rise and fall on current trends and you need not be reliant on social media platforms changing their algorithms.

Build a strong brand and reputation

You are battling amongst thousands, hundreds of thousands, of other online businesses within your sector. In order to succeed you have to stand out.

You need to focus on your branding and ensure that you are conveying all that you are about within your design, website and logos. People need to land on your website and instantly understand your product offering, and they need to recognise you when they stumble across you elsewhere on the internet. Strive for something unique and something that says what it is that you do.

You will then have to monitor what people are saying about your business online. Your business needs to have a good reputation so you will be seeking to receive excellent reviews and to be responding to any online feedback. Set up Google Alerts so that you are always aware of any fresh content written about you.

3 Home Improvements The 21st-Century Landlord Should Make

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Real Estate is a major wealth-building tool. Landlords who own property must understand how to maintain and even upgrade their residential home properties in order to keep them up to code and also compete with other landlords. The following contributed post is entitled, 3 Home Improvements The 21st-Century Landlord Should Make.

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Nowadays, first-time homeowners are more likely to be in their 30s and sometimes even their 40s. Compared to our parents and grandparents, it makes no doubt that the real estate market has evolved dramatically. The price tag has increased tremendously, making it more challenging for buyers to secure the deposit and find an affordable mortgage. As a direct consequence, buy-to-let landlords find that their tenants are more likely to be interested in mid- to long-term tenancy agreements.

Indeed, the difficulty to enter the property market presents a valuable opportunity for landlords. As most tenants are keen to stay for several years, they also seek modern days comfort and facilities in their rented property. The shoe-box, dark property with a low rent doesn’t run the rental market anymore. Tenants want to feel at home, and they expect landlords to create a space that is fit for purpose.

Concrete floor

No tenant wants to look after the garden
The idyllic suburban house with a little garden is a home cliché that nobody cares about anymore. The truth is that your tenants work hard during the week to pay the bills and save money ahead of a deposit. They don’t have any time or interest in maintaining the garden. From lawn mowing to watering, a pretty garden requires a lot of effort – without mentioning money. Your tenants don’t want to spend their weekends clearing the lawn. They want to relax, and therefore, they prefer a front yard that is easy to manage. Consequently, it’s a good idea to work closely with concrete paving contractors to transform your yard into a smooth surface that can act as a cozy patio in summer. Additionally paving slabs are perfect as an impromptu parking space when your tenants receive guests.

Help your tenants save money on energy bills
Windows that let the cold air in and inadequate attic insulation have earned a place in the top ten worst rentals in history, but they are nothing modern tenants are ready to compromise. Indeed, your tenants have no desire of being cold in winter. Many know exactly what to check when they visit a property, and therefore, no landlord can afford to run rentals that waste energy. As most tenants will pay close attention to your windows, your heaters, and the overall temperature in the property, they will quickly spot any issue. But you can also provide additional support towards energy bill management by installing smart technology, which tenants can control with an app. Smart appliances and systems offer a compelling control argument for budget-focused tenants.

Give your tenants control

Switch the carpet for eco-friendly and easy-care solutions
What is the most common flooring solution? If you’re still thinking in terms of costs, you’re approaching the problem from the wrong angle. As a landlord, you need to consider flooring solutions that are easy to maintain – and therefore don’t require replacing each time you put your property back on the market. Concrete floors can be not only elegant, but they are durable, easy to clean, and non-traditional. Wood carpets share the same qualities and can be used for centuries!

Making your rental property appealing is all about putting your tenants’ needs first. Your tenants want something that is easy to manage, that provides great cost control, and that is durable – therefore, they don’t need to worry about it. From your curb appeal to your flooring solutions, it’s time to transform your rental.

Nine Ways Office Décor Can Make You More Productive

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success, and two key focuses are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. No matter which sector you’re in, the décor of your office can impact the productivity of your staff. This is often overlooked by ownership and management. The following contributed post is entitled, Nine Ways Office Décor Can Make You More Productive.

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Did you know that the way you decorate your office can have an impact on your productivity? The way you decorate can encourage better work and minimize distractions. What are the best ways to decorate your office to help you work the best way you can.

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Light it up. A properly lit office is very important. Being in a well lit environment boosts your energy, and it reduces eye strain. If you’re using a computer all day, make sure your workspace is well lit to protect your eyes. Add more light with lamps, or light window treatments to let in more natural light. Move your desk next to a window to make the most of the daylight.
Choose the right furniture. Make sure your desk is the right height for you to work comfortably, and choose a desk chair that offers good support for your back. Adjust your chair to match your desk height. If you’re furnishing a large office, find the best options by using a service known for connecting global buyers and furniture manufacturers to get the best deals.
Declutter. A tidy workspace can help you to focus. Clear anything you don’t need off your desk, and invest in a set of desk drawers to store everything out of sight instead.
Paint the walls the right color. Did you know, color can have a big impact on your mood? Blues are shown to stimulate the mind, while yellow can increase creativity. To make your office more relaxing, choose green.
Engage your senses. Some people find that scents can help them concentrate too. Experiment with scented candles, reed diffusers or scented oils in your work space and see if it works for you. Peppermint is often used to energise, and citrus is great to reduce stress. If you work in a communal office, make sure your neighbours don’t mind you adding strong smells.
Add plants. Plants make a work space feel more homey, especially if you don’t have much chance to get outside in your work day. Adding plants also boosts the oxygen in your office, which aids your ability to concentrate.
Get motivated. Feel inspired by motivational messages? Add some to your work space. Buy posters or postcards to pin up around you with messages that you find inspiring. You could make your own messages too by using scrabble tiles, letters cut from magazines or with letter board.
Add storage. Being able to quickly and easily find important documents will make your work day go more smoothly. Invest in some practical, but visually pleasing, storage. Store away paperwork, stationery and other desk clutter to keep your desk clear and save you time hunting for things.
Try a standing desk. Sitting all day won’t do much for your energy levels, and many find they get more done while using a standing desk. If you don’t get on with standing to work, make sure you get up and move around often to get the blood flowing again. Whether you just take a walk to the office kitchen and back, or spend five minutes dancing around your home office, taking time to move will help you.