As a business owner, one of the top priorities you should have is ensuring the wellbeing of your staff is at an optimum level. Doing this can help maintain productivity and guarantee the demands of the business are met. There are several ways you can help improve wellbeing in the workplace and making changes to your work environment is one of them. Here are a few steps that can be taken to improve the wellbeing of staff in the workplace. Promote Healthy Working Habits Utilising your kitchen is a great way to enforce healthy eating in the workplace. Many
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Looking After Your Business’ Most Important Asset: A Guide to Motivating Employees
How Do We Define Motivation in the Modern Business Environment? The simplest definition of operational motivation is defined as the “inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organisational goals”. The follow-up question is therefore: What creates that inner force? Followed by: Why does an organisation need motivated employees? Addressing the latter question first, studies started in the 20th century began to understand that employees were more than just another resource in the production of goods and services. A study by Dickson (1973) was the first to establish that employees are not motivated by solely by money and that
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How Can You Improve Staff Productivity
Improving Staff Productivity In our article on Motivating Employees we talked about the various theories of motivation and intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Studies have shown that a high level of motivation leads to increased productivity, but how does this work in practice? Here are some ideas and thoughts about satisfying the extrinsic factors and maximising the intrinsic factors, both of which are likely to result in increased productivity. The extrinsic factors are those which do not lead automatically to increased motivation, but the lack or poor handling of these factors by the organisation are both demoralising and demotivating. The resulting
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Why Does a Business Need HR Support?
What is Human Resources? If you were to ask ten people to define the role of a Human Resources Department, it’s quite likely that you would get ten difference answers. Why is that? Are they lacking in understanding or does the function itself lack purpose, clarity and direction? The answer to both questions is “no”. To understand what is the role of Human Resources and how it works in an organisation, we must go back to the term itself. Human Resources is defined (by Wikipedia) as “the set of individuals who make up an organisation of any size”. It’s also
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Employment law changes for 2019: things employers need to know
As we proceed with pace into 2019, now would be a good time to look at the developments in employment law so you know what’s coming your way in the year ahead: Settled Status for EU workers As part of the government’s post-Brexit plans, European workers currently living in the UK will be able to apply for settled status in 2019, allowing them to remain indefinitely following the end of the transition period in 2021. To attain settled status individuals must be able to prove they have been living in the UK for 5 years by 31st December 2020. Meanwhile,
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News.
Sharp rise in pension auto-enrolment fines
The last financial year has seen a sharp rise in the number of businesses fined by the Pensions Regulator for pension auto-enrolment errors. The number of fines in 2017-18 was 35,810, up from 14,650 in 2016-17. Fines totalled £42m in 2017-18 for auto-enrolment errors, up from £12.6m the previous year. The startling number of fines was put down to the expansion of the auto-enrolment pension regime to cover smaller businesses of fewer than 50 employees. Until 2017, only large and medium-sized businesses were required to auto-enrol staff into a pension scheme. Under the Pensions Act 2008, every employer in the
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Job Roles That Can Help Utilise Your Transferable Skills After the Military
There’s a large misconception that there aren’t transferable skills that can help military personnel when they leave the service. Finding a career can appear difficult to some considering the how many of your years are dedicated to the service. However, there are career paths that you can take that can help to utilise your skills as a military veteran, helping to smooth your transition from helmets and boots, to suit and tie. Here are ideal jobs that military veterans can target as potential career paths when they leave. Pilot Many members of the military will find this a smooth
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Pensions Auto Enrolment – Compliance Update
Increases in Minimum Contributions The minimum contributions that have to be paid into your Automatic Enrolment pension scheme are increasing again from 6th April 2019. The amount that you and your staff pay into your pension scheme will vary depending on the type of scheme you have chosen and the rules of that scheme. Most employers use pension schemes that currently require a total minimum contribution of 5% to be paid. By law a total minimum amount of contributions must be paid into the scheme. The employer must make a minimum contribution towards this amount and the employee (or worker)
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Top Tips – Managing Change
Change…….to make or become different, to take or use another instead of, to give up or get rid of (something) in exchange for something else; an act or process through which something becomes different. Change means many different things in different situations. In practical terms, in the context of running a business, it could mean something as simple as changing the supplier you buy your stationery from or it could be something altogether more complex such as changing your opening hours, launching a new brand, implementing a new organisational structure, making redundancies or even opening a new branch. The simplest
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Great North Run 2018
Director running in aid of St Barnabas Hospice Trust (Lincolnshire) It’s that time of year again when Adam Davey is donning his trainers on 9th September to run in the world’s largest half marathon, the Great North Run, for the 14th time. Having raised over £10,000 over the past years, he is once again raising vital funds for St Barnabas Hospice. St Barnabas Hospice delivers free, high-quality, compassionate end-of-life care and support to more than 9,000 adults with a life-limiting or terminal illness, and their family and carers. They aim to enable them to live as fully as they are
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