|
THIS WEEK
10 Things Your Business Needs to Do Before Christmas
ALSO IN THIS EDITION
10 Things Your Business Needs to Do Before Christmas
|
Yes ... the decorations are starting to appear in the shops, which means we have only 3 months until the end of the year. So what do you as a business need to do before Christmas?
Review your budgets and projections. Are you on target? What do you need to amend/adjust so you are ready for the post Christmas slump?
 Sort out your pre-Christmas marketing. All the big companies already have this under control, but as a small company will you be offering Christmas deals or special offers to your clients? What will this look like? Get your copywriter and graphic designer onto this ASAP or you will miss the Christmas boat. Our office enters the local Christmas lights competition and we benefit from all the evening traffic of families coming past to look at the lights through handing out branded sweets and promotional material.
Plan your staff leave schedule." No, Jane you can't take the week before Christmas off with all the rest of the employees". Unless you want to do a Scrooge impersonation, get some planning into your Christmas leave roster.
Review your business goals for the quarter. If you don't have any clear goals, then try this simple question. "What one thing if you completed it successfully before Christmas, would make the most difference to your business". Now do it!
Prune back on the unsuccessful parts of your business. Not everything is a raging success. Often in business we take on tasks and roles because we "can" do them, not because we "should" do them. These bits often are roles we don't really like to do – but we do them because we can. Unfortunately these also often are not the highly profitable parts of our business and take away time from what we could be doing. This is a great time to prune these parts from our business – and learn to say "no" to them if they appear again.
Simplify your systems. Often systems in an office grow like topsy, with no real thought behind why we do things a certain way. Take one system a week and see how you can prune out double handling, unnecessary steps or just totally rework the process to make things easier, simpler and more fun to do.
Don't leave it to the last minute. Fixed deadlines like Christmas spur people into action – usually the week before Christmas. Put some planning into what you want to achieve and don't leave things until the 11th hour. Printers tend to close down over a long period of January, so if you need business cards, marketing materials or calendars you need to get in early.
Order your Christmas corporate gifts/cards. If you give corporate gifts, now is the time to sort out who will get them and what they will get. Try and avoid gifts with nuts because of potential allergens. Branded bottles of nice wine still work, as do candy bouquets or gifts for the desk. It is also time to consider how you are going to say thank you to great customers from throughout the year.
Book your Christmas party. This year think of something different for your party. Find something that all your team can participate in and enjoy (without alcohol). My personal favourites include bare foot lawn bowling, 10-pin bowling, karaoke clubs, or go carting. If you work by yourself – find a great networking event Christmas party and arrange to meet your work colleagues there (double duty networking).
Plan your own time off. Yes, you also need a break over Christmas. So book your own time away from the office to relax, unwind, and recharge your batteries.
| HR Tip of the Week: The Need to Take Holidays |
Most of your employees look forward to taking regular holidays - but when you look carefully at the leave records you will find there are a number of your team you accumulate their leave from year to year.
This is a massive financial cost on your budget, carrying forward this leave accumulation. If they leave your company you will be up for a huge payout. There is also the cost issue that often an employee's wage would have risen over the years - so the actual cost of their holidays has increased with their wages.
But the bigger cost is the cost to an employee's health and wellbeing. No-one can keep on their game 52 weeks of a year each year. People need regular down-time to recharge their batteries. Often those that are the most conscientious and reluctant to take a break are the ones who need it most. If they are not "encouraged" to take a break you are failing in your duty of care from a workplace health and safety perspective.
 So how can you manage your holiday challenges? First look at your business figures over the year - are there periods when it is really slow? This is the time when you need to be encouraging more people to take leave. Are there peak busy times? These are the times when it needs to be all hands on deck - and no leave will be approved.
Write these times down and let your team know. Include this in your inductions so all team members are aware of the no-go times.
Once you have the major bits sorted, then put up a leave calendar for the year and get people to request their leave either each quarter or every 6 months (if you are a large company).That way you can plan for coverage while people are away.
Ensure your leave policy includes bits around accumulating leave - perhaps no leave to accumulate over 2 years. If that happens you reserve the right to give one month's notice of the requirement for the person to take leave.
For real hard heads with their leave - I usually gave them first pick of popular available leave times such as school holidays, in order to remove any potential blocks to them taking a break.
Managers & CEOs can be the hardest to get out the door - and often they will only take a day here or there. I have no magic bullets for these people - only to say they are human just like the rest of us. They also need their times away too.
When travelling, I like to pick up a tour with one of the locals in order to learn more about an area. Last week in Lightning Ridge - the home of the brilliant black opals in Australia, we took a tour with Black Opal Tours.
Black Opal Tours run small mini-van style tours around the sights of Lightning Ridge. Now let me tell you that Lightning Ridge isn't a big town - if you look up the term "small country town" in the dictionary you will see a picture of Lightning Ridge. It has one small supermarket, a handful of shops, a hospital and that's about the main street really.
What you don't see are the wonderful places only locals know about and the stories behind each of these places. Mick was our tour guide - he doubles as the town's fire chief as well as running his own opal mine (an occupational hazard in that town).
He picked us up from our motel and on learning that I hadn't been to Lightning Ridge since I was about 10 years old, proceeded to show me what had changed in the many years since we were last there.
We explored the fascinating Astronomers Monument house - built by one of the locals, as well as Amigos Castle (a castle in the middle of mullock heaps). We learnt stories of the early pioneers as well as the life of modern day miners. We went fossicking for opals and Mick made sure the kids found some nice colour.
We also checked out the local theatre (Black Queen), going through an underground opal mine as well as ending up for morning tea at an opal shop.
So why is this the business of the week? Remember - this is a very tiny country town much like many other country towns. They created something from nothing and then found the market to suit.
In creating the tour, Black Opal tours had got together with many other local small businesses. They cross referred and cross-promoted without heavy sell. Every business benefited from the tour in terms of new business and awareness. Yes, they had their share of knockers in the early days - but they persevered.
The tour guide they chose to run the tours knew his stuff - he had been there for over 40 years and could tell yarns that were interesting as well as funny. You can't challenge local knowledge.
To me it was a great example of small business ingenuity - working out how to market their businesses in a very challenging area. How can your small business work together with other businesses to generate clients?
While trekking around the countryside on our holidays we discovered a massive untapped niche - Grey Nomads. They are a fascinating migratory species of people with a brilliant lifestyle. In this post I share why I want to be a Grey Nomad.
exuberantly yours
Ingrid
Heart Harmony
PS: This week's Small Business Tips blog included posts about "Country Towns with Soul" and "Lessons from a New Hotel - Citigate Mount Panorama"
Legal stuff: This newsletter is intended only a general guideline for Australian businesses. You should seek specific advice for your situation rather than relying only on this newsletter
Earnings disclaimer. Some of the content may include advertorial information, which means I may receive financial compensation for the products I recommend. But - unless I know and trust the product, I will not recommend it.
|
email
