Day: November 17, 2019

 

1. Flexible working hours 

 Offering flexible working hours to your staff can really help staff engagement and office morale without breaking the bank. Studies have shown that putting a flexible work scheme into your business enables your staff to feel more in control of their work-life balance and more trusted. This uplift in morale can result in workers becoming more motivated and often produces increased productivity around the office.  

The beauty of flexible working is that there’s no cookie-cutter approach to getting it right, meaning it can work around your business. There‘s a variety of different working structures you can integrate into how you operate the business; two popular ones are flexi-time office hours and remote working. 

Flexi-time: Your team won’t all work the same way, nor will their situations outside of work be the same. You may find that one employee is more productive in the morning and another in the afternoon. Either way, many companies have found their staff are more efficient when they can choose what time they start and finish their workday. Of course, there should still be some limits to ensure your business runs effectively: when implementing a flexi-time strategy, be sure to include guidelines, for example having all employees present in the office during certain core hours.  

Working remotely: In our recent marketing report, we found that working from home was in the top three desired benefits tech employees wanted in a perk scheme. 

Thanks to technology, it’s now possible for the vast majority of industries to incorporate remote working into their business strategy. To keep your employees happy, why not offer your staff a four day office week, or allocate a percentage of days a month when they can opt to work from home?  

 2. Insurance packages  

 You want your team to be not only happy but healthy, and an excellent way you can ensure this is by offering your employees a healthcare insurance package. Most businesses will supply a basic healthcare package, but to stand out from your competitors and give your employees an incentive to stay, why not try adding other healthcare perks like medical or dental expenses?

For start-ups or smaller SMEs, offering a ‘deluxe’ healthcare package to all your employees may seem expensive. However, it’s not impossible; it’s all about being frugal with your budget when planning the packages. 

Also Read:  The importance of one on one meetings with your employees

 3. Company incentives  

 Company incentives can be anything from performance-related bonuses or shares in the company, to or one-off gifts such as vouchers or trips away. 

Incentives like these shouldn’t be relied on as a bribe for staff, or a way to buy their loyalty, but rather an extra perk to show your appreciation of their work and contribution.   

Your incentive prizes don’t have to break the bank: even small allowances like dress down days, late starts, or extra vacation days can make a massive difference to employee morale. Your team won’t really mind what the incentive is, just as long as you’re acknowledging their hard work in some shape or form.   

 4. Office perks  

 The modern-day office has become more than a desk your employees work at eight hours a day. It’s an environment where your employees can blossom, not just professionally, but socially and personally.  

Your employee spends two-thirds of their life at work—to ensure they stay with your company, try to make the office a happy, comfortable, and fun space to work in. 

 Here are a few suggestions to start implementing around the office:  

1. Provide free breakfast or lunch once a week 

2. Sign up to a third-party discount or perk scheme 

3. Offer a gym membership  

4. Create a ‘comfy’ space for your staff to relax in at lunchtime or socialize in after work  

5. Hold monthly competitions to bring the team together 

6. Have social nights out with your team  

If you put effort into making the office a great place to work every day, then your staff will feel more positive and motivated to work with you and have less reason to look for a job at another company.   

 5. Career vision plan 

 If you want your company to grow, then you need to take care of the people helping you build it. No matter the size of the company, every business can afford to offer their employee a career vision plan; it shouldn’t cost you anything and could be the difference in an employee viewing their position with you like a long-term career and not just a job.  

You can develop a career vision plan with your employees simply by holding one-to-one meetings to talk about their career objectives, how the business can help them reach their goals, and how you can create a mutually beneficial situation by supporting them in improving their skillset. 

The error that most companies make with this scheme is consistency. For a career vision plan to work, you need to meet up with each employee regularly, perhaps once a month or quarter.   

Also Read:  5 incentives that can be helpful in attracting awesome employees

Employees will be more loyal to your company if you can demonstrate an interest in their career development and the progress they’re making within the business. Being coherent and predictable with your one-to-ones gives your employees, your team, and, ultimately, your entire business structure. 

No matter the size of your business, if you can provide regular feedback, a clear progression path, and a positive work environment, your staff will enjoy coming to work knowing that they have a valuable part to play in your company’s future. 

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The packaging is one of the most important things to inspire customers. It is considered a vital element of the marketing mix. It means that packaging plays a significant role in promoting your brand. Retail packaging boxes can be designed in various shapes, sizes, and styles.

The selection of the right colour and text can make your products sell more. Over time different companies are becoming aware of the importance of retail packaging boxes for their brand.

They have started to spend more money to create exceptional designs to stand out. In reality, the packaging is much more than something to deliver a product. Below are some of the aspects which explain how packaging is a smart tool to promote your brand

1. Make your products appealing to customers

The appearance of your presentation packaging boxes is an important factor to drive the number of sales. A strong visual display can attract the customers while a bad one repels them. Customers never give another chance to boxes and wraps which look unattractive. Beautifully designed custom retail packaging plays a crucial role in promoting your brand.

This makes them realize that they have a desire for your product. According to research, about one-third of purchase decisions are made in-store. The visual look of a package performs the part marketing communication with the brand. If designed attractively, it makes a valuable first impression.

The following perfume boxes are designed luxuriously to make the product more appealing for the customers.

2. Explain the key benefits of your brand

Your paper boxes packaging plays a big role in winning the in-store business. It highlights the key benefits and useful features of your products. It’s an effective way to promote your brand in the marketplace. The information which can’t be explained verbally or through advertisement, your retail boxes can do it in the best way.

In the case of custom food packaging, they highlight various important details. The boxes of cereals contain information like ingredients, direction to use, manufacturing and expiry dates, calorie count and nutritional value.

Also Read: The power of storytelling: how to engage your audience

Sometimes, packaging can also add additional benefits to the main product. For example, some sports drinks have an extra flip-top lid. This enables consumers to drink the beverage during sport. Similarly, there are some of the makeup products, which come in exceptionally designed cosmetic boxes. Such extra benefits of packaging attract a customer towards your brand.

3. Innovations in packaging help to improve sales

Designing your customized boxes with innovative designs is the best way to drive your sales. It acts as a smart tool to promote your brand. Customers are always attracted to something unique and innovative. Besides, to create traditional custom cardboard boxes, work on various elements of packaging design to produce interesting variations.

Experiment with different shapes, styles, colours, and fonts. For example, if you want to promote your brand, design custom display boxes or a pop counter to boost its visibility. Place them near the shelves or counter to stimulate purchase behaviour.

4. Communicates overall brand quality

The quality of your custom boxes wholesale communicates the overall quality of your brand. You might have read about how Apple strived on the packaging on its smartphones.

The designers worked on minute details to create a presentation box that communicates the pride of ownership. This makes your packaging a smart tool to promote your brand. The same concept is applied to a variety of product categories. The custom boxes which look expensive tend to communicate a superior brand quality.

5. Creates brand recognition

Packaging plays a prominent role in creating more recognition about your brand. With the help of attractive packaging, small brands can give a tough fight to some of the most successful brands in the market. All you have to do is to design your package in a way that people start recognizing it at a sight.

Also Read: Why reciprocity is key to building deep customer relationships

This can promote your brand effectively and take it a long way. Working on different elements of packaging design like colours, logo, other artwork increases the awareness about your brand and attracts a bigger customer base. Moreover, the way you design your packaging helps in differentiating various products in the same category.

For example, ice cream boxes can be designed in different colours according to the flavour of its ingredients. This not only looks appealing but facilitates the customers in choosing their desired product.

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Culture is the soul of the company and it takes more than sleeping pods to make it work.

In today’s age of high-tech companies, high growth is a necessary requirement for success. As Circles.Life has grown from 100 to 500 people in 5 countries, what keeps us up at night is: how do we retain the culture that got us to succeed in the first place?

We built our company’s culture from day one to be one of empowerment, trust, and high-performance. One magic moment that demonstrated that we had the right culture was a few months after launching Circles.Life. I remember the time when one of our customers had trouble with his Circles.Life app because of his phone model.

One of our engineers (all on his own) decided to travel down to the customer’s house to resolve the issue. The customer was completely taken by surprise with how far we would go to help him and for us, this moment showed us that our culture is something special – and we need to spread this magic across!

Launching in 2 countries 3 months apart this year meant that our team doubled almost overnight. I  wondered if our culture was at risk if we grew too fast. 

In reality, I was asking the wrong question. Growth itself is at risk if you can’t get the culture right.

While we are still learning, here are some things that have worked really well for us:

Cloning founders – aka the Space Explorers

When we first launched, the founders and early leaders led by example and shaped the culture that ultimately allowed us to succeed. As we continued to grow and expand, ensuring that the leadership team across all markets was getting the culture right was difficult. Our realization that we had employees who truly lived by our company values and demonstrated consistently high performance led us to launch our Space Explorers program. 

These employees became our extension- our next round of founders who could uphold the same culture that our early leaders cultivated. 

The company rewards Space Explorers generously, with up to six months’ worth of salary in stock options annually, an additional cash bonus, sponsored training courses of their choice, and exclusive access to the founders and stakeholders. 

Transparent pulse check

Many companies think about using a net promoter score (NPS) to measure customer experience and predict business growth; likewise, you can think about creating an internal NPS to better understand how your employees feel and to work towards using valuable feedback to improve the workplace environment. At Circles.Life, we launched an initiative called monthly pulse check (quick rating of 1 to 5) that helps us evaluate how our employees feel.

Also Read: Company culture is more than just a foosball table

Understanding how each individual feels is very important, but so is taking action where it makes sense. Each quarter, we present the actual feedback and data transparently to all, highlighting what we have done, what’s in progress and why we can’t do some things. But that’s not all, the pulse check KPI is every manager, leader and founder’s KPI that gets measured and graded on. Everyone owns this outcome, to contribute towards building a great workplace for all. 

Town Hall “founders for all”

All companies have town halls, but what makes ours different? We host a weekly “Circle of Trust” town hall that we use to update employees on the business and provide confidential numbers – not something that other companies typically do. 

Ahead of these, we also send out a link for employees to anonymously submit a question, feedback or concerns that are then addressed at a company-wide quarterly meeting. Each survey question that comes in is carefully addressed and acknowledged in future weekly updates. 

Employees are also invited to raise any questions or feedback they may have on the spot, so that leaders and founders have a chance to address it right away.

Psychological safety to fail and learn

If you want to create a high-performance culture, you need to allow space for growth, innovation and …. failure. This needs to be built into your culture. Setting up a root cause analysis (RCA) initiative allows people to understand that every failure is a learning process. 

We use every opportunity to hold an RCA sharing session to allow employees to learn about what worked and what didn’t, to avoid repeating the same mistake. That learning becomes the focus rather than who is to blame for the failure. Owning up to failure is looked upon with pride, and is something we encourage for each of us to grow.

Ultimately, as a leader in the organization, you need more than words to fuel this culture beyond the words in your speeches. 

Also Read: A guide to navigating, and hopefully saving, a struggling startup

I believe strongly in action-oriented work. In fact, some commandments that I live by are:

1. Thou shall lead by example, not 99 per cent  but 100 per cent of the time

2. Thou shall recognise publicly and reprimand privately but ALWAYS specifically behaviour that leads to good or bad culture

3. Thou shall enforce a strong culture screen for new hires and set up a culture keeper test for existing folks (culture fit is least likely to be fixed)

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