It’s almost June, and you know what that means: National Safety Month is here again! This year, the National Safety Council’s goal is to create a culture of safety in every organization and workplace in order to eradicate preventable injuries and deaths on the job. With a bit of planning, your business can join in this four-week observation of the importance of safety at work; here’s how.

Week One: Slip, Trip and Fall Prevention

As far as workplace accidents go, slips, trips and falls are the most common cause of injury. In fact, 15 percent of accidental deaths are attributed to slips and falls, making them second only to motor vehicle accidents. The cause of these common occurrences can be related to faulty equipment, such as improper shoes or uneven surfaces; human error, such as inattention, fatigue or walking hastily; and environmental, such as inadequate lighting or slippery spills on floors.

Your business can help prevent slips, trips and falls by practicing good housekeeping and making work areas clean and clear of obstacles. Train employees on the proper use of ladders and ensure that facility safety equipment is accessible and up to safety standards.  Continue reading »

Starting a business while still studying is not exactly easy but it has its advantages.  Although studying in itself can already take so much time, there can still be some time left for productive activities such as doing business.  This is especially so for businesses that has something to do with the type of business students would like to have after graduating.

Student entrepreneurship seems to be a daunting task , what with all the existing responsibilities of studying and excelling at it.  Students however, who manage to squeeze entrepreneurship into their busy lives have the chance of not only earning but also developing skills and acquiring practical business knowledge which can never be learned in school.  This is a type of learning that can give them the edge over other graduates when it is time to enter the employment world.

Doing business provides experience in  marketing products, dealing with customers, and doing financial accounting.  Being enrolled as a student also gives that extraordinary advantage of having a ready market for their offered products and services.  Classmates, friends, and their respective families are natural targets for marketing and most of them turn out to be willing and eager customers.  Seeing a student seriously trying to make a go of business is enough for many to patronize the business.

Colleges and universities do not automatically produce successful business people.  Everybody has to go through the process of learning and experiencing the ropes of doing business.  Even the richest heirs to giant businesses will have to earn their mark apart from the accomplishments made by their predecessors for them to have a rightful claim to business success.

Doing business while still studying is an opportunity to develop business acumen at an early stage.  This is seen as an advantageous proposition even to those who are not enrolled in business courses and who may not have any immediate plans of going into business.  Having learned the ropes of business makes graduates a more viable candidate for employment.

Studying and doing business at the same time needs proper time management.  It goes without saying that students  must not sacrifice studies for business.  There are priorities and studying must come first at least during the time that a student is still trying to earn a degree.

Did all successful businessmen finish a degree? Probably not, as there are always exceptions but why waste the opportunity that is already there?Student entrepreneurship is productive and fun but it has to be done without sacrificing studies.

Teresa is a researcher-writer who covers a wide range of topics in search of useful information.

Image: forbes.com

The New Orleans’ pro basketball franchise recently announced it was officially doing away with its Hornets mascot, which was a holdover from the team’s relocation from Charlotte. While some fans have questioned the integrity of the pelican as a professional sports emblem, it’s important to remember what motivated the rebranding. The Hornets’ mascot never attached itself to New Orleans and fans were slow to embrace the transplanted team. Will the pelican logo strike fear into the hearts of competitors? Maybe not. But for the franchise, it’s not about intimidation — it’s about ownership.

In becoming the Pelicans — and honoring local wildlife with a strong presence in New Orleans and Louisiana — the basketball franchise is planting roots and identifying with its host city in a more direct way. Additionally, fans will be more likely to embrace a quirky, homegrown mascot than something generic or passed down from another city. The team’s change to the Pelicans can teach us a thing or two about the intelligence of rebranding. Continue reading »

Most offices have a small petty cash lock box, monitored by one or two individuals who disburse small amounts of money to reimburse employees who have purchased low-cost items for the office. While no one mistakes the small gray box for Fort Knox, records of the date, amount of cash, employee and item(s) purchased are carefully kept.

In the meantime, office supplies worth at least 10 times as much are often crammed into an unlocked spare closet to which employees have frequent, unmonitored and unrecorded access. It doesn’t make sense. Office supplies are a significant expense to businesses and they require some sort of inventory or monitoring system to minimize said costs. Continue reading »

At some point during your lifetime, you probably realized that you learned and retained information better when it was presented to you in a certain manner. Perhaps you’re the type of person who understands a concept better when it’s demonstrated. Your friend Bob, on the other hand, learns better when he can listen to an instructor describe the steps of that very same concept. Over the years, researchers have devised a number of tests to help individuals determine their particular learning styles. Some of these tests were also devised to help people find degrees and careers that best fit their learning and personality styles.

Learning Styles

Researchers have categorized a number of different learning styles. These styles include, but are not limited to:

• Auditory or Listening Learners do better when given oral instructions.
• Visual or Seeing Learners will learn more when they can see illustrations, graphs or demonstrations of concepts
• Kinesthetic/Tactile or Feeling Learners can absorb information better when they can physically manipulate and touch what they are learning about.
• Social Learners enjoy learning in big groups.
• Solitary Learners prefer to study and absorb information on their own.

Of course, you may possess a combination of these learning styles.

Your Learning Style and a Degree

Knowing your learning style can help you determine what field might be best for you. For instance, kinesthetic/tactile learners typically do better in careers that involve physical movement, such as being an architect or a surgeon. On the other hand, auditory learners tend to do better in professions such as journalism or the legal field that involve the use of the spoken or written word.

Don’t Self-Limit

Of course, you shouldn’t limit your dreams because of your learning style. For instance, you may be a kinesthetic/tactile learner who really wants to earn a degree in business management, but are afraid that many of the courses in this field will be lectures or textbook lessons that don’t fit your learning style. You might also be concerned that the field itself may not be perfect for you, especially if it involves more paper shuffling than actual physical work. However, you should never limit your career aspirations by either your fears or your learning style.

If you find, for instance, that you’re struggling in a business management course taught in a verbal style and you’re a visual learner, you can always search for videos online to help you grasp the concepts being taught in your classes. As for your career choice, try to seek out business management positions that will engage your visual learning style.

Use Learning Styles as a Guideline

While it can be helpful for you to know what your learning style is, this information should only be used as a guideline for choosing a degree and career that will be a good fit for you. It should never be used as a fence, barring you from opportunities that may not fit into your personal learning style.

(Photo credit: lhl)

More and more business travelers are choosing boutique apartments over hotels because of the affordability and value for money. For the same price of a small room, they can get much larger and more comfortable accommodations. Many of the business apartments also offer facilities like a kitchen, and have a living room and dining room that can seat a small group of people.

These extra features make the luxury serviced apartments London a possible venue for small meetings. This is ideal for informal brainstorming sessions, planning sessions, or interviews. The cozy, comfortable environment immediately puts everyone at ease, and of course, nobody has to worry about anyone else overhearing confidential business information.  Continue reading »

All businesses start with a bright prospect of success and profit. Somewhere along the line, some will have to face the reality of business failure.  What are the options left for an entrepreneur with a failed business?

There are various reasons why businesses fail.  One very important reason is starting the business for the wrong reasons.  Earning profit is a good enough reason since any productive business seeks to achieve this. However, if that is the only motivating reason, the business owner will not have much to lean on during the most difficult time of starting a business. Running away from an employee status to become the employer without having much preparation is a big mistake especially if it is done out of spite to the former employer.  Wanting to have more time to spend with the family cannot be guaranteed by a business since it would require more work because of the added responsibility.

Having insufficient capital to start with puts a business on shaky ground from the very start.  Poor management and lack of planning will certainly drag  any business down.  Poor choice of location and over-expansion are contributing factors to business failure.

What does a business owner do when failure becomes a reality?  It is so simplistic to say that one should learn from mistakes and then start over but there is no other way to go about it.  In surviving business failure however, owners need to look at the accomplishments as well as the mistakes.  In so doing, there will still be enough spirit to try again.

About the Author:

Teresa is a researcher-writer who covers a wide range of topics in search of useful information.

Image: socialmediamanagerinc.com

There’s no doubt that the internet has become very useful to people since it was introduced in 1994 or nearly two decades ago. With this technology, numerous tasks can now be easily done online and communicating from anywhere in the world is possible in real time.

In its first year alone, the internet had already gained 16 million users. In a span of 10 years, the number of people using it reached more than 800 million and in 2012, the number has peaked at more than 2.4 billion, according to Internet World Stats. Along with this development, the growth of internet service providers had also been noted.

Today, not only private individuals are using the technology because businesses of all sizes are also now making full use of it in their operations. Among those that are actively using the world wide web in their daily operations, many have reported success in various areas from faster communication and sharing of important documents to gaining more clients and achieving their sales goals.
Continue reading »