Rod Springall has helped dozens of business owners successfully sell their businesses over the years. As such he is perfectly placed to share his experiences, to include:
How can company values help people be their best selves at work? An organisation’s company values can play a significant role in creating a workplace culture which enables employees to bring their best selves to work and therefore be more engaged, motivated and productive. Using her own experience as a co-founder of Pure, a values-led organisation, Chief Operating Officer Gill Buchanan has shared some of her top tips on embedding values into a business and the reasons why this makes a positive difference. Gill said: “In our day-to-day work as professional recruitment specialists for the eastern region, we are increasingly seeing just how much importance candidates place on finding an organisation which genuinely cares and which has a set of values they can really relate to. Companies with clearly communicated values are often the most successful when it comes to competing for top talent and having high levels of employee engagement. Supporting vision and purpose A company’s vision and purpose can be used as the inspiration and guidance to set company values. This will help to ensure that they are authentic and can successfully form the basis for the organisation’s culture. For example, when we established Pure, our vision was to create a company which was different to others within the recruitment industry. We wanted our business to focus on developing long-term client and candidate relationships rather than being driven by numbers and KPIs. Having a clear idea of what we wanted to achieve helped us to choose our values. We wanted them to represent everything we believed was important about the way we wanted to work and achieve success. Our six values are: Pure Quality, Pure Teamwork, Pure Supports, Pure Delivers, Pure Rewards and Pure Innovates. Bringing people together Employees who feel a sense of belonging are far more likely to be engaged and motivated to go the extra mile for themselves, their colleagues and the business as a whole. Shared values can bring people together whatever their background, interest, age or level of expertise. They enable businesses to celebrate and encourage diversity while still uniting people in day to day behaviours, standards and attitudes. We recognise that our business is a people business. We want to bring our people together and look after them as they are our ambassadors and the ones engaging with our candidates and clients. Our values have helped us to create a culture where great work is rewarded, teamwork is celebrated and everyone is supported to deliver high quality. Company culture foundations People spend a lot of time at work, so it is understandable that they will want to be in an environment which is a positive place to be. An organisation’s values can help to achieve this as they set the foundations for a company’s culture and the attitudes and behaviours to develop and maintain it. For example, we have a people-first culture and our Pure Supports company value helps us to achieve this. As well as supporting each other, and our candidates and clients, we want our employees to have the support they need to do their job well. It helps us to shape everything from the equipment and training we provide to the initiatives we put in place to support the mental and physical wellbeing of our team. Embedding values into day to day business For company values to make a real difference they need to be brought to life and embedded in day-to-day working practices. This means more than just displaying them as part of the office branding, although that is still a very positive thing to do! They also need to become foundational to the business and genuinely underpin everything. Values can be embedded by making them a part of every aspect of your business from recruitment and onboarding through to referencing them in staff reviews, reward and recognition schemes and L&D plans. They also need to be reinforced and authentically displayed by the leadership team to ensure they flow from the top down. As part of the leadership team at Pure, our values have given us the basis of establishing a consistency of how we want to do things. Because we all really believe in the values, we can live them while still being our true selves, we don’t have to robotically try and demonstrate them. They have also become a key part of the language we use when talking about our business, from updating our teams internally through to our external communications. We believe that being able to share our values with our clients and candidates helps to give them a real understanding of what it is like to work with us. The same goes for potential new recruits. Our values help us to explain more about how we have created a culture which differentiates us from other recruitment firms. To help share this with prospective employees, and new recruits, we have put together a Pure book to explain more about our company in a fun, easy and tangible way. After a few months of being part of our team, we also ask new employees to deliver a presentation which includes sharing examples of when they have seen our values being demonstrated day to day. This really helps people to understand why they are so important to us and how they benefit everybody.”
Are you struggling with your mental health or do you know somebody who is?
In Norwich, the ST MARTINS HOUSING TRUST provides a place for people in mental health crisis to gain help and support. Known as Under 1’s Wing, it provides an alternative service to A&E or mainstream mental health providers.
People who visit the service come from all walks of life.
They are often the strong ones in their families – the people that everyone else relies upon. But one day these people might find themselves in an emotional space where they simply can’t cope.
Under 1’s Wing provides a safe place for people to go, to speak with someone about what’s going on or simply just to sit and have some quiet time. The service is run by a group of extraordinary people and there is also a mental health nurse on site.
So, please be aware that this service exists and pass it on to anyone who might need it:
The Criterion Theatre is one of London’s premiere West End Theatres found at the heart of the capital. With seating capacity for over 500 guests each performance, the venue caters for a huge volume of visitors each day.
The Challenge
Due to the high volume of visitors and the complex layout of the venue, staff needed a quick method of calling for support and alerting the network to an incident – even when internet or phone signal may be an issue. A potential terrorism incident in the heart of London caused a influx of members of the public seeking shelter in the building. Front line staff needed a panic alarm solution to immediately notify the network in case of future events.
The Success
Little Green Button has been implemented quickly and easily, fulfilling the theatres dedication to staff and visitor safety. Deployed discreetly on devices across the network, the team can call for assistance or raise an alert regardless of mobile signal or internet availability.
With coronavirus forcing people to self-isolate have you thought about how your current IT infrastructure will support your business if your staff need to work from home?
If you aren’t already setup for remote working, you need to start exploring your options to make sure that your business is prepared, and your staff are supported.
Protecting your employees and your business in the event that remote working is needed takes careful planning and strategies should be tested regularly.
Ask yourself the following questions:
Can I quickly communicate an office closure to all staff out of working hours? Outside of working hours it cannot be expected that staff will be checking their emails. Do you have a way to text or send push notifications?
Are all staff able to take their equipment home with them? If employees are restricted by desktop computers, you’ll need a way to relocate equipment, including phones, if needed. Do staff know how to reinstall this equipment at home?
Will the team be able to effectively collaborate with each other, with contractors or with customers? Collaboration tools and shared documents will ensure that your team are still productive, even if they are miles apart. Does your team have access to Microsoft Teams or other collaboration tools?
If you need help making sure that your business is ready for remote working send us an email at [email protected]
St James CE Infant School is a small primary school located in Whitehaven, Cumbria. Safeguarding of both the children and staff is of the utmost importance in every aspect of their school life.
The Challenge
Michael Craig, Headteacher, needed to implement a simple and effective safety solution for St James. He’d previously used Little Green Button in another school – for added security when behavioural problems arose – and was keen to use it again having seen how effective it was.
The school needed a way to get alerts out to other staff members, without leaving the children unsupervised. This could be for any number of things – they could be sending a request out for an ice pack, or it could be for part of their lockdown procedure. Little Green Button gave them the flexibilty to continue with the day to day running of the school
The Success
Little Green Button has been successfully installed and embedded at the school. The Teachers are able to communicate effectively with each other, and the children are never left unattended.Using our simple how-to guides, they’ve implemented a process for testing their little green buttons alongside their regular fire alarm drills. Staff are happy and secure in the knowledge that their workplace is safer thanks to LGB.
The Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) team at Tudor Lodge Consultants is proud to announce that we are now working with Aaron Jonah Accessories (https://www.aaronjonah.co.uk). Aaron Jonah Accessories provides men and women accessories, including designer cufflinks and jewellery gifts.
Our SEO Aproach
Aaron Jonah Accessories approached us to help launch their new website – and ensure that it starts to rank on Google for their brand name and products.
We began by carrying out a full technical SEO fix-ups – going through every product page and optimising the images, product names, meta-titles, headings and descriptions.This ensures that Google and other search engines can read [crawl] the website and rank it as high as possible.
To build up the domain authority, we have been acquiring some clean links on some shopping, fashion and style websites and magazines – not only providing links by good PR for Aaron Jonah in the process.
We have been carrying out extensive keyword research and competitor analysis to find keywords of focus that best represent the offerings and products of the Aaron Jonah Accessories brand.
Finally, will be working with the content team at Aaron Jonah Accessories to produce original and SEO-friendly content for the website throughout all pages including the homepage, information pages and new pages that will be built and populated. All of these pages will make use of SEO-best practices.
We are excited to be working with Aaron Jonah and expect to see some very positive results in the next 3 to 6 months.
Tudor Lodge Consultants is very happy to announce that they are working with gin subscription company, <a s website has plenty of internal links, and that all images have appropriate alt-titles.
● Fixing landing pages: landing pages are what customers will see first when they arrive on the site. Therefore, making sure that these pages have relevant keywords, headings, and important customer information clearly on each page in an organised manner is highly important for SEO. This is something our dedicated team is working hard to update.
About I Love Gin
I Love Gin is run by a team of gin enthusiasts and their website offers a direct way for customers to get a monthly subscription with different flavours to their door.
Members get a new G&T box delivered every month containing two craft gins and two unique tonics or mixers to try at home (with 4 servings) starting from just £14 per month.
I Love Ginsends out miniatures so you members can try lots of new gins without having to buy full-sized bottles, and they feature new tonics and mixers every month, so their customers are not just drinking the same old tonics again and again.
Members can also take advantage of exclusive discounts on full-sized bottles of gin and extra tonics from their online shop and enter member-only competitions to win gin!
We’re very much aware of the importance of good mental health, especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of their Impromptu Business Chat special interview episodes, James Lay and Mark Curtis recently spoke to Louise Newby, from Three Eggs, on this interesting topic, particularly for business leaders. It’s important to look after your teams, but who is looking after you?
Louise is an experienced educator in the world of mental health, with a Masters from Cambridge. She has seen, first hand, the detrimental effects that poor mental health and lack of training and support can have on business leaders and their teams. In this valuable and important discussion, the panel look in depth at what leaders can be doing to build their resilience during these turbulent times. Off the back of this chat, James Lay has also written a blog – We all have mental health – where he goes into further detail about his own coping mechanisms. He provides further resources that many other leaders just like him, may find helpful whilst navigating the ongoing pandemic and its challenges, both personal and professional.
The podcast chat with Louise is available onApple Podcasts, You Tube, Spotify, or wherever else you find your podcasts.
Has your business been affected by Covid-19? Have you been considering funding to finance new business equipment, consolidate debts accrued during the pandemic, or freeing up some cashflow? If yes, then you need to act now!
Many of our customers are benefiting from the government’s Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), with 12 months interest free! The CBILS commercial loans and some asset finance packages also allow a full 12 month payment holiday – helping to ease businesses cash-flow.
The Government have extended the deadline – you can now apply up to 31st March 2021
Are you planning on a new purchase this year? Then ACT NOW! If you don’t need finance immediately, but have plans for new equipment in the next six months, you can apply now to secure the 12 months interest free feature and defer drawing-down the funding for up to 6 months.
Don’t miss this opportunity for Government backed support.
Please call today on 01603 381955 to talk through your options or alternatively e-mail us [email protected]
As an issue that affects almost every household at one point or another, a tripped fuse can cause a total loss of power to a certain area of the house. Often caused by a faulty appliance, here’s how to fix this simple issue:
1. In the affected room, start by unplugging every appliance or electronic piece of equipment that’s utilising a socket in the wall.
2. Locate your fuse box and switch any fuse that’s been tripped to the ‘OFF’ position back to the ‘ON’ position (you’ll be able to spot which fuse has tripped as it’ll most likely be the only one facing in a different direction to the others).
3. Head back into the room and plug in each appliance one by one.
4. If the lights in the room go off when you plug a certain piece of kit back into the wall, hey presto! You’ve found your broken appliance.
5. Unplug the faulty appliance and repeat step number two to turn the power back on in the room.
6. Take your faulty appliance to your local electronics shop and have it looked at by a trained professional – you don’t want to be tinkering with plugs yourself!
John Smith, Managing Director was recognised today for his many years of service to the construction industry in Norfolk and received the Special Achievement Award at the Norfolk Constructing Excellence Awards. The culture of fairness, honesty and humbleness is very much down to his leadership over the years. He has achieved many things over the years and contributed to the fabric of our built environment with some outstanding projects, one that has already been mentioned today. He has also been a leader in his local community; devoted to making a different to the area he lives and works in. Warren Salmons, Chair – Norfolk Constructing Excellence