Driving Growth Black Friday: Should You Bother? Black Friday: a crucial new event in the UK retail calendar, or another unwelcome American import? We look at whether small retailers should bother taking part in this year's Black Friday sales...
People Management How to Reduce Time Theft and Keep Accurate Employee Time Records Hourly employees often 'guesstimate' their timesheets, usually to their benefit! While a few minutes extra pay here and there may seem harmless enough, this type of 'time theft' can soon add up. Here's what to do about it.
HR & Recruitment How to Hire Successful Seasonal Staff If finding seasonal employees is an annual struggle, switch it up this Christmas. Here are ten tips to make seasonal recruitment less of a headache.
HR & Recruitment Five Innovative Annual Leave Policies for Your Small Business There's nothing wrong with traditional annual leave policies, but these changes could make recruitment and retention a whole lot easier — and even save you money.
HR & Recruitment Blind Hiring: Everything You Need to Know Keeping the recruitment process free from unconscious bias is almost impossible. One of the few practical solutions to limiting its impact is blind hiring — a variation on your typical recruitment process that scrubs [...]
Driving Growth Should Your Business Go Cashless? More and more businesses are choosing to only accept digital payments. Is now the time to go cashless at your cafe or shop?
Driving Growth Is Your Business Ready for 'Making Tax Digital'? In a matter of months, there'll be an overhaul of business tax in the UK — yet only half of small businesses know about it.
HR & Recruitment Is Your Hiring Process Fair? Whether you run your hiring process internally, or outsource parts to a recruitment agency, you have to take steps to avoid discrimination and keep the recruitment process fair.
HR & Recruitment How to Choose Between Two Outstanding Candidates: 10 Tiebreakers You're out the other side of the interview process and you're left with two exceptional candidates. Candidate A has a little more experience than Candidate B, but you've been more impressed by B's responses at interview. In other words, they're neck and neck.
People Management Why it Pays to Build Your Rotas Around Your Staff [Rota Crimes] Building the rota is hard enough without having to accommodate employees' preferences for particular shifts or days off. Pretty much every member of part-time staff has the odd day or shift that they [...]
HR & Recruitment How to Narrow the Field When Recruiting: 7 Easy Steps for Managers You've advertised your role in the local paper, shouted about it on social media, and posted it on the big job sites. As a result, the responses have come flooding in, and [...]
People Management How Inaccessible Rotas Could Be Holding Your Business Back [Rota Crimes] The average manager spends almost five hours a week planning and managing rotas — that's more than two workdays every month. While building a rota from scratch usually takes the bulk of a manager's [...]
HR & Recruitment Recruitment 101: How To Write and Publish a Job Ad that Gets Results The perfect candidate for your latest vacancy is out there somewhere — but right now, they don't know their ideal role exists. That's where your job advert comes in.
Delighting Customers 25 Quick Tips for Boosting Customer Loyalty at Your Small Business Customer loyalty can be difficult to win. But it's also easy to lose. Even if you manage to convince a customer to cut ties with a big brand and use your business instead, [...]
HR & Recruitment Why Data Protection Matters to Every Small Business Updated May 2018 The issue of data protection has been everywhere recently following the furore over Cambridge Analytica and Facebook's wider approach to data protection. (Out of the loop? Here's a summary of [...]
Driving Growth Dealing with Restaurant No-Shows — Tips for Managers and Owners Occasions such as Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and the Christmas season are reliable earners for pretty much every restaurant, even if they fall midweek or trade is slow on either side of them. [...]
Driving Growth How to Get More TripAdvisor Reviews — Tips for Small Business Owners You know how important high quality TripAdvisor reviews are for your business. In many cases, poor reviews can deter previously enthusiastic potential customers from visiting at all. And impressive reviews draw in customers [...]
Driving Growth How to Manage Your TripAdvisor Listing When it comes to attracting new customers, your TripAdvisor listing is just as important as your website and social media channels. And if your business is a hotel or is a high-end eatery, [...]
Driving Growth Five Ways to Manage Your Small Business' Online Reputation Every good business owner knows that it's important to keep abreast of what people are saying about their brand. What's also important to remember, however, is that the type of conversations people have [...]
HR & Recruitment Carrying Over Annual Leave: Everything You Need to Know Half of employees don't take all of their annual leave, with the average employee only taking 77% of their total leave, according to a Glassdoor study. Although you might instinctively be pleased that [...]
People Management Will 2018 Bring Predictive Scheduling Laws to the UK? The use (or misuse) of zero-hours contracts is probably the most contentious subject in UK employment law. But regardless of our opinions on these controversial contracts, it's clear that they emerged in response [...]
People Management Flexitime: Is it Right for Your Business? During our careers, we've all had different experiences of flexible working — as an employee, and perhaps a manager. In many companies, working hours are set in stone. But increasingly staff are getting a [...]
Driving Growth Chatbots 101: A Guide for Small Businesses Depending on who you ask, the word 'chatbot' either encapsulates everything that's wrong about brand communication, or is the future of all our brand interactions. We wondered who was right, so we did [...]
Driving Growth Why & How Your Business Needs to Act on GDPR Updated May 2018 On May 25th 2018, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect in the UK. And your business almost certainly needs to comply. There are two main [...]
HR & Recruitment How to Conduct the Perfect Job Interview [Free Template] You've attended plenty of job interviews as a candidate, so you've seen plenty of interviewers in action — the good, the bad, and the ugly. But regardless of the competency of the interviewer, it's [...]
