Many of us have worked through previous summers in air-conditioned offices. But with the pandemic turning us into homeworkers, more of us will be battling to stay cool at home while still working effectively and achieving the right results.

In this blog, we share our 5 tips for working effectively from home in hot weather.

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There were mixed feelings among the Get Ahead team last week as schools reopened. While many of us were glad to be able to work without interruptions again, getting back to normal after lockdown is still an upheaval for us all. Fortunately, by being mindful of the change and embracing the new opportunities it brings, owners of “non-essential” businesses can get ready for reopening in April or May and have the successful summer they’ve been hoping for.

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Here are four points that are on our January checklist – we hope they’re on yours too!

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How will you be celebrating Christmas with your team this year? If you usually organise a party or a meal for your employees, you might be wondering how to mark the end of the year in a pandemic-friendly way – and you may be lamenting the loss of the traditional Christmas party this year. 

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Thanks to the pandemic, we are all using Zoom and online meeting platforms far more than we used to. There are many applications for online meetings that we’d never thought of until this year, and holding networking events online is one of them. While many of us prefer real-life networking, we have also seen the advantages of online networking – not having to travel makes networking more cost-effective, and we are also able to attend events that are outside our usual patch. You never know – even when the working world returns to normal, we might carry on networking online.

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A virtual assistant (VA) can be useful for a small business at any time of year, but especially so over Christmas, when things get busy and people start taking time off for the holidays. Get Ahead VA’s franchisees know how much their VAs are needed during the festive season, and they offer a wide range of services to help out local businesses at this time. Here are 5 key ways that hiring a VA can make a difference to your business this Christmas. 

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This year, 27th November will be Black Friday, one of the biggest days for sales and shopping in the pre-Christmas calendar. For many businesses, this is one of the most important days of the year, and that may be especially true this year due to the economic slump caused by the global pandemic. 

But for service-based and B2B businesses, the question of whether to run a promotion for Black Friday is a tricky one. Can you run an effective campaign if you don’t sell physical products? What might a B2B business offer instead? If you’re pondering these questions right now, let us inspire you with a few ideas about how to run a Black Friday promotion for a B2B business. 

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In any other year, businesses would have booked their Christmas party back in August or so – big room, catering of some sort, maybe a magician visiting your table doing some close up magic. If you were really (un)lucky, someone might even have hired a karaoke machine.

But this year, it will all be different. Lockdown didn’t just introduce new restrictions; it introduced a new way of working. So many businesses have noticed how much easier remote working is that it’s looking like it’s here to stay, even when restrictions are finally over. What’s certain is that we’ll be having our works Christmas parties remotely, and we’re proud to report that our VAs with Zoom expertise are already receiving bookings to provide tech support during the virtual party season.

Here are some ideas for virtual Christmas parties!

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One-to-ones are an important element of networking. When carried out with the right approach and motivation, they can be a highly effective means of building professional relationships and ultimately helping you to build your business.

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As we go into autumn, it’s impossible to ignore the warnings of a second coronavirus wave, predicted by health experts during the summer and now back in the press. But what will happen to UK businesses if we do go into a second lockdown?

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