Category: Small business

When you run a small business, it can be tempting to do as much as possible yourself, but sometimes this DIY approach will end up costing you more than if you had simply outsourced the work to a professional.

This is especially true when it comes to photography for your business – if you’re not a photographer, taking your own photographs can be a risky move. In honour of World Photography Day (19^th August), which celebrates photography in all its forms, we’re taking a look at how hiring a professional photographer could be the best decision you can make for your SME.

Plastic is a hot topic – the buzz around it began in earnest thanks to the BBC series Blue Planet II, which raised awareness about the damage plastic is doing to our oceans and sea life. Earlier this month, people and organisations around the world celebrated World Oceans Day (8th June), an annual event which encourages people to protect our oceans against threats like plastic.

So how can you, as a business owner, get involved with this movement? We’ve gathered together a few ideas – big and small – to help you reduce plastic in your workplace.

This week is Learning at Work Week (13–19 May), and to celebrate, we’re talking about CPD – continuing professional development.

CPD is the process of tracking your knowledge and skills, and investing time in your own training and development at work. It is reflective – it requires you to think about the things you have learned, to reflect on what you would do differently next time, and to set goals and targets for yourself for the future. Most importantly, it involves writing these things down, so that you have a permanent record of your own development.

We’ve talked before about how to do CPD as a business owner, but today we’re focusing on why it’s important, and why you should make time for it.

Today is International Women’s Day, an annual celebration of women’s rights, designed to raise awareness of women’s issues and continue the push towards a more fair and equal global society. This year’s theme is #BalanceforBetter, a rallying cry for gender balance around the world, including in businesses and boardrooms.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, we thought we’d share with you some invaluable advice from some of the world’s most influential businesswomen, to guide and inspire you in your own business!

Earlier this month was National Sickie Day, an awareness day which started from the claim that more people call into work sick on the first Monday in February than at any other time of the year. Whether or not that’s true, sickies are a real phenomenon, and they can be especially tricky to deal with if you run a small business.

According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, 2017 saw the lowest average number of sick days taken on record, at only 4.1 days for the year.¹However, the cost to employers increased, from £455 per employee for days lost to sickness in 2016, to £570 in 2017.²While paid sick leave is obviously an important right for workers, sickies (i.e. sick days taken when the person isn’t really sick) can have a negative impact, especially on small business owners.

So what should you do if one of your employees pulls a sickie? Here are some tips that will help you to handle it in the right way.

When you think about content marketing, video may not be the first thing that leaps to mind, but it is a hugely important marketing channel for businesses, and it’s on the rise.

A 2018 report by Cisco* has predicted that global video traffic will grow four times between 2017 and 2022, and video will make up 82% of internet traffic by 2022. Video has a very bright future, then, and the beauty of it is that it works for all businesses, of any size.

There are all sorts of video-making resources out there for business owners wanting to make greater use of video in their marketing. To help you narrow it down, we asked our VAs to tell us about their favourites. Here’s what they chose!