Welcome to the Essential Business blog pages. Here you’ll find articles, comments and opinion pieces by Julie Stanford and Marianne Whitfield, directors of Essential Business and, from time to time, guests whose opinions we value.
You can comment on any of the articles and we are always interested in hearing what you have to say. There’s no such thing as absolute truth in business (or in life!) it’s all a matter of opinion – and the more opinions, the better.
New year, new way of working! After fifteen years of selling all our products from just this one website, we’ve realised that it might all be a bit complicated for our retail customers and professional clients! So, we’ve made the decision to split this website into two new websites, aimed at two separate groups:
When you’re setting up and running a business, it can be difficult to know where to start, let alone how to keep going. The retail products and free resources on this site will guide you through the business maze, and help you to run your business in the best possible way. Our books, workbooks and online courses are clearly written by people who understand how it feels to run a business, and this video shows you just what makes our approach to business learning so very different. Take a look around.
As a business support organisation, advisor, mentor or enterprise educator, you face constant pressure to provide high-quality information and training for your clients or students, with the ongoing challenge of funding those services. When you win contracts, you have to be fast on your feet, providing the contracted services and materials at the right quality, often with little time to create them. We can adapt any Essential Business publication to suit your needs – from simply adding your logo to our materials to including information about your organisation and services. We can also create custom covers to your specification. Visit our new professional’s website to find out more.
If there’s one page in our Essential Business Guide that epitomises why we created the book in the first place, it’s probably page 157: Checklist: Make your workplace safe.
As business owners, we all have a legal responsibility for the health and safety of our employees and anyone else who may be affected by our businesses, such as customers. But there’s so much we need to know, and it can be hard to keep on top of it all. So, we wanted to create an ‘at a glance’ checklist, for busy business owners.
That’s the first part, the second part is that you need to do the work! There’s no saying, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that’ or ‘I’m too busy – I’ll get round to it later’ – this is a legal responsibility (at least, it is in the UK) and if you don’t do it, you’re liable.
Marianne and I don’t want you to get into ‘hot water’ because you haven’t taken care of everything you should have, so here’s the list reproduced from the Guide, with our compliments. We’ve even added some little tick boxes so that you can keep track of what you have and haven’t done. Get ticking!
A safe place of work and safe access to and exit from that workplace?
Access points and paths leading up to your premises that are safe, with handrails that are secure?
Adequate welfare facilities including toilet and washing facilities, lighting, and the maintenance of a reasonable room temperature?
An employers’ liability compulsory insurance certificate?
The Health & Safety Law – What You Should Know poster (available from HSE books on 01787 881165)?
A first aid kit and an accident book?
The correct number and type of fire extinguishers?
An evacuation procedure to follow in case of fire?
Free health and safety training for your workers so they know what hazards and risks they may face and how to deal with them?
A written health and safety policy (if you have five or more workers), which lists the safety arrangements and the people responsible for carrying them out?
The opportunity for your employees to be consulted on health and safety matters?
Someone to help you meet the requirements of health and safety law? (You must by law report some work-related accidents, diseases and dangerous occurrences.)
A responsible employee as a health and safety officer?
At least one person who has been appropriately trained in first aid and who is responsible for first aid policy?
Someone to be responsible for the supervision of young workers/trainees?
The correct number and type of safety signs and put them up?
A fire certificate?
Information about assessing risk within your workplace – and then actually done the work?
The fire escape routes and fire exits? Virtually all employers have a legal obligation to carry out a fire risk assessment.
If you’ve scored badly in the checklist, the Health & Safety Executive is a good place to go for information. It has workplace contact officers who can visit your business to provide information and advice.
Recently I was at a meeting where the question ‘What do most business owners ask for help about?’ was mooted. The obvious issues of marketing and finance were mentioned but the debate took an interesting turn when one of the attendees at the meeting said, “Last week I was asked three times, by firms in three very different sectors, about how to find a business angel”.
That seemed an awfully specific question for three different people to ask but, as it turns out, the ‘word on the small business street’ is that you should try and find a business angel if you need money for your business. Why? Apparently, at this stage of the economic cycle, with the country moving out of a long recession, business owners’ perceptions are that the banks aren’t lending, venture capitalists will take the lion’s share of their business, but a philanthropic business angel will invest time, money and personal support – so that’s a much better avenue to pursue.
Recently, I watched some episodes of Alex Polizzi’s The Fixer programme on BBC catch-up. Of all the business pundits on TV and radio, she’s the one I’ll go out of my way to watch. It’s refreshing to see her no-nonsense style and willingness to tell the truth. She also seems genuinely to care about the business and its owners, and I like that.
As I watched the various programmes, I was struck by how unwilling the business owners were to receive the hard news about why things were going wrong. When Alex suggested that, in business, you need to know what your customers are really thinking – otherwise they’ll vote with their feet – the owners insisted that they “just knew” what people wanted. They didn’t have to ask. [Read more…]