Small Business Ideas to Start in 2021

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When it comes to starting a business, choosing a business idea to start with can be challenging as there is plenty to choose from. You can choose from various sectors such as home improvement, cleaning services to real estate businesses and much more. Here are a few profitable businesses you can start in 2021:

Digital Marketing Services

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, more businesses have set up online shops. You can create a digital marketing agency to help companies build their brand and establish their digital presence. You can run your agency from your home, and the startup costs are low.

Some of the services you can offer through your digital marketing agency include:
Copywriting
Social media advertising
Creative/brand consulting
Web design consulting
Content creation
SEO writing

E-commerce Dropshipping

As online technology is becoming more advanced setting up a dropshipping business has now become easier. With this business, you don’t have to worry about storing your inventory; all you need to do is list the products on your e-commerce website.

To get started with this business, you will need to partner with dropshipping suppliers such as Worldwide Brands, Doba, Oberlo, SaleHoo or Dropified. To ensure the business is successful in the long run, focus on boosting your website, expanding your audience and selecting in-demand products.

App Development

As businesses are now looking to go digital, most will likely seek to build an app to reach more customers. By building custom Android or iPhone apps for businesses, an App developer helps make businesses’ visions become a reality.

If you are planning to get involved in the app development field, you can start with training and acquiring experience in building apps. Free online courses and coding bootcamps can help you get started as you learn the fundamentals.

Real Estate Agency

The coronavirus has created a shortage of houses as people demand more spread out and bigger spaces. With prices expected to skyrocket, remote work has made more people leave cities to seek properties in suburb areas. These trends may be provisional, but the real estate business has so much to offer.

With available online classes, it is easy to become a licensed real estate agent. The Overhead costs involved are relatively low, as you can work from anywhere and won’t need a degree to get started.

Whether you want to supplement your salary or free yourself from the financial and personal restrictions of employment, there are many options for starting and growing your own business.

Employing non-EEA or Swiss Candidates in the UK

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employing skilled workers from outside the UK

Employing candidates from outside the UK is a great way for many employers to fill skilled positions which may be more difficult to fill with UK nationals. Positions such as healthcare professionals, science & research jobs, multi-language service jobs, sports and entertainment roles, may attract candidates from other countries that have a more niche skillset or specialist training.

Before seeking to employ non-EEA or Swiss candidates, you need to ensure you are eligable to employ them.

Free movement will cease at the end of this year, and Brexit will commence from the 1st January 2021. From this date forward, employers who are looking to hire a new non-EEA or Swiss citizens will have to follow the post-Brexit immigration system. As for new non-UK employees, each job applicant will need to apply for a work permit and visa before they can work in the UK.

You can choose to complete the applications yourself, however, by working with specialist immigration solicitors, you can ensure you are complying with the latest legal requirements.

Sponsor license

Employers will need to apply for a sponsor license when recruiting workers outside the UK. There are currently two types of sponsor license available. The tier 2 license applies to long term job offers in various sectors including general work, health care, Intra company transfer, sportsperson and minister of religion. The second type of license is tier 5, which is specifically for temporary employment.

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How to choose the right scrubber dryer

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A floor scrubber dryer is a piece of cleaning equipment that has grown in popularity within the cleaning industry. Compared to traditional manual brush and mop cleaning, a scrubber dryer can save you a lot of time and can help thoroughly clean the premises.

With this new equipment, cleaning companies will not need to hire as many people, and can save time carrying out the job.

When buying a scrubber dryer, there are a few things you will need to consider including the types of scrubber dryers available to you. Below we have covered the two types of a scrubber dryer.

Ride-on scrubber dryers

The ride-on machine comes with a seating area for the operator to sit on. It is ideal for covering larger areas as it is built with a working width of between 65cm and 150cm. If you are looking to clean large premises like an industrial or commercial space, this would be a perfect choice. It comes with a larger capacity water tank, holding more cleaning fluids, which therefore demands less emptying and refills, overall saving time in the process.

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Going Green in your Workplace – Top Tips to Get you Started

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The threat of global warming is HERE and ever so REAL! And everyone needs to share the burden and start cleaning up their act to alleviate the mounting problem of waste being sent to landfills all over the UK from the workplace.

So how can your company help?

Here are 6 tips to help you cut down on your workplace waste and potentially even save you valuable resources.

  1. Keep the 5Rs to heart – Always remember “Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle & Raising Awareness”
  2. Use your paper wisely – You can reuse scrap paper instead of using normal paper. In addition, try to print only when needed. 
  3. Segregation is the key – Invest in good quality bins and ensure that your garbages are segregated properly.
  4. Encourage employees to use reusable cups and mugs – Reusable mugs that can be used for both hot and cold beverages comes in various trendy designs. 
  5. Dispose of old electronic resources properly. Some of their parts can be recycled and others can be repurposed.
  6. Businesses should have effective waste management programs in place in order to reduce the carbon footprint and protect the environment.

There are a variety of companies available that provide both confidential waste disposal and wee recycling services. This combination of services allows businesses to effively reduce their carbon footprint whilst complying with disposal regulations.

The key to going green in your workplace is to identify the wasted resources and reduce them where possible. In addition, you can choose local suppliers or suppliers with similar values to further reduce your impact on the environment.

Why is air pressure testing required to pass building regulations?

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Building regulations in the UK require an air pressure test for all new buildings, in order to be compliant. But what is an air pressure test and why is it necessary?

The reason concerns conversation of energy and heat. All new buildings whether they are domestic or commercial, need to ensure their energy performance is at a certain standard.

A building that ‘leaks’ too much energy and heat is inefficient. It will have a higher CO2 footprint and will be expensive to heat. A level of controlled ventilation is fine, however uncontrolled ventilation through leaks can cause problems with condensation and damp, and affect the lifetime of the property. It is therefore in everyone’s interest to check the energy performance of all new buildings, to see if they meet the building regulation standard. These will have a better environmental rating.

The specific standards are Part L1A and L2A (England & Wales), Section 6 (Scotland) or Part F1 (Northern Ireland) of The Building Regulations. Calculations such as Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) calculations or Simplified Building Energy Model (SBEM) should be looked at during the design stage, and then they can be verified once the build is complete.

This is where the air pressure test comes in. Air pressure tests are used to test ‘air permeability’ or ‘air leakage’ of a building. This is a straightforward way to verify whether the building meets the building regulation standards.

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The Importance of Business Fire Alarm Systems

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Fire alarms are necessary in order to prevent loss of life and property in the event of a fire. Fire safety is therefore something that should be taken very seriously in the workplace. Owning a business is a huge responsibility and once you have taken on staff, your business becomes liable for the safety of those people. Accidental fires claim lives but this can be prevented, providing the correct installation of business fire alarm systems.

Installing alarms and detectors could save lives and also protect your business as a whole. Choose either to suit your working environment:

  • Manual System – call points on the wall for when someone sees a fire. They can activate it and set off the alarms. This is adequate for a specific working environment where people are always present.
  • Automatic Fire Detection – Fire would be automatically picked up by a detector and automatically set the fire alarm off. This is ideal for a work environment where people are not always present.

Proper installation of fire alarm systems is vital as this will be the indicator for people to call for help. A competent person should be assigned to conduct inspections and check on a weekly basis to ensure that they are working. Depending on the size of a business, full-service checks should be carried out once up to four times a year. This depends on the complexity of the system installed.

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How to Recruit Full Time, Part Time and Casual Staff for Your Business

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Finding the right talent is an essential part of operating a successful business. Based on the size of the company, the recruiters may need to hire full-time, part-time and casual staff on a continuous basis. This is why many recruiters use a diversity of mediums to attract top talent into their companies.

Choose the Right Recruitment Schemes

Many companies utilise a wide variety of recruitment schemes to attract new employees into their business. The scheme used is often based on the demand and the supply for a specific resource. If the demand for the resource is high and the supply is low, the recruiter will normally use a more aggressive tactic to secure the talent that they need. For instance, the demand for certain medical professionals is presently high and the pool of government website candidates is low. Therefore, recruiters will need a more aggressive tactic to obtain the talent that they need. One of which may involve going directly to the nursing schools in the surrounding areas to recruit the students that graduate. To make the job offers of the company more attractive, the students may be offered an added incentive bonus along with great health, dental and retirement benefits.

Target Part-time Friendly Candidates

Some companies have more part-time and casual job openings than others. Consequently, the recruiting that has to be done may require a customised recruitment scheme to secure the talent that is needed. Although part-time employment may be a long-term commitment for some people, others may accept a part-time job for very short time frames. Therefore, companies who want to attract the best candidates for their positions will need to recruit the people who need a long-term commitment. To accomplish these efforts, recruiters may want to target students who are currently in college. Fortunately, many college campuses and universities are open to these kinds of ongoing relationships since it helps their students with funding their tuition, books and room fees.

Use Network Strategies for Executive Talent

Even in harsh economic times, recruiting top talent is not always as simple as it appears. These pools may be filled with good talent but they may not be exactly what a company is looking for. Consequently, when recruiters are looking for a specific kind of talent to fill an executive position, they may need to solicit additional help through their government website networks as well as other mediums. From working with private talent agencies to involving direct recruiting agencies, employers have a diversity of methods that they can use to get the right people for the job. For instance, if they are looking for someone to fill an executive position in the field of technology, they may involve a private agency to find people who are currently on staff at other top companies. One of the tricks to this trade is to provide these coveted candidates with an offer that they cannot turn down (i.e. company stocks, family benefits etc.).

Use Online Career Boards

As stated above, sometimes the recruiter may want to confine the pool to a specific type of candidate. While this may be a great strategy for top executives, this may not be necessary for other full time, part time or casual staff positions. Instead, the recruiter may want to make the job position available to people from all over the country and abroad. Since the advent of the Internet, this can be achieved by posting it on popular online career boards. Candidates who are looking for jobs are always frequenting these boards to find employment. The role of the recruiter, however, is to make sure the job position is posted clearly and succinctly so that they will only get serious candidates that meet the requirements.

Help Grow Your Company With Business Training

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Once you have started a business, the task then turns to grow to the point at which it is profitable. However, this is not an easy task as there are so many things to learn while you trying to run the company’s day-to-day operations. With so much knowledge and varied skills required, it can be impossible to handle all these matters in-house.

Business support services offer training in a wide variety of fields from project management such as PRINCE2 or MSP Training, employee management to software training and sales force optimisation. You can get MSP foundation certifications and advanced project management courses from various accredited online institutions in the UK like MSPTraining.com.

A company that needs to implement the widely popular SAP suite of business software applications faces a hefty task if they try to accomplish this in-house. Not only would they need people with experience in SAP (System Analysis and Program Development) applications, but these employees should also have experience in teaching others on how to use the software. A superior solution can be to outsource SAP training to third-party service providers.
Outsourcing has many advantages as it leverages the expertise and experience of professional trainers. In this way, companies can save on the overhead costs required to launch and maintain the operations internally.

Another good example of using support services would be in the setting up of a customer contact centre. Such an operation may not be part of the company’s core mission but nonetheless, it may be an essential part of doing business.

By hiring a team to help company employees in customer contact centre operations, the business can save time, energy and resources. The support team will already have extensive experience in helping other clients establish such contact centres. Of course, nothing beats a well-trained employee that continually strives to improve the company’s methodology and business processes. Make sure to invest in training courses like Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Training in the UK.

While it may seem less expensive to handle it all internally, this is often the case because the decision makers do not put enough thought into how much work such training will actually require. In some instances, it may force the company to hire new people who have sufficient expertise in specific areas. Cultivating teamwork is as important as individual growth. Team building activities will also foster healthy competition and encourage mental concentration and physical exercise. The most popular travel and outdoor sports today are beach volleyball in Northumberland, rock climbing in London & SE area, and road buggy racing and paintballing in Dishford, Newcastle or North East. Arrange periodic workshop and group training for all your employees throughout the year.

By utilising these types of services, companies will know that they are receiving thorough instruction that covers the latest advancements in the field. Instead of a trial and error operation, training becomes more of a “turnkey” solution when you outsource the job to professionals.

What is Ergonomics in the Workplace?

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Ergonomics is hugely important in the workplace, but what is it? And how can it change the way you work? From adjustable chairs to specialist tools, here’s how ergonomics can make your job easier.

How Can Ergonomics Help My Workplace?

Before anything else, you’ve got to understand what ergonomics is. Ergonomics is all about designing the tools and furniture around us to make things as easy, efficient, safe and healthy as possible.

It’s about chairs that allow you to sit properly, desks at the right height, and machinery that’s easy to operate safely. As you can imagine, that means ergonomics has quite a big role to play in the workplace.

When it comes to improving ergonomics in the workplace, there’s some clear benefits to everyone involved. You can expect fewer injuries, fewer employees experiencing pain, increased productivity and increased morale.

People like it when their safety and preferences are taken into account, because you can’t really expect someone who’s six foot five and someone who’s five foot to be able to use the exact same chair and desk set up, especially not for long hours of the workday.

Many companies hire a specialist ergonomic consultant to thoroughly assess their workspace, observe how the team works and then suggest and implement practical solutions to improve performance.

happy workers are productive workersWhy is Ergonomics Important in Your Workplace?

Put simply, it’s important because businesses run on people, and if you want your employees to work like reliable cogs in the machine, you need to treat them right, and not put them under undue stress. Only through doing this can you maximise efficiency, and that’s talking from a managerial perspective.

From the employees perspective, just having your physical well-being taken into account properly can be a big morale booster, and allow you to avoid all kinds of unpleasant chronic issues that could result in claims against your employer, time off work, or simply inefficiency. (more…)

How to Finance Property Development?

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Property investors dream of investing in big projects that will give them good returns in future. Property developers usually finance new building projects or renovations of the old building. They can build up luxury homes, convert offices to flats, or develop a commercial building. However, investing in property development projects require a huge amount of money. Finding ways to finance this money can be a challenge.

There are many financing options available. Property development loans are available if you would like to invest in the UK market.  Property business is highly rewarding. It can give you consistent income and you can live without financial stress when you retire. According to a market research, the house prices in the UK have increased more than any other European countries since 1988. On average, the house price increases by 12.3% every year. This upward trend of the property market indicates that investing in UK property market is a wise decision.

Another reason to invest in this market is that there is a huge demand. The Office of National Statistics has declared that by 2025, there will be a shortfall of 1 million housing in the UK. That means that investing in the property market now can give you huge returns in the future and there is a huge opportunity for business growth in future.

How to Finance?

The interest rates have been low for the past six years, so it getting a loan will be cheaper. The mortgage payments are the lowest currently, so if you invest money in this market now you will be able to get good returns. You can rent out the property and enjoy high rental income every month. It is the right time to invest in residential and commercial properties because you will have good rental potential and prospect for a higher property value.

In order to invest money in property development, it is necessary to have sufficient fund. The available fund should cover the in initial investment and the cash flow. The type of funding depends on the scope and scale of the project. For example, if you are doing only light refurbishment then short-term loans will be a good option.  For heavy renovation, you need to go for long-term bridging finance. You can apply for short-term commercial loans as well. To build a property from scratch, you might need to think of several funding options.

Types of Finance

You should choose a finance option according to the need of your property development project. Here we are going to discuss some of the types of finance available for your project.

Personal Savings

If you have significant savings, then you may not need to look out for loans. You can use your cash to buy the property. This is the best option as you won’t incur any interest and won’t have to go through the complex process of borrowing. (more…)