Solent Business Academy becomes a Reputation Advocate

Posted on 31st January 2017 By Robert Briggs

We provide a full range of flexible business support servicesfor top management through to the individual employee that brings vision, focus and innovation to an organisation.

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Thinking of outsourcing : do your diligence!

Posted on 7th January 2017 By Robert Briggs

This time of year many business owners look to outsourcing certain activities. This can be a great way of reducing the burden or growing the business.

On the other hand the wrong outsourcing partner can cause mayhem and add to the stress levels. Not an ideal solution!

To reduce the risk do some basic diligence:

Do they have appropriate qualifications – this could be a recognised qualification or qualification by doing. In other words do they know what they are talking about?
Are they experienced – have they done the work (or similar work) in the past and can you talk to a previous client about their experience?
Do they comply with the relevant legislation – they need to know what laws apply to their business and be compliant with them. A great example is data protection. You don’t want to have an issue because your outsourcing partner doesn’t understand their responsibilities with your data!
Are they insured for the work they will be doing for you – insurance is a safety net for you and may influence your bargaining position over rates!

The extent of the diligence you do clearly relates to the value of the contract but remember it is your reputation to lose!

If you are going to rely on recommendations from others, always ask yourself why the person is giving the recommendation. For example is it because:

they have experienced the service and found it to be satisfactory?
they know someone from a networking meeting?
they know someone from social media?
they are going to receive some form of payment for the introduction?

The rationale for the introduction is important to your decision making process.

If it helps Crimson Crab can carry out diligence on potential outsourcing partners read more…

Our Reputation Advocates have been checked against the membership criteria, so that some of the diligence legwork has been done for you. They also work to our Ethical Trading Policy and Code of Conduct to give added peace of mind. The directory of members is here.

Is your business doing enough to support people with disabilities?

Posted on 12th December 2016 By Robert Briggs

When it comes to providing an inclusive workplace for people with disabilities, some businesses believe that following the legally correct policies is enough. Unfortunately, it isn’t.

Whilst many employers do their best make reasonable workplace adjustments, staff perception and awareness of disability in the workplace is equally as important- but commonly neglected. The truth is, even if a business provides the most inclusive working environment available- these adjustments are worthless if your staff lack an inclusive mind-set.

Some employers may feel that their staff are a friendly and considerate group, and therefore do not need such training. However, you’d be surprised to learn that a recent Scope survey revealed that 67% of the British public actually ‘feel uncomfortable’ when talking to disabled people and ‘awkward’ about being patronising or saying the wrong thing.

At Enable Me, we educate workforces by breaking down these barriers and changing the way people think. Our disability awareness training programmes are user-led (meaning the courses are run by people with disabilities themselves), and cover etiquette, communication correct use of language, and inclusive behaviour, as well as legislation and adapting the business environment.

Understanding disability

At Enable Me, we also aim to break the common misconception that your businesses may be ‘unaffected by disability’ as there aren’t any people with disabilities working for the company- therefore adjustments and training are not required.

Currently 12 million people in the UK have a disability, and vast numbers of people have what are known as ‘hidden disabilities’ including sensory disabilities, a range of mental health conditions, brain Injury, epilepsy, diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, cystic fibrosis- to mention just a few. So, it’s highly likely that as a company, you already employ someone with a disability, that you didn’t even know about.

Furthermore, it is also worth considering that disability is something that can occur – in fact, only 17% of people are actually born with a disability, 83% acquire it later in life. In total, 780,000 people become disabled every year, therefore the idea that disability won’t affect an organisation is also a perception that should change.

The benefits of awareness

If your staff are client facing, there is a good chance you are neglecting to capitalise on a very vast number of potential customers. Households with a disabled person have a combined income of £212 billion after housing costs- so failing to target this market is a huge waste – one which awareness training can help you change.

Enable Me’s training will empower your workforce with a greater sense of empathy, and will also encourage them to understand the needs of other people. Your business will begin to appeal to a wider group of talented employees, and furthermore, you will proudly reap the reward of publicity when you declare your dedication to becoming a fully inclusive organisation.

So if you want your business to be truly inclusive, your staff to be empathetic and understand the needs of people, whilst you tap into a wider group of customers and talented employees- contact Enable Me -and gain the awareness your business needs.

Reputation Matters by Chris Jay from Enable Me an accredited Reputation Advocate.

For further details on how Enable Me can help your workforce gain a positive perception of disability call: 01903 734400 or email chris@enablemeproject.org.uk

www.enablemeproject.org.uk

What Makes A Perfect Profile Photo

Posted on 22nd November 2016 By Crimson Crab

“IMAGE IS EVERYTHING”

Life is all about first impressions, Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov.

Forming a first impression takes 1/10th of a second.

In 1/10th of a second we decide someone’s Competence, Likeability and Influence by possibly viewing a profile photo of them.

How does this relate to Business?

“People buy from people they like know and trust”
If you don’t have a picture, how can you start the process?
More importantly how do you go about getting a good profile image?

A couple of years ago “Photofeeler” carried out some research using 800 profile images. Viewers were asked to rate the images against Competence, Likeability and Influence. The research did not include the characteristics like gender, age, and physical traits.

The following were considered the important areas discovered by the research, are you surprised?

Eyes

When viewing images of someone, people like to see the full facial features of who they are looking at. Obstructions such as hats, sunglasses or poor lighting can hide features and this reduces the likeability of what the viewer is seeing. Look into the camera, don’t hide.

Squinting

Ensure that you squint slightly when looking into the lens. Having wide open eyes gives the impression of the rabbit in the headlights, it denotes fear.

Having a slight squint, increases the perception of your
competence, influence, likeability and feels more comfortable for the viewer.

Face

Profile photos that show a defined Jawline increase your perception of competence, influence, and likeability.

Smiling

I know we have all made excuses, “I don’t like smiling”, “my teeth aren’t white”, “I’ll crack the lens” but that’s what they are excuses.

Want to increase the perception of people viewing you? Then an open smile is a good way of doing so. By smiling you appear friendlier, happier, healthier, and more relaxed.

If your smile is a closed smile (no teeth showing) then your perception of competence, influence, and likeability is likely to drop by half of that with an open smile.

Be careful though don’t turn the smile into a laugh, although this was found more likeable the competence and influence was shown to have dropped. So keep the smile controlled.

Body

The way you dress in a photo says a lot of who you are. Think it’s not important and anything will do?

The research showed that formal dress gained the greatest
perceived Competence and
Influence. That is a dark suit over a light coloured shirt/blouse, and men you need a tie.

By all means dress down for your photo but this will lose viewers perception of how credible you are. Also beware of stripes and bold colours.

Body Area Shown

How much of the body should be shown:

Close-up of the face?
Head and face?
Head and shoulders?
Head to waist?

The research showed that head and shoulders or head to waist shots fared better than face only close-ups.

Those people that used a full body shot negatively affected competence and influence.

Setting

The research never came up with an answer to this. However as a personal opinion the background needs to be plain or out of focus. The important thing is that the subject stands out.

Maybe you can experiment with different colours. Have your head-shot taken against a green screen and have a series of different background (colours or out of focus) being used.

Avoid direct sunlight images as you will either be squinting with the sun in your face or to dark (unless flash is used) with the sun at your back. Both of these viewers will lose confidence in you.

profile photo demonstrating an office setting with a blurred background

Editing

The key here is moderation; all digital photos benefit from some editing:

colour correction
Spots
Dandruff
Lightening
Softening
contrast etc.

But avoid anything extreme.

All photographs copyright © Martin Harris. All rights reserved.

Martin Harris

T: 07824 331 730

E: martin@mhphotographyhampshire.co.uk

W: www.mhphotographyhampshire.co.uk

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How much do you value your reputation?

Posted on 14th November 2016 By petercbw

Are you aware that documents you’re sending out by post or by email attachment may contain errors that might damage your hard-earned reputation?

The reason I ask is because I recently received an email from the Sales Director of a local company in which was attached a sales brochure. On reading this brochure I spotted 12 mistakes.

When I replied to notify him of this, he was devastated as he had no idea that he was sending out literature that contained mistakes. He said he would be going back to his marketing people to point this out and that a new brochure would come to me first for professional proofreading.

I’m sure I’m not the only one that will spot these mistakes. Whilst the product being promoted wasn’t appropriate for me, those for whom it would be appropriate are probably now making a negative judgement about the business and saying, “If they can’t be bothered to check their literature, then why should I be bothered to place an order?” The poor quality of the brochure gives the wrong impression to prospective customers.

You probably do everything necessary to ensure that your products and services are delivered to the best of your ability. You protect your staff, yet how much care do you take over all the various bits of written material that your business produces?

I’m talking about stuff like website content, blog content, publicity/marketing material, emails, newsletters, reports…..the list goes on.

Many of us may take all this for granted as it is just something we do without thinking about it. But let’s think about it for a minute……..

Any piece of written material that you ‘publish’ by sending it to a customer or out into the public domain via a website or a blog, for example, is either promoting your business or it will reflect back on the quality of your business, without you even knowing it.

Did you know, in a recent survey, 59% of respondents said they would not do business with a company whose marketing material contained errors?

So, what do you do to make sure that your written content is accurate and error free? Do you rely totally on your auto-correct functions and a spellchecker? That’s fine, but did you realise that if a word is spelt correctly but you might have keyed it incorrectly, a spellchecker won’t pick it up? That could be embarrassing if you type ‘naked’ instead of ‘named’.

Reading and re-reading your own work is not only time consuming – time that you could be using to better effect – but you’re more likely to miss those small errors because your eyes and brain recognise what you’ve written and will skim over it even though it could be wrong.

The brain is an incredible thing. If you’re reading something and you spot a mistake then your brain will automatically flip into a different mode and focus on finding the next mistake instead of the message contained within the writing. So, if you’ve got an important message to get across to your potential clients, you must make sure that it’s error-free otherwise you’ll lose the reader’s attention.

These are classic examples of how a trained proofreader can help businesses to preserve and enhance reputations through the publication of professional-looking and error-free copy.