Business Partner Magazine

Tips and advice for entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs

How Airtrack Factory Can Boost Your Earnings as a Personal Trainer

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You’ve started your new career as a personal trainer. You have completed the training, written your business plan and transitioned from full time employed to self-employed. According to your plan, you should have more money and more time to spend with your loved ones.

However, as you have probably discovered, working as a personal trainer is not always plain sailing. Getting a steady flow of customers is easier said than done. Once everyone has given up on their New Year’s resolutions or shed a few pounds for their holidays, it can be excruciatingly quiet, leaving you struggling to meet your monthly bills and to fill your time. Or perhaps, everyone expects you to help them for free or to pay ‘mates rates’.

Whatever you expected, you didn’t expect it to be this hard! Don’t give up yet!

The following tips provide suggestions for additional services you can offer as a personal trainer whilst building your list of regular paying clients. It also demonstrates how airtrack factory products can help you to do so.

Tumble Tots

Parents are always looking for ways to entertain their children and develop their motor skills.  Use your skills to work with toddlers to develop body awareness and increase coordination. Equipment such as the airtrack factory inflatable gym mat makes it easy to take your service from one location to another.

Kids Clubs

Offer activities to children after school or during the school holidays and encourage them to get fit. There has been a huge surge in the interest in “Parkour” as seen in the spectacular chase scenes in movies such as The Bourne Legacy and Casino Royale. Parkour offers a full body workout and involves jumping, swinging, running and climbing. The airtrack factory slip and slide allows you to minimize impact when teaching the basic gymnastic tumbles, jumps, and somersaults.

Exercise Sessions for Senior Citizens

There are so many benefits to keeping fit in later life. With a growing elderly population, you will not have a lack of clients.  Walking clubs, Yoga, Tai Chi or seated exercise clubs offer gentle muscle strengthening activities whilst also boosting flexibility.

The above are just a few suggestions to diversify your activities and to help provide a steady stream of income.  Take some time to research further activities that you could offer as a personal trainer. Airtrack factory US will be able to provide you with many inflatable products that are portable and can be used in multiple locations.

The Ways Flexible Packaging Has Changed Marketing, Ensured Product Quality And Lessened Costs

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If you are in a manufacturing business, you may already know what flexible packaging is. Flexible packaging has changed the way of marketing and maintaining product quality of many products including food products, toys, tobacco, sports items, household cleaners and more.

Marketing Made Easy With Flexible Packaging Materials

The use of flexible packaging materials such as plastic pouch has made life easier for marketers to make their products look smart and attractive. First of all, flexible packaging allows companies to use digital printing on product packages to make the products most attractive and different from the competitor products. You can convey all the information on the product packages about the product. Additionally, you can give the product unique looks being creative with the size of the products. Just go to any superstore around you and you will see how beautiful the products on shelves look when packaged with flexible packaging. In a nutshell, the advent of flexible packaging made marketing easy allowing marketers to be creative with product look and size.

Product Quality Assurance With Flexible Packaging

Flexible packaging is made of Polyethylene (PE), Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE), Polypropylene (PP), and High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) and similar other materials are perfect for ensuring the quality of many products especially food products over time. Use of these materials for packaging ensures the food items do not get exposed to natural environment and get rotten quickly. Products do not mix up and maintain its quality over time for not getting exposed. Additionally, customers can see the products inside packages when a portion of the package is left unprinted. This allows customers to be sure of the quality of the product inside. When products are transported from one place to another, flexible packages ensure the non-breakage of the products. You may have noticed that food products are packed with air. So, even when a large product package falls from hand of a worker, all the products don’t get broken. This is a huge advantage unthinkable without flexible packaging.

Lessening Packaging Costs With Flexible Packaging

Flexible packaging does not just make marketing easy and ensure product quality over time, it also allows companies to cut packing cost by large. Think about the cost of paper bags, cardboards, glass bottles, plastic boxes and other common packaging materials and the cost of flexible packaging materials. So, flexible packaging allows companies to save big in both packaging costs and marketing.

Conclusion

If your business is yet to adopt flexible packaging, maybe you should rethink your packaging and marketing strategy.  If your company operate in large scale, you can have your own packaging section and buy flexible packaging printers to print on the packages of your products. Especially if your business is in the food industry, we highly recommend you to adopt flexible food packaging.

Employing Someone With A Disability: What You Should Know

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The National Disability Employment Awareness month comes this October. On that entire month, multiple advocacy groups and organizations in the U.S. will organize events to educate employers and promote hiring individuals with disabilities. There are a lot of things an employer must know when hiring people with disabilities. In fact, regardless if you’re a large corporation or a beginning microbusiness, there are plenty of benefits and reasons for hiring disabled persons, including those with hearing loss, vision loss, and other disabilities.

Why Should You Hire Disabled Persons?

The business case for employing disabled persons is strong. A company may save costs due to reduced staff turnover, lower enlistment or recruitment, and retraining costs. Further, people with disabilities make fewer compensation accidents and incidents at work, unlike other employees. Thus, insurance cover and compensation expenses are generally lower.

Employing persons with disabilities also guarantees that the team represents all components of the local community. Disabled persons also contribute an extensive set of skills, abilities, and talents to the workplace, like all other employees. Many possess tertiary or trade certificates which guarantees they can operate in any job.

What You Should Know When Hiring Someone With A Disability

Employing disabled people can bring plenty of benefits to the workplace. In fact, there is a notable gap between the ratio of non-disabled employees compared to handicapped employees. Inviting disabled persons to send applications is good for the business.

1. Individuals with disabilities are highly reliable and manifest higher job retention rates.

Studies show that people with disabilities take fewer days off, and are more likely to stay in their jobs compared to other employees. A study conducted by The Chicago Lighthouse demonstrated that there was indeed a significant retention rate with disabled persons. The Illinois Tollway call center employs disabled persons such as those who are visually impaired, completely blind, suffer from another disability, or are veterans. The results show that employees with disabilities had a higher retention rate in contrast to the retention rate of non-disabled employees.

2. Disabled employees are less susceptible to work-related accidents.

Further studies deduced that disabled workers had remarkably higher key performance in their area of safety in contrast to employees without disabilities. Thus, disabled persons are more conscious of their safety in the workplace.

3. Businesses may receive tax credits or other incentives when they hire persons with disabilities.

Legitimate businesses may receive incentives such as tax credits to assist them in accommodating and hiring disabled people. Most of these credits are given to finance expenses involved in purchasing equipment suited for disabled workers. The credits or incentives may also be used for covering the expenses of any modifications or improvements necessary to make the building more accessible to them.

The grants or incentives given can also be used to fund the following expenses:

  • Special equipment and aids
  • Travel to and from work
  • Communication support
  • Offer support to individuals with mental health conditions who find it difficult to work

4. Employing persons with disabilities will increase diversity in the workplace.

Employees with and without disabilities benefit equally from a diverse or varied work setting. Further, working together with disabled employees make non-disabled employees become more aware in making the work setting more accessible and inclusive to everyone.

Non-disabled employees may consider ideas they have never reflected on before, like the accessibility challenges and experiences of their disabled co-workers. Moreover, disabled employees can also enlighten their co-workers about imagination, creativity and other methods of solving problems and accomplishing multiple tasks.

5. Persons with disabilities are as skillful and talented as anyone else.

This is the simplest, but many times most challenging consideration for employers to comprehend when hiring disabled persons. In fact, in many parts of the world, the unemployment rate of disabled persons has been hovering at more than 70 percent. Unfortunately, most employers refuse to employ people with disabilities because they think they are incapable of doing required tasks or jobs. Further, employees refuse to hire disabled persons simply because they are unaware of the multiple adaptive techniques and equipment available that can allow them to work.

6. Hiring disabled persons is suitable for the workplace.

Further, employing persons with disabilities can increase the number of excellent applicants. These disabled persons can create a workforce that reflects the diverse customers the business serves, and the community it is located in. Moreover, disabled persons possess plenty of skills that can benefit the business. For instance, a disabled employee’s ability to use sign language can result in huge savings. Also, they can converse with clients or customers who can only communicate with the use of the sign language.

7. The expenses of creating reasonable adjustments to assist disabled employees are quite low.

Disabled employees stay longer. Thus the benefits of a retained skilled disabled employee are significantly higher than recruiting, enlisting and training new staff.

Conclusion

One of the key features of the disability equality policy is equal opportunities in the employment world. Thus, employing someone with a disability benefits both employers and employees. Disabled employees possess skills, talents, and faculties which can provide added quality to any small business or large enterprise. If you’re not sure on the legal areas of hiring someone with a disability it might be best to see help from a lawyer.

About the Author

Andrew Nickleson is a passionate writer, writing about disabilities and the law. He has written about many subjects aimed to help those who have questions unanswered. In his spare time he enjoys working on volunteering for those less fortunate.

5 Unique Business Cost Saving Ideas You Should Apply In Your Business

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In this highly competitive world, you should always look to lessen your expenses to have better revenue margins. Therefore, every manager is always on a fact-finding mission, to find out ways in which to minimize the operating costs of running a business. Here are five ways to try:

  1. Change The Way You Do Your Marketing

There is no need to advertise on prime time television where you will not get feedback and will pay an astounding amount of money when you advertise online where customers will find a channel to give you a feedback about your products. Start by creating a website supported by a blog or several blogs where you can tell people about your products and services. You will be surprised at the amount of money that you can save. So, rethink your advertising strategies and reduce advertising costs if possible.

  1. Use The Already Existing Employees Before Hiring New Ones

When you need a certain skill, you should first look for the skills with the employees of your business instead of hiring new ones. You may easily find an existing employee with just about the same skill that you are looking for. Now, if you go ahead and hire an extra employee, you will need more space, more money and other resources to bring them aboard.

  1. Save Energy In The Office

Do you know how much money you lose by virtue of lost energy? It is a lot of money every month. Many employees do not worry about switching off the appliances that they are not using and they leave them plugged in most of the time. This means lost energy. It also means that you pay more for your energy bills than you should.  For corner offices, use as much of natural lighting as possible. For every device or appliance that is not being used, it should be switched off. There is no need to leave the printer on when you are not printing. Install windows with reversible insulation – one to keep in the heat during winter and the other to keep out the heat during summer.

  1. Use All The Space Available

If you de-clutter the offices, you will find that there is so much space lying idle that could be used to fit in another workstation. You could also create extra space for that printer or other office appliance that you want to buy. Should you manage to get a full office that is not being used, you can even hire it out to another company and make money.

  1. Employ Technology For As Many Tasks As Possible

Automate as many services as you can and invest in management tools like CRM. You will be surprised just how fast work will flow and how much money you will save in the long run. With so many vendors online, you should be able to find an appropriate solution for your business. Say for example, going online can save you cost of printing. Online advertisements will not require you to print handouts, leaflets and similar marketing materials. Still if you need a small portion of materials printed, you can hire a professional printing service provider. For businesses in Austin, there are some affordable yet highly professional printing service providers. You can look for similar services around you.

Keep Sick Leave Under Control During the Season

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Caucasian woman having bad cold blowing her noseThe festive season often brings challenges to employers as an annual challenge to try to battle through the cold months with a full team. Absences often happen, and one of the biggest causes is seasonal sick leave.

Most employees will follow the office procedures and rules in regards to calling in sick however, there are always a few occasional workers who seem to take advantage of the system. What can you do to stay on top of it?

Simple: have very clear sickness rules and monitoring processes. Here’s how:

Sick leave policy & procedures

All companies should have sickness policies and procedures. If you don’t, you need them to set out:

  • How staff should report an absence.
  • The proof people need to verify.
  • What constitutes action against an employee.
  • Your sick pay arrangements.

Managing employee sickness is important for the growth of your business and for maintaining a strong organizational culture. Keeping a formal record of leaves of absence has long-term advantages and ensures both you and your employees are aware of what happens.

 Monitoring sick leave

Record all periods of staff sick leave in an easy-to-read format. Ensure that you are also documenting the reasoning for their absence. This allows you to identify any patterns, like if someone takes every Thursday off (when you know there are staff drinks every Wednesday night).

Once sick leave reaches an unacceptable level, you can take disciplinary action. Habitual short-term absences are more likely to elicit corrective action than longer-term absences.

A verbal or written warning is usually enough to diminish absence issues.

Return-to-work interview

This is a helpful tool to talk through an employee’s absence and discuss whether you can offer support to keep them in work. Let them know that you’ve noticed issues in attendance and see if they are open to telling you what the problem is.

If they aren’t sharing information, ensure that you ask the right questions, such as whether there are any issues you should know about, to see if they could be suffering from a disability.

Then, you can put in place alterations to help decrease absences.

Deal with fake sick leave

If you suspect someone’s dishonest about being sick during the festive season, investigate it. Get as much evidence as possible, include notes from any return-to-work interviews, and get witness statements from colleagues (they may have overheard employees talking about fake sickness).

Once the investigation’s over, invite your employee to a disciplinary hearing and get in-person answers to your questions. When you get insufficient explanations or lies, take disciplinary action for falsely claiming sickness.

Reduce individuals coming to work despite of illness

Your stance on employee being absence due to illness should not be so severe that employees who are genuinely sick feel like they have to come to work.

In fact, ‘presenteeism’ has a damaging impact on your workforce.

For employers, a paid sick leave is beneficial to accelerate recovery time and reduce the spread of illness, both of which, help to increase workplace productivity and morale.