Creative Corporate Entertainment – Guide to Choosing the Right Event
Corporate entertainment is of crucial importance in today’s business world. It is used to woo potential clients, to celebrate a goal reached, to reward and motivate staff and even as a subtle method of team building. But there is such a bewildering array of corporate entertainment events, what do you choose? Here are a few ideas of what is on offer.Adventure DaysAdventure themed corporate entertainment events have been around for quite a while now. They provide you with an exciting and entertaining day out and offer the chance to sample activities that most people would not normally experience. The original adventure days involved abseiling and climbing, plus possibly weekends out in the wilds, although the latter became the stereotype for management training and team building events. These are still very popular but could alienate some of your staff who prefer a dry and less physical environment. Also, there can be quite a lot of standing around watching others. The adventure days style of corporate entertainment has evolved into more sophisticated events, for example Spy themed events, in which teams compete in a variety of short tasks, motivated by (fake) money!Hospitality DaysTaking your clients or staff on a day at the races or to a football match is another popular corporate event. One benefit of these is that your staff or clients will remain dry! They will also be pampered as sporting clubs and venues compete for their slice of the huge sums spent on corporate entertainment. A downside is, as with the adventure days, some staff could be thoroughly bored by the sporting event so do your homework carefully.Food and Evening EventsWe are talking casino nights, wine tasting, chocolate tasting, gourmet meals and so on here. Even the most sour of your employees could not fail to have a great time, unless of course they are teetotal or on a diet! The casino night is popular with just about everybody – the point is to try and make money, but even losing huge sums can make for great entertainment. With the tastings, always make sure that they are a little bit special, either at a special venue or with a company who emphasises the ‘fun’ in ‘corporate fun event’.Themed EventsThe corporate entertainment events that prove hugely successful with staff and clients are themed days – It’s a Knockout for example. An up and coming fun day idea is the Medieval themed event that have developed from the medieval banquet style of event. Participants dress up in medieval clothing for the whole event, which is just the start of the fun. As the day progresses, they learn and practice an assortment of medieval skills like archery, building and firing a trebuchet (siege catapult), getting a reluctant boar to the kitchen and jousting. As the day develops, everyone is involved in an archery battle, where the battle of Agincourt is (sort of) re-enacted. The day is given a real sense of direction by the jousting finale. In the jousting, each team’s best knight competes for the championship – on horses propelled by the other team members. Great fun indeed!So to sum up, there are many different events out there; all have their merits and drawbacks so think carefully before choosing. Ring the changes, don’t go for the same event each time, no matter how much fun it is, too much can be boring and demotivate staff. Some corporate entertainment also doubles as team building which is an added bonus to your organisation.
Top Goal for Small Businesses: The Eight Most Important Checkup Questions for 2021
Are you happy with your business this year? What are you going to do differently? How can you hire the right people to support your vision? Sadly, many small business owners do not spend enough time planning for the future. It’s quite understandable. Managers must keep pace with the daily demands of their businesses, including payroll, taxes, product/service delivery, and customer expectations.Fortunately, the end of the year is the perfect time for a comprehensive evaluation of your company. Your business needs a checkup. Most people can relate to a checkup with their local doctor, depending on their background and personality characteristics (age, sex, family medical history). The doctor will conduct a variety of tests, including blood, vision, heart, and hearing.In fact, one element like an individual’s weight is not the only indicator of overall good health. Likewise, small businesses could benefit from a good checkup too. Successful entrepreneurs think strategically when engaged in a hostile, global environment.After 27 years of managing projects and conducting over 100 organizational evaluations of business organizations, I realize that both large and small organizations struggle in implementing their operations effectively. This article examines how small businesses need to conduct an effective checkup of their organizations.Welcome to the New Normal! Yet, nearly a year after this pandemic, the full impact on the U.S. economy is unclear. According to recent studies, more than four million Americans have left the workforce, and nearly 10 million are now unemployed compared with last February.In fact, the number of unemployed people continues to rise. According to a business study conducted between March 28 and April 4, 2020, small businesses have been heavily damaged by the lockdowns due to Covid-19.In an analysis of more than 5,800 small businesses (reaching a network of 4.6 million small businesses), the research highlighted the damage caused by the pandemic. The results showed evident damage of the pandemic. At this juncture, 43% of businesses had temporarily closed, and nearly all of these closures were due to COVID-19.Respondents stated that they had temporarily closed, largely pointed to reductions in demand and employee health concerns as the reasons for closure. In fact, the businesses, on average, reported having reduced their active employment by 39% since January.All industries have been impacted. However, retail, arts and entertainment, personal services, food services, and hospitality businesses showed significant employment declines exceeding 50%. Some businesses hope for assistance from the government.According to a Babson’s Goldman Sachs report, 88% of U.S. small business owners have already exhausted their Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan; the Small Business Association gave these loans specifically to help businesses keep their workforce employed during the pandemic. These loans were helpful.Yet, these successes do not diminish the fact that more than 32% of PPP loan recipients already have laid off employees or cut wages. In fact, Forty-three percent of Black small business owners reported that their businesses’ cash reserves would be depleted by year’s end due to Covid-19.Today’s small businesses and entrepreneurs must retool themselves, given the potential impacts of Covid-19 have the necessary capacity to change their way of thinking because of their passion. However, small businesses must be willing to evaluate their current operations and make the required changes.For example, customers have largely gone online to purchase services due to the lockdowns. If a business does not have an online presence now, this company does not exist. Internet pioneer and CEO of PSINet Bill Schrader explains the significant of online visibility: “Almost overnight, the Internet’s gone from a technical wonder to a business must.”With the appropriate diagnosis of an organization, a business can develop more sustainable success. Thus, the right checkup is critical.Below are some critical questions to help you conduct your own self-checkup:
Do you have a clear vision for your business? What is it?
Do you know why your customers buy from you and why others do not buy from you?
What results are you getting from your marketing? Do you have an effective online presence on the web?
Are you collecting data or the right kind of data on your customers and competitors?
Are you keeping pace with your industry trends? If so, what are the key trends?
How are you measuring results (i.e., key performance indicators like cash flow and revenue)?
What are your key competitors’ marketing strategies?
Have you evaluated your strengths and weaknesses (i.e., SWOT Analysis)?
In summary, successful global businesses, like IBM and Google, have continuous systems in place to evaluate their performance. Let’s call this process an organizational checkup.Small businesses that want to succeed in this global and technological climate must be able to conduct this self-evaluation or checkup. This article demonstrated the relevancy of a good checkup to help improve a business by asking probing questions. In many cases, small businesses do not have to take on this organizational checkup along.There are various organizations like the Small Business Administration and local universities that can assist in this process. Have you conducted a checkup for your business this year? It’s not too late. Start the new year with a healthy business checkup.© 2021 by D. D. Green
The Heart of Education is the Student’s Learning – The Library and the Librarian
The heart of education is the student’s learning. The responsibility of the librarian is to develop knowledge so that learning will become more lastingly significant, more permanently meaningful and more personally satisfying. Perhaps, much of what the students learn will wear out or become obsolete. But information skills learned in libraries will continue to be functional indefinitely or for as long as they are needed (Mangay, 2004).The school/college library is a vital partner in knowledge management and should share with the school/college their responsibility to systematically design, carry out, and evaluate the total process of learning and teaching (Herring, 1982). In which case, the library assumes the role of mediator between pupils/students and learning resources, and between teachers/lecturers and instructional resources. The library contributes to a meaningful, satisfying and challenging education, if directly involved (Mangay, 2004).The school/college library should be seen as an integral part of the school/college organization and not as an orphanage. Its development cannot be isolated from development in education because it is a part of the education system. The library is unique in that its users are part of its education, acquiring skills in the effective use of information to meet certain learning goals. The library is not merely a support to the curriculum but an active part of the curriculum.Education generally is moving from traditional class teaching of restricted subject/modules, towards more individual work, group learning, project work, research and making increasing use of non-book as well as book resources. The disappearance of streaming in the school curriculum plays a vital role in the search for methods or sources that will cope with the great variety in the learning capabilities of pupils/students.The traditional ‘chalk and talk’ approach of teacher/lecturer centred education has been modified. Teachers/lecturers now spend their time to introduce pupils/students to topics and explain concepts and methods in a lecturer-type situation. Pupils/students are required to learn for themselves and by themselves and where possible as their own pace. We continue to see the gradual growth of the use of the ‘newer media’ alongside the ‘older print’ medium (Mangay, 2004).School/college libraries offer a learning environment within which the pupil/student can learn and practice the techniques of enquiring and research. Their collections express anticipated requirements of all teaching units and special interests of the school/college, and in addition, pay particular attention to the personal cultural and recreational interests of young people themselves, so that reading and enquiring become natural habits of life.Libraries are now entering a new stage of development in the information age. New educational developments have strengthened the role and importance of school/librarians. They have the task of fulfilling the natural role of school/college libraries as a centre for learning and the exploitation of all available methods of communication. The library is a communication centre. Its commitment and concern for the encouragement of reading and enrichment of the individual’s imaginative and creative life remains undiminished (Taylor, 1980).It is the responsibility of the librarians to ensure that clientele develop the skill to find, use, evaluate and retrieve materials according to the clientele’s own felt need and purposes. He should provide reference and guidance services when the clientele’s skills are not adequate to the search problem at hand (Grass and Klentz, 1999). Librarians are often viewed as providers of resources, rather than co-teachers who share common goals. The librarian is an educator, custodian, organizer and disseminator of knowledge. The library therefore, enables the student to investigate context beyond curriculum.Effective library use will enhance library-consciousness of young people; transform non-users and enthusiastic students to become lifelong readers and learners. Library-consciousness will also change the opinion of students who think his/her purpose in the library is only to study lecture notes or charge mobile phones without the ability to make research for assignments, project-writing or other academic assessments. The library enables users to develop lifelong literacies. It helps to increase individual student efforts and attainment; creates a new look at the use of information, and it is a stimulus for the academic community (lecturers, staff, students, researchers).Finally, the library should be recognised and utilized by other professional colleagues in the learning enterprise (Lance and Loertsher, 2001). It brings professional clientele by the resources provided, thus facilitating richly-improved lecture notes fruitful to students’ learning, project writing, term papers, assignments and of course, examination. Better approach will be taken on modules taught and ‘notes-making’. This stimulates partnership between lecturers and the librarian. The work of the librarian is of high-quality and he/she makes valuable contribution to the academic community (Grass and Klentz, 1999).BIBLIOGRAPHYGrass, J. and Klentz, S. (1999). “Developing for authentic learning”. Teacher Librarian, 27(1), pp.22-25.Herring, J.E. (1988). School Librarianship. 2nd ed. London: Clive Bingley.Lance and Loertscher, D.V. (2001). Powering achievement: school library media-programs, make a difference – the evidences. Sam Josa, California: H. William. Research and Publishing.
Mangay, S. (2004). The need for provision for an effective school library system in Sierra Leone. (unpublished).Taylor, L.J. (1980). A librarian’s handbook: supplementary papers and documentation, containing new policy, statement, standards of service and memoranda of evidence, and a fully revised direction section. Vol.2. London : The Library Association.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Network Marketing
Learning to utilise network marketing to promote your business both for advertising and recruitment of more affiliates is a brilliant concept. However, there are a number of do’s and don’ts with which to comply.Do:
Ensure you are aware of and comply with all the regulations and legislation that now applies to online marketing.
Thoroughly research the network(s) you want to become part of. Understand who the participants are, and what marketing messages they are open to.
Develop metrics to enable you to track and analyse the return you are getting from your marketing spend.
Don’t:
Make assumptions about the people and businesses on the network targeted. Marketing messages that are effective need to be highly focused.
Spam your fellow network users with messages. With online network marketing quality is much more favourable than quantity.
Ever sell or otherwise pass on any personal details about the people or businesses on your target network without their permission.
Checklist for Network Marketing InvolvementPlanning is vitally important to ensure you join the right network(s) that will deliver the business benefits you are looking for.When joining a network, ensure that you:
Choose the right network for your business goals. Ask yourself why you are joining an online network. What do you want to get out of this activity?
Develop your user profile. Networking is all about relationships. The more people and businesses know about you, the closer that relationship. However, be careful when exposing information about yourself and your business. Always check your data is being held securely.
Try to avoid hard sales pitches on your networks as these are usually rejected.. Your core motivation for joining an online network may be to sell your business’ goods or products or recruit people for affiliation.
Obey the network rules. Every network has its own rules. Ensure you are aware of the etiquette that is in place.
Commit enough resources. When joining one or more online networks that support your sector, think about how much time and resources that are available. These network connections need to be maintained which could be very time consuming.
Maintain contacts. It can be difficult to maintain a large number of contacts. Identify the key contacts with whom you want to maintain a relationship. This will enable a better budget of time and resources.
Enhance your business brand. Joining a network can have a great positive impact on a business brand. The close working relationships built via networks is now an essential component of modern branding practice.
Create new, original and engaging content. No one wants to read boring posts on the networks of which you are a member. Write relevant and engaging content each time you contribute to a network.
Place advertising on carefully chosen networks. The online networks that have developed over the last few years are clearly a great location for business advertising. Banner ads are now appearing on network websites. Careful consideration must be given to what kind of advertising is placed on these networks and what messages they contain. Research the profile of network members to help design an engaging advertising message which will receive a positive response.