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Anything you purchase or create in this world needs nurturing and taking care of to stay in peak condition. Running a business is no different in this respect. It requires a holistic approach, an investment of time, effort, and money to sustain your companies success and in turn, hopefully, see it flourish. For a perspective on which areas need most of your care, there are three things you need to think about.

Health, Safety, And Wellbeing

An area that all businesses need to bear in mind is health and safety. And with the increase in awareness of mental health problems, wellbeing is becoming an increasingly important topic for business owners the world over to incorporate into their HR practices. Whether you’re running a cargo shipping business, you own a store selling camping equipment, or you run a zoo, health, and safety regulations possess a place in every industry. To assess your business needs in this area, keep it simple and think about the following to see where and if you need to improve your business in this department;

• Cleanliness – A filthy workspace is a breeding ground for germs. This will, in turn, will impact on your employee’s health, meaning more sick days. Not only this, but bacteria could infect or contaminate the products that you sell also.
• Clutter – An unorganized, messy workspace is a poor environment filled with hazards that could mean a nasty fall or accident for one of your workers or customers. Resulting in impacting your reputation and the need to pay out for a personal injury claim
• Developing hazards – Such as a fire door that keeps getting stuck when you attempt to open it, or a fire alarm that keeps going off in the middle of the day with no specific reason behind it. All of your health and safety equipment should work and be free from obstructions or errors. 

The health and safety areas listed above form the foundation for taking care of your employees. Alongside this, it’s essential to look after your employee’s wellbeing. A happy team is a productive team.

• Team building – Create a pleasant, sociable environment to work in by instigating team building activities for employees.
• Training – Provide ongoing training for staff to improve their existing knowledge and boost confidence in their role.
• Promotions – Great employees should be allowed to excel when there is an opportunity to do so.
• Praise and celebrate – Accomplishments big and small should be recognized. Such as, via a certificate, or a letter outlining why your employee is an asset to the team.
• One to one meetings – This allows your employees to voice any concerns they may have and highlight anything they think the business can do to make life better for your staff. 
• Perks – Whether free fruit every day in the office, to wine and beers stocked in the fridge on a Friday afternoon. There are tons of ways to boost employee morale at work by implementing a few perks on the job.

Taking care of your employees and customers is essential for running a great business. By committing to some of the suggestions above, your workforce will feel valued, comfortable, and confident in their jobs. Taking care of your employees properly will lead to a better, stronger workforce with a reduced turnover of staff. 

Back-Up And Protect

The concept behind your business and the intel you have accrued along the way (such as the clients, business contacts, financial reports, and bank accounts, future plans to grow, etc.) is the lifeblood of your business. A lot of energy from entrepreneurs is spent growing their business, but the same can’t be said for protecting it. Which is why you need to be smart about backing up and protecting the business data you’ve worked so hard to accrue.

There are many sources available for you to store your business information. It purely depends on the size of your business and how much information you need to allocate. This will be the deciding factor on what storage is right for you. For instance, if your work is currently in paper form, it is 100% advisable to scan this into digital form to keep copies in case the originals are destroyed. Furthermore, once you have your copies of your work in digital form, don’t rely on one device alone to hold your business data, branch out, and seek other opportunities. You can store your data on an external hard drive, by using cloud services, or by buying or hiring servers.

Once you have stored your business intel in a few areas, you need to protect your sources any way you can. Whether employing an experienced IT technician to protect your systems from errors and hackers, or by outsourcing Server Monitoring to survey your existing servers and eradicate any faults and mistakes that may crop up. 

Take Care Of You! 

Your employee’s health, safety, and wellbeing, along with protecting your business information, are your top priorities. However, there is one more that’s incredibly important, you! What would your business be without you? It needs the very best of your creativity, ideas, personal inspiration and problem-solving to sustain the growth it’s made this far. If you’re in a bad place physically or mentally, this will have a devastating impact on the health of your business. Initially, it may be challenging to prize your thoughts and self away from your growing company, but it’s entirely necessary to stay sane and energized, by regularly sleeping, eating (mostly healthy food), exercising and laughing!

On the subject of laughter, as you’re probably aware, running a business isn’t all roses and rainbows. You have to solve difficult problems from competitors cropping up across the street from you, issues with reaching your target audience, and difficulties with staff that are finding it difficult to take orders. Which is why at some point, you will need to find the funny side in the events that occur. Otherwise, you risk spiraling into a pit of depression, where everything about your business appears to be doom and gloom. And so, through those tears laugh when the vending machine breaks for the umpteenth time and join in when employees are cracking jokes about you.

Prioritizing the needs of your employees, business information, and will enable you to effectively run a healthy, prosperous, and sustainable business.