Tuesday, March 28, 2017

3 Ways Small Businesses Can Improve Employee Engagement


Employee engagement has an impact on everything from productivity to employee retention to morale. A variety of studies have found that highly engaged workplaces have 20% or higher productivity and profits per employee than those that don’t. Let’s look at three ways companies can improve their employee engagement.

1. Get Honest Feedback and Then Act on It

Companies must first determine the level of employee engagement instead of acting based on impressions and anecdotes. Data driven management decisions are not impossible in Human Resources, but they may not be possible if the people collecting the data are biased in how they collect the data or interpret it.

The solution is to outsource employee engagement surveys to third parties such as Insightlink (for more information about Insightlink and their services, click here) so that management doesn’t receive overly rosy reports or biased action plans. This can happen because employees are afraid to tell HR about problems out of fear it will get back to their managers, data collection may ignore high non-response rates in favor of the skewed positive image or use feedback as justification for its pre-existing desired actions instead of what employees want. When a third party runs anonymous surveys, you’ll get more honest information than if HR could come back to “talk” to submitters and more detailed, actionable advice.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Legacy of Tag Heuer Watches



Tag Heuer has its beginnings rooted in a company started in 1860 by Edouard Heuer in a place called St-Imier in Switzerland. This is the company that later joined up with a company called TAG in 1985 (Techniques dAvant Garde) and that is how the modern TAG Heuer was born. TAG originally manufactured precision engineering and high tech technology such as ceramic turbochargers for Formula One cars.

In 1999, TAG Heuer accepted an offer from one the biggest French luxury design houses Louis Vuitton for buying up a majority stake in the company for about $452 million. This resulted in Louis Vuitton owning 50.1% of all pre-owned TAG Heuer watches shares thus owning majority of the company.

Pre-owned TAG Heuer watches have behind them the historical achievement of being the first to introduce the automatic chronograph to the world. Heuer was part of a three company joint effort to produce the worlds first automatic chronograph and it was achieved in the first quarter of the year 1969 with the announcement being made in Geneva.

Heuer has also had the opportunity to produce watches that were sold under yet another large international lifestyle brand and design house Abercrombie and Fitch. These watches were produced and sold in the years 1953 and 1954. The designs had tachymeter features that were geared towards rally car drivers who could use their watch to determine the speed of their car over a measured mile and thus calculate whether it was performing optimally or not.

Heuer was also the first to get the patent for a dashboard chronograph that was meant to be used in automobiles and airplanes. The first model had two large hands to show the time of the day and had a smaller dial at the 12o clock position for showing the duration of the journey, which was at that time up to 12 hours.

In 1962, Heuer became the first Swiss watchmaker in space. It was onboard the Mercury Atlas 6 spacecraft, which was Americas first manned spaceflight to orbit the earth. The watch was worn by astronaut John Glenn who was part of the mission.

Heuer was also part of the first wave of digital watches that experimented with LCD and LED displays. These were really new at the time and garnered a lot of attention. The first such watch from the company was the Chronoplit model. This happened during the mid-1970s.

Thus Tag Heuer watches have been part of a legacy that stretches beyond the borders and boundaries in and outside this world. It is a multi-century heritage that safeguards the high precision engineering art of making perfect timepieces that are trusted by professionals everywhere.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

How to Produce Great Promotional Videos for Your Business


Video is one of the most powerful ways to market to huge numbers of people. If you approach this marketing strategy in the right way, it has the potential to generate new business like no other marketing methods can. However, if you produce poor quality videos, it can affect your business’s reputation and it could cost you a lot of money in the long run. This is why you should be aware of the tips below, so that every promotional video you create from now on is a success.

Focus on High-quality Content

No matter what type of video you create, it has to contain high quality content. This is particularly true when it comes to promotional videos. These types of videos need to educate, entertain or provide value in some other way. If you don’t achieve this goal, your viewers won’t wait around for long and your video marketing efforts will achieve very little.

Research

To create higher quality videos, it’s essential to carry out extensive research on the topic or area your video addresses. This includes research on your own industry and your potential shoppers and customers who will be viewing your videos.