December, 2022

Achieving a work-life balance today is an even more difficult task than a few decades ago. As Mr. Daniel Smith points out: “Live a life that is well balanced; don’t do things in excess.” It is surely easier said than done, but all we can do is give it our best shot. In this article, we are going to explore the importance of work-life balance, why employers should pay more attention to it, how can they promote it, and what all of us can do to help us to strike the perfect balance for ourselves. As always, go and grab that favorite drink of yours, and let us dive in.

Why is a work-life balance important nowadays?

Just to get things clear, work-life balance has always been important. Baby boomers just didn’t have the luxury to ask for it. For them, it was way more important to be employed, rather than insisting on employers give them bean bags, a hot-coco machine, and a room filled with PlayStations, which on the other hand is typical for Millenials (It’s a joke, Millenials, we love you). The in-between Gen Xers emphasize a lot more on work-life balance, after seeing the after-effects of their parents (baby boomers) who broke their backs working long hours.

Today work-life balance and a flexible work environment definitely are taken even more seriously. As an employer, it’s essential to promote and invest in a healthy work environment. Most of the aspects of a flexible work environment before are now considered as a baseline. Some of them often include:

• Ability to work from home
• Flexible working hours
• Opportunities for professional and personal growth
• Additional days off
• Frequent team building/bonding events
• Child/Pet Care Options

The easiest way for employers to promote a healthy work-life balance is to give their employees the freedom and responsibility to decide what works best for them. This has to be moderated of course, in order to avoid exploitation. For example, people who have children might want to come in early, so they can leave in time, to pick up their kids from school. Alternatively, night owls and younger people might prefer to come in later and stay a bit longer. If you hypothetically are a manager, and you tell your employees they have to be in the office from 10 to 4, in order to be able to organize day-to-day tasks and meetings easier, you will definitely be on the right track to creating a healthier, more flexible work environment. 

Healthy employees are probably the number one asset in an organization. They tend to focus on work better, and complete tasks without compromising quality, which increases overall employee productivity and job satisfaction. And when those two parameters are on the high end, employee turnover decreases. We all heard stories of the work-life balance in Japan, where sometimes employees are forced to work overtime, due to high demand, and a lot of them can’t even apply for their 20 days of annual leave because of the harsh working culture. On the other hand, an example of a good work-life balance can be made with Etsy, which received a score of 3.9/5 for work-life balance from its employees and was included in Glassdoor’s list of companies that offer healthy work-life balance. 

How did employer features change after covid?

When the pandemic hit our homes became our offices and remote work became a necessity rather than a perk. When that happened a lot of us found out how much time and effort we actually put into our work. During that time a lot of people realized that they have been neglecting their well-being and that they focused too much time on their work, and didn’t spend enough time out of it, to enjoy life in general. We feel that the majority of people understood the importance of having hobbies and pursuing passions outside of work, therefore after the mass amount of layoffs people started their own creative/business journeys as blacksmiths, carpenters, artists, photographers, vloggers, etc.

After things slowly got back to normal, businesses were faced with new challenges when hiring new people and keeping their existing employees happy and healthy. Managers and recruiters had to get more creative. The former leaned on creating a framework for developing a balanced approach between professional and personal lives in the workplace. Some of the critical work-life strategies can include:

Culture of trust – managers should allow employees to be responsible for their performance and trust them that they will get the job done, rather than micromanaging, which oftentimes is counter-productive.

Open communication – managers should allow an open flow of communication between them and the employees. Sometimes people just have a lot going on and their performance at the job can be hindered. By having the opportunity to openly communicate with their managers, those types of personal issues can be addressed and possibly be given space to be resolved.

Flexibility – managers should give the ability to employees to work flexible hours and to have flexible annual paid leave policies. That should increase overall job satisfaction and possibly reduce the employee turnover rate. 

Workplace perks – managers should invest in workplace perks in order to let employees enjoy some time off and refresh their minds. Spending more hours at the desk doesn’t always equate to more productivity.

Employer branding and the importance of showcasing the right features for future employees.

A strong workplace culture that promotes a healthy work-life balance, is a powerful recruiting tool. Securing top talent across all industries has always been difficult. If you provide an impressive well-being policy and your employer branding successfully communicates it to the world, then attracting the right talent should become a lot easier. It’s a fact that millennials are more willing to take a job, with a favorable company culture over a higher salary. Stating what you stand for as an organization clearly has an impact. Talent will be attracted to you.

By promoting a healthy work-life balance you increase the possibility of existing employees referring future candidates. This is widely acknowledged as an effective means of hiring. Your employees know the company culture well and can know if a person will be a good fit. If your organization offers a flexible and supportive environment at work, the people inside will be eager to share the news with their friends. 

Closing lines

As workplaces become busier and more connected, it is more important than ever to try to move toward achieving a work-life balance for employers and employees. Having a company culture that promotes work-life balance is also good for recruitment. It can be a key differentiator between different companies for a candidate, and it’s a great way to attract top talent to your business. A better work-life balance will inevitably lead to better retention, greater longevity within the industry, and, perhaps most importantly, better well-being for everyone working within it.

Humans throughout history have managed all sorts of processes and tasks. In the middle of the 20th century, the art of this responsible position was fully recognized and thus the official term project management was born into the world. Every one of us has been a project manager at some point in our lives simply because we all had to organize a birthday party. As weird as it sounds organizing one requires key project management skills: to work and collaborate with people (e.g to call a bakery, which is going to make the cake); to plan carefully and to fit in a budget (e.g to not go overboard with decorations); to oversee and navigate all of the processes (to make sure the DJ arrives early, to properly set up the surprise and to not forget the cake); to meet a deadline of some sort (e.g to make sure everything is ready for the big day, not the day after), and most importantly to produce a final visible successful result (e.g a fun and memorable birthday party for all of the participants). Now, if you want to learn more about managing a killer birthday part… we mean a killer project, then this article is for you. As always, go and grab that beloved beverage of yours, and let’s plow ahead.

What is project management?

A detailed definition would sound something like this: project management, or PM for short, is a group of different processes, which all aim to achieve a specific objective in a specified amount of time, all in accord with predefined criteria and parameters. It’s a complex and multi-layered task, which safeguards a project from its planning phase to its due date and tries to make the road from beginning to completion as smooth as possible.

In today’s fast-paced technological world project managers are cherished and sought after in pretty much any type of business. They are the people responsible for the success of every project. Depending on the organization a project manager can oversee different operations and usually juggle a lot of things at once. This might sound very similar to any managerial role. The things that set apart project management are that it has a final deliverable and a finite timespan unlike regular management, which is an ongoing process.

Projects are part of every organization’s operations. Obviously, they vary in scale, complexity, and specificity but every project contains the same three building blocks: time, cost, and quality. Not every project requires formal management though. Some tasks are pretty straightforward, with minimal risk and not that large of an impact. But some tasks morph into enormous projects, which can’t go forward without a person who oversees them. These sorts of projects hide a lot of risks and often require cross-team collaboration.

Investing in effective project management and project management tools can bring a lot of benefits to an organization’s overall performance. The most obvious one is to increase the likelihood of a project bearing successful results. Other key benefits are the more efficient use of resources and the ability to better satisfy the differing needs of the project’s stakeholders. 

Core stages and methodologies

Before we talk about the tools first we have to shine some light on the core stages of project management, as well as on the different types of project management methodologies.

There are three core stages when we talk about project management:

Scoping – the gathering of all the elements needed to kick off the project; they include the reasons behind starting the project, estimating the resources needed, comparing them to the expected return on investment, and securing the budget for the project. 

Planning and delivering – mapping out how the project should be completed; gathering delivery teams and assigning tasks to them; identifying and fixing issues throughout the process that could hinder the performance of the teams involved; ensuring that deadlines are met; 

Reporting and closure – reporting is an ongoing process throughout all stages, e.g communicating with project stakeholders and managing their expectations; once the objectives are met and everything is handled appropriately, a post-mortem meeting is assigned to discuss and evaluate what went right, and what went wrong. 

With the development of technology and industries, the role of project management also has to adapt accordingly. Project management methodologies exist for that particular reason. Different companies have different projects which can have specific needs and the role of all of the methodologies is to better meet those specific needs. We’ll list and review a few of the popular ones.

Waterfall methodology – the traditional approach to project management, in which tasks are handled sequentially in a linear manner, e.g complete task A, then start to work on B, and after B is completed start to work on C, etc.

Agile methodology – the very opposite of the previous approach; this methodology offers an iterative approach that allows for revision while a process is ongoing, rather to have to wait for its completion and then revise it. Testing at frequent intervals, reassessing, and adapting are key elements in this approach. 

Scrum methodology – a different form of agile project management; the work is split into short, often weekly cycles, called “sprints”, which are managed by a scrum master (a person who leads small teams, not to be confused with the project manager), who reviews the team’s performance after every sprint and makes the necessary adjustments before starting the next one.

Kanban methodology – another form of agile project management, in which work is picked and assigned from a pre-defined backlog and “moved” along through columns that define different stages of development.

What tools are usually used in project management?

We’ll give you the universal answer – it depends. Based on the structure of the company, and by which methodology/methodologies it operates, some tools might be a better fit than others. At their core, they are pretty much the same. By giving visibility on every single process, that is part of a project – how it’s going, who is responsible for it, ETA, etc. –  they assist project managers in their daily tasks of supervising each project they are accountable for and basically make their lives easier.

In a big organization, different departments might choose to operate by different methodologies, therefore a more complex and diverse project management tool like Jira might be of better use. On the other hand, a small marketing agency that has a less complicated structure and operates in a more simple way might opt for Trello, which will probably cover all of their needs and can save them expenses with its free version.

Choosing the best tool for your business can be a feat of its own. You can use the following steps as guidelines if you want to make that process a bit easier.

Define your needs – think about your company culture, what services you provide and which project management methodology best suits your business operations. A PM tool should be cross-functional and should be scalable.

Pick and test – based on the previous step, you should pick 2-3 tools and test them with a real team on a realistic project. The more complex the test project – the better. A suitable tool should be flexible. After the test trials, evaluate the pros and cons of each tool, get feedback from the different teams and their project managers and opt for the best choice. 

Purchase and implement – price should definitely be accounted for when making the choice from the previous step. After you found the solution that fits your business best you now will need to implement it. Some of the project management tools are intuitive and user-friendly-ish but keep in mind that the more complex ones probably will require some sort of training. 

Review and iterate – after implementing the tool, you should review its impact on the organization. Did it cover all of the needs you addressed in step one? Are your teams happy to use it or do they despise it? Does anything need improvement? Acquire all of the feedback you can get and make the necessary adjustments.

Closing lines
Project management is a constantly evolving discipline that requires project managers to deal with delivery teams and hand over work on time and within budget. Along with their specific skill set and leadership qualities, project managers also require the help of the right tools to perform their job more efficiently.

Choosing the right tool for your organization can be overwhelming based on all of the available options but if you are able to carefully define your needs and test some tools based on the type of your organization and its field of operations, you will manage to narrow down the options to a few, and then purchase and implement the one you deem best.

It’s not a secret that everybody secretly dislikes meetings. We’ve all had our fair share of business sessions that really didn’t have any impact and just felt like a big waste of time. Organizing a meeting might sounds easy on paper but in reality is a feat of itself. You need to invite the right people, to cover a serious topic in a short amount of time, to be able to smoothly present the topic at hand, and to make sure everybody got the memo. Complicated, right? Well, not really. In this article we’ll try to help you better prepare and present your next meeting. As always, fetch your favorite drink and let’s move forward, shall we?

What is a meeting agenda?

In order for any action to have a better chance for success there has to be a proper planning phase. This also applies for meetings. As we already mentioned, nobody likes to sit in a small room with pen and paper ready at hand just to smile and nod wondering why is this meeting even necessary. There is a magic cure for that and its called a meeting agenda.Meeting agendas are basically an outline of a meeting. They should cover the main points of the gathering, act as an overall guide and should be able to help everyone involved to get a better understanding of their purpose and of the main purpose. 

Whether remote or in-person effective meetings are important for teams and businesses to better align on a subject. According to research only half of the time spent in meetings is effective and engaging and over $37 billion is wasted on unproductive meetings each year. Without apparent purpose and proper organization your next meeting can easily fall in the previous statistic. It’s paramount to design a decent framework if you want your colleagues to feel organized and motivated to get stuff done.

Why do you need meeting agendas?

The lack of structure to a meeting can have a crushing effect on its purpose. Often times conversation trails off to offtopics which have nothing to do with the main purpose and just waste everyones time. Without a framework meetings run the risk of dragging for too long. Thirty minutes to an hour should be enough to brief a team on pretty much any topic.

Agendas help both the presenter and the attendees to have an overall better experience. For the host its necessary to keep the conversation on track in order to fit in the pre-defined time span, and to make sure each participant is engaged, and fully understands his/hers role in the meeting. For the people participating agendas help to clear the point of the meeting ahead of time, so that they can better prepare for it. For example if the meeting is about creating a new onboarding process, the presenter should address questions like: “Why do we need a new onboarding process?” ; “How the new one is going to improve current setbacks and fix issues?”; “Who is going to be in charge of different processes?”, etc. Alternatively, participants should prepare all sort of questions regarding the new system and think of ideas for the new one. 

How to properly create and follow meeting agendas in 6 simple steps

Every process can be made easy if broken down. In the case of meeting agendas, here are some simple steps you can follow when preparing for the next meeting.

1. Ask for input – when creating the agenda, ask the attendees for their input on how should the meeting be conducted. This will also help with overall engagement. 
2. Present agenda items as questions – the more eloquent and precise an agenda item is named, the better. Frame them as questions to help participants prepare better.
3. Assign a timeframe to each item – by doing this you ensure that everybody will better understand the flow of the meeting. It will also serve as a reminder to the presenter on what to emphasize and to not drag the meeting out unnecessarily.
4. Invite the right people – simple but very important. Make sure to pick only the people who are directly concerned with the topic of the meeting. 
5. Assign roles – unless you plan on leading the whole meeting, which often is not a good idea, you should assign roles for other participants. This will ensure that everyone will come prepared.
6. Leave time for Q&A’s and wrap it up properly – always make sure to answer questions and concerns. They will inevitably arise at some point in time and its better to address them in the meeting room while everyone else is present, so that all the participants are properly aligned. It is also a good idea to summarize in short what were the results of the meetings and what is expected from each participant. 

How to properly lead the meeting discussion according to your agenda

Creating a proper agenda is just a single step of managing a successful and efficient meeting. In order to run a meeting correctly you need to understand that most of the work happens beforehand through organization and planning. Don’t forget to:

1. Define the objectives
2. Create an agenda and send calendar invites
3. Create a safe space for communication and collaboration
4. Stay on track
5. End with clear actions

People don’t dread all meetings, they dread the poorly planned and managed ones, which lack structure and organization. By being proactive and carefully designing your next meeting, you will be able to set yourself apart and possibly create a positive and fruitful experience for everyone involved. The most important thing is to always ask for feedback and to make adjustments along the way. Practice makes perfect and with time and patience you will undoubtedly be able to hold killer meetings.

We bet that you probably have heard “KPI” at least once in your life. We even mentioned it in a previous article about KPI reports and why they are important. Today we are going to try to broaden the knowledge around KPIs, what they are all about, why you should know more about them and why every business should use them. As per usual, pick your preferred refreshment, and let’s press on, shall we?

What is a KPI?

KPI, also known as a Key Performance Indicator is a measurable mark that is used to determine the efficiency of a business operation. They help with gauging a company’s strategic, financial, and operational performance and provide a clearer overall vision of how an organization is functioning. They are important for people across all levels of a company, as well as for stakeholders, who can view if progress is made and if the business is on track. KPIs are also useful because they:

Help with employee accountability – by tracking progress on every level, team leaders can see how well individuals on their team are performing and if they are meeting their goals. This can help with overall morale – award employees who hit their target and provide additional training and support for those who aren’t able to.

Alignment – KPIs set a common goal that everyone can get behind. This works on a team level, as well as on an organizational level. Managing to keep everyone aligned with the important objectives is crucial.

Overview of a business’s health – by tracking, measuring, and analyzing what’s important, an organization can get an overview of how well it’s functioning. For instance, employee retention rates can paint a picture of the company’s culture. Assessing similar data and taking the necessary actions are a must if a business wants to operate better and longer.

Examples of KPIs

Revenue, expenses, and profit are the golden trio of KPIs that everybody is aware of. Beyond them, other commonly used KPIs are gross and net profit margins, which measure how much money a business makes when they are selling their products; cost of goods sold, which measures the materials and labor expenses when a product is being made; inventory turnover, which tells how fast products held in inventory are sold. 

Depending on the industry, every business chooses to track a specific set of KPIs which are relevant to their operations. If for example, a company operates in customer service, they will opt for tracking KPIs such as first-call resolution rate, call abandonment rate, call hold time, etc. Or a business in manufacturing will follow KPIs such as manufacturing cycle time, carrying cost, percentage of out-of-stock items, etc. 

A specific real-life example can be given with the electrical automotive giant Tesla. The numbers below are from their Q4 2021 update. You can view the full report here.

Vehicle production – the company produced 305,840 vehicles and managed to deliver 308,650 vehicles. Ramped-up production means more market share and profits for the company.

Automotive gross margin – Gross margin provides a very clear sign of profitability for Tesla, as it isolates its vehicle production costs. Based on the report it expanded to 30.6% even as sales of lower-priced models outpaced its higher-margin models.

Free cash flow – in the previous year-ago period the free cash flow was $1.9 billion, compared to the $2.8 billion during the quarter there’s a significant difference. The larger amount of free cash flow is an indicator that the company is reaching a scale of profitability without the help of regulatory credits. 

How are KPIs usually used? 

The previous example provides a rather clear idea of how KPIs are utilized. Often times its better for businesses to pick a set amount of KPIs to track. Not only its easier to collect, maintain and analyze the data needed for the reports but also it gives a better idea of what the company aims to achieve and where it should go in the long term. Tracking too many KPIs can be extremely complicated and more often won’t lead to positive results.

KPIs help to shine a better light on how well a business is doing. Leading KPIs can help with assessing information from past events to help better navigate the future. They are used to give the company’s leaders a tool to help them evaluate overall performance and to make meaningful data-driven changes to address possible problems. Lagging KPIs on the other hand try to foresee and warn company leaders of possible issues in the future. For example, profit margins are a result of operations and are considered a lagging indicator. Alternatively, the number of overtime hours worked, can be a leading KPI if the company notices a poorer manufacturing quality.

What do KPIs mean for the business? 

As with everything, KPIs have their advantages and their limitations. An example of the prior is when KPIs inform management of specific issues, which they can resolve properly and ensure that everything is in order. Key performance indicators also act as a bridge between business operations and business goals. Without the ability to track progress, a company can’t really navigate well toward those goals.

In order for KPIs to provide meaningful and accurate data, they have to measure parameters for a longer time frame. For example, for a company to properly assess employee satisfaction and overall morale it might have to collect data from the whole year. KPIs also require constant monitoring and processing. If I KPI report is made but is never analyzed it serves no purpose. 

The bottom line

A carefully selected and managed set of KPIs can help to provide key information for managers to use and analyze in order to progress toward a specific goal. A KPI can track and measure numerous factors most of which are used to assess performance, with the ultimate goal to help leaders to make more informed business decisions. By understanding better what KPIs are, their advantages and downsides, and how to properly implement them, businesses are able to optimize for long-term success.