Growing a business, Marketing
What is a Fulfilment Company? What is a Fulfilment Company? …An order has just come through, what happens next? Fulfilment… but what does this actually mean? In the broadest sense, order fulfilment is everything that happens between a customer placing and receiving an...
employing sub contracting
Returning To Work After Restrictions Are Lifted The time has come for organisations to think about asking their people to return to work as the work from home guidance will be removed as restrictions are lifted and in general the public are being advised to make their...
Management Skills
Developing the Management Training & Skills needed to improve our national productivity Throughout the 20th century, national productivity, measured by output per hour worked, rose consistently. From this we were able to pay ourselves higher wages and generally...
The Role of a Virtual Assistant
How to find a virtual assistant who can help you run your business Virtual assistants are pretty commonplace these days with plenty to choose from but how to find the right one for you? Every business is different, with different things that can be outsourced....
design your business for growth
Growth Strategy: Love your Customer When people want to increase sales they tend to focus on the usual promotional techniques of giving away margin. However, we’d like to open your mind to a new approach and ask you to consider thinking first about your best friends...
design your business for growth
Growth strategy: Identify Your Cause to Grow Your Business Making money while doing good; surely that’s what all entrepreneurs dream of? Simply turning a profit is no longer enough for most of us. Instead, we want to feel we are actively contributing to society. And...
design your business for growth
Growth strategy: Disruptive business models The successful businesses of the future will fall into two groups. The first will be huge global corporations, capable of moving entire economies and changing sectors in pursuit of growth. The second will be small,...
design your business for growth
What’s your strategy for successful expansion? Following on from our recent article on what business growth actually is, we felt it might be wise to look in more detail at the issue of how your business actually works. And, of course, how to devise and adopt a...
design your business for growth
Graceful growth requires a Point of Difference Statements of the very, very obvious! It is easy to sell products or services when the offer is: 1) Wanted and needed by the customers.2) Wanted and needed by the customers at the time of the sale or...
employment law
Employment Legislation – A Detailed Overview This guide to Employment Legislation provides a brief overview of some of the most commonly encountered aspects of legislation applicable to employment. It is not designed to be a comprehensive guide and further advice...
Management Skills
Management Qualifications – an overview In a previous Yorkshire Powerhouse guide, we outlined the perilous state of management training and development in Britain today and the direct disastrous effect that has had on our national productivity, economic growth and...
employing sub contracting
Managing Employees Employing people brings a whole new dimension to running a business. There are things that you need to consider which are both informal and pretty much common sense (managing people) and formal (legal requirement). Managing your employees can be...
employing sub contracting
Training & Developing Staff In a small business or start-up environment, developing staff (the training of staff) can be an extremely difficult area. It is important as you design the ‘shape’ of your new start-up, or your growing business, that you consciously...
employing sub contracting
Employee Handbook The employee handbook is an addition to the contract of employment and is often referred to in the contract of employment. The Employee Handbook is intended to cover areas that apply to all employees equally and refers to policies that should be...
employing sub contracting
Contract of Employment All employees have a contract of employment with their employer. A contract is an agreement that sets out an employee’s: Employment conditions Rights Responsibilities Duties These are called the ‘terms’ of the contract. There are hundreds of...
employing sub contracting
Employee Benefits Designing a reward system for your company is best done at the outset or at least before you have too many employees. The different types of employee benefits and rewards are numerous and some companies offer a mix and match approach, leaving...
employing sub contracting
Paying Employees There are seven key things a company must do before employing a member of staff: Decide how much to pay someone – you must pay your employees at least the National Minimum Wage. Check if someone has the legal right to work in the UK. You may have to...
employing sub contracting
Apprenticeships There’s a view that apprenticeships are expensive and don’t fit into small business models. These are major misconceptions. We’ve entered a new age of apprenticeships, and there’s no better time to get an apprentice on board. Whilst common wisdom would...
employing sub contracting
Employment Law Regardless of the size of your business or the sector that you operate within, it is essential that you are aware of employment law rules and regulations. A failure to follow or adhere to rules, policies and procedures could see you facing costly...
employing sub contracting
What is the Cost of HR support? When a business starts up you generally find that the owner has to take on all roles in the business including HR. As the business grows and more employees are taken on, quite often the HR function is delegated to another employee...
employing sub contracting
Recruiting Your New Team One of the most challenging stages of setting up your own business (or buying an existing business) is finding and recruiting the talent to take your business forward and help you grow. The success of many businesses is dependent on a strong...
The Role of a Virtual Assistant
Being Productive and not a fool Did you check out the earlier article on this subject – Time Management: Busy vs Productive? How many of those busy fool traits did you have and made you really think about how you could do things differently? Let me show you the...
The Role of a Virtual Assistant
Time Management: Busy vs Productive Time Management seems to be a common problem for many business owners. We all have the same amount of time, so it comes down to how you choose to spend that time. Remember, it is a choice! Another factor with managing your time is...
The Role of a Virtual Assistant
Keeping in contact with everyone – 2 ways to get started This is always a difficult one – you’ll notice in your personal life how you can go days or weeks and sometimes months (just me then) without speaking to a certain person or group. Life takes over and we get...
The Role of a Virtual Assistant
How to make your administrative procedures run like a Swiss clock Are you setting out how you do things in your business? If you’re on your own and think it’s all in your head and there’s only me to do it so why spend time documenting it? Then I have news for you –...
The Role of a Virtual Assistant
3 Ways to improve your business administration to speed things up Don’t we all love a bit of automation? Things happening without our intervention – once set up of course. Analysing what areas of your business would benefit from some automation as well as it being...
The Role of a Virtual Assistant
How to get the most benefit from a virtual assistant for your business Benefits vs features – always an area of discussion and a VA partnership is no different. Ensuring your VA is doing what you need doing within your business is essential. If, however, you don’t...exit planning
Preparing your business exit plan As a business owner, whether or not you are thinking about exiting your business, we encourage you to start planning for an exit as early in your business Life Cycle as possible – preferably during the startup phase, but if not then,...
exit planning
Growing your business value for exit Strategic business exit planning In our previous article on business exit planning we encouraged you to begin planning your transition from the business as early as possible in your business lifecycle. Too many business owners wait...
exit planning
7+ reasons why Small Business Owners commonly over-estimate their business value The key to exit planning is to have an accurate idea of what your business is worth – its business value. Clarity on this will lead to better decisions. Not thinking about this leads to a...
exit planning
7 things to consider when deferring to a management team There are only four ways to exit your business, so if you are considering retaining an income from your business. What do you need to consider? See our other article: 4 Ways to exit from your business Exiting...
exit planning
What does a typical exit process look like? With all businesses being unique, every exit is going to be different; however, there are going to be some general similarities and therefore if you have reached the point where you want to put the wheels of exit in motion...
exit planning
5 ways you can improve your profitability as part of your Exit Strategy As you approach the point of exiting your business, it is important that you understand the direct relationship between your business profits and the business valuation. As these valuations tend...
e-learning
The Rise of the Remote Worker As life starts to take on a sense of normality – albeit tentatively – our thoughts turn to getting our businesses back on track. Many employers now find themselves having to choose between bringing employees back into the work environment...
e-learning
Learning to Survive and Thrive throughout the Lockdown – Wellbeing and Covid 19 Undoubtedly the biggest threat to UK businesses for a very, very long time, is how they cope with the Covid 19 lockdown and whether it will enable them to thrive or if they will. Do your...
e-learning
Innovate or Go Bust! ‘Innovate or Go Bust’ was a phrase coined by the world-renowned economist Joseph Schumpeter when taking about his Theory of Dynamic Economic Growth. Never has this statement been more pertinent than now. The aftermath of the Covid 19 epidemic is...
Understanding ISO Certification
You really shouldn’t care about being ISO Certified Editors Note: Expert content needs an expert content writer and Yorkshire Powerhouse is pleased to publish this business advice article on being ISO Certified, kindly written by a real expert in his field – Roger...
Growing a business
Imports & Exports If you are looking to grow a business then the World is your oyster – literally. The general concept of importing means there is no limit to the products or services you can access and exporting opens up a genuinely global audience. Clearly in...
Understanding ISO Certification
ISO14001 – the Environmental Standard The Environmental Management Standard ISO14001 was updated in 2015, alongside the international Quality Standard ISO9001 and Health and Safety Standard ISO45001. One of the objectives was to create commonality of terms across the...
Understanding ISO Certification
I haven’t got the time for management systems and ISO certification … or do I? Editors Note: Expert content needs an expert content writer and Yorkshire Powerhouse is pleased to publish this business advice article on being ISO Certified, kindly written by a real...
Understanding ISO Certification
ISO 9001 is a waste of time and is useless for SME’s, right? Editors Note: Expert content needs an expert content writer and Yorkshire Powerhouse is pleased to publish this business advice article on being ISO Certified, kindly written by a real expert in his field –...
Growing a business
Employing a Team? – Your HR essentials Editors Note: Expert content needs an expert content writer and Yorkshire Powerhouse is pleased to publish this business advice article on Employment Law and HR Compliance, kindly written by a real expert in his field – Paul Addy...
Understanding ISO Certification
Great quality management principles for great quality management Editors Note: Expert content needs an expert content writer and Yorkshire Powerhouse is pleased to publish this business advice article on being ISO Certified, kindly written by a real expert in his...
Growing a business
Grow your business without employing people When we set up in business we realise that it’s hard on our own – there are lots of tasks that need to be done. That ‘stuff’ is not what we do – it’s our responsibility to do the ‘doing’ in our business – but when it comes...
Growing a business
Why would anyone want to develop their management skills and capability by exposing themselves to new knowledge and skills? Imagine that the next time you are sat in an airport departure lounge and a message came over the public-address system that went something like...
Growing a business
Design your Business for Growth There is not a successful Bridge builder in history that started construction before knowing how wide the river is and how big the bridge will be. The height of every sound building is determined by the depth of the foundations. The...
Growing a business
Common Obstacles to Business Growth Editors Note: Expert content needs an expert content writer and Yorkshire Powerhouse is pleased to publish this business advice article on growing a business, kindly written by a real expert in his field – Richard Charlesworth from...
Growing a business
ISO certification is just a money making exercise for auditors, right? Editors Note: Expert content needs an expert content writer and Yorkshire Powerhouse is pleased to publish this business advice article on being ISO Certified, kindly written by a real expert in...
Growing a business
The role of a virtual assistant and how to work together to grow YOUR Business Virtual Assistants are pretty common these days – plenty to choose from – we’ll come to that in another blog; but I want to tackle that question of how a VA can support you in your business...
Growing a business
e-Learning – What is all the Fuss About? Ultimately, the aim of any business is to bring their products and services to market profitably. That may sound straightforward enough but in order to sustain and maximise profitability, organisations need to develop and grow....
exit planning, Growing a business
7 areas to consider focusing on when planning your Exit Strategy Every business is unique and as such, this guide is going to be generic; however, by surrounding yourself with the appropriate professionals, they can help your generic plan become more specific. You... 
