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guest blogger, Happy work environment, IT Project Management

5 Ways That A Wellness Program Can Save An IT Business Money

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In the Information Technology (IT) business, maintaining project profitability often requires keeping personnel costs at a minimal level. However, rising health insurance premiums coupled with new health care reform legislation is putting an additional burden on IT companies. For employees who spend eight-plus hours a day working on intense projects at their computer stations, the need for routine wellness care is vital to their productivity and quality of work. Not having access to affordable health care support means illness, injury, and lost work time for your most valuable investment: your people. Therefore, it’s up to each IT company to ensure the health and well-being of all employees.

A corporate sponsored wellness program can be a solution to reducing the costs of health care in the workplace. Here are five ways a wellness program can save your IT business money this year.

  1. Reminds employees of risky lifestyle behaviors. The IT world can be a very high pressure work environment, leading employees to engage in risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking, and overeating. The long work hours can also be damaging to physical and mental well-being, due to being stuck at a desk a lot and not getting enough exercise. Having a wellness program on site allows employees alternative ways to deal with stress and help reduce risky behaviors, which over the long run improves employee performance.
  2. Provides access to self-managed wellness care. The best wellness program can empower your employees to take better control of their health and well-being. Providing onsite wellness benefits, such as a corporate gym, massage therapy, an employee assistance program, flu shots, and more can help employees see you are vested in their success. Web-based wellness programs, which cost pennies as compared to doctor visits, provide even more value by reminding employees to take care of their health and reach important wellness goals.
  3. Reduces health care insurance premiums and sick time. A study conducted by Harvard University in 2010 advised that when employees have access to corporate wellness support, this reduces the cost of health care insurance premiums and sick time. For each dollar spent on an employee wellness program, health premiums drop by $3.27 and an additional $2.73 is saved in absentee days. That can be significant for an IT department that deals with frequent illness or absenteeism.
  4. Prevents catastrophic losses due to illness and injury. Imagine an IT workforce that’s healthy, mentally and physically strong? When IT employees are given the opportunity and encouragement to take advantage of a corporate wellness program, they are less likely to experience preventable ailments common in IT (neck pain, stress headaches, back injuries, repetitive motion injuries) that cause them to miss work or file workers’ compensation claims.
  5. Increases workplace productivity and project management. To boost your IT employee performance levels, add a wellness programs like fitness programs from Aligned Modern Health. This can give employees a healthier outlet to reduce stress, eat healthier, and get up out of their chairs for some exercise. These activities have been shown over and over again to improve physical and mental well-being, meaning you benefit by having more productive and high performance employees on board.

While workplace wellness programs can be a cost effective way to make your IT workplace better, there are some ways to experience even more benefits. Roll it out with full management support, be consistent, and keep employees informed about new resources they can use to stay healthy at work.

Tess C. Taylor, PHR is a certified Web Content Manager, Human Resources Professional, and Career Coach with nearly two-decades of writing experience. Tess also founded the popular blogazine, The HR Writer. As a regular contributor to multiple HR and Business publications, including Benefitfocus, Dale Carnegie Institute, HR Magazine, PayScale, and US News Careers, Tess is dedicated to educating others about important human resources and marketing topics worldwide.

guest blogger, Project Management, Project Management Communications, Project Management Software, project teams

The Best Business Apps To Show Your Boss

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As businesses become more and more tech-savvy, many are choosing to distribute iPhones as their default company phone. The iPhone’s wide variety of business apps can help streamline your company while increase productivity at the same time. If you want your company to use technology to gain an edge, here are 5 apps to show your boss that will make his (and your) job easier.

Dropbox

Sharing files among your colleagues can be quite the pain. Many businesses don’t have a standard system in place for transferring files, and many rely on email attachments which can get clunky. Dropbox allows you to created shared folders on your work iPhone and computer, and sync them with each other seamlessly. To share a file, simply place it in the share folder, and it will appear on your coworker’s devices instantly.

Evernote

Evernote is the premier note taking app for iOS, thanks to its simple design and numerous features. Rich text notes can be created, edited, and shared all from your iPhone, and can be accessed from any device with a web browser. Evernote’s notes also support photos, which sync just as quick as text notes.

Scanner Pro

Scanners are the butt of many jokes in an office, thanks to their propensity to malfunction exactly when you need them the most. Ditch the bulky scanner and grab Scanner Pro to streamline the entire process. The app uses your phones camera to scan documents, which can they be emailed with the touch of a button.

stack-of-iphones

Basecamp

Basecamp is the the most comprehensive project management tool for businesses of any size. The program allows your to share files, conversations, projects, and more through a simple user interface. Best of all, it can be entirely operated from the mobile application, allowing users to be productive on the move.

DoubleDutch

Planning large-scale corporate events can often be rather frustrating thanks to the hundreds of factors that go into planning a large conference. Between the attendees, presenters, and planners, numerous people need to stay informed of the event’s schedule. Enter DoubleDutch, an application that gathers all the information you need and allows attendees access everything from their smartphones. The application displays a mobile agenda that can be updated in real time, so guests always know exactly where they need to be. They can even create custom agendas in a few simple steps, or connect with other guests based on their interests/career. DoubleDutch also allows you to create custom polls and survey to collect information from your guests, so you can know exactly what they thought of this year’s speaker.

Tripit

Business traveling always seems to be more hassle than it should be. Between planning the flight, renting a car, and reserving a hotel, the process can get quite complicated. Enter Tripit, which simplifies the entire process. Simply forwarding your travel confirmation emails to a Tripit email account automatically creates your itinerary for you. It can then be shared among users, so all your coworkers know when and where you are heading.

As time passes, more and more business rely on strictly digital methods for managing their information, and the above apps build a solid foundation for running a well oiled and tech savvy company. Remember to try out any apps that seem interesting, and find what works best for you and your business.

Adrian King is a business consultant with a passion for technology. When he is not found working or spending time with his children, Adrian spends much of his spare time reading http://www.marketingtechblog.com/.

guest blogger, Project Management, Project Management Careers Advice

The Project Management Survival Guide

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Project management is a fast paced highly involving world of deadlines, information and teams. So how can you survive it all and come out with your and your colleagues sanity intact? Well Here is my survival guide.

Words to Live By

Each Project Management Leader should have the mantra of “Don’t Panic”, friendly text optional. Panic at any level will spread and cause mistakes, so if you feel it coming on, take a breath, count to five and trace the problem to its source, clearing up any other issues that may have sprung up around it in the process.

High Definition

Know what your project is about, have clear goals and make sure the investors and yourself know why the project has been requested, what will be produced during it and what the successfully completed project will have and when it will be.

Negotiation

No one likes to feel forced in to something so learn the art of negotiation, it is much easier to have a team member or employee do whatever task has been set willingly rather than have them fight you or become unhappy which will bring a very obvious note of discord that could disrupt the rest of your team.

Just Communication

Communication is vital to your survival, Don’t just talk at people, remember to interact with them! Listen and give appropriate well thought out responses when questioned as this will encourage others to do the same for you. It is also a good idea to document all communication and correspondence that goes on throughout your project as this will leave everyone on the same page and with a thorough understanding of each aspect of the job. This will be irreplaceable if something happens to a team member as their stand in or replacement will be able to review past notes and comments and pick up where they left off.

Building Bridges

Get your team working as one, even if this means going back to basics with team building exercises that is okay, one day spent on this could mean a much happier work environment with no miscommunication or unfounded resentments. Treat your team equally and help out with suggestions, mentoring or offering an ear for some counselling if needed.

Decisions, Decisions

Make sure there is a process for decisions when they need to be made, this way no one person has the “fate” of the project hanging on them, though is need be you can step in to make an executive decision – just remember that each team should be taught to see both sides of their point and you need to be able to do that too.

A Plan For Everything

You may not like hearing this but it has to be said; Plan for everything, even failure. Look at your project critically, what happens if everything goes wrong? Set aside some time to investigate this and work out some fail safes with your team, this way you’ll be prepared for every eventuality and you’re much more likely to succeed.

Vari thinks that survival guides are needed for most things from zombie apocalypses to engineering project management.

guest blogger, Happy work environment, Project Management, project management recruitment

Hiring IT Consultants – What Are The Benefits?

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With economic pressures bearing down on both large and small firms, the pressure to change the way in which things are done is mounting. Times are changing and the way in which a modern business works is constantly evolving and moving forward, especially when it comes to technology. So why does it now make more sense to hire IT consultants for projects instead of using your in-house tech department?

IT Consultants

Expand Your Base

Some business owners may be sceptical about the idea of hiring consultants to come in from outside their company and essentially ‘tell them how to do things’. However, this view can sometimes be ego-driven and is often proved not to be the case. Consultants hold their positions because they know what they’re doing. Besides which, it can often be crucially beneficial to projects, especially creative work, marketing, or system planning/redesign, to have a fresh opinion from the outside. Consultants are there to help you and your business, not just to come in and get paid to tell you the time with your own watch.

Even if your internal staff have come up with amazing ideas and possess a vast understanding of your business and how it works, the consultant can bring proven, tried and tested methods to the table and re-work these into successful ways to help your particular project. They have used these methods before and have learnt what works and what doesn’t, as well as how and why these methods have proven to be successful. Working together, you could come up with something twice as good as you could on your own.

Cost Savings

Most importantly for many businesses, it costs a lot less to call in consultants as and when you need them instead of paying to maintain an entire department. This is especially true for SMEs who lack an IT team entirely, but is also true for those who wish to keep a small team in-house but expand capability for larger one-off projects. As well as saving on salaries, employers are able to avoid paying secondary and hidden costs such as pension contributions, payroll taxes, and sick pay.

Gain Skills As You Require Them

As we all know, IT is something that can be hard to keep up with. New technologies are released constantly, and with these come new methods of working. This leads us to another reason as to why IT consultants could be the best choice for your your business – managers need not worry about having to get too involved in the IT project and can utilise valuable time elsewhere in the company. You don’t need to train an external consultant as they already have the skills and knowledge that businesses need; some skills that may not currently exist in-house.

Another perk is that IT consultants only need to be hired and brought in when a big project is coming up, offering businesses more flexibility and giving them a little extra money to play around with. This extra revenue could mark the difference in being able to really push the limits of the company and can make that extra room needed for sustainable growth.

Katie Barnes writes for Penman, a specialist Cloud Computing IT consultancy based in London.