Self Employment Survival Webinars

In the past we've offered Look Before You Leap: Self-Employment Survival Strategies as a two week, facilitated online course.  With the continued support of CERIC, we will now be offering a Look Before You Leap webinars series, making it more affordable and accessible than ever.

The first introductory webinar will provide attendees with a brief exploration of self-employment, both within and outside of the career development sector, and a review of the Look Before You Leap project and research (conducted by Life Strategies and funded by CERIC). Attendees will also be introduced to the 5-part webinar series. 

You can register for the introductory webinar here: http://ceric5.eventbrite.com/#.

This introductory webinar will be followed by a 5-part webinar series exploring  the following topics:

1. Getting Real About Self-Employment 
2. Creating Your Self-Employment Vision and Business Plan 
3. Marketing Yourself Effectively to Get Clients, Customers, and Projects 
4. Managing the Logistics and Getting Help 
5. Monitoring Progress and Planning for the Future 

For detailed descriptions of the series, please download this document.

To register for the 5-part series please visit: http://ceric6.eventbrite.com/#.

The first 10 registrants for the 5-part webinar series will receive a free PDF copy of the Look Before You Leap book.  A certificate of completion will be issued by Life Strategies to participants who attend all five parts in the webinar series.

Clocking In From The Couch

When I tell people I work from home, they respond with, "that must be nice" or "that's awesome."  But, is working from home really that nice and awesome?  Some days I find it quite challenging.  Why?  I must say it's because of all the distractions that surround me.  I have designated office hours and an office space, but I still get lured by distractions such as house work, kids, pets, the mail's arrival, tv, phone, Facebook...

Recently I came across this great blog post and infographic by www.webs.com that gave me a good chuckle about the realities of working from home and some solutions to combat the distractions that make my "nice and awesome" work environment actually a great place to get work done.  Click on the image below to visit the infographic.

Miranda Vande Kuyt is a self-employed project and communications consultant. She is also the facilitator of the "Look Before You Leap: Self-Employment Survival Strategies" online course through www.LifeStrategies.ca.

8 Tips For Supporting Retained Employees After Layoffs

Engaging survivors is key to successfully downsizing a workforce. Failing to support survivors is proven to lead to low motivation, loss of productivity, and a decrease in performance. Survivor disengagement leads to an increased staff turnover, causing companies to hire new staff, negating the cost saving intentions of layoffs in the first place. Having highly engaged employees is key to successful downsizing. Follow these tips for keeping survivors engaged. 

1. Preplan - Start the downsizing process by considering all your options to avoid downsizing1. Include staff in your look for a solution. Ask them what they need for the company to be successful.

2. Create career development plans - Meet with individual staff to create career development plans. Understand what motivates each employee; what he or she truly values in life and work. Support them to create a plan to journey towards their career goals. Having staff invested in their future helps your company meet your needs of a diversely skilled work force2.

3. Treat those being laid off with dignity and respect - This reassures survivors that if they must leave in the future, they will be treated in the same manor. It reduces their fear and anxiety over the future3, as well as encourages them to stay with the company4.

4. Address survivor guilt - Survivors can be plagued by worry about the future, guilt over surviving the cut, increased stress about the increased workload, and their skill gaps5. This overall leads to lower morale, productivity, and performance, as well as higher staff turnover6. Address this through one on one coaching. Allow each staff to process the transition in their own way as they move toward understanding their new identity within the company7.

5. Recognize accomplishments - Celebrate small wins for the company; how the downsizing is fulfilling its goals. Also celebrate the achievements of staff; when they reach part of their goals, complete training, etc. Acknowledging their accomplishments and how they ultimately make your company stronger boosts morale and the staff's commitment to their personal career development goals and loyalty to the company2.

6. Communicate transparently - Update staff frequently on how the company is doing through newsletters, reports, emails, staff meetings, etc. Encourage them to give you feedback on what they need to do their job more effectively. Use multiple avenues such as feedback surveys, group planning sessions, one on one coaching, etc5.

7. Provide strong leadership - Survivors need help to focus on the most important things they can do for the company and themselves in order to succeed in the time of transition2. They require clear communication on the expected outcome and empowerment to reach and even exceed those expectations. Also, don't forget the need for honest communication and recognition for moving towards and reaching expectations.

8. Create an environment for highly motivated employees to succeed - Have the systems (policies and procedures), as well as the strategies (career development planning, cross training, leadership) in place for people to tap into their internal motivation and talents for being highly engaged employees2.

Miranda Vande Kuyt is a self-employed project and communications consultant. She is also the facilitator of the "Look Before You Leap: Self-Employment Survival Strategies" online course through www.LifeStrategies.ca.

End Notes:

1 Weber, Liz. (2009, March 20) Managing Layoffs With Dignity. Retrieved from http://www.smartbiz.com/article/articleview/2516/1/8/

2 Discover Winning Ways. (2009, April 15) Outplacement – Managing the Survivors After the Layoff. Retrieved from http://www.discoverwinningways.com/outplacement-layoff

3 Oliver, Karen. (n.d.) Outplacement Services – Part II. Retrieved from http://www.dbmgulf.com/articles/dbm_articles2.htm

4 People Central, (2009, February 12) ROI for Businesses Using Outplacement & Career Transition Services Retrieved from http://www.peoplecentral.co.nz/outplacement/roi-for-businesses-using-outplacement-career-transition-services/

5 Oliver, Karen. (n.d.) Outplacement Services – Part III. Retrieved from http://www.dbmgulf.com/articles/dbm_articles3.htm

6 CallMe!. (2011, April 26) 5 Steps to Overcome “Survivor Syndrome”: managing Employee Productivity in the Wake of Layoffs & Restructuring Retrieved from http://iq.callme.io/2011/04/26/5-steps-to-overcome-survivor-syndrome-managing-employee-productivity-in-the-wake-of-layoffs-restructuring/

7 Trevor-Roberts, Edwin. (2008) Outplacement Myths. Retrieved from http://www.aim.com.au/DisplayStory.asp?ID=653

How To Deliver Layoff News [Infographic]

Choosing Your Logo Style

When pulling your logo together ensuring it’s high quality and using good colours is important. You also need to think about what kind of image you want to portray your company. Do you want to go abstract or do you want to be more realistic? Professional or comical? All of these things can affect your design. Let’s use the following companies as an example:

There’s quite the difference between these two! You have the professional and the more comic style. Both portray a completely different feel – and you have to make sure the style you choose portrays not only your company and its culture, but also looks appropriate for the industry.

The best way to help you make the right choice of what sort of a look to go for is to think of what your target clients would like. Do you work with corporate high-end companies or do you work with creative artists? A logo appealing to those two groups would be entirely different! A corporate customer would likely not appreciate, or take seriously, a company that had a very abstract and artsy logo. Keep your clients, or ideal clients, in mind when you make your logo – you can even ask them for their input, they would appreciate that you value their opinion if you ask!

Remember if you decide to go with a photograph in your logo to ensure that you start with the highest quality, largest file you can. Keep this saved, backed up, etc, in a safe place because every time that you re-save an image you loose quality, so make sure you always have one copy that no-one’s touching that you can go back to if you need to. That being said, using photos in logos is a bit dated, it’s more common to use computer generated graphics and the benefit is that they’re generally much easier to work with.

There are so many more important things to keep in mind with logos, always make sure you get other people’s opinions – be that your clients, staff, or a professional designer!

Anna Kouwenberg is the Owner and Creative Director at ARK Squared Productions where she offers web and graphic design services. You can connect with Anna about your logo and design needs via email at anna@arksquared.com, Twitter:@arksquared, or her website at www.arksquared.com.

Choosing Logo Colours

Photo by Thedalog

There are so many things that can make a company look professional, but one of the most common and often overlooked at times is a company logo. It can portray so much about a company, either through images or colours used. What colours can say about you and your company through something as simple as a logo is quite amazing!

The colours you use in your logo can end up being one of the biggest decisions a company can make. These colours are likely going to be the colours you end up using throughout your company – from letterhead to uniforms, business cards to the paint colour scheme in your office. So not only do your colours have to represent you well with their meaning – but you had better like them!

There are many different resources to help you learn more about different colour meanings, a few that I’ve come across are:

• http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html
• http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/color2.htm

Those are just two of many great resources. If you look you will see that you really need to be careful what colours you choose – especially if you have a specific target client. For example, you have probably noticed that many companies that have primarily Chinese clients tend to use a lot of red because in their culture red is an important colour. At the same time you have to be careful that you also do not offend by using a “bad luck” colour.

Another example, if you’re working with money, using green will get people thinking about money. It can also reflect that a company is using “green” practices and have that positive swing to it as well. What about if you’re going for a high-end clientele? Purple, the colour often associated with royalty can be a good choice. Or if you’re thinking high-end corporate a colour like “IBM” blue mixed with greys can work really well too.

A couple examples of negative colours would be red and yellow – while sometimes they can be good representing luck with red or energy with yellow, the colours can also mean different negative things too. Red is also a sign of caution and yellow can make people be on edge or it can also represent being scared or afraid. If you’re wanting to come across with confidence and professionalism you will want to be careful how you use those colours!

Overall just make sure that you don’t just pick a colour because you like it, but research it and make sure that it doesn’t have bad connotations attached to it, particularly if you target a specific clientele. You need to make sure that the people and companies that you are targeting as clients would like the look and feel of your marketing material!

Anna Kouwenberg is the Owner and Creative Director at ARK Squared Productions where she offers web and graphic design services. You can connect with Anna about your logo and design needs via email at anna@arksquared.com, Twitter:@arksquared, or her website at www.arksquared.com.

The Importance Of A High Quality Logo

When people think about starting up a company they tend to focus on getting their product or service ready and selling it to their clients. One thing that can get left behind is ensuring they have a consistent image to put forward in those efforts. How much more professional does, say a courier company appear when they show up in uniform, with a nicely logoed car? A professional image definitely makes a statement, and it can be one of confidence, intentions to be around for the long-haul, and the list goes on.

The key piece to any visual consistency in a company is the logo. Everything can come from the logo – colours used throughout marketing elements, a general feel for anything from business cards to websites. If you don’t have a logo, or don’t have a good one, you can find yourself having a tough time being consistent throughout various marketing mediums because you do not have a strong base.

There are a few key things to consider and remember when putting a logo together and one of the most important is ensuring you have a high quality logo. Some companies use photos in their logo, but most companies are tending to move away from that because a computer generated image is the easiest to keep looking the best. The reason is that photographs are made up of pixels, the higher quality/larger size the image is the more pixels (and thus smoother image) you get. So if you have a poor quality image and you try and use it for a billboard it will look rough and grainy. A computer based image can be done with vector instead of pixels and then holds its smoothness regardless of size. Let’s look at an example with a basic circle:

Original image:

Now let’s zoom in on the image, left is what it would look like if we zoomed in and it was a traditional picture file, right is what it would look like if it was a vector file:

 

Now think of some of the ways that you might use your logo. Sure business cards, brochures, etc, those you do not have to worry about too much. But let’s say you wanted to put a great wrap on your car, make a nice tradeshow booth, or maybe you wanted to do a billboard ad. When you enlarge your logo, is it going to be an ugly circle like the left or like the nice high-quality circle on the right? We all know which one we’d want anyway! So remember that when you get your logo designed – ALWAYS have a vector image available. You can save the file as the traditional “pixel” image for various uses, but being able to go back to the vector image for different projects is very important.

Anna Kouwenberg is the Owner and Creative Director at ARK Squared Productions where she offers web and graphic design services. You can connect with Anna about your logo and design needs via email at anna@arksquared.com, Twitter: @arksquared, or her website at www.arksquared.com.