CURLY AND CANDID

Essential Tech Skills For Your Workplace – Back to Basics

Admitting you’re not completely tech-savvy is something of a taboo in a modern office, but the truth is, that many adults lack basic digital skills. As many as 24% of employers struggle to find employees with basic digital skills. This not only causes problems in the workplace but causes issues for individuals, too, as the digital skills gap potentially leaves them behind.

Running sessions on digital basics can help boost confidence and help people feel more comfortable performing everyday digital tasks. Common office software such as Microsoft Office is constantly developing and evolving, which many people can find difficult to keep up with. Some refresher sessions could make all the difference in ensuring employees feel comfortable carrying out everyday IT tasks, and help your business become more tech-forward.

Making the Most of Productivity Tools

Technology has the ability to save time and make work tasks simpler, if you know how to use it, that is. And showing your employees the right productivity tools could transform the way they work, helping to make your workplace much more efficient. The right productivity tools could help employees:

Manage their calendars and schedules

Prioritise tasks

Automate some tasks

Improve performance

Increase customer satisfaction

And many other benefits. When your employees are more productive, they will enjoy boosted morale, and free up time for more complex tasks and their own development. Productivity tools can help navigate some of the challenges of management, creating a more positive, results-driven workplace.

Getting to Grips with AI – Essential Tech Skills For Your Workplace

AI is already bringing big changes to the workplace, especially in areas like customer service and even in creative roles. But while AI is already helping to make workplaces more efficient, it does come with its challenges, which is why it’s important to get ahead and help your employees get to grips with AI.

Show your employees the AI tools that are out there and how they can be used to enhance their work. But you should also show them how to use the technology safely and be mindful of sharing sensitive and personal data. You may even find that many of your workers have an interest in AI, providing opportunities to work with them to introduce best practices to the rest of your company or organisation.

Improving Content Creation skills

Content creation is a part of many people’s job roles; they just don’t realise it. It’s not just about making videos or posting on social media. From delivering presentations to writing briefs and reports, content comes in all kinds of forms. Helping your employees enhance their content creation skills, focusing on areas such as writing, using brand templates and even capturing simple photographs can boost your employees’ overall skills, helping them deliver better quality work. Using content creation tools like Canva can make the learning process even easier.

Developing content creation skills can be fun, and could be delivered in the form of creative workshops. Even if employees won’t use these skills every day, it’s good to do something a little different to keep work interesting and perhaps help them discover new interests too.

Keeping Your Workplace Secure

Maintaining security is one of the most important of all the tech skills in the workplace. Many incidents of data breaches and cyberattacks are caused by human error, which is something that can be prevented with the right training for your employees. There are precautions you can take behind the scenes, such as using WiFi security protocols, helping you protect your networks and maintaining privacy, but hands-on training can have a big impact on your IT security.

Teach employees how to spot phishing emails, how to secure their data, and what to do in the event of a cyberattack. Ensure refresher training occurs regularly, in line with the latest developments and threats.

Technology plays a key role within most businesses, and it’s important to use it to its full potential. Equipping your teams with the right skills to use technology effectively not only helps them feel more confident in their jobs but also helps keep your business secure. Invest in developing essential tech skills for your employees and start reaping the benefits for your business.

Does your workplace care about your safety? This blog post considers the warning signs. No matter what kind of professional you are, you’re a human being first. That means you’re vulnerable, as we all are. You shouldn’t have to accept a dangerous job unless you are explicitly made aware of the risks. You must be fairly compensated for the added challenge, and full safety measures have been integrated to mitigate any threat. This is how oil workers on independent sea stations, law enforcement, or even chefs in a blisteringly hot kitchen all day are prepared, to various degrees, and against various threats.

Does your workplace care about your safety? They might be saying all the right things, of course, as they have to pass the auditing checks. But the truth is that safety isn’t just a vocal commitment or even a policy change, it’s a practiced reality. Safety can be considered or disregarded at any moment. From a boss asking you to lift a heavy object without proper safety training, or failing to restore your safety equipment. On the flipside your manager might let you go home early if there’s a sweltering heatwave.

How do you assess if your managers and workplace are genuinely interested in your safety or not? In this post, I cover all of that and more:

Does Your Workplace Care About Your Safety? Infrequent To Rare Safety Training

Safety is not just a luxury process you voluntarily engage in. It has to be baked into every working process you engage in during an average shift. If you’re only getting a quick rundown in training when you start, that’s not great.

After all, what may require safety planning now could change in a little while. Often, threats change and new risks pop up.

Usually, this involves refresher courses or sending out updates. It could involve excellent, process-specific measures such as ADR courses to properly handle chemicals while keeping everyone protected. If you’ve been at a workplace for a while with no safety training, or your colleagues can’t remember the last time they had a course, this is a sign safety is hardly a top priority within that space.

Does Your Workplace Care About Your Safety? Slow Reactions To Safety Reporting

The truth is that even in a perfectly trained workforce and a well-curated building, safety issues can and do occur. Maybe the shutter doors are caught, black ice is present outside on the driveway, or there are no longer safe places in a warehouse to store materials.

If you find that reporting these issues is commonly met with silence or even an accusatory tone, that’s a deeply worrying prospect. Putting it simply – when you point out a safety issue, it shouldn’t disappear into a black hole. Good workplaces take that seriously. look into it, let you know what’s happening and even thank you for your communication and responsibility.

You should see some action, even if it’s just a temporary fix. If you’re getting brushed off or told “We’ll look into it” over and over, it might be worth checking just how much of a pattern this has become. Every day, safety reports save lives. That’s why having them ignored is so dangerous.

Improper Safety Equipment Replacement

Safety gear is great, and its presence is encouraging. However, time goes by and that equipment is no longer as protective or capable as it once was. Wear and tear affects safety equipment over time. If a construction safety helmet is hit with an impact, replace it, You never know what hairline cracks might cause a safety failure next time.

Simply put – safety gear wears out. If you’re stuck with old, worn-out equipment that never gets replaced because of “operational costs,” that’s a problem. Good businesses keep on top of this and also perform daily checks on their safety gear to ensure an employee never has to find out about issues the hard way. If you’re always having to ask for new items, or if requests get ignored, it’s a sign that short-term savings are more important than you potentially being harmed.

Effective Punishment For Reporting Errors – Does Your Workplace Care About Your Safety?

Getting in trouble because you reported a safety issue shouldn’t happen. Anyone sidelined after whistleblowing will know consequences can be severe but also subtle.

Reporting a safety hazard is not “bad form”. People should never be penalised for reporting safety issues. If you hear about people getting shifted to worse shifts or passed over for promotions after speaking up, that’s bad news. If there’s a feeling that it’s better to keep your head down, safety’s not the priority in your workplace.

No Accountability Measures

There should be clear rules about who’s responsible for what when it comes to safety. A good workplace will, generally, allow the buck to stop with the manager on shift or those responsible for overseeing safety, not the worker who made a mistake.

This way, if something goes wrong, it shouldn’t be a big mystery about who dropped the ball. Good workplaces have systems in place and care little about their reputation if it means they can avoid an injury. They also invest in good standards, such as regular audits or clear reporting lines. If it feels like safety is “everybody’s job but nobody’s responsibility,” then who will take charge if an issue happens? A common misconception is that accountability is more focused on pointing fingers than implementing lasting change, but that’s certainly not the case in good workplaces.

Does Your Workplace Care About Your Safety?

With this advice, we hope you can more easily identify the warning signs that your health and potential safety is not being prioritised as it should. We can’t determine your professional choices for you, but in these cases, prudent advice would be to find other opportunities and escalate the issue externally.