Opinion Piece Archives - Page 3 of 4

Leading the way: how Air is kickstarting my leadership career

Posted on 20 August 20193 July 2023 by Doug Roots

After moving back to my home town, I started my career at Air fresh out of university. I had completed a 6-month internship in business development at a PR and marketing agency, however it was fair to say that my experience in business development was still at novice level. Understandably, upon securing a job at Air, I was nervous. Although the team had been very welcoming and transparent, I couldn’t fully understand what my role as Business Development Executive would demand of me.

But I quickly found that I didn’t need to worry. During my first few weeks at Air, the team were so encouraging and open to helping with all aspects of my training. Their encouragement gave me confidence and I found that my capabilities in sales and business development were actually a lot stronger than I thought, even if I was a ‘beginner’. With the team continuously giving me constructive feedback and boosting my confidence, I couldn’t wait to get on the phone and start dialling. There was no pressure to be at a certain level – I simply needed to be professional, polite and enthusiastic. The in-depth training would take care of the rest.

I scored highly in my first few days of dialling and Air never treated me, or any other new employee, as if I couldn’t do something yet. They threw me in at the deep end and surrounded me with support, allowing me to dial on 3-4 campaigns within a matter of weeks. I quickly grew my knowledge and began speaking with decision makers in an array of industries, from fintech to HR and performance management.

When I joined, Air was only 2 years old with a team of around 30. They had grown quickly, and I realised that there was an opportunity here if I wanted it – and I did. Although I had joined the business development world, I didn’t want to just generate leads; I also wanted to share my growing knowledge and ideas for campaign improvement, eventually running one of my own.

My manager, Account Director Keryn Seal, recognised this ambition and after passing my 3-month probation, I was promoted to Senior Business Development Executive. The thing about Air is that no one is out for themselves, everyone is here to help you and drive the business forwards. Under Keryn’s guidance I was exposed to the basic operations of a campaign and our system, shown how to interact with clients and oversee a team of diallers. All I needed was an opportunity to put this into practise.

I got my opportunity when we moved to the new office in October 2019 and Air reworked its internal structure. Promoted to Account Executive, my new role sees me supporting my Account Director, Keryn, in the day-to-day operational tasks of a campaign, including set-up, strategy, reporting and being the link for feedback between diallers and the AD/client. This promotion has only encouraged me further and my aspirations are now to become an Account Director and Air are helping me to get there.

Since January, Air have supported me in my decision to pursue the leadership side of sales and business development. The step up is not one to be taken lightly and so they have enrolled me on a specialist training course, given me continuing support and exposed me to the commercial, client and growth aspects of the business. I’ve also been given my own accounts, recently working on a project that not only allows me to manage my own campaign but also a whole team of agents.

I can’t put into words how much I continue to develop and grow at Air. It’s been a fantastic opportunity in just over a year and I can only see further progression in the future.

Some parting advice for anyone unsure on which direction to go in next… Whether you are a graduate, unhappy in your current job, or looking for something new, give it a go. You’ll know when you find the right company to help you develop and flourish, just as I’ve done with Air.

Opinion Piece written by Yasmin McNeill, Account Executive at Air Marketing Group

Culture – Only seeing is believing

Posted on 19 July 201929 June 2023 by Doug Roots

One thing that has made a huge difference recently here at the Air Marketing Group, is the concerted effort for clients to actually ‘see’ our culture. To incentivise clients to come down to sunny Devon as early as we can in the sales process and experience our ‘difference’ for themselves.

You see, we are very proud of what we have created at Air Marketing Group, but there is only so much that you can say over the phone when trying to explain a culture and an ethos – seeing is believing. Adjectives like hyper-professional, driven, ambitious and cultured are all over-used, when sales people are promoting their services to prospective clients.

This, for example, was my first impression of Air Marketing Group when I started working here a few months ago:

“Think telesales, then destroy that mental image and re-engage, re-ignite and reconsider your sales team with Air Marketing Group – the most technologically advanced outsourced sales and Demand Generation partner in the UK.”

And it’s true, Team Air team have won many awards and are nominated as national finalists in both the ISM’s BESMA awards and the Amazon Growing Business Awards. My point though, is that anyone could say it, but not everyone is speaking the truth.

So, if anyone can make the same grand claims about their business, then how can you get differentiation if you consider your offering is actually ‘better?’ Well, we decided to go one step further and not only invite prospective clients to come and have a tour of our offices but give the client the chance to be left alone and have the run of the floor with our sales teams to quiz them, engage with them and get to know everyone in the office.

What we find is that clients have so many questions on how a campaign is run that, if left with those running and working on the campaigns, they relax and work out how our sales process can best be incorporated with their product or service. They are not being sold to at all, rather just being a fly on the wall and working out how it all works. They are often really surprised that we are confident enough in our team to leave an open invitation for them to talk to anyone and ask them anything they want. But why wouldn’t we be? We are proud of the culture that we have developed here and of the results that this culture gets for our clients in return. We treat our staff well and we look after everyone’s wellbeing – we have a great time, and we have nothing to hide.

You see, we are not ‘salesy’ to new clients, which is a bizarre thing to say about a company who averaged an ROI of £18 for every £1 spent by clients in 2018. But we know that clients aren’t actually aware of the technology that we leverage to get such results so, our initial meetings are more consultative and mature than a simple sales pitch. We actually just want to explain how calls are made, how we get our data and how we will look after their brand.

We want to invite as many clients to meet our team as possible – we are called Air after all and we pride ourselves on our complete transparency. Like any industry, people have preconceptions based on past experiences and telesales still gets tarred with a broad brush. We are however proud to be one of the nicest and most productive. I know anyone could say that, but we are. If you don’t believe us come and see us, have the walk of the floor and experience the award-winning Air culture for yourself.

“I was absolutely blown away with how different the team were at Air Marketing Group compared to my own preconceptions of telesales. I am so glad that I went to see them, they are amazing!” CEO of an International Events PLC.

Opinion Piece – Simon Scott-Nelson, Sales Director

Sales, It’s not just a job…. It’s a lifestyle!

Posted on 12 July 20193 June 2025 by Doug Roots

Being a Sales Professional requires not just a certain skillset, attitude or level of experience but an entire lifestyle, sense of dedication and a driven mindset.

It may surprise you but being a Sales Professional is not actually all about selling. Top performers don’t just sell, we build relationships and problem solve for our prospects and clients. We dedicate ourselves to building businesses one customer at a time and leverage our experience to help solve any challenges that may be impacting the progress of the next. To us, a problem is an opportunity to provide a solution, not a dead end!

We always put ourselves out there, ensuring that we have a presence in our prospects day to day lives. In order to be successful and progress sales, we show ourselves as the expert, the “go to” for guidance, regardless of whether that results in an immediate sale or not.

This presence can be developed through social media, networking, podcasts, cold calling, blogging, thought leadership or a combination of them all. It may take 1, 5, or even 10 years to build a relationship, but you can guarantee that the person we helped with no immediate benefit to ourselves will come back or refer our next potential customer.

At the end of the day, strong Sales Professionals will have a genuine interest in what we can do for someone else, as well as what they can do for us. More importantly, we’re proactive in helping them.

We never wait for a change in the economy, industry fortune or the circumstances of an inbound lead. Top sales performers are almost fanatical about our craft and we are constantly in preparation, plan and pipeline building mode.

In the words of Grant Cardone, “be obsessed!” There is no shame in following up with a prospect more than once, in fact it’s argued that an average prospect will need 8 touchpoints to convert. At the end of the day, a lost opportunity is lost ROI for ourselves and our clients. We hold ourselves accountable and set ourselves goals – our ambitions are always even higher than those set for us to ensure we always hit target.

As top performers, we hunt down those next opportunities and never give up. In a book I read recently, Richard Forrest, explains how opportunities are like icebergs – whilst 20% of buyers are already online, in buying mode, 80% of buyers are those that we must go and hunt down under the water line, unaware they even have a problem or maybe didn’t know there was an answer for the one they do. In order to reach that 80%, we have to pick up our spear (our phone), our shield (our objection handling) and hunt down that next opportunity.

Don’t be fooled, success is a long hunt and results don’t always come quickly. Top Sales Professionals dig and keep digging until we fully understand what a prospect needs, uncovering all of the issues and gathering the information that we need to make our solution a no brainer.

Opinion Piece by Simon Murthwaite, Leading Sales Director, Air Marketing Group

Sales – The Rocket Fuel Behind Your Start-Up Success

Posted on 19 June 201929 June 2023 by Doug Roots

The century old debate amongst start-up entrepreneurs, which is most important; product development or sales? It can feel like ‘what came first the chicken or egg?’ But I feel it’s clear.

There is no doubt that you need an offering to sell. Developing a product or service to take to market is an important early step for your start-up but it is often costly, time consuming and this can be detrimental to the success of the business. Products and services can and should evolve with time. Taking on board feedback from early adopters and listening to the market will help your offering adapt and grow. But your offering needs to earn its return on investment, which is where sales come in.

In the early days of a start-up business, sales are your lifeblood, your start-up is fighting to survive in a competitive market. As a new unrecognised business you’re trying to find your individuality and give reason as to why a customer should trust you. Trust me, it’s a tough world!

Reports show that so far this year 103,207 start-ups have been launched, but further reports suggest that 20% of start-ups fail after year 1, 30% after year 2 and 50% after year 5. There are of course many reasons why businesses fail, but from my experience one stands out. When it comes down to it, many simply do not focus on selling their offering, they expect customers to come to them.

Sales is your rocket fuel. Getting your sales strategy right from the beginning and being flexible, personable and, above all, hungry will be the difference between failure and success. The only way you can survive in a competitive world is by attracting and keeping customers. They become your advocates, they refer more customers to you and crucially they pay for your further offering development, your growth and your success!

Let’s give sales the focus it deserves.

Opinion Piece by Owen Richards, Managing Director, Air Marketing Group

Outsourced Sales vs Hiring In-House – The Debate Continues…

Posted on 30 April 20193 June 2025 by Doug Roots

As a business owner, you want to grow your company, you want to increase your sales and marketing function and you want to build your sales pipeline. However, should you outsource this to the experts or try and do it yourself, in-house? As a topic that is discussed by businesses on a daily basis, the debate between outsourced vs in-house sales is rife. It’s important to note that outsourcing your sales and marketing is, on paper, no different to outsourcing your recruitment, accountancy, HR, IT and so on. We know that all of the above, as well as sales and marketing are specialist areas which are needed within a business to ensure a smooth operation. We also know that all of the above require time, expertise, resources and dedication and that is exactly why you should outsource, to take the pressure away and allow you to focus on what you do best. If you’re thinking about outsourcing your sales and marketing or hiring an internal team, there are quite a few elements to consider, before making that final decision:

Do you have the office space/capacity/management structure to manage new team members internally?
Are you fully up to date with GDPR compliancy? Are your systems and processes GDPR compliant?
Do you have a call recording function? Can you record calls for training purposes?
Do you have a system for recording transactions?
Do you have in house data analytics? Do you know what you’re looking for when it comes to reporting and data analysis?
Have you thought about recruitment costs? What happens if the first few aren’t performing for you? If you let them go, have you thought about the cost of re-hiring?
What about sickness / holiday impacting productivity and dialling?
Do you have a quality assurance team?
Do you have in-house expertise when it comes to creating and managing an outbound calling campaign?

With the costs, time and resource strain associated with hiring internally, most companies eventually decide to leave it to the experts. Of course, this comes at a price, but the value and return are usually far greater than trying to do it in house. Not only that, but the flexibility of outsourced providers can be far more attractive than the rigidity of an in-house team. Let’s look at the benefits of outsourcing to us and why companies decide to use Air:

We are GDPR compliant, offering expert advice, systems and processes.
We have access to UK based data providers at reduced rates.
We manage the agents, we manage the entire recruitment process and we take the pain away when it comes to finding the right talent for your campaign.
We have the resources to cater for sickness and holiday time to prevent it impacting productivity.
We have purpose-built systems and processes which feed directly into a live time portal, where you can see exactly what we are doing on a daily basis.
We have a team of in-house data analysts who can spot trends and provide feedback.
We are experts within our field and have a proven, open questioned and permission-based scripting structure – designed to engage in high level conversations with key decision makers.
We have a GDPR compliant call recording functionality, all calls are recorded and can be accessed by the client.
We have an in-house Quality Assurance team who provide valuable feedback to the diallers/campaigns and improve quality and productivity.
We have an in-house learning and development team to ensure the quality of work we produce is as high as it can be.

Certainly, there are a few things to consider before making your final decision but most of the clients that decide to work with us have either tried it internally and it hasn’t worked or, they want to benchmark their internal performance alongside the experts. If outsourcing is your preferred solution, then we can help. We position ourselves as an extension to your sales team and everything we do is totally transparent. In short, we position ourselves as part of your team, we aim to replicate your corporate identity and we see ourselves as a true partner, being honest and proactive with everything we do whilst taking the pain and hassle away from managing this internally and allowing you to focus on the bigger picture. If outsourcing your B2B sales is something that you’re interested in discovering more about, why not get in touch? Call: 0345 241 3038, or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk Opinion Piece by Marco Alfano-Rodgers, Client Services Director, Air Marketing Group

Telesales… It’s just double glazing and all that, isn’t it?

Posted on 18 March 201929 June 2023 by Doug Roots

PPI, double glazing and timeshare apartments in Turkey. Hundreds of young staff, ‘battery hens’, on automatic redial with a career expected to span until the end of the week… If committed. I think that covers telesales, right? Oh, and “please, just take me off your list!”

Well, that may have been the image, one day, far back in the past. Although, I may still be doing the industry a big injustice and for that, I apologise. However, whether that was what the image of telemarketing was or whether it wasn’t, one thing is for sure… I certainly never expected it to be what I found when I walked into Air Marketing Group – the multi award winning outsourced business development, telesales and telemarketing services company in the heart of Exeter’s professional Southernhay district.

Any preconceptions that I had tucked up my sleeve were immediately out the window. I’ve spent my life in sales, working in a variety of industries including owning a small estate agency group and a clothes brand but what I have seen at Air marketing is second to none. They have completely opened my eyes to just how far away from my preconceived image of the industry was from the reality.

Organised, hyper-professional, driven, ambitious and all of that with a relaxed, engaging culture – that is Air. Air tackled my preconceptions from every angle, quickly showing me that they are a well-rounded outsourced sales team, an extension of any business that wants their own ‘instant plug-in’ to focus on selling their particular product or service. Without interruption, without variation, with a trained approach that best expresses their brand and one that is 100% recorded for quality control and training – all day every day if required.

Like I say, it just was not what I expected. If you couple this hive of focused sales activity which brings in 100’s of leads for clients such as Funding Circle and Beco Energy, with their sister marketing company ‘Roots to Market’, you can see the full sales cycle. From generating new enquiries to nurturing leads and then even to appointment closing and money taking, Air and Roots offer a complete sales and marketing funnel all under one roof.

If a company has an event to market, a service to sell into businesses or a product that requires a sales team to test the concept, it is now easier than ever to do this. At Air, we instantly, professionally and successfully demonstrate proven results and help companies to generate hundreds of thousands of pounds of revenue. I think that is something worth shouting about – as far as I can see, the image of telemarketing is changing, and Air is leading the way.

Here’s to working with such a forward-thinking, ground breaking, exciting and industry changing company and here is to the future of the ‘right’ telesales!

Opinion Piece by Simon Scott Nelson, New Business Manager

Quality Assurance, a New Year’s resolution to stick to!

Posted on 21 January 20193 June 2025 by Doug Roots

A renewed focus on Quality Assurance (QA) should be at the top of everyone’s resolution list this year. In the telemarketing industry small issues within company processes can often snowball and result in bigger, damaging issues if not nipped in the bud quickly. By implementing a QA system, you can make sure that best practise is followed by your team in every aspect of their calls – from introduction to close.

At Air, we rely on our QA system to maintain our reputation in the local and wider areas. We have taken many learnings from our system and this has allowed us to make sure that our services are of a high standard in a highly competitive market. Our focus on quality is what has allowed us to disrupt the industry and bring business to Exeter, rather than it being focused purely in London.

We want to distance ourselves from the traditional telemarketing reputation that telemarketing companies have of offering low quality services. We achieve this through our ability to be transparent. Part of our QA system is regular ‘calibration’ sessions with our clients, in which they have the ability to listen to our calls and offer training to ensure that we are delivering their brand message the way it should be.

From the outset of a client’s journey with us, QA is at the top of our priority list. Within our initial meetings we outline our typical sales cycle and method, allowing them to get involved and adapt it where they see fit. From there, we introduce their dialling team and we encourage them to discuss their product and services in as much detail as they can so that everyone has a thorough understanding of the offering and industry they will be selling in. We then set up a script and pitch for our diallers which provides them with a guide for their calls. Our scripts are important, offering company USPs and common objections, however, we don’t hire robots and we don’t want our calls to sound scripted, so we allow our expert diallers to tailor them as they see fit.

Once the diallers have made their calls, they then go through the next phase of our QA process – call screening. This involves us randomly selecting calls from each campaign and grading them against Air’s call framework, which is adjusted to suit each client. Owing to our transparent approach, clients can have as much involvement with this as they would like, for example one client calls us every Friday to catch up with the campaign and compare call notes. To follow up on these discussions, we then have a debrief with the dialler who’s call has been selected to ensure that they implement any feedback going forwards.

For us, QA helps us to meet our clients demands and expectations. By continuously offering services of a high quality, we build strong trust with our clients. It also allows us to save us and them costs, as we can pin point issues before they become damaging. Investing in QA is indispensable in many industries today. It is most effective when it’s in place from the start. When Quality Assurance is done right, confidence is guaranteed.

Opinion Piece by Jo Marshall, Quality Assurance Co-ordinator

Time management is vital to business – how can you better yours?

Posted on 10 December 20183 June 2025 by Doug Roots

We’ve all had those days where we come into work and just don’t feel up to the day; tasks have been stacking up for days, deadlines have been pushed back and our workload just seems to be taking over our lives. And on days like these we often don’t help ourselves. Instead of tackling the more pressing tasks, we chose to do admin and smaller jobs which don’t take up as much of our time. Of course, this doesn’t solve the issue and we continue to get increasingly behind on our work and become even more stressed, leading to poor mental health – 1 in 6.8 people experience mental health problems in the workplace.

I know it’s sometimes easier said than done but in business we just need to grab the bull by the horns and take on the tasks that we don’t always feel up to – only 37% of teams in the UK report completing their project on time. An easy way to balance our workload is to simply invest proper time management. By effectively managing our time we reduce stress and increase productivity.

My top tips for time management:

Wind down and plan

Allowing yourself 15 minutes at the end of your day to wind the day down and go over the tasks which need focusing on the following day will allow you to create a structure to follow when you get in.

Book it in

Use your calendar – it’s right there to remind you to do what you need to do! By booking tasks into your calendar you will basically have a virtual PA which nudges you when it’s time to wrap up a task and move on to the next.

Eliminate distractions

Put your phone back in your bag (on silent), pop in your headphones and turn off anything that will distract you. This includes team chat notifications and emails, sometimes you just need to cut yourself off and work for an hour.

Colour code it

Sit down and work out which jobs are high priority and which jobs can be left for a while – then flag them with a colour code, ranking them in order of importance.

Training

Make the most of training opportunities available to you. Sometimes sitting down with your team and/or a trainer and discussing various techniques which other people implement is a great way of making your day, and the business, run more smoothly.

My favourite Time Management concepts:

Follow The Pareto Principle

I am a strong believer in this time management concept – it’s tried and tested, based on the work of the Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, in 1906.

To put it simply, 8/10 tasks on your daily to do list are as important as your top 2.

So, take your daily to do list and write down 10 things that you want to achieve today. Of these 10, select the 2 that are most important. Make these your priority. Work towards these throughout the day, resisting the urge to procrastinate and take up smaller tasks.

In working towards your 2 most important tasks, you know that the key tasks can be crossed off and time can be given to the smaller tasks when you have the capacity to fulfil them.

Implement The Eisenhower Matrix

This concept was born from Dwight Eisenhower’s famous quote, “what is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important”, and again it’s pretty straight forward.

The basic premise is that some tasks are simply more important to a business than others. Often it pays to be able to delegate, if you have an assistant (or a colleague with a lighter work load) then hand it over and save yourself the time to work on your more important tasks.

There really is nothing worse than coming to work and feeling like you can’t face the day. So, if you’re feeling a little snowed under, why not implement these hints and tips?

Opinion Piece by Nicolette Karides, Learning and Development Coordinator, Air Marketing Group

Morning Buzz Meetings – Demotivating or Motivating?

Posted on 29 November 201819 September 2024 by Doug Roots

Motivation can be difficult to achieve in an office environment; hard work can often go unnoticed and the constant pressures of a competitive environment can begin to wear employees down. Research has shown, each day, 10% of employees are absent in call centres due to the lack of appreciation felt in the workplace. This research alone highlights the need, especially in my industry, for touchpoints which allow managers to show their appreciation to their staff, highlight individual achievements and deliver motivational objectives. In this blog post, I will share my experience and tips for achieving the above in one morning meeting.

So, how do you maximise your morning buzz meetings to encourage individuals and create high performing sales teams?

Strategise

43% of highly engaged employees receive feedback at least once a week, however, employee reviews should be happening more often and take less time.

There’s nothing worse than a long-winded ‘motivational’ meeting that is set to demotivate from the offset. It’s therefore important that you plan and prepare; effective buzz meetings should be concise and last no longer than 15 minutes, be armed with your objectives, focus on team wins and pinpoint your collective areas of learning.

Set the tone

Our physical behaviour influences our mental and emotional approach to the day.

Think of ways to get your team moving, have a walking meeting, introduce a quick-fire game or play uplifting music to get the blood pumping. Increased blood flow creates a positive mood, resulting in employees being more equipped to handle objections, take on new challenges and meet personal milestones.

Spotlight success

69% of employees say they would work harder if they felt their efforts were better recognised.

This is the perfect opportunity to feature the activity which you want to encourage. Celebrate your teams wins, even if they don’t lead to a direct sale and avoid focusing on losses. Recognising individual and team achievements has become my common practise, as I know this makes the individuals in my team feel more confident and in turn, pushes them to set bigger targets.

Support and encourage

41% of companies that encourage colleagues to support one another experienced a significant increase in customer satisfaction.

If you want to create a great support network and boost team morale, encourage employees to praise fellow team members, this assures no one’s hard work slips past management and brings the team closer together. If your team is feeling positive it will show in their client conversations, resulting in better relationship building, more sales and higher ROI for the company.

Strengthen from learnings

92% of employees agree that negative feedback, if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.

Remember, the key for creating a great buzz meeting is positivity. Take negative feedback from the day before and turn it into takeaways and learnings for the team to overcome together. If a client isn’t happy with an element of your team’s performance, encourage your team to think of tactics that will better engage them and the people they are selling to.

State the day’s focus

90% of business leaders believe that an engagement strategy could positively impact their business, yet only 25% of them have a strategy in place. It’s therefore no surprise that only 40% of employees are well informed of their company’s goals, strategy, and tactics.

It’s time to hit the reset button and introduce a new action plan for the day. Ask each individual team member, “what do you want to achieve today?” I have found that when the whole team acknowledges personal targets, that individual immediately feels more accountability to meet their goal, success is more likely to be achieved and goals are more likely to align to the company’s bigger picture.

At Air Marketing, we have experienced great success from our initiative to focus on our internal company culture. Achieving £18 for every £1 our clients invest, we are performing higher than the industry’s £11 average. I personally believe this success is down to the time we take out of selling to promote appreciation, individual achievements and team objectives. The culture at Air is one that I haven’t experienced anywhere else, our team’s positive and supportive nature is infectious, thanks to our daily buzz meetings we continue to deliver fantastic results for the companies we support.

Opinion Piece by Annie Blundell – Account Director, Air Marketing

The Office Environment Creates Success

Posted on 24 October 20185 May 2022 by Doug Roots

Today, businesses are keen to concentrate on successful recruitment processes, robust 1-2-1 systems, competitive pay grades and offering the right benefits. All of this comes in an attempt to attract and retain excellent employees that constantly perform to the best of their ability. However, reality suggests that businesses are also becoming increasingly demanding of the people that they should be working hard to look after.

Recently, the Mental Health Foundation released figures which state that work-related stress costs Britain 10.4 million working days per year. An increasingly demanding work culture, in the UK, forces longer hours, less manageable workloads and heightens the intensity of constant comparison amongst peers in a race to stay ahead.

Businesses should be concentrating on, a healthier office environment which results in employees waking up on Monday, enthusiastic to come to work. Below are my three top tips to fostering a healthy and encouraging office environment:

The life-changing magic of tidying

With our minds often reflecting the environment in which we find ourselves, there are a lot of factors we should start considering to better our office surroundings and withdraw the best attitude from our employees, fellow colleagues and ourselves.

Marie Kondo, a Japanese organising consultant and author, has written 4 books on the art of decluttering. Her book ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up’ has been well received in more than 30 countries and her simple but sought after method has consequently led her to appear as one of the Times ‘100 most influential people’. Aside from helping millions organise their sock draw; her book explains how cluttered disorganised spaces have a negative impact on our minds and how we choose to process our day.

In a world where the restless mind often wreaks havoc, encouraging a spacious, clear and organised office environment will allow efficiency, concentration and motivation to flourish. The art of organisation, natural light and the odd office plant will boost energy levels and increases employee well-being.

An open office

We associate an open door with opportunity. An open office space allows us to form strong relationships, build good rapport with others and gives us an opportunity to absorb the culture – whether it be peaceful and calm or buzzing with energy. The opportunity to be part of a team, working towards the same goal, allows us to immediately feel a strong sense of belonging.

According to Maslow’s motivational theory in psychology, belongingness increases motivation, self-esteem and self-actualisation needs.

A high level of motivation will lead to new clients won, individual targets met and a positivity which can be absorbed by the whole office.

The right culture reflected

Hard work and achievement requires recognition to create an overall feeling of appreciation.

Sometimes it’s the little things that impact us the most, a thumbs up from our manager or a well done from our colleague. Knowing we are surrounded by support (at all levels) allows us to take on new tasks with confidence and grow and develop as individuals.

Recent surveys have shown that the more employees felt appreciated at work, the more they were committed to their jobs, the better equipped they were to handle stresses of client demands and deadlines and the less likely they were to take time off work.

The concept of a good workplace has been a part of office culture for decades, but many business owners still don’t know all that this entails and why it’s important.

So many different aspects of the office environment effect employee motivation, productivity and even retention.

No relationship is effortless

Getting the simple stuff right is becoming increasingly more important if you want your business, employees and colleagues to thrive.

As a manager or business owner encouraging continual feedback from both your perspective and your current employees will ensure essential needs are met in the aspiration of achieving a happy successful environment for everyone.

Opinion Piece by Samantha Bennett, Human Resources, Air Marketing Group

Category: Opinion Piece