Who is Keeping You Accountable?
There is a saying that “nothing gets done between Melbourne Cup and Australia Day”.
Given the rush in to Christmas (yes, it is less than 8 weeks away!), and the slow Christmas/New Year period when many business shut down, it is not hard to see why people hold this saying as true.
However, would you accept a 12 week stop in activity at any other time of the year?
Of course not!
Keeping your eye on the ball and motivated to keep pursuing your goals can be hard at times, and everyone needs down time to relax, reflect and recharge. Sometimes though, personal motivation is not enough to keep motivated and be pro-active towards achieving targets set.
At those times, it is important to have a mechanism or structure that keeps you accountable, and keeps you on track. Whether it be something as simple as a colouring chart, or more formal like a business plan or budget, keeping accountable is one of the keys to goal setting and achieving success.
One of the many ways to keep yourself accountable is to simply write down your goals. Of course, the important part of that process is to choose goals that are both realistic, but also stretch you to a better result.
Other ways you can be kept accountable include having a success partner, who can not only provide advice and guidance to set your goals, but also keep you on track and make sure you don’t deviate too far off the path.
At Value Beyond, we have a number of methods that we can use that can help you set your goals, as well as be accountable to those goals and to yourself. Don’t let this period until Australia Day be the time when nothing happens – contact us to see how we, or any of our extended network of professionals, can help you lead into your best year yet.
Online Scams On The Rise
Every day there are new online scams coming out, and also the same scams are repeated in various different forms. Protecting yourself from these scams is vitally important, as any access to your private information can lead to incidences such as identity theft and fraudulent transactions and finance applications.
The results of these illegal acts can take months to clear up, and can have lasting impacts on your credit record and ability to use items like credit cards and bank accounts. This can be even more important for small businesses, as a cyber attack takes an average of 23 days to resolve (50 days if it was an inside job), and 60% of business who experience a cyber attack go out of business within 6 months of the incident.
How do you protect yourself from these scams? If you ever receive a suspicious email, there are a number of things to do:
- Don’t click on any links in the email as they may open up malicious websites, or install viruses on your computer
- Don’t provide any personal information that can identify you, particularly items like tax file numbers and bank account details
- Install an anti-virus and malware protection program, and use it regularly to scan your computer
- Go directly to the company’s website by typing their website address into your browser.
- If you are in any doubt, go directly to the website and change your password to ensure that your security is maintained
Government departments like the ATO will never contact you by email asking for your personal information (they already have it, why would they ask for it again!), so if you receive a suspicious email you can double check with Value Beyond, or ring the ATO on their listed phone numbers to find out if the details are correct.
The government has more information on their Stay Smart Online website, and they have also released a Small Business Guide.
How Well Do You Know Your Workplace Rights and Obligations?
Whether you are an employer, or an employee, how well do you know workplace rights and obligations? Fair Work have released a quiz which tests your knowledge on key areas such as:
- Pay and awards
- Types of employment
- Flexible work and work life balance
- Disputes and grievances
- Leave
- Record keeping and pay slips
- Termination including redundancy
Click here to take the test, and see how much you really know!
Safety Workshops
Workplace Health and Safety Queensland are offering a number of free workshops which cover a range of work health and safety topics:
- Basic safety management system
- Risk management
- Safe work procedures
- Safe work method statements (for high risk construction work)
- Basic risk management for manual tasks
- Incident and emergency response
- Hazardous chemicals
- Health and wellbeing
- Injury management and return to work
- Monitor and review
To find out more details and to register for the workshops, visit the Work Safe website