Business Plus Baby

As a business, ensuring that your company is secure and your customers are protected is high on your list of priorities. However, many businesses may not realise that they can use internet filters to protect their security and keep their WiFi network protected.

In this guide, we’ve explained how businesses can use content filtering software, as well as the reason why you may want to incorporate this into your business’ WiFi network:

What is WiFi content filtering?

If you’re offering guest WiFi to allow your customers to connect to a network controlled by your business, you’re essentially providing people with access to the internet.

Simply put, content filtering is a method that businesses can use  to prevent people accessing the network, from visiting certain sites. Because almost anything can be downloaded or accessed on the internet, web filtering software will prevent customers who are connected to the network, from accessing non-family-friendly content or downloading malicious software.

Who can use it?

If you’re a business and you’re offering a WiFi connection to anyone visiting your premises, you’re able to use content filtering within your network. This means that whether you’re offering hotel, restaurant or stadium WiFi, you’re able to use web filtering software to block those connected to the network from accessing certain sites.

rawpixel

How to use internet filters

Once you have web filtering software installed within your business WiFi network, you can use it to:

Block certain sites

The most common use for WiFi content filtering software is to block your customers from accessing certain sites. Many types of software will run by blocking a list of recommended sites by the Internet Watch Foundation. However, you may also have the option to block websites by category if you’re looking to tightly control the content that is accessible to your users.

Blocking users from visiting unwanted websites is often the main use of content filters for businesses operating in public places. It is useful to be able to prevent customers from watching content that isn’t family-friendly content in a public area.

Limit Social media access

By using web filtering software, you can also block employees using your business WiFi, from accessing social media websites.

Aiding with your employees become more productive in working hours, you may want to add other websites that could act as a distraction to the block-list.

Provide additional security

Because this type of content filtering will prevent users of the network from accessing certain sites, your business is provided with additional security. This is because customers are unable to download malicious software, which protects the network against hacking, malware or phishing attacks.

Protect against excessive WiFi bandwidth use

With slow WiFi being named as one of the biggest modern stresses, you may be surprised to learn that you can use WiFi content filtering to improve the speed of your network connection.

By preventing customers from taking advantage of your WiFi bandwidth and using it excessively and blocking them from downloading large media files such as videos, the speed of your business WiFi will automatically improve for other users on the network.

As you can see, there are a variety of ways that your business can use internet filters to improve your customers’ experience of using a secure network. Keep in mind that the security of your network is essential and you should always consider blocking sites that pose a risk of damaging the connection.

Hans

A builders job is to construct or repair houses and other buildings. Here, I’ll be giving tips for a first-time builder to find their way in bricks, timber, mortar, and steel. However, I will also advise that even after reading these tips if you don’t feel as though you’d be confident and successful in building entirely by yourself, get a company to help.

You can get a steel building priced up easily online. One place you can do this is Armstrong Steel who are America’s number one preferred Steel Building Systems provider and have connected with over 1 million online customers. For expert help from their specialists and ensured fast turnarounds, it would be beneficial to invest in online professionals to help. However, if you’re confident in getting the job done yourself, here are 10 tips that you need to follow.

1. GET LICENSED

Unleash the power of a state license and get one for yourself. It works both ways for builders by protecting their clients as well as enhancing their marketability. Today, property owners are shrewder than ever and the best ones do not want to save funds by working with unlicensed workers. They know that such builders may disappear in the middle of a project or do a below average job which could result in safety hazards. You can find more information about what licence you need here.

2. GET CERTIFIED

The subsequent need after getting a license is getting certifications to rise above the crowd of builders. A client would naturally take a builder more seriously upon seeing his or her accreditations. These days, a steel building certified general contractor is more valuable than the rest due to its ever-increasing popularity.

3. MANAGE THE CASH FLOWS

A majority of small builders go out of the game in the first few years due to problematic cash flows. A first-time builder could do the following to avoid clogged cash flows:

• Ask customers for deposits up front.
• Request your creditors for stretched repayment terms.
• Converting receivables to cash.

4. GET THE RIGHT BUSINESS TOOLS

A cursory online search would reveal the leading business tools for general contractors. To be successful, you need to be efficient with the business tools that are relevant to your scope of work. Also, learn the software to optimise your operations from design to billing, accounting and design.

5. GET SERIOUS ABOUT ONLINE MARKETING

Word of mouth and personal referrals are still relevant, but today it is all about your online presence. The significance of showing up on top or on at least the first page when prospects are searching for your services is paramount. Therefore, even if you are a freelance builder there are many authentic platforms to get yourself registered and then progress through the ranks as you gain credibility through your work.

Moreover, it is admissible to be regular on social media by frequently tweeting or posting updates and announcements related to your industry and your own expertise.

6. DEFINE YOUR UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION

A builder should know that his or her competitors are also licensed, certified and using the best software available. Therefore, to distinguish themselves they need to define their unique selling proposition. It could be their skills, attention to details or an eye for design which will make them exclusive.

7. ALWAYS START WITH A CONTRACT

An essential tip to have a successful career as a builder is to always start a working relationship with a contract. It shall define the cost, quality of items being installed, approximate start and finish dates, and written specifications regarding the intended design. A good contractor never leaves anything to guess work by detailing every aspect in the mutually signed contract.

8. IMPROVE YOUR INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE

It is not a hidden secret that keeping a close eye on the happenings of the construction industry is always beneficial. Today, about 3 million construction jobs account for 10% of the total UK employment. Moreover, it is an annual £110 billion industry and contributes 7% of the GDP. Moreover, approximately 1/4^th of the construction is in the public sector while the rest of the 3/4^th is in the private sector.

9. IT IS NOT ONE JOB

To consider construction just one job is a dangerous over simplification. It is a blend of several jobs. When a building project is going on, you see lots of different people such as carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers, scaffolders, and tilers doing specific orderly tasks. Every individual’s output or the lack of it is the responsibility of the contractor.

10. DEFINE YOUR AREA

It is admissible to mark the communities you have local knowledge about in your work resume once you get more experience as a builder. This is because a general contractor sees as many buildings as a realtor and therefore is better placed to offer insights about its different aspects to the clients.

When you own a business, you become responsible for all sorts of individuals’ health and safety. Your own, your workers’ and your clients’ or customers’ well being all need to become your prime concern. Every year, hundreds of workplace accidents leave people injured, sick or otherwise incapacitated. So how do you go about avoiding accidents in the workplace? Here’s a quick run through of everything you need to do to ensure everyone is content and well.

Health and Safety Training

You should ensure that all of your staff are health and safety trained before being set to work. Health and safety training will ensure that everyone knows the protocols for hazardous situations. This can take place in a classroom type setting or can be more casual, verbal communication. Providing adequate training will ensure that your employees will know how to get through the day safely without posing a risk to their own or others’ health. This will remove the risk of the distress that accidents and illness can cause in the workplace and will also make sure that you can avoid the financial costs of injury and ill health within your workforce.

monicore

Signage

You should ensure that you have all of the apt signage at hand for your business. This should include permanently fixed signs, such as fire action information, evacuation information, fire exit indicators and glow in the dark safety signs in case of a power outage. There should also be temporary signs, such as wet floor and wet paint signs.

Collective Protection Systems

There are certain areas of your workplace that will pose a collective safety risk but cannot be removed. An example could be the roof space of your establishment. Chances are that individuals will be able to access the roof. To prevent accidents from occurring should someone end up on the roof of your building, you could install Edge Protection Guardrail, which can help to prevent individuals from falling or slipping off the edge of a great height.

Ergonomics

If you have employees working in an office setting, you need to ensure that all of the furniture in the space is ergonomically designed. Standard chairs, desks, and accessories can result in chronic health problems within your workforce, such as repetitive strain injuries. Ergonomically designed furniture ensures that your employees’ posture is upright and they have the most appropriate and comfortable working conditions possible.

photo: minthu

Fire Safety Equipment

Fire safety equipment is an essential for any business setting. You should have all necessary extinguishers within easy reach and in fully functioning condition. This includes water, dry powder, foam, CO2 and wet chemical extinguishers. If your staff know these items’ whereabouts and how to use them properly, fires can be put out before they pose a major threat to life and property. You could also install a sprinkler system as a back up.

Following these instructions could quite literally be the difference between life and death situations. All of these essentials will result in the creation of a safe and secure workplace in which your employees will feel safe, content and comfortable.

Tony Alter

In the effort to develop and build your own firm, whether that is subcontracting services or providing some form of freelance work to an agency or regular client, you are likely to take as much work on as you can to satisfy the client. You might be tempted to take on repeat business from the same client if the process and transactions are going well.

After a while, you might feel comfortable in your operation, and it can become easy to rest on your laurels. However, as an independent contractor, you cannot afford to make a mistake, and accidentally making one, in any capacity that suggests to your client they have been financially or otherwise misled, damaged or impinged with difficulty, you are in trouble.

Now, it’s likely that if you’re an independent contractor and have developed from success to success so far, you might feel like no error could be made. This form of business confidence is useful, but it can blind you to issues that crop up you might not be expecting. If you have no form of insurance, cover, or even forethought about dealing with these events outside trying to remedy it from a personal level, you will have much difficulty navigating the inevitable sticky issue that can’t be settled as easily.

Without some form of adequate indemnity insurance such as that offered by Kingsbridge, you will be vulnerable to paying out enormous potential costs for work, both past and present, that a customer just might have an issue with. The following list will hopefully help you realise just how, with the best observation in the world, you might be betrayed by a minor missed contingency that you hadn’t planned for.

Yourself

Now, no matter how shrewd you are, and you must be to successfully build a business, you are not impervious to making mistakes. No one is. If this is your first business, you might not be one hundred percent aware of standard business conduct in your firm. If you have operated for some time, you might be unaware of some new legislation or methodology of obtaining work that is now considered the norm.

However, it needn’t be a difficult clerical error that trips you up. Sometimes, a bad week such as going through a difficult, turbulent family event can lead you to performing badly at your work, and understandably so. No matter the issue, you will find that mistakes in your work and proceedings crop up from time to time, even the largest multinational conglomerates do that, and so if you’re not covered for those little moments, you will always live in fear of making one. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if you’re not careful.

Staff

Training new staff or apprentices, and generally placing the responsibility your name into the hands of another is a risk no matter how you look at it. You are never 100% realistically responsible for what your staff member does in your name, but you are 100% technically responsible from a legal, financial and insurance standpoint, so you need to plan for this. You should consider hiring employees that you have vetted thoroughly, and only hire family members if they are proven to do the job and are willing to take it with the utmost professionalism. You must also place these staff members on your insurance to protect yourself from any shoddy work they’ve done that might have originally evaded your careful close inspection when it comes to reviewing and signing off on the work done.

Materials

If you’re in some form of construction industry, you are always responsible for the materials you bill and provide for. In an effort to save costs, you might opt for cheaper materials that can still do the same job well, or so you might think at the time. The harrowing feeling you’ll retrieve when you learn from a job undertaken a few years ago that the materials bought then when your business was in its infancy and trying to save money has unfortunately affected the resident it was meant to help.

There’s no way of overcoming this issue apart from making sure that all of your materials are of stellar quality, but also being retroactively covered for jobs undertaken in the past can be of huge benefit when figuring out what insurance policy to apply.

Misunderstanding

People misunderstand each other. This happens in every social avenue you can think of, so you can be certain it happens in business transactions, sometimes even more so than usual. With the knowledge that you have accumulated that allows you to professionally run your firm, you’ll initially realise that the people who hire your services are often unaware of how to do it themselves – this is why they’re hiring you in the first place.

Sometimes, in the effort to communicate with you what they require, they might use sloppy or misleading language that gives you the wrong impression about the task to be completed. You might simply have made a mental error yourself, or even mix job requirements up at its most chaotic.

Misunderstandings happen, and they happen often. Prepare for them financial as best you can to lessen your fear of being involved with them.

Vindictive Clients

Sometimes, clients aren’t the golden prize we believe them to be. Sometimes, in an effort to get out of paying for a satisfactory job that they unfortunately aren’t happy with, or if they feel like work has overran despite you compensating them for this, they might try and take it further through the courts. The best way to overcome these issues is to keep complete, total and clear records about every business communication or transaction you undergo between yourself and  the client, to stay on top of any issues you might be experiencing.

Be forthright about work you have completed and issues you have raised from your own side of the issue. A solid defense will help you get through these problems with minimal financial cost. If you are defined as being in the wrong by a court, having a great insurance policy to help you overcome this can definitely place minimal impact on your finances. It certainly will help you avoid tanking the business thanks to this mistake.

These issues can befall any business, no matter how positive their intention. Stay mindful of these to help you prevent them with a stronger filter, and cover for them appropriately.