Prepare the space

One of the primary considerations when starting your parking lot business is where you’ll be putting it. You need to find a location that has high foot traffic and enough space for cars without causing congestion or blocking other businesses’ entrances. One way to do this would be by leasing out part of an existing commercial building, such as an office park or shopping mall. This can also be done on private property if you have enough land in your possession.

You’ll also need to think about how many vehicles can fit into the space you’re working with, so plan accordingly when designing the layout of your parking lot business. You might want to consider hiring an engineer or architect who specializes in this type of work if it’s not something you’re familiar with. You should also install some weather resistant lighting to ensure that your lot is safe to park in at night, as well as other basic security features, such as cameras and fencing. This will protect your property and customers as soon as you launch.

Secure the necessary permits

Once you’ve secured a location for your parking lot business, it’s time to start the tedious process of getting all of the necessary permits in place. This can vary depending on your location, so be sure to check with your local government to see what’s required. In most cases, you’ll need a business license as well as permits for construction and signage. You might also need an occupational license if parking is your only business activity.

Get insurance

If you want to start a parking lot business, then you must protect yourself and your investment. One way of doing this is by getting an insurance policy for the property where your cars will be stored or parked for long periods, like overnight. This type of coverage can include liability as well as physical damage coverage for things like vandalism and theft. You may also want to consider adding on some additional protection such as business interruption insurance, which would help with any loss of income that might occur due to an unexpected event such as a fire. This way, your customers won’t have to worry about their cars being damaged while they’re visiting you.

Contract workers

One of the benefits of starting a parking lot business is that you don’t need to have many employees on staff. This means that your start-up costs will be relatively low, and you can keep your overhead expenses down as a result. However, this also means that all of the work will fall on your shoulders or a few people. That’s why it’s important to have a well-written contract with workers who are reliable and trustworthy, so they can take care of things like collecting money from customers as well as cleaning up after them when necessary. You might also want to consider hiring someone else part-time or even full-time to do some advertising and marketing for your parking lot business. This can help to get the word out there and bring in more customers.

Start marketing your parking lot business

The next step is to start getting the word out about your new venture. You’ll want people who live nearby or work within walking distance of this location to know that it’s open for business so they can stop by when they need somewhere safe and convenient to place their vehicle while at home or work. You can do this in a variety of ways, such as by creating a website and social media profiles for your business, putting up flyers and posters around town, or even sending out an email blast to people who live or work in the area.

Now that you have a general idea of what’s involved in starting a parking lot business, it’s time to get started. Before you know it, your lot will be full of vehicles that need a place to stay while their owners are out doing other things. Rest assured that you’ll be making money while keeping your property and customers safe at the same time.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Want to Start a Parking Lot Business? Here’s How appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

British workers are struggling to adapt to new digital tools, losing hundreds of hours in productivity in the process, according to a new report.

Following the global COVID-19 pandemic, millions of workers have been forced to incorporate tools they have never used before, as an individual or employee, creating a drain or productivity and new challenges in communication.

The Modern Worklife report by Sigma, a leading UX design and development agency, has revealed that the average worker loses 28 minutes every day using digital programmes or tools that they can’t use effectively – almost two and a half hours per week.

For a full-time member of staff, this equates to 560 minutes (9.3 hours) per month or 112 hours per year. Considering there are 43,000 medium-large sized businesses in the UK, with 14,142,000 people employed at these enterprises, this equates to a total of 211,187,200 working days lost.

The new report also found that two-thirds (67%) of British workers lose up to 30 minutes every day due to difficult-to-use, inefficient or difficult-to-understand digital tools – with another quarter (26%) losing between 30 minutes to an hour.

Hilary Stephenson, managing director at Sigma UK, said: “Despite the workplace being revolutionised by digital tools such as, instant messaging, video conferencing and project management applications, clearly there is still some way to go for them to be an entirely efficient addition to modern working life. This is in part due to workers having limited understanding of how to use new tools and also tasks being doubled as suppliers, clients and different department using different types of tools to complete their day-to-day work.

“What’s more, following the global COVID-19 pandemic, millions of workers have, almost overnight, been required to conduct their jobs remotely and adopt a series of digital tools with little or no training, and with the tools often suffering from poor implementation. When interacting with other colleagues, teams, clients and suppliers that have adopted alternative tools, integration and communication breaks down and even doubles up, before a single channel is agreed upon.

“For example, email is being replaced with instant messaging apps and boards to share information that would be typically emailed, however it doesn’t suddenly become a legacy channel; new ones are simply added on top. Instead of just checking emails, everyone has to stay on top of numerous channels at once.”

The research found that on average, UK workers are using four digital tools in their daily working lives, with 6% of workers – almost 2 million people – using more than nine.

However, it’s not all bad news, 81% of workers feel that digital tools make day-to-day working life better, more productive and more efficient.

The data industry is the worst for time lost to difficult tools, followed by IT – naturally these industries have a higher usage of digital programmes that workers have to grapple with.

However, the hospitality industry is also placed highly in the list of lost hours, as it too struggles with new digital tools such as booking systems, rota and time management systems, order at the table apps and new POS (point of sale) systems.

Hilary continued: “More must be done, particularly in the industries which have been highlighted as having the most inefficient users, to better educate and integrate new digital tools for both internal and external communication. Often legacy systems are not fully replaced or integrated leading to further confusion among the workforce.

“Although this research was undertaken before the pandemic, there is no doubt the rush to work remotely has impacted even more businesses and their workers, meaning that figures could be temporarily even higher as the workforce is fragmented.

“There is opportunity to adopt these new digital tools and reduce the time it takes to do certain admin and organisation tasks, leading to efficiencies, ultimately saving time and money. As with any new system and process there will be initial teething problems, however those that persevere and address initial hurdles will be the businesses that benefit the most.”

The report, Modern Worklife, surveyed 500 SMEs and 500 employees from medium-large businesses in a range of sectors about their current working processes.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post 112 Working Hours Per Worker Wasted Each Year Due To Digital Tools appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

For UK workers, commuting time has increased by 18 hours compared to a decade ago, according to the TUC. A study by Totaljobs shows the average worker is set to spend a whopping £135,000 on their commute by the time they retire.

Following these findings, Instant Offices has investigated which cities around the world are the best and worst for commuting and whether a rise in flexible and remote working can finally tip the balance for UK workers. What the research found is that London is set as the worst city for commuting, whereas Nice, in France, leading the list as the best city for commuting. In fact, in Nice is where transport is cheaper and the average time of travel is just 44 minutes a day, compared to 90 minutes in London.

According to the Department for Transport, London by far has the longest commute with the average worker spending 46 minutes per trip or a roundtrip of 92 minutes each day from the workplace. With so much time spent simply travelling to and from work – around 400 days for the average person – it’s no surprise that the topic of how to reduce commuting time is so popular.

One study by Focus considered various factors, including journey times and cost of travel cards, to rank the best and worst cities for commuting in the world. Unsurprisingly, London tops the list, with Miami USA a close second.

Nice in France took the top spot as the best city for commuting. Travel cards in Nice cost more than four times less than they do in London, and average travel time is around 22 minutes a trip, or just 44 minutes each day compared to over 80 for London.

In the UK, Leicester, Bristol and Edinburgh topped the rankings as the easiest commutes in the UK, with London, Birmingham and Manchester coming in last.

There is a large body of research into the negative impact of long commuting times on employee physical and mental health. One report by the Royal Society for Public Health shows the following:

• More than half of commuters say travel increases stress levels.
• Two in five commuters say it decreases the amount of time they are physically active.
• Over one-third of commuters sleep less.

In addition to the impact on mental wellbeing, excessively long commutes over a long period can also reduce employee happiness and negatively impact health due to lower physical activity.

There is also a loss of productivity to consider among talent. If one employee given up to two hours of their day back, ten hours of potential productivity could be released back into the workplace each week, which equates to a potential 40 hours a month.

Lucinda Pullinger, Global Head of HR at The Instant Group commented: “To cut down on stress as well as commuting times and costs, more companies in the UK are introducing flexible and remote working options for employees. An increase in co-working and flexible office space, access to new technology and faster internet speeds have also changed the way we work, and by 2020, a predicted report by HSO shows 50% of the UK workforce will be working remotely.

“While some companies are concerned about the impact remote and flexible working will have on productivity, research by YouGov shows 20% of HR managers believe that their staff work to a slightly higher standard at home than they do in the office, while 7% say the standard is much higher.”

Testing Remote Working in the Workplace

Here are four ways to introduce remote working in the workplace:

1. Ensure your performance is flawless: a company is more likely to have the remote working conversation with top performers who are good at communicating and can handle the responsibility of progressing deadlines from another location.
2. Provide reasons why: whether to reduce commuting costs, increase productivity, gain more quiet time or move from one area to another, provide clear reasons to justify your choice when discussing the possibility of remote working.
3. Research your options: put together a plan to ensure you can do the job remotely. This includes having all the tools you need, fast internet and access to technology or tools when needed. Research different flexible office space options and weigh up the costs and amenities.
4. Testing remote working: most companies will be more comfortable introducing remote working for one day a week as a test. A trial run is a good way to ensure productivity and work quality remains as high as expected.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post These Are The Best And Worst Cities For Commuting appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.