Do you often feel as though there’s simply not enough hours in the day? Like no matter how hard you try, you can’t quite get through your never-ending list of things to do? You’re not alone. Trying to stay on top of work, life admin, family commitments and relationships can be challenging, to say the least.

Why is it then, that some people seem able to achieve much more with their time than others – even when they lead incredibly busy lives? The secret is in good time management. These people know how to maximize and manage their time. They know how to avoid the pitfalls of procrastination, stay on track and be productive, and keep their work and social lives in balance.

If you’re tired of feeling snowed under at work, want to improve your work-life balance, or are keen to boost your productivity, you’ll benefit from learning how to take charge of your time. By mastering this ability, you’ll soon be able to better organize, plan and prioritize tasks, allowing you to make the most of the hours in your day.

The Benefits of Taking Charge of Your Time

Time management is high on the list of desirable skills for employees, across all industries and job descriptions. This is because how you manage your own time has a direct impact on your employer and the business. Employees who are able to manage their individual workload, maintain productivity, and meet targets and deadlines without stress are invaluable to any organization.

Mastering time management is also essential for your own wellbeing. Running on panic and adrenaline each day is a sure-fire way to end up burning out at work, leading to high stress levels and low productivity rates. Holding onto perfectionism can also be a road block to productivity – while perfectionists may appear to look super busy, the need to do everything perfectly can have a negative impact on their ability to deliver and achieve. It’s vital to learn how to proactively manage your workload without procrastination or perfectionism, for your mental, emotional and physical health.

It’s not just your own life that’s affected by poor time management. When work is particularly demanding, our social and family lives are also likely to suffer. And when we’re stressed, it causes havoc on our close relationships. Time management takes discipline, planning, and a positive attitude. When you start to make improvements in this area, and feel more relaxed and on top of things, you’ll find that your relationships with workmates, friends, family members and partners become much smoother.

Learn Time Management Skills Through eLearning

Ready to get some help with your time management? The good news is, there are plenty of resources and techniques available to help you improve your time management skills. These days, we’re very lucky to have the convenience of eLearning, allowing us to easily study and complete online courses on our laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Why not start by taking a look at the short online course Productivity and Time Management? This 30-minute eLearning course is ideal for anyone who wants to improve their time management skills and get more out of their day. By the end of the course, you’ll have the skills, confidence and knowledge to start taking charge of your own time, once and for all.

The interactive online course covers the four essential pillars to time management, explaining why they work, how you can incorporate them into your work and the benefits these techniques will bring to your life and career.

The time-management techniques explained in this course will help you improve your ability to function more effectively – even when dealing with tight deadlines, high pressure work environments and multi-tasking. You’ll also learn how to avoid procrastination, to help you maintain your focus and productivity.

This exciting animated explainer course allows you to learn at your own pace, at a time and place that’s convenient to you. While it’s up to you how you use your time traveling to and from work, you could even think about using your commute to focus on your professional development. Your daily bus or train trip presents an excellent opportunity for individuals to learn new skills, such as improving time management and productivity. Enroll and get started online today.


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How to improve your time management skills

Online training provider Go1 is partnering with learning management systems provider Totara to provide Totara partners with comprehensive training solutions for its customers.

Through the partnership, Go1 will work with Totara partners to create custom training content packages to help deliver the best learning and training outcomes.

As part of the agreement Totara’s partners will have access to Go1’s content which includes compliance training, soft skill training and personal development courses, as well as the ability to book in-person training such as first aid or leadership courses.

oThrough accessing Go1’s content, partners will have the ability to open up new revenue streams to new and existing customers through content sales, decrease sales cycles and implementation timelines with readily available training content, improve sales conversion with content tailored to target industries and verticals, as well as increase client retention by providing a broader and more comprehensive solution.

There are many synergies between Go1 and Totara, the main being a strong desire to help companies train and upskill their staff.

Andrew Barnes, CEO and cofounder of Go1 said, "The decision to partner with Totara was an obvious one for us. Our missions are similar - to help individuals and companies learn and enhance their skills, whether for compliance or personal development goals”.

“Through this partnership we are able to offer Totara’s partners a comprehensive training solution for their customers," Mr Barnes said.

Richard Wyles CEO of Totara said the major appeal for Totara is the way in which Go1’s content is updated automatically by its expert course authors, saving hundreds of hours a month. Users are automatically notified when there is an update, which enables them to stay compliant and up to date with regulations in their sector.

"We’re very excited about this new content partnership. It gives our customers access to a wide variety of high-quality training content that is constantly kept up to date with regulatory changes in each jurisdiction. Go1 works with our customers to find the best content for them."

Go1 partners with Totara to provide comprehensive training solutions

If you’re involved in the learning or training space you’ve probably been hearing a lot about micro-learning recently. But how much do you actually know about what it’s all about, or how to to start implement it into your next training program?

To help you understand more we asked micro-learning expert Julie Watson to come in and walk you through the basics, as well giving you a stack of tips that you can apply directly to your training programs. With more that 20 years experience in developing more productive behaviors, Julie provides some great insight into how you can take your training to the next level.


This discussion covers a range of topics including how you can get started with micro-learning in your organisation, how some major banks have implemented successful programs that have resulted in a dramatic culture change, embracing informal learning, and the key elements required to make gamification work.

One of the key elements to making any learning program successful is having buy in from all members within your organisation, and to do that you must make learning fun and experiential says Julie.

“Embrace the values of the organisation, as well as the individuals.”

Getting started with micro-learning takes time and planning. As Julie says, “Just because it’s micro, that doesn’t mean that it’s just going to happen.” Company Leaders need to invest time into developing programs and creating a culture of learning and development amongst their employees. Having individual teams taking ownership of their training is a great way to get everyone involved.

Micro-learning can easily be utilised for all elements of training within a business. It’s especially great when coupled with workshops, and used as the underlying continual learning process to keep employees engaged on a periodic bases. It’s not there to replace traditional learning elements, it’s there to support them.

It’s less intrusive nature means that providing sustained training is not an intrusive and time consuming experience like it may have been in the past. Where training programs of the past may have required large chunks of time sitting in a boardroom, we can now drastically reduce the length of in person training, and provide a blended learning solution to allow a micro-learning solution to continue the learning process once the workshop is complete.

With gamification being one of the biggest buzzwords in the learning industry at the moment, Julie gives us her top tips on how to create a successful gamified learning program by maintain relevance and not rushing learners through the process.

We hope that you get some useful information out of the discussion and would love to hear from you if you have any tips that you’d like to share with our readers!

What you need to know about Micro-Learning with Julie Watson

Today’s job market is not like that of yesteryear. There are fewer jobs for life, competition is fiercer than ever, and the pressure to hit targets is a frequent source of stress. In fact, work is the number one source of stress for most people. The need for a resilient mind – one that’s able to overcome challenges and face tough tasks with a can-do attitude is key.

But this is not just true for your working life, either. Of course, in our private and personal lives there will always be bumps in the road – some of which might be devastating to come to terms with – and so resilience can improve your mental health too.

There are ways to build resilience that can provide help over time. Yet one of the best ways is with the helping hand of an online course, guiding you with professional experience towards a goal that is vital yet difficult to attain.

Reasons to develop your resilience at work are:

Being able to bounce back – There is nothing in work, nor life generally, that is worth having if it’s easy to obtain. We all know this, yet many of us are frequently terrorized by the possibility of difficulty and failure. But failure is necessary to learn from, if you are resilient enough to understand this. Resilience allows you to move forward, not give up all together.

To be committed – A lack of resilience will cause people to give up when they’re finding something difficult. Commitment is all about dealing with adversity, acknowledging that work can sometimes be difficult, and continuing undeterred.

Being able to learn from mistakes – When a task has gotten the better of you, it’s only in trying again that you can put what you learned from failing, into practice the next time. This is a highly sought after skill, and one that is a real asset to have.

Cognitive distortion – This section explains how our brains like to spot and form patterns, but that, unfortunately for us, they don’t always see the right things.

For example, we assume that the angry reaction that our manager had this morning is because we did our job poorly, but perhaps they were just having a bad day; we don’t have all the facts we need to make a proper judgement. Cognitive distortion is the phenomena whereby our minds cause us to believe in something that is not actually true. For many, this is where doubt creeps in.

Cognitive restructuring – This next section begins the process of developing resilience by firstly restructuring our response to a negative situation, and then using it to our advantage. This middle section uses the book Mind Over Mood by Dennis Greenberg and Christine Padesky as a general guide. This is broken into chunks:

Identify the situation – When a situation arises that has a negative effect, take a second to describe the situation to yourself.

Identify automatic thoughts – Be conscious of the automatic assumptions you have made, which are frequently negative. For example, “I’m not good enough”.

Find supportive evidence – What concrete evidence do you have to support those automatic assumptions? If you can’t find anything, your assumptions might not be correct.

Find contradictory evidence – Is there any evidence to contradict those automatic thoughts? For example, “I hit my targets every week.”

Take a balanced view – Speak to a colleague to hear another opinion.

It’s important to develop a level of resilience due to the strained nature of working environments. Currently, deadlines are tight and budgets stretched, so nerves understandably fray. To ensure you’re not overwhelmed by situations that may be confrontational, resilience is key.

A lack of resilience will undermine your performance. It will cause you to second-guess yourself and assume that you’ll fail. Furthermore, those above you are unlikely to look kindly on a refusal to commit.

A resilient person is more able to cope in both personal and private life. You can be more resilient too – it’s all in the mind.


Developing resilience: change your thinking

Do you think games are just for entertainment? Or only for kids? Think again. These days, many eLearning projects contain elements of game play, with certain strategies used in gamification being very effective when applied to learning environments.

In fact, gamification is a very powerful tool that can help to engage, interest and educate users of all ages. Games can be successfully used for many corporate training needs, such as induction processes, onboarding, compliance, professional development and behavioral change.

When used as a component of staff training, games can also help employees to stay motivated, learn new skills, improve existing skills and retain knowledge. Let’s look at how gamification strategies can be successfully incorporated into eLearning projects for the corporate sector.

Applying gamification strategy to eLearning

Gamification is about much more than playing games, relating also to the concept of applying game-design thinking to non-game applications. When used in eLearning, gamification can help learners to become more active participants in the online course, appealing to the competitive and fun nature in many individuals.

You can incorporate game play into your eLearning course to encourage employees to practice situations and challenges in the online environment. This will help them hone their new skills before putting them to use in the workplace.

Defining your goals like a game developer

When designing and implementing an eLearning project, you want to be sure you’re getting a good ROI – return on investment. Gamification often uses a monetization strategy, which can be successfully applied to corporate training.

Cindy McCabe, senior gamification/instructional designer, looks at the very popular Candy Crush game to explain the monetization strategy. As McCabe says, “ROI is the ‘holy grail’ for corporate training and performance improvement, [as] it's often hard to define and measure success.”

Game developers are understandably reluctant to spend a lot of money on development if they don’t have a strong hint that the game will be a success. A monetization strategy helps you to define a clear set of goals and a clear way of measuring against those goals. Take a leaf out of the game developer’s book and be sure you know how you’re going to define and measure goals in corporate training.

Let’s look at McCabe’s example of Candy Crush gamification strategy again. With the Candy Crush game, we can see that not everything happens within the game interface itself – players are also encouraged to connect with their friends through Facebook, for example. This helps players earn additional lives, and importantly, it also serves to “extend the game event beyond what's happening on screen.”

In the same way, you can think about how your eLearning course can extend to social media or productivity tools. This tactic works to further involve and engage participants (in this case, your employees) in the learning material.

As participants become more engaged, it also helps to improve the amount of knowledge and content that is being absorbed and retained. Just as players become more adept and skilled at playing games over time, your learners will become more comfortable and fluent with the course content through game play. They can then translate that knowledge into performance when they return to the workplace from training.

Adopting gamification strategies for learning

Christopher Pappas, founder of the eLearning Industry’s Network, is also strongly in favor of adopting gamification strategies for learning,

Pappas refers to the rise of gamification in corporate training environments, as learning professionals are now recognizing the importance of gamification in this area. “Games may offer employees the opportunity to acquire and cultivate skill sets, while empowering them and putting them in control of their own eLearning experience via increased engagement,” Pappas says.

He cites promising figures relating to participants in gamified eLearning experiences, with learners demonstrating:

14% increase in skill-based-knowledge assessments

11% increase in terms of factual knowledge

With gamification improving the way in which online learners both acquire and retain information, it’s worth considering incorporating some game play into your next eLearning course.

How to apply gamification to improve your corporate training

The world is much smaller than it once was, figuratively speaking. Of course, oceans and time zones still separate us all but in terms of our ability to access information about anything we want, from almost anywhere we want, and the world has never been smaller.

Despite this self-evident fact, not everybody is taking advantage of our current position.

While you may have left high school a long time ago, your ability to learn new skills or simply brush up on old ones has not gone away.

Online courses present a perfect opportunity for people to learn now and to improve their working career. The more skills you have to offer an employer, the more responsibility you’ll receive.

If you want to progress in your career, this is an easy way to do it.

The provision of online courses is huge at the moment and set to grow, and with so much competition, prices have really been driven down - meaning that expense is becoming less of a concern.

As the old saying going, if there’s a will, then there’s an easy way to learn via online courses.

This is certainly something that Steve Baxter, the Australian start-up investor, agrees with. He said, “There’s no point sitting in a rocking chair at 65 years old and saying ‘I could have done that’. That’s a wasted life. Nowadays it’s so easy, there are so many online courses, training courses.”

In this blog we’ll address some key benefits of online courses to explain why there really is no excuse not to learn!

Customizable – online courses have real-world benefits

Due to the pick-and-choose nature of online courses, students can tailor their course to meet their specific needs and goals.

This is of vital importance to adult learners, who want the time and money they’ll spend on a course to have real-world benefits; the course should help them progress in their working lives.

Targeted education to increase knowledge in the area you work will improve your career and exhibit your willingness to use your own time to improve yourself. This is the attitude that all employers want to see.

Online courses are flexible – they fit around you

One of the major problems adults have with returning to study is that they often have families who require an awful lot of time and attention. You can’t attend an 8 a.m. class in the next town if your child needs to be dropped off at school at that time.

While college schedules are fixed and unchanging, the beauty of the online course lies in its entirely flexible nature. Sure, you’ll have to complete a set number of hours of instructional video or homework, but you can choose when you want to do them; once the kids have gone to bed if you have a family, or on the bus to work.

Online courses frequently offer the option of downloading content straight to a mobile device, so even if you don’t have internet you can still use your free time to learn.

Many adult learners need to stay at home to look after young children or elderly relatives. Or perhaps you’re a freelancer who wants to add a few strings to your bow. Regardless of the situation you’re in, online courses are the perfect option for those who need to stay at home.

And not having to leave home offers many benefits. There is no traffic to slowly creep through or trains to catch on the subway, so that means there’s no gas or tickets to be paid for either.

A computer, internet access and the familiarity of your own home is all you need to make a step in the right direction.

Online courses can be taken at your own pace

Returning to education after a long time away can sometimes be a struggle. The fast-pace of college and university courses are aimed at students fresh out of school who have enough free time to spend hours in the library.

Adult learners haven’t always got a lot of time to spend studying, and adjusting to the pace of learning again can sometimes be slow going. But online courses offer the benefit of the student

choosing when they are ready to study, meaning the course can be taken at a pace you are comfortable with.

That leads to a lower dropout rate, and a higher chance you’ll achieve your goals.

Mature students can have a hard time finding support of fellow students if they spend no time on campus or in university accommodation. Without this support, or time put aside to see college tutors, help with problems you have can be difficult to find.

Online courses tend to have forums and help desks, where students can reach out to one another to lend a hand of guidance in troubling times. If you’re stuck on a particular part of the course, asking the forum is a sure bet to find the answer you’re looking for.

Online courses are a great way to improve your standing at work and to help you up to the next rung on the career ladder. Rather than sacrificing time with family and friends, online courses fit around your life. A decade ago courses taught online were considered a soft option, but not anymore. The dedicated to complete a course while juggling the responsibilities of life is impressive to everyone.

Really, there’s no excuse not to learn.

Want to make your eLearning course more engaging and effective for your audience? You need to ask yourself one important question – does your online course offer learners any real world benefits?

Because the truth is, no matter how interesting your online course materials are, learners will fail to engage with your content if it doesn’t apply to the real world. In classrooms and staff training rooms alike, people want to know that they can apply their new skills and knowledge to real life situations and work environments.

Using eLearning scenarios makes training more interactive, more engaging and (as a result) far more successful for learners. By giving individuals the skills and knowledge they need outside of the online environment, you’re empowering them to feel more confident and prepared for a successful career.

Let’s look closer at why real world benefits are so important for eLearning, and how you can start incorporating more scenarios into your online courses.

Using scenario-based training in eLearning

eLearning courses are a popular way for people to acquire new knowledge or improve their skills in a particular area – for both education and work-related purposes. Therefore, it makes sense to create materials that allow students to practice and develop their skills in an environment similar to the one in which they will actually be used.

When designing your eLearning course, include scenarios that place learners in the real world, rather than relying on traditional methods of teaching and purely text-based learning. In this way, participants in your course will be challenged to take their newfound knowledge and apply it to relevant real world scenarios.

In doing this, students and employees will feel more confident about using their new skills or abilities, while trainers can also gain more insight into how individuals will perform outside of the classroom environment.

Recreating real world situations and environments

One of the best ways you can help students know how to put their knowledge to good use is by recreating situations that are likely to occur in the real world.

You can create a sense of real world pressure by having students complete eLearning scenarios within a specified timeframe and environment, as these are the kinds of challenges they will be faced with on the job or while under exam conditions. Effective decision making is a very valuable (and valued) skill in the modern workforce, so encouraging learners to make choices under pressure will help them to perform well outside the classroom.

Explaining processes and steps through scenarios

eLearning scenarios are also great for explaining complex processes to learners, particularly those processed that involve a series of steps being carried out on-screen. Rather than having to explain each concept or step of the process, you can have students take part in an interactive scenario.

In this way, participants in your course can click through certain online tasks or processes, learning as they go. This can also help learners retain knowledge, as they are performing the actions for themselves, instead of simply reading about them.

You could also challenge students or staff to create their own eLearning scenarios. Working as a group, team members are asked to come up with a scenario that shows their understanding of a particular process or concept. An example of this might be an online quiz that requires course participants to click through a series of steps, or use certain objects in a specific order, to demonstrate knowledge of safety procedures in the workplace.

Using case studies in eLearning scenarios

Case studies of real or fictional characters can also be used to create eLearning scenarios. Why not develop a simulated work environment online, featuring a number of different interactive characters?

Students can click on the different characters on-screen, to discover more about them and their various roles within the organization or company. Characters could exemplify different management or leadership styles, helping staff gain a greater understanding of successful management techniques, for example. Or in contrast, the negative effects of poor leadership skills or negative work culture.

When creating your eLearning course, you may also like to read through our handy course design checklist. You'll find plenty more useful information on how to design an online course, including important things you need to know about eLearning accessibility, course navigation, and incorporating multimedia and design elements.

Creating eLearning scenarios for the real world

With so many courses on offer to meet compliance standards, it can be tough selecting which courses your team should be taking. Those days are gone with Go1 Awards.

Being locked in to a set group of courses that your employees need to complete is not for everyone. Every training provider has a unique way of presenting learning content, as well as testing for competency, all while the compliance requirements associated with the topic.

Just like in many other aspects of life, people learn in different ways, and while one training providers course may be engaging to one employee, another employee may prefer the learning style of a different provider.

So why can’t your employees choose which course they want to complete? Now they can!

Go1 Portal Administrators can now create an Award, within which they can specify which courses, or sets of course can be completed to obtain certification in a particular area.

As an example, your organisation may have a requirement that all team members to complete 3 courses in leadership every year. The administrator can create an award called ‘Leadership Training’ and nominate any courses that they would like to include from your course library. The employees will then be able to chose the 3 courses that they would like to do from the list, and then be accredited with the award.

Administrators can navigate to the Awards tab in the Administrator menu. Here you can create a new award by defining the conditions and selecting the course that can be taken to meet the requirements of the training.

Training GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Another great feature associated with the above scenario is the ability to set a reset time for each employee, so that after one year their training resets and the are required to complete another 3 courses.

This can be used across all aspects of your business to keep up with compliance in workplace health and safety, professional development elements, product training, and for tracking CPD requirements.


Awards GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

As a user, you can find “Awards” located under the “Explore” tab. Here the user can see all of their current awards, along with their status. By clicking on a award, you can read more information.

In the past, keeping up with internal compliance has required multiple applications, and manual input. Awards simplifies the way in which you can keep track of your team, and allows you to quickly and easily access reports to prove compliance whenever you need them.

Get started with Awards today and simplify the way that you handle internal compliance.

Track your internal compliance with Go1 awards

This is the second part of our blog looking at Workplace Learning Trends.

In the first part, we addressed some of the major learning trends that are taking place right now in the workplace, and those that are likely to become bigger players as time goes by. Namely, these were:

The rise of virtual reality – How VR is going to further enhance training in the workplace

Hiring from within – How employers are increasingly looking inside their team to promote, rather than hiring from outside

Mobile learning will continue to grow – How mobile learning, which already plays a part in workplace learning, will continue to be ever more present in the industry

Millennials increasing the demand for workplace training – How the Millennial generation’s outlook will play a major role in the dramatic increase of workplace training

More workplace training – That there will be more of it. More employers will use workplace training in more effective ways to produce improved results

In this blog, we’ll focus our attention on one important reference from LinkedIn’s 2017 Workplace Learning Report. In this report, researchers state that:

“The average shelf life of skills is less than five years.” (pg. 16)

With this stark fact made clear, it’s now necessary that companies and employees evolve to keep up with the rapidly changing pace of the business world.

It’s clear not all companies are doing so – in fact, the lack of opportunities and training in companies has led to some suggesting that job hopping is the only route worth taking for an aspirational employee.

But to make sure that the best and brightest worker doesn’t traipse out the door to the more dynamic company down the street, it’s now necessary to start on the application of new technology and training from within.

To explain the need for improved employee training, here are some reasons to get the ball rolling:

With more frequent training, you’re more likely to stay ahead 

Obinna Ekezie is the CEO and founder of Wakanow, Africa’s leading online travel company. He’s a man who should be listened to, having been crowned Entrepreneur of the Year in the All Africa Business Leaders Award West Africa 2015.

Ekezie believes that much of his success is based on his emphasis on constant training; frequent and effective is the key. And training shouldn’t be given only to the ground staff and those who will face the client. Instead, frequent training is mandatory for employees of every level in the company, himself included. This is the only way that Wakanow stays ahead in the ever changing technological landscape of the travel industry.

Important for the retention and attraction of talent, he says that his focus on constant training creates a good company image which gains attention from the best in the business. The best employees demand that they’re at the forefront of their industry, and the right training ensures this.

Stephanie Stones remarked that “every company is a technology company” in a recent Forbes Magazine article. She’s right. Are there any major companies that do without some form of technology in today’s world? The answer is no, which gives us our last and most simple reason for your company to evolve: because you have to.

Technology affects your staff because it improves the flow of communication and the efficiency of work. To take Stones’ example, tablets improved the speed with which designs could go from planning stage to seeing the light of day. Staff were able to easily discuss plans, and changes could be implemented immediately. But very soon, tablets alone won’t be enough. Technology will improve and tablets will make way for something new.

Currently though, methods like Agile are further accentuating the distance between companies that do and companies that do not. Those that do will continue to be at the forefront of change and attract the brightest minds, while retaining the best from within their ranks.

With business so tight right now, does any company have the option of turning away from the future?

Technology and training: the need for big data

A massive tech trend that is happening throughout the world in both business and private life is the incredible rise in the use of big data. This trend is now being seen in more and more in Learning and Development departments, and for good reason.

As we saw at the beginning of the article, new skills now have a very limited shelf life so it’s important that companies monitor the effectiveness of training and have a solid foundation – quantitative details that big data offers – to determine this.

The use of big data can be directly connected to the growing utilities of workplace learning trends, such as Virtual Reality and mobile learning. This connection enables the collection of data with performing analysis on, so that companies have a clear sight of how, and in which ways, the training that is being provided is making a difference to the company and employees themselves.

Continuous observation of stats can be used to personalize approaches to training and in turn improve how individuals perform. This is particularly relevant for the demand that millennials are making for training and growth, and serves to keep the morale of employees high.

While the cost of implementing a big data-led approach to training may be high, business will only come to rely more heavily on its use.

Workplace learning trends: the average shelf life of skills is less than five years

More than 20,000 Australians have made the move to Silicon Valley in the hopes of taking their internet startups global. However, the hunt for expert advice and capital is often met with many challenges unseen back home, especially for those dealing with remote teams operating on opposite sides of the world.

It might sound obvious, but the way you communicate with your team could be the difference between success or a long and frustrating experience. Talking to your team daily and taking the time to make personal connections can go further than you think, and taking the time to understand cultural differences that affects the way in which people work could allow you to get the most out of your employees.

Having an open line of online communication is great, but if you can, try to get to your offices and meet face-to-face as often as possible. It may only be a few times a year, but being able to physically sit with someone and work through your strategy for the coming months can make a world of difference.

When it comes to working with a range of time zones scattered across the globe, you need to be prepared for some late nights and early morning meetings. After many years of working with remote teams, I’ve learned that optimising your meeting times can result in freeing up many hours, and keeping your much-needed sleeping patterns.

Try to stack all your late or early meetings into a couple of days, this way you’re not up for half the night every night of the week and won’t burn out after a few months.

Maintaining a global business culture is the glue that will hold your team together. Ensuring that everyone in the organisation is clear on the business objectives, and holding regular all-hands company meetings to reinforce these values is a great way to keep everyone on the same page shooting for the same goals.

Staying true to your company’s goals as you are building remote teams lays the foundations as you expand into new regions.

There’s no shortage of ways to keep in touch with your team online and track projects. Thanks to Slack and Hipchat you can instant message anyone, anytime. Video calling platforms such as Skype and Google Hangouts allow you to have the in-person experience with the click of a button.

Jira, Trello and Confluence are ideal for tracking projects and priorities, and have become a staple for businesses with both in house and remote employees. Finally, never underestimate the power of email, it might not be the coolest tool in the shed, but it’s still one of the best ways to communicate.

When it comes to marketing specifics, you need to know your audience.

Most people think that moving to the United States is easy, culturally. They speak English there, right?

This couldn’t be further from the truth, you might as well be living in France. Yes, the language is the same but the cultural differences are dramatic, and understating them can save you a lot of wasted time and lost deals.

The simplest thing that catches people out involves the difference between ‘s’ and ‘z’, which I have learnt can infuriate people.

Get specific with your targeting too. Unlike Australia, the United States can completely change culture from city to city, and throwing out broad campaigns will not work anywhere as near as effectively as segmenting your audience and doing your research into how to target them.

Geotagging your website so that you can provide customised content on each page can make a huge difference to bounce rates and user retention. Backing this up with content curated for specific regions can establish local authority and drive traffic. Someone in San Francisco is going to react very differently to something intended for a target audience in Melbourne.

With a few simple updates to your website and marketing materials, you will get dramatically better results in traffic, open rates, and what we are all working towards; more sales!

This article was originally published by Marketing Magazine

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