Author: Rebecca Alston

Not all blogs are created equal. That’s just how it is. When we’re searching through lifestyle blogs, very often, most of what’s on offer just doesn’t fit well. Then you read half a blog, get bored, and move to the next one.

Admittedly, It’s not the very worst thing in the whole wide world, but things do tend to get a little samey after a while. Nothing is quite what you were hoping for, and what should have been a compelling journey through lifestyle articles becomes dull and frustrating.  

It’s right at this point that our little compilation enters the fray! We’ve done the hard yards and emerged with a great selection of lifestyle blogs and articles to suit your tastes. Take a look below because something is bound to grab your interest.

 

1. Modamily

Modamily is an online network that helps connect people who are ready to start families, whether they are looking for romantic, platonic parenting, or known-donor relationships. Modamily was the first digital platform of its kind to provide this service in the U.S. and its app continues to be a great resource for prospective parents around the globe. They also feature blog content related to building a family whether it be a co-parenting, sperm donor, or even surrogate resources as their blog aims to help educate prospective parents on all the opportunities available to them.

 

2. The Babe Report

The Babe Report is a popular lifestyle blog that focuses on dating advice, wellness, mental health, beauty, and travel. The Babe Report has been syndicated by POPSUGAR, HuffPost, Elite Daily, Bustle, YourTango, Thought Catalog, and many other publications. The founder, Erica Gordon, initially started The Babe Report as a relationship advice column while she was working for one of the world’s largest dating sites. She’s since been able to grow it into a lifestyle blog with a worldwide audience.

 

3. Sustain Health

Sustain Health is the first-of-its-kind online digital magazine that is non-gender specific in its articles regarding all things fitness and sports.
SH helps its readers perform at the best of their abilities bringing them the latest and best apparel, nutrition, tech, and fitness/sports news that is out there to aid them in fulfilling their goals.

 

4. The Multitasking Woman

Eva, the woman behind The Multitasking Woman, transformed her blog into a Mental Health & Wellbeing blog after her diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder in 2017. The Multitasking Woman aims to give hope, inspiration, and guidance to women struggling with family, career, and mental health juggling.

 

5. DietZones.com 

DietZones.com, is your go-to destination for all things entertainment, health, diet, and beauty. We have built a community of modern women and we are familiar with all of their needs. That’s why we work incredibly hard to ensure that our platform is always up to date with the best entertainment, health, diet, celebrity, beauty, and gossip news that can be available with a simple click.

 

6. Made In A Pinch

Made In A Pinch is a family lifestyle site by moms and for moms to help eliminate the overwhelm and stress many moms face by providing real-life experience, practical solutions to common issues, fun ideas to do with the kids and as a family, and easy, delicious recipes that kids will actually eat. Come check out your new one-stop resource for all things family-related!

 

7. PuckerMob

PuckerMob is a blog for women, on all things Fashion, Fitness, Beauty and Business.

 

8. Bed Guru

Bed Guru, You dream it, we make it. Made to measure mattresses, bed frames, and divan bases in any size. Over 200 standard UK, EU, and custom sizes to make your dream bedroom a reality.

 

9. Happy Healthy Hippie

Happy Healthy Hippie is a health & wellness brand that was born out of a genuine passion for a healthy, natural, and intentional life. This includes using the gifts of nutrient-filled plants that nature has provided us. The founders, Kylie and Keio, are working to promote the message of healthy, conscious living through the HHH blog and their 100% organic and natural products.

 

10. NativePath

At NativePath, we’re on a mission to restore human health by rediscovering the Native way to eat. We do this by providing the purest, most natural ingredients that Mother Nature has to offer. Choose from Grass-Fed Collagen, Collagen Coffee Creamer, Wild-Caught Krill Oil, and more to look and feel your very best.

 

11. EnviroMom

EnviroMom is a blog about sustainable living for busy parents. There are lots of tips for reducing waste around the house and the garden. I like it because it keeps it real and practical without being the eco-police.

 

12. Cathy Taughinbaugh

Because of her own child’s drug use journey, Cathy, a certified parent coach, is passionate about supporting parents with research-based skills to help struggling teens or young adults. She is the author of  The Compassion Antidote: A Path to Change for You and Your Child Struggling with Substance Use.

As a result of her journey with her own child’s drug use, Cathy, a former educator became a Certified Parent Coach to help other parents struggling because of their child’s substance use. Cathy was an elementary school teacher for fifteen years. She has a Certificate of Completion from Robert J. Meyers, Ph.D.& Associates, Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT) and is certified in the Invitation to Change Approach. Cathy is one of over 350 Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT) Parent Network Coaches trained by the Center for Motivation and Change and the Partnership to End Addiction. She is the author of “The Compassion Antidote.” You can learn more at her website, www.cathytaughinbaugh.com.

13. We Made This Vegan

We Made This Vegan – You will mainly find delicious vegan recipes (all homemade!) and also a spattering of beauty and lifestyle content, from homemade moisturizer to DIY crafts.

14. My Life Your Way

My Life Your Way – is a lifestyle blog full of informational articles about interiors, beauty, fashion, food, and travel ideas. It is a brilliant resource for the busy working woman who is interested in broadening her knowledge base and living life to the full.

15. We Made This Life

We Made This Life – An aspirational parenting and lifestyle blog featuring recipes, parenting tips, interior design ideas, and much more.

16. Pilot

Pilot is the brand-new trip planner that helps you discover and build travel itineraries connecting you to resources everywhere. Make the planning experience more fun by collaborating with your travel buddies! Pilot makes it fun and easy to share and relive your favorite travel memories with many useful features, which include Flightdeck, our complementary travel resource to help you discover, explore, and get inspired on all things travel!

17. GenTwenty

GenTwenty is a career, financial, and self-development resource for twenty-somethings who are growing up and navigating the real world. With a free resource library, they’ll help you make the most of your twenties.

18. Miss MV

Miss MV is a lifestyle blog that features the latest trends in fashion, beauty, personal finance, home décor, and DIY. What sets us apart from other blogs is that we care about our audience and we try to build a close relationship by allowing them to express their opinion.

We’ve worked with large and small brands and independent artists to help them set the foundation for their businesses. Our mission is to share the best information possible, helping people make the most of what they have and also supporting local, national, and international business owners.

There’s no doubt that moving houses is an exciting process. You may already have a vision of how you want to decorate your new place, and you’re excited about all the changes you’re going to make so that it feels like a home. Your new home is basically a blank canvas you can use to express your personality and creativity. The fact that it’s currently a bare and empty space is precisely the reason why you need to give your new home a deep clean before you move in.

Not only is cleaning an empty home easier compared to a place filled with all the boxes and furniture, but it’s also a way to give yourself a peace of mind knowing that you’ve taken care of all the nooks and crannies previous owners may not have. Whether you’re renting or buying, here are some tips on what to clean when you move into a new home.

 

Tackle the bathroom first

This is the most used space in the entire house, both during the move-out and the move-in. This is why it makes sense that you’d start by cleaning the bathroom first. Start at the top, as you would with any other room, dusting and vacuuming the accumulated dust and cobwebs. Rely on an all-purpose cleaner to wipe down the windows, cabinets, vanity drawers, and linen closets. Then, move on to the tub, shower, sink, and toilet, giving them a thorough scrub using a disinfecting cleaner.

Remember to disinfect all the switches, paper holders, door handles, faucets, and make sure to change the toilet seats. If you’ve got your dryer next to your washer, be sure to give them a thorough scrub as well. Clogged dryer vents are notorious for starting dryer fires. Cleaning the vents regularly prevents the buildup of dirt and lint, and the same goes for ducts and filters.

 

Move on to your kitchen space

Now that you’ve got your bathroom in order, it’s time to tackle the heart of the home – the kitchen. The best place to start with disinfecting your kitchen space is the fridge. You need a place to store all your perishables, so this is the step of the move in cleaning process that you shouldn’t put off. Remove all the shelves and drawers and use soap and warm water to clean them. Repeat the process with the freezer. Rely on vinegar and water to clean the inside of the fridge, and return everything once it’s dry.

For the rest of the kitchen, start at the top, tackling the ceiling, lighting fixtures, walls, and the upper cabinets. Move on to the appliances, countertops, and sink, using hydrogen peroxide and baking soda to remove stubborn stains. Finish by cleaning the inside and the outside of the cabinets and disinfecting all the handles.

 

Tackle the rest of your living space

For the rest of your living space, you’ll need to change your cleaning routine a bit. Instead of cleaning room by room, tackle the dirt and grime by going item by item and working with gravity.

Take your duster, microfiber cloth, and your vacuum, tackling all the ceilings, walls, corners, and lighting fixtures at first. Pay special attention to ceiling fans, shelving, and other elements close to the ceiling that tend to get neglected. Speaking of the areas where the dust tends to accumulate, remember to change the air filters in your HVAC units. Scrub down glossy paint walls, and take a gentler approach to cleaning wallpapers and flat paint. Make sure to wipe all the moulding, trim, window casings, too, leaving your bedrooms, hallways, and living room spotlessly clean.

 

Finish things off by tackling the floors

A proper cleaning process always starts at the top and finishes at the bottom. Start by vacuuming the remaining debris and using the right attachments to tackle edges and corners. Depending on the type of flooring, you want to make sure you’re using the right cleaning products.

Mild and wood soaps work best for laminate, hardwood, and engineered wood, while stone, linoleum, tiles, and concrete floors will all require different cleaning solutions after being swept or vacuumed. Carpets and rugs, on the other hand, will benefit greatly from a professional steam cleaning. They often harbor bacteria, germs, and allergens that can be successfully eliminated with deep floor cleaning done by a professional.

 

Wrapping up

A new home comes with new possibilities, allowing you to be creative and transform it into a place you’ll love. That said, it also comes with a list of cleaning tasks that need to be tackled sooner rather than later. Keep this list in mind next time you’re moving homes, and you can rest assured you’ll be starting this new chapter in life off on the right foot.

Human resources are the soul of every organization both large or small. Here’s what we think many may not know, though. How do HR managers measure the performance of their employees?

Wondering why a certain colleague gets recognized and awarded during their company’s annual dinner event and more than once, too? We know what that’s like.

What’s their secret? Read on to find out. 

Those employees know something others don’t. They know the key performance indicators of an employee in that particular organization. Different organizations have their unique policies and mode of operation. This also applies to their key performance indicators. All of this is taken into account during performance management review.

What is measured in an affiliate marketing company will be different from what is measured as performance in a book publishing company. However, certain key performance indicators are commonly measured. 

So what are these key performance evaluation tools that the HR managers use to measure employees’ performance in an organization? Why is Henry getting awards at the annual company’s dinner event and others don’t?

Let’s delve right in to know why. The first performance metric is clients’ satisfaction. 

 

Clients’ Satisfaction

No organization will be in business without its clients. It’s a common performance metric for employees. So how do they relate with the organization’s clients?

Let’s look at a telecommunication firm, for instance. Gemma is a customer care representative at the firm and is in charge of fielding calls from subscribers phoning to lodge complaints. Unfortunately, Gemma is temperamental and easily loses her cool when a client gets insistent on certain requests. She becomes rude, forgetting she is projecting the image of her firm to the subscribers. This goes on for a while until the firm notices that they are experiencing a significant decline in subscribers. A quick investigation into the source of the problem is launched, and HR discovers from the reviews online that the firm has one of the worst customer support centers.

An unsatisfied client is an unhappy client. An unhappy client is bad for business. When a business becomes bad, it will reflect in the performance metrics of that organization. The customers’ rate of satisfaction with the products and services is a key performance metric for every company. Conversely, organizations experiencing a surge in growth and stock value are keeping their clients happy. 

On the other hand, when the clients are not happy, they will seek satisfaction elsewhere (going to the competitors). This can gradually lead to a decline in business and the company’s market value. This metric can be quantified or measured by the number and nature of reviews, recommendations, and testimonials about the company’s products or services. 

 

Employees’ Productivity

HR managers look at the quality of work done by the organization’s employees to gauge their performance. It’s beyond keeping up with task deadlines, working efficiently, getting the job done, and doing it well. No supervisor will applaud a staff who delivers work on time when the work is far from impressive.

Hank is a staff in the administrative department. His desk is regularly saturated with tons of paperwork to type, proofread and submit before the close of work each day. Then, finally, his boss hands him a particular file, telling him to prepare a comprehensive report on it and submit it before closing for the day. Two hours before the close of work that day, Hank is back with the typed report and submits it to his pleasantly surprised employer. Only that satisfaction is short-lived once he takes a look at the document and finds it poorly structured and riddled with typos. 

This is a subjective performance metric. Employees handle different tasks, but how they’re measured depends on what they’re doing. However, one common denominator is the quality of the task done. If it’s impressive work, then it speaks well of the employee’s performance. But if not, such work will be turned down, which leaves a dent in that employee’s performance. 

 

Individual Targets

A lot of times, employees are given separate targets or goals to accomplish. As much as teamwork is a thing, so are individual tasks. Teamwork can shadow low-performance employees due to the brilliance of others covering for them. However, in an individualized setting, it’s every employee for themselves. Organizations usually give employees quantifiable or measurable targets. 

Typically, nominees for “employees of the year” are those whose individual achievements and contributions have been instrumental to the organization’s success. The appraisals of employees’ accomplishments are used to measure this performance metric. In-house company reviews can be carried out monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, or annually where the employees’ output will be analyzed and evaluated. 

How about we paint a scenario with this?

Henry is a staff in the firm’s marketing and sales department. Along with his co-marketers, he has been given an individual monthly target to sell 50 of the company’s products. After every month, a performance review is conducted by the head of Marketing and the HR manager. A couple of them were able to sell 20 products, some 25, others 30. Some performed below expectations and were able to sell only 10. Henry delivered and sold all 50 products. So naturally, he gets the highest performance ratings for that month and a noteworthy appraisal from his superiors. 

With this scenario, it’s easy for you to know how the performance metric for each marketer will be like. If the metrics are graded via percentages, those who sold 30 products had a 60% success score. Those that sold 25 products achieved a 40% success score. Henry, who sold every single product allocated to him, had a 100% success score. 

Indeed, percentages may not be used. It’s up to the company to decide how to quantify their employees’ performance data. 

 

Conclusion

In summary, the clients’ satisfaction, the employees’ productivity, their quality of work, and setting individual targets for employees are some of the key performance metrics that HR managers based on for their employees’ reviews. Using a tool like a good HR Software in India can be very useful to HR managers to keep track of everything.

So, what other performance metrics do you think HR managers use? Please drop your comments. We’ll love to know what you think. 

 

References

https://blog.namely.com/the-4-metrics-you-need-to-gauge-employee-performance

About AbstractOps

Do you want to implement performance based metrics? AbstractOps handles and automates your HR ops so that you can focus on your customers. If you have any questions about how to implement performance based metrics, email us at hello@abstractops.com. We’ll do our best to help.