In modern day business, we hear a lot about CSFs or Critical Success Factors. So what are Critical Success Factors? Do they pertain to big companies or individual employee? There are many more queries that you may have. For a start, they are the most important key factors that you should make a list of before you start a task. They are important because they are crucial to make your business or break your objective.

So how to know what these critical factors are? You get it through knowledge and experience. They depend and defer according to what your aim is.

Consider a successful entrepreneur, be it Bill Gates or a smoothly running local café. If they have not made their factors, then they are following it without realizing that they are doing it.

Analyzing them, planning future by making action plans and reviewing your performance are some of the management tools to be considered.

They can improve your abilities in more than one way. It does not matter whether you are an employee, team or an employer. Once you understand the meaning of CFSs, you will be able to identify them yourself for your company or group.

They change over time and you will have to review them periodically. Any business has to be dynamic to stay in business. Your aim could revolve around customer satisfaction, product improvement, increase in profits, sustainability or simply grow in size. So the factors should be made keeping these in mind.

The concept of What are Critical Success Factors is relatively new to the business world and now many professionals, Directors and business owners are focusing on it. It is also taught in business and professional schools. There are detailed strategies and analysis you can take on if you are interested.

Royal mail announced that their profits had doubled last year to £321 million today, despite a huge decrease in the numbers of letters being posted across Britain. This move has angered those groups who are fighting to stop a motion going through the houses of commons that will be decidede upon by the end of the month. This bill will see half of Royal mail being privatley owned with the sale of 49% of the business. 180 MPs have signed a petition to try and stop the motion from going through to keep Royal mail as a public company.

After this annoucenment the unions have hit backat Royal Mail, with the recent pay freeze of its staff. Royal mail were using the recent troubles with the recession and the drastic fall in the numbers of letters posted to freeze the pay of their work staff. Sources in opposistion to the pay freeze have said that 'a pay freeze is just not defendable in this situation'. Posting letters fell 6 percent in the UK in the past year and might reach ten percent in this year.

Also annoucned was the amount of money chief executive Adam Crozier has been making -£995,000, as opposed to the £3 million he made in the year before that. His basic wage was frozen at £633,000 but the rest came from a deferred bonus scheme. This makes Crozier Britain's highest paid civil servant -which he has received much critism for.

The company made £9.5 billion in revenue due to a price increase -and thats just the letter delivering side of the company. General logistics profit rose from £114 million to £124 million and Parcelforce's increased from £8 million to £12 million. The numerous other businesses that Royal mail own collected a combined £86 million in profits. If the privitisation in the ownership takes place, we would see the tax payer funding the companies pensions scheme.

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If not repaired it won’t take long for a building with one broken window to quickly turn in to a building with many broken windows. Addressing problems when they are small will prevent them from developing into more serious problems.

When considering the level of employee satisfaction the same is true. Dissatisfaction can spread like wildfire and in the blink of an eye you can have the type of morale problems that are notoriously hard to resolve.

To be confident that your employees are satisfied you need to be aware of any day to day concerns and deal with them before they get out of hand. Keeping the initiative is vital and it is nearly always better to give a little and often.

This turns out be a vicious circle. Fixing problems when they are small is also when they are at their cheapest to fix. The majority of employees would prefer their managers to act without being prompted and by doing so they prevent the situation where they have to address employees’ concern while on the back foot. Employees like strong, confident management and a proactive approach generates respect not least because someone has taken the time to understand some of the employees’ issues.

Compare that with those managers who are out of touch. Arriving late to a problem they are on the defensive, their credibility at risk as they may have to concede to demands which can lead to further and less reasonable demands. It’s not big and it's not clever.

How then can a company monitor the morale of the employees without a big budget and an abundance of spare time?

The first port of call should be an online employee survey. They represent a quick, easy and low cost solution. Instead of weeks and months surveys can now be designed and published in hours and minutes, by harnessing the power of the internet invitations can be sent out instantly and free of charge using email, links on websites and postings on social networks; the results are collated in real-time and can be automatically displayed as charts.

The ideal delivery mechanism is the corporate internet.

By linking through to an online survey website a company can regularly conduct surveys so they become part and parcel of the daily operations.

With an online survey’s ability to produce results in real-time the mood of the employees can rapidly be gauged and concerns highlighted both on a collective and individual level.

Organisations can use survey results to highlight problem areas and then use follow-up surveys to target specific concerns. With good information managers are able to identify specific problems and prepare a considered response.

By conducting regular surveys companies are able to address small problems before they grow into much bigger problems that are then more difficult to address.

And don’t forget that the majority of employees appreciate being consulted so asking their opinion is not a sign of weakness but an indicator of good decision making.

Very occasionally management problems can be solved with something that is quick, easy and won't break the bank; this is fortunately just one of those occasions.