Category Employment

Entries 21 Total

Q & A: What Are The Problems With Staff In A Small Business?

Oct 17, ’07 12:10 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Employment, Question & Answer, Small Business / SOHO

Any small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professional, contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants, at some point will have to think about hiring staff. I received this question yesterday from one of my readers, and in my mind to answer this question you have to look at two areas:

Firstly, the obligation your small business has towards your staff.

Your business has an obligation to your staff, that extents far beyond paying a monthly salary, insurance and taxes – you have a social obligation. Offering work to someone means offering them security of employment, which in turn secures their private lives, mortgage, education for children, and so on. So you should only take on staff, if you really can fulfill all those criteria. If you can’t – outsource.

Another point to consider, is if you have enough work for the new staff member in this position. Staff is not impressed if they get hired to answer the telephone, and then have to clean the floor.

Secondly, finding the right staff.

This is probably easier than you think – as a bootstrapper at least – if you only hire staff, core to your small business, i.e. they need a skill set you can judge easily, because of your own skill set, then you will have a much higher success rate with hiring staff.

If however you hire staff for areas outside your skill-set, and for non-core functions for your small business, it becomes much harder, and your success rate will go down. Here I do and always would outsource, it makes it easy to change or end the relationship, makes you look more professional and reduces the fixed cost structure in your small business.

There are other points to consider, but this is my two pennies worth. ST.

Disclaimer: As with any of my readers questions, I do not have all the answers and here on my blog I can only give you some ideas, since I know very little about your small business. If any of you can add anything here do so for the benefit of my reader, who asked the question and everybody else, leave a comment below – I’d be most grateful.

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Small Business Infrastructure For Business Start-Up.

Aug 28, ’07 12:42 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Accountants/CPAs, Accounting, Business Ideas, Contractor, DIY Business, Data Security, Development, E-Commerce, Employment, Entrepreneur, Exporting, Finance, Franchise, Freelancer, Generation-Y, Globalization 3.0, Green/Eco-Friendly, Health Check, Home Business, How to ..., Infrastructure, Infrastructure, Lifestyle, Marketing/PR, Mobile Technology, MumEntrepreneur, Office - IT, Outsourcing, Personal Business, Red-Tape, Relationships, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Sales, Self-employed, Small Business / SOHO, Social Entrepreneur, Software as a Service, Sole-Trader, Start-Up, Suppliers, Virtual Assistants, Web Technology, WinWeb, WinWeb Live™, Work/Life Balance, avoid growing pain, be eco-friendly, be successful, bootstrap, choose your office, deal with taxes, do a SWOT plan, do a reality check, do bookkeeping., do cost cutting, do credit control, export, find funding, grow your business, handle problems, keep data safe, lower overheads, market and sell, motivate your staff, outsource effectively, plan cash-flow, plan your business, start-up in business, use online IT

I get regular questions about what we really mean by WinWeb’s Small Business Infrastructure?

On-demand Small Business Infrastructure™ centers around the idea that business start-ups and growing small businesses need help with numerous administrative tasks that are not core to the business success – such as bookkeeping, it services, internet services, call handling and other such services.

These services – if performed by the business owner – cause a great deal of time wasting – while the fixed cost of a business is still accumulating. This is in our minds a fatally floored business model and can easily be remedied with our infrastructure approach.

We should not expect business start-ups and small business in general to be accountants, bookkeepers, lawyers, marketing & PR gurus and so on. We should provide small business with an infrastructure in which it can concentrate on core business tasks, while at the same time enabling the business owner to stay informed of all relevant business facts like cash flow, sales, HR issues, tax position and more. This will enable him / her to make informed decisions, maybe with the help of an external advisor.

Based on these facts, we have devised a six point on-demand Small Business Infrastructure™ concept, which consist of:

1. WinWeb On-Demand Software Solutions – Anywhere At Anytime.

AccountsOffice and OnlineOffice are our two software offerings, which are based on the SaaS – Software as a Services model, to allow for the following key business benefits:

• tight inclusion of business advisors from the start,
• cultivating outsourcing techniques at the outset, i.e. virtual assistants,
• no IT knowledge needed and hassle free operation,
• real-time multi-user access from anywhere, increasing mobility.

2. WinWeb 24/7 Live Support – We Are Here For You Always.

Providing customer care and support only during business hours is not acceptable to our clients. Experience has shown us that most admin work gets done by small business before nine in the morning or after five in the evening. This practice is essential if the business is to survive it’s early years.

This is why we have provided our much acclaimed customer support for 24 hours a day, seven days a week from the outset. Saving our clients wasted time and money – while setting new standards in customer support. No manuals need to be read – all problems can be solved in real-time online.

3. WinWeb Live – Networking Community for Small Business Only.

To foster collaboration and outsourcing we have expanded our WinWeb Live™ offering to allow for small business community networking – thus enabling the business owner to make decisions about his / her current needs, with the following benefits:

• timeshare virtual assistants for professional results,
• offer contracts of work to contractors on a case-by-case basis,
• promote the business to a large audience or even locally,
• find new work and contracts online

4. Business Advice

Our On-Demand Small Business Infrastructure™ enables business advisors, accountants, bookkeepers and other advisors to have a “Up Close and Personal” relationship with the small business owner, providing key elements for the success of a small business:

• timely and up-to-date advice from anywhere at anytime,
• more efficient advisor function due to SaaS technology, less travel,
• easily expandable advisor network.

5. Solution Partners

Third parties provide external services to complement our services, such as parcel service, office supply services, printing services. These and other services are provided on a bulk buy arrangements by leading businesses in their respective sectors – to provide the most reliable and up-to date service possible – with the effect of enhancing the professional appearance of our clients.

6. ClimateByte™ Technology – For A Cleaner Future.

Our clients are among the biggest demographics concerned with climate change and carbon footprint neutrality. It is a fact that employing remote working and collaboration techniques drastically reduces the damaging business side affects on our environment. We enable our clients to be more eco-friendly and aware, by providing them with our green technology – an ongoing development commitment of WinWeb.

WinWeb welcomes any suggestion that will further enhance our On-Demand Small Business Infrastructure™ concept – especially the development of even more eco-friendly business processes – to serve our small business and business start-up client-base.

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Small Business Failure – Reason: Management Control

Aug 28, ’07 12:41 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Business Ideas, Development, Employment, Entrepreneur, Failure, Health Check, Lifestyle, Marketing/PR, Relationships, Sales, Small Business / SOHO, Start-Up, avoid growing pain, do a SWOT plan, do a reality check, do bookkeeping., do credit control, grow your business, handle problems, lower overheads, market and sell, motivate your staff, not to do it!, plan cash-flow, plan your business, recruit the right people, start-up in business

The typical scenario is you work hard all week, have no live and at the end of it all little money to show for it. This is often a sure sign of loss of management control in a small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses.

The small business health-check questions for this episode are:

  • Do I know what is going on in my business in all areas or have I abdicated some responsibility to staff? You can pick and choose what you do work-wise everyday, you can not pick and choose what you should know about and make decisions about – this is your business, not your staffs business – act like it.
  • Am I running my business or is it running “itself”? No business is running itself, other than into the ground!
  • Do you know how your cash-flow is doing? Done this one before, yet it always comes back to this, check it out.
  • Do you have an overview of your small business fixed costs and sales, are you happy with the situation? I guess you could always do better, but if you do not know the details you can not improve your situation.
  • Is your vision in line with your small business targets? You need a vision for your business, that will allow you to develop your small business strategy and plan, so you know where you are going – don’t just drift along.
  • Have you asked your staff lately? Have a power-meeting with your staff once a week, to see how they are feeling about your small business, last week or the next few weeks. It will motivate them and give you a new insight in how others see your small business.

The central message here is to be involved in ALL areas of your business ALL of the time – in a management capacity. When I hire people I always hire people who do something better than I, but you have to stay involved.

You can see other reasons for small business and personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants failures in my Health Check Category, if you can add to this list please do so, I would welcome your comments.

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Outsourcing Options For Small Business

Aug 16, ’07 8:44 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Contractor, Employment, How to ..., Outsourcing, Self-employed, Small Business / SOHO, Virtual Assistants, outsource effectively

A couple of days ago I mentioned the excellent posting from Kathie ” Virtual Assistant or Virtual Worker” followed by my own post of yesterday “Grow your small business – success or failure will follow“. This all leads us to the next question what to do when you decided you are going to get help for your small or start-up business.

Kathie highlighted two options, the virtual worker – who like her husband works as a contractor or the virtual assistant who takes care of certain work on a timeshare basis for an indefinite amount of time. The only other option is employing staff full time into your business.

Virtual Assistants will enable you to outsource – what I call non core business processes, like bookkeeping, call handling, typing, etc. – to a professional person, well equipped to perform these tasks for you in a cost-effective manner and I do not mean cheap, I mean cost-effective. It is also noteworthy that you will not have to provide office space, work-tools, computer, heating, etc. for virtual assistants, as they usually work from home. look at it this way, you are getting a professional on a timeshare basis, and believe me when I say, having you phone answered in a professional manner makes a lot of difference to your business, or keeping up with your bookkeeping, so you know where you are – this all will make your business much more professional. Businesses and people like to do business with professionals.

Virtual workers can be from a “Temp-Agency” or a from contracting firms. These relationships are for finite projects or to fill a cap, due to permanent staff illness on a temporary basis – they are limited by time or project. So again you can afford to bring in professionals, to perform tasks for you or your clients.

Both of these relationships are good for your cost-planning because they are not fixed, permanent costs, they are variable cost, meaning, when the project is finished the contract for your temp-workers, contractors finishes too. If times are harder for your business and you need save cost it is often easier and faster to terminate a virtual assistant – but remember to explain your decision, so that when your small business is doing better again you can start working with your virtual assistant again.

Employing people full time should only be considered for “essential, ongoing and full-time” work, this way you can provide a more secure workplace for your employee and look forward to a peaceful and unstressed work environment.

Building a support network community for your small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses is essential to your survival. Remember, the contractor you hire today, may hire you tomorrow on a project he or she is working on – networking is the way to go.

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U.S. Employees Not Taking Enough Vacation

Aug 16, ’07 8:46 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Employment

A vacation provides much needed time away from work that allows people to relax and re-energize themselves so that when they get back to work they are motivated and energetic. Going by this philosophy it is crucial for the success of any small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses, that its employees get adequate time off from work.

While employees from businesses across the globe enjoy their vacation time U.S. office workers find it rather difficult to move out of their office. According to Hewitt Associates most American firms offer their employees only 10 days of leave every year. A stark contrast to the 30 days mandatory leave in Austria, Finland and France and the 20 day government mandated vacation provide in countries such as U.K, Australia and Brazil.

“The U.S. doesn’t have any kind of federal law that requires employers to offer any vacation at all,” says Carol Sladek, a senior work-life consultant for Hewitt.

An Expedia.com survey has some interesting information to report, even when U.S. employees were offered leave 35% did not take the paid leave. Often the reason for such behavior is that there isnít enough support at work for employees to go on vacation. While this may be a good show of commitment in the long run the businesses actually suffer.

Small-, micro-, home and SOHO businesses need to ensure that they offer employees adequate paid leave and that it is taken. This lowers the chances of burn out and also of stress related illness. Flexible working conditions and good business infrastructure also help achieve the same.

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Business Fraud On the Rise

Aug 14, ’07 8:56 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Employment

Business fraud is on the rise and has employers and business owners across the U.K wondering whether it is to do with employee dissatisfaction, poor HR management or improper financial management.

BDO Stoy Hayward reported in a recent research that business fraud has gone up by 42% as compared to the same period last year. It also found that one of main reason for this trend is not poor management or dissatisfied employees but because the fear and risk of prosecution is low.

“When it comes to frauds against businesses, if you are discovered there is only a small chance of being prosecuted. When a fraud is discovered, all but the very largest are not a priority for the police given their limited resources, “says Simon Bewan, the national head of BDO Stoy Hayward.

Less than 15% of business frauds are prosecuted simply because companies want to focus on getting back the money and protecting their company image and reputation.

Most often business fraud is committed by employees in a position of trust with access to company funds and crucial financial information. Interestingly the research also showed that the larger the amount that was stolen the lower is the chances of prosecution.

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Bogus Leave Maybe an Indication of Employee Morale

Aug 14, ’07 8:51 AM
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Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Employment

Skipping class may not be a habit that employees left in college but may still be taking leave of absence for bogus reasons. According to a survey by the employment law consultancy, Peninsula, 17% of all company sickness is bogus.

The research covered over 2,000 employees and it was calculated that such leave costs companies billions of dollars, £20.9bn to be precise. And the number of sick days has risen from eight in 2002 to 16 this year.

Employees are most likely to take bogus leave on Fridays and Mondays, thereby enjoying a long weekend away from work. They are frequently found to be absent from work after sporting events.

Small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Personal business owners need to ask themselves and their employees as to why absenteeism is becoming so common and need to take steps to ensure that it does not become an accepted trend. In fact the survey also revealed that when companies accepted such “sickness leave” other workers were often left wondering “Why not me?”

“Bogus leave should not be taken lightly” says Mikle Huss, the employment law director at Peninsula, and work interviews need to be scheduled after the employees get back to work.

Often other employees and the employer find themselves burdened with additional work resulting in stress – employers need to take steps against such as a situation.

Hat-tip to GrowingBusiness.co.uk

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Health Warning for Small Business and Start-Ups.

Aug 13, ’07 9:03 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Comments, Contractor, Employment, Freelancer, Home Business, News, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Self-employed, Start-Up, Work/Life Balance

A chain is as strong as its weakest link, and this saying holds true for a small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Personal businesses also. It is crucial that employers look into the work-life balance of their employees and motivate them to stay healthy and fit.

With the working day extending to more than the 9 to 5 routine, often employees are sitting in front of the computer for hours at end and this affects their health as well as their energy level.

Peninsula Businesswise conducted a survey to study the health of office workers and 82% respondents said that their working hours and conditions did not allow them time to exercise and this was affecting their health and well being.

Start-up-, personal- and small businesses need to motivate and encourage their employees to exercise and stay fit and could consider offering them discounted membership to local gyms. With global business practices office workers are often working at odd time and work conditions should be such that allows them relax and keep fit.

“Employers simply need to be aware of this growing issue in the modern business environment, whilst also ensuring they carry out the duty of care they must have for their employees,” says Peter Done, the managing director of Peninsula.

Flexible working conditions should be considered and an online office can help keep remote workers to stay in touch with the office.

I guess the start-up-, personal- and small business owner should take the same advice for themselves.

Hat-Tip to GrowingBusiness.co.uk

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Low Staff Turnover in SME/SMB Businesses

Aug 9, ’07 3:22 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Employment, News, Personal Business, Small Business / SOHO

Not so long ago I wrote about small business being less volatile and that employees see small or personal business as less risky than working for bigger companies.

The NFIB-National Federation of Independent Business in a small business poll reported yesterday:

“…. nearly half of all small businesses, 49 % experienced no employment turnover during the past 12 month….”

The news for small business is getting better and better – let’s hope it will stay that way.

Hat-tip to Jeff Cornwell – Retention of Employees Strong Among Small Businesses.

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