All Entries in the "Employees" Category
Obamacare Small Business Quick Start Guide
Whether you’re angry, happy or just plain confused about how “Obamacare” (a.k.a. the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) will impact your business, my best advice is this: Get over it! Official start date is January 1, 2014, but some provisions are already in place (such as healthcare tax credits for small biz) with more coming [...]
How to Hire Teens While Staying Sane and Legal
Soon, teenagers by the millions will be seeking summer jobs – the vast majority at small businesses coast to coast. An estimated 18 million U.S. teens will work this year, one of the highest totals in the developed world. Speaking as a parent of teens, this is a good thing. But in its song Teenagers, the [...]
4 Reasons to Ban the Yearend Bonus
Sure, nobody wants to be labeled a Scrooge. But if you’re among the roughly 50% of U.S. businesses (and shrinking) that still offer traditional yearend bonuses, it might be time to join the 21st century – and plan for something different in 2013. Too many small business bonus plans operate on autopilot, under “conventional wisdom” [...]
8 Ways to Deftly Handle Customer Complaints
When a small business receives a customer complaint it has two basic choices: Treat the complaining customer like a pain in the neck, or use the complaint as an opportunity to improve. Business owners who are adept at handling and learning from complaints know all too well that one complaining customer might represent many others [...]
A Foolproof Framework for Hiring Perfect People
Here’s a motto every business should live buy: Hasty hiring brings frequent firing. Unfortunately, however, the hiring “process” for many firms still consists of little more than posting a job opening, sorting resumes and hiring the first person who makes a good impression and survives the gauntlet of interviews. But the consequences of poor choices [...]
Keeping Time and Attendance in the Cloud
Time and attendance systems are one of the most searched-for services by small businesses. And some of today’s best choices are cloud based services that work especially well for business owners who use remote workers, independent contractors or others off-site. If that’s you, and you need a service you can log into at any time [...]
How Business Owners can Fight Rising Fraud
“Back office” and other types of financial fraud are rising at U.S. companies, and are hitting small businesses especially hard. Fraud experts point to the lingering effects of recession, cutbacks that have eliminated financial checks and balances at many businesses, and simple complacency as key reasons. According to Joseph Wells, a CPA and founder of [...]
How to Defuse Workplace Conflicts
Workplace conflicts can sap energy from any small business. Whether it involves employees, vendors or contractors, getting such issues resolved is critical to smooth sailing. Business managers overall spend an estimated 40 percent of their time dealing with conflicts both big and small. That’s just normal, since disagreements, disputes and honest differences exist everywhere. For [...]
How to Create a Winning Business Culture
When a once-growing business stumbles, the cause is sometimes an overlooked culprit: the company culture. Many good businesses with solid ideas, a great market and talented people start to lose their grip on growth after failing to win victories that seemed within grasp. Slowly, the “win or die trying” mentality gives way to deciding how [...]
A New Dental Discount Plan for Small Business
When it comes to offering a dental insurance plan as an employee benefit, most small business owners have to pass on affordability grounds. Cheap or low-cost dental plans are nowhere to be found. But low-cost, easy-access dental discounts plans are something worth chewing on, and a newly launched service called Brighter is providing a way [...]
