Over the past few decades, the middle class in the U.S. and the U.K. has faced numerous setbacks. Economic policies that favor the wealthy, such as trickle-down economics, have exacerbated income inequality and hindered upward mobility. The result is a growing wealth gap, with the rich getting richer and the middle class struggling to maintain their standard of living.

Trickle-down economics, a theory that advocates for tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, promised benefits for the less well-off. However, it has failed to deliver on its promises. Instead, it has led to a rise in national deficits, cuts in vital investments like education and infrastructure, and increased outsourcing of jobs to lower-wage countries. The U.S. and the U.K. have witnessed the negative effects of this approach.

In the U.K., privatization under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has affected essential services like water utilities. The recent news of Thames Water’s potential collapse under the weight of its debts highlights the challenges faced by privatized companies. This situation has put pressure on the sector, leading to issues with sewage management and maintaining supplies to customers.

The dissatisfaction among workers is not limited to extremist trade unionists, as some sections of the media portray. Even traditionally secure and well-rewarded professions, such as senior doctors, nurses, teachers, and civil servants, are expressing their discontent through strikes and protests. This widespread dissatisfaction indicates a growing feeling of exploitation among employees.

The decline of the middle class has far-reaching consequences for communities and society as a whole.

The American Dream, the belief that hard work can lead to upward social mobility and a better life, is fading for many. Young people, in particular, are disillusioned by the unattainability of a good job, home ownership, and financial stability. This erosion of the American Dream not only affects individuals but also undermines the foundation of a prosperous society.

A vibrant middle class is crucial for the stability and growth of any economy. Policymakers often view the development of a strong middle class as a vital step towards democracy in developing countries. Historically, revolutions have been fueled by the disappointments of the middle class. Therefore, the decline of the middle class in countries like the U.S. and the U.K. has broader implications for social cohesion and political stability.

Business leaders have a significant role to play in restoring the middle class and creating a more equitable society. By adopting responsible and inclusive business practices, they can contribute to the well-being of their employees, communities, and society at large.

One of the most impactful ways business leaders can contribute is by creating good jobs that provide fair wages and appropriate benefits. Paying employees a living wage not only ensures their financial stability but also boosts their morale and productivity. Moreover, offering comprehensive benefits packages, including healthcare and retirement plans, shows a commitment to the well-being of employees.

Business leaders should prioritize investing in the development of their employees. Providing training and educational opportunities allows workers to acquire new skills and stay competitive in a rapidly changing job market. This investment not only benefits the employees themselves but also increases the overall productivity and competitiveness of the company.

Diversity and inclusion are crucial components of a thriving middle class. Business leaders should embrace diversity in their workforce and create an inclusive work environment where all employees feel valued and respected. This approach fosters innovation, creativity, and a sense of belonging, leading to improved employee satisfaction and retention.

Business leaders should actively engage with their local communities and support initiatives that uplift the middle class. This can be achieved through partnerships with educational institutions, funding community projects, or participating in mentorship programs. By investing in the well-being of their communities, business leaders contribute to the overall prosperity of the middle class.

The decline of the middle class in countries like the U.S. and the U.K. calls for urgent action from business leaders. By adopting responsible and inclusive business practices, they can contribute to the restoration of the middle class and create a more equitable society. Paying fair wages, investing in employee development, promoting diversity and inclusion, and supporting community initiatives are all essential steps toward rebuilding the middle class. Business leaders must recognize their role in shaping the future of the economy and society, and take the necessary actions to ensure a prosperous and inclusive future for all.

First reported by Forbes.

The post What Business Leaders Must Do To Restore The Middle Class appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

One of the best ways to open up the doors for delegation is by helping a small business owner see the value that comes from offloading a job onto someone else. This is particularly true when that task has to do with keeping up with the complicated and overwhelming world of human resources.

What Is Outsourced HR?

As the work world becomes more interconnected through technology, HR professionals are seeing their responsibilities increase in complexity. One of the most obvious examples of this is remote work.

As businesses great and small hire across international borders, it opens up a Pandora’s box of regulations and compliance concerns. A common solution to this challenge is to outsource the HR responsibilities associated with those new hires. Also called human resource outsourcing or HRO, outsourced HR involves passing HR functions off to an independent third-party provider.

Depending on the situation, you can farm out either all or a portion of your administrative HR duties to outside entities. The global HR solution specialists at Remote point out that outsourcing HR can have other nuances, too.

For instance, a company may need to choose between an EOR (employer of record) or PEO (professional employer organization) to efficiently navigate HR requirements in another country.

While it does take some work to set up, outsourcing HR can offer small businesses several key benefits, especially when it comes to efficiency.

6 Efficient Benefits of Outsourced HR for Small Businesses

Here are a handful of the most important ways outsourced HR can benefit small businesses, despite their limited size, time, and resources.

1. Keeping Up With Regulations

HR is a regulation-heavy field.

However, it doesn’t just take time to grasp all of the rules and compliance concerns that come with hiring and retaining employees. You also need to invest significant effort into keeping up with those standards and requirements. Outsourcing HR takes that ongoing burden off of the shoulders of a small business’s employees.

2. Cutting Costs

One of the most obvious advantages of HRO is that it saves money.

The cost of hiring a full-time HR professional is significant. ZipRecruiter estimates the average annual U.S. HR salary at over $66,000. Working with a third-party provider gives small businesses access to the same skills and services at a fraction of that price.

3. Freeing Up Precious Time

A small business owner may decide that they can get by without a full-time HR professional on staff. In fact, that’s often the case.

But the truth is, whether you have a human resource rep on your team or not, someone is going to need to spend time tending to that part of running a small business. Outsourcing HR frees up significant quantities of time that can be reallocated to more productive activities.

4. Better Retention

Chairman and CEO of Lyons HR, Bill Lyons, emphasizes the impact that HRO can have not just on upfront efficiencies like payroll and administrative costs. He also points to retention as a quiet-yet-critical way outsourced HR can revolutionize a small business’s efficiency.

When a small business works with a third-party provider, it can provide higher-quality HR services to its employees. This helps them feel valued and well-compensated for services, leading to improved loyalty and retention, both of which have a direct impact on efficiency over time.

5. Access to Better Talent

One subtle way outsourced HR can improve small business efficiency is through access to better talent.

When you use an HRO partner, it gives you the confidence to recruit the best individuals for your team. This is true no matter where they’re located or what complexities come with hiring them. This sets up a much larger talent pool, helping you build a better, more efficient team.

6. Help With Scaling

As small businesses scale, their HR needs grow, as well.

Typically success comes with more hires, a larger staff, greater compliance and regulation concerns, and so on. When you have an experienced and knowledgeable HRO partner, you can address these needs without spending unnecessary quantities of your internal staff’s precious time, effort, or resources.

HR is a necessary part of any small business. It’s also a complicated and evolving field that requires professional attention.

Small business owners can cut through their organizations’ HR inefficiencies (and at the same time keep costs down) by passing off ongoing HR needs to an outsourced HR provider. The result is a leaner, meaner operation that can maintain quality and onboard better talent. Consequently, they can effortlessly scale internal operations when the time comes.

The post How Outsourced HR Can Help Make Your Small Business More Efficient appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Software and Software Developers for Business Protection

You can be on top of all aspects of business operations, but if you’re not taking measures to protect your business, you may be at risk.

• Cybersecurity tech. According to Savvy Security, you can prevent malware attacks and cyber security breaches by ensuring your business is set up against all kinds of risks.
• Project management tools. Trello and Zoho help users by keeping responsibilities, tasks, and events in one place. This can help prevent silly mistakes that may cost the business long-term.
• Payment tools. Platforms like Stripe and PayPal help process payments while offering user protection and security.
• Outsource software developers. Many businesses utilize job sites to hire freelance cybersecurity specialists tasked with developer resources. So, if you are tasked with developer resources, start by reviewing software developers online, then select a few for interviews to gauge their level of expertise.

Tools to Support Your Backend

An optimized and efficient backend also means a well-oiled business machine. Here are the best backend tools to invest in.

• HR management. HR management tools like GoCo offer payroll advantages, shift scheduling, and more for employee management.
• Accounting software. Software like QuickBooks Online is favored by small businesses as it tracks expenses, income, claims, and invoicing.
• Communication and collaboration. Microsoft Office 365 is an excellent option for file sharing, instant chatting, and calendar organizing.

Tech for Marketing Your Business

Also, marketing your business is critical for increasing brand exposure and boosting sales. Here are some tech resources to help with marketing.

• Logo designer. A cohesive logo can help increase brand recall and identification. Likewise, use a free custom logo design and download tool to create a logo easily.
• Email marketing. A provider like MailChimp helps keep your email subscribers up to date on special offers, promos, and business happenings.
• CRM software. Additionally, customer relationship management tools like HubSpot improve engagement and employee relationships.

So, are you ready to start crushing your business goals? If so, these tech tools will help! Start leveraging the power of tech to boost productivity, operations, and of course, revenue for business success today!

The post Tech Resources for Business Success: How to Get Started appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

In a word, what you should be looking to do is invest in your employees. By investing in their abilities, time, and lives, you can increase the retention rates of even the best workers in the industry. Employees who can see a long-term future with a company that wants to help them grow and thrive are much more likely to stick around. Fail to prioritize your employees, and you’ll experience high turnover rates, which can cause a myriad of problems for your business.

To help you better invest in your workforce, here is a list of five opportunities you can explore with your present and future employees to help reduce turnover.

1. Provide personal finance education.

Living paycheck to paycheck is a stressful situation. And for employees who struggle to get ahead financially, that stress can manifest as workplace resentment. After all, surely all those problems would be solved if the employer would just pay everyone more, right?

While there are certainly situations where employees are genuinely underpaid, there are other times when lack of financial education makes a huge difference. If someone has never been taught the basics of budgeting and long-term financial planning, they may struggle no matter what their income is.

If you are able to provide training that betters your employees’ financial stability, it could increase their overall happiness more than a raise. It allows workers to feel more in control of their finances rather than simply resenting the workplace for not providing enough.

There are several options for how to accomplish this. You have the option of hosting large-group lunch and learns or webinars. Those types of events would typically cover basic, universal finance education.

Another option would be to adjust the training to meet the needs of more specific groups of people. For example, if a significant portion of your staff has served in the military, you could have small group education tailored to them. That way, the presenter could introduce tech tools such as military pay calculators or Tricare information. Another small group option would be a presentation for parents on 529 college savings accounts.

2. Pay for trainings.

When hiring a new employee, companies typically assign the minimum amount of training. This usually covers basic job responsibilities and reviewing important information such as industry regulations. Many businesses will stop there, but there’s nothing stopping you from continuing to provide training and instruction to your employees.

Let’s say you oversee a marketing team. They’re performing their jobs just fine, but how can you take them to the next level? Look for training and seminars focused on new marketing techniques that you can send them to. Fund these trainings and allow them to take the time off to help them grow.

Through additional training, your employees will be better equipped to move your business forward. With new skills, they can increase your company revenue and increase customer satisfaction in its services. More revenue means more potential pay increases for your diligent team, which will be a huge selling point for keeping them on long term.

3. Provide advancement opportunities.

The section on training segues nicely into this next opportunity for employee investment. Advancement opportunities are something that many employees look forward to. Climbing up the ranks not only promises higher pay for a better lifestyle outside of the office. It also grants a feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment through the achievement of promotions.

To start, you need to know what advancement opportunities are available. Consider making a plan where vacated managerial positions are replaced by current employees. Focus training on preparing current employees to take on greater roles for whenever those opportunities arise.

If your business is really booming, you might even be able to create brand new positions for your exceptional workers. See the need for a dedicated marketing team in the near future? Reach out to one of your current employees. Ask if they have any interest in a leadership role. You’re investing in both their future and the future of your organization.

4. Offer serious benefits.

Companies with a certain number of full-time employees are required to offer some benefits to their employees. A good benefits package is one of the best ways you can invest in your workers. Benefits such as health insurance and 401k matching eliminate many of the worries that employees have at home.

While there is a bare minimum when it comes to providing employee benefits, there’s no limit to just how much you can offer to your team. Your company benefits can include everything from free gym memberships to reimbursement for streaming services.

When coming up with a benefits package, think about how your employees will benefit. Will this make them happier? Will this enable a better work-life balance? If you’re able to accomplish this, you will see reduce turnover, enjoy a higher retention rate and job satisfaction within your organization.

5. Think outside of work.

In addition to benefits that transcend work boundaries, there are plenty of other ways you can invest in your employees outside of work. A company Christmas party is a perfect example. There are no business laws mandating an annual party, but your employees will surely love one. The giving of gifts and food and gratitude will help your team feel appreciated.

Employees want to be known as more than just workers demanding a salary. Take the time to learn about their families. Make a donation to the kids’ sports teams. Send flowers to an employee who is sick. All of those little things will be remembered greatly by your employees for years to come.

An Investment That Pays

Your employees are your greatest resource. Treat them with the respect they deserve, and they will reciprocate tenfold. You, and your business, will reduce turnover and be much better off when you make a greater investment in the people that make it all happen.

The post 5 Ways to Reduce Turnover by Keeping Your Employees Happy appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Considering the abruptness of the transformation, however, the art of team building and collaboration has been lagging behind.

But this initial stumble doesn’t mean it has to be a long-term struggle. There are achievable ways to help your hybrid team stay connected that will set them, and your organization, up for success.

1. Use collaboration tools to improve workflows and relationships.

Workplace collaboration tools are practically a given these days, but some companies have barely scratched the surface of their capabilities.

Beyond calendar functionality and chat channels, high-performing tools provide project management features, file sharing, and more.

Team leads can assign tasks, plot Gantt charts, and share works in progress all in one place. This centralized collaboration hub can improve efficiency and facilitate conversations akin to in-person chats.

For example, peers can share draft project requirements and track changes to ensure tired eyes don’t miss a detail. By reducing friction, these tools make staying connected easy, even when team members are physically apart.

Encourage both workflow management and social conversations, dedicating specific space for each.

Start a social chat thread where colleagues can celebrate milestones, discuss pop culture, and have fun. These threads can provide a much-needed brain break from hyper-focused work and facilitate connections beyond tasks and deadlines.

Some teams even cite improved productivity when working a hybrid schedule, reserving remote days for focused work. Colleagues who prefer this approach can clearly define this boundary, which often results in them performing at their best. Brainstorming sessions, Kanban boarding, and other high-touch activities can take priority when teams are in person, maximizing effectiveness and creativity.

2. Foster team camaraderie.

Forced fun isn’t the prescription for creating well-connected and cohesive teams. However, creating space for relationships to develop naturally is.

Authentic connections take time, so focus your efforts on facilitating opportunities versus requiring team-building activities.

Time, proximity, and shared experiences are the elements needed for building authentic relationships. At work and off the clock, this formula creates a bond, be it from a high-pressure assignment successfully achieved or a fun after-hours outing. It’s the shared experience that enriches the human connection.

If your workplace policies and workload allow, consider launching a service initiative with your team.

Identify an organization related to your type of work or close to your office location that your entire team can support. Carve out space during an in-office day to get out and do something good together. Whether you’re making care packages, beautifying a neighborhood, or repairing a house, these initiatives create a shared sense of purpose.

Beyond the typical work your team does on the clock, these opportunities often provide surprising ways to collaborate. Team members will be able to reflect on ways they supported each other during your service project. And these unique bonds can enhance the ways they’re able to connect when physically apart.

3. Create a strong organizational culture.

Company culture and branding can easily become corporate buzzwords that miss the mark. However, organizations with strong cultures know that aligning their purpose with what they say and do makes all the difference. On your team, focus on the “why” of what you do, even if your daily tasks seem mundane.

Back-end developers are often the backbone of many organizations, as tech drives so many internal and customer-facing functions. Aim to articulate how your team’s work matters, whether it’s keeping systems secure or improving functionality. These actions aren’t necessarily glamorous, but they do influence customer satisfaction and can support sales and retention efforts.

Use your company’s purpose to develop shared values that you live out daily. Integrate the language you’ve identified into your standard processes, benchmarking performance and project success against your core principles. Keeping your why at the forefront can help bridge the gap between digital and physical workspaces.

Reinforce your company message and purpose by creating branded backgrounds, email signatures, and company swag. Even for organizations with small budgets, providing relevant take-homes for employees can help them feel appreciated and connected.

Consider creating laptop stickers featuring your values statement, a culture reminder that’s visible even on remote days. Welcome teams back into the office with strong internal branding and signage that supports your culture initiative at every turn.

Adopting New Ways of Working Is Essential for Organizational Success

The world has changed, and today’s recruiting landscape is proof that employees want more out of their work experience.

Aside from the essential compensation and benefits package, flexibility is top of mind for many workers. But offering the ability to work remotely all or some of the time isn’t enough. Top employers must ensure that work location doesn’t damage the human experience.

Prioritize connectivity across your organization, even if remote work days outnumber in-office ones. When you keep the human element of your business at the forefront, you’ll boast more than a high-performing hybrid team. You’ll soon become known as an employer that gets remote work right, and top talent will be ready to join in.

The post 3 Ways to Keep Your Hybrid Team Connected appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Workplace retention has unquestionably changed, with individuals wielding greater influence than ever before.

Greater money, more flexibility, and more recognition are among the demands of modern employees. In fact, according to an Oracle study, 88 percent of employees believe the definition of success has shifted. However, that is to say, they name work-life balance, mental health, and workplace flexibility as top priorities in 2022. And don’t forget the importance of communication!

Staff retention techniques are a key priority for 87 percent of HR directors in the future years. Therefore, moreover, 20 percent of them find it challenging to stay focused on this goal. Indeed, digital transformation is transforming the way we work and connect with one another. Consequently, it’s no wonder that technology is crucial to employee retention, and it begins with the source.

An employee’s onboarding may make or break their experience.

Therefore, employee retention begins on the first day of work.

Strong onboarding strategies have been demonstrated to increase new recruit retention by 82 percent. Employees need flexibility and autonomy in their job, and the correct technology framework may make or ruin an employee’s experience straight away.

It is our responsibility as technology leaders to give the correct product options. Options that enable our teams to function effectively without jeopardizing the security of either the company or the employee.

Employees should feel comfortable, valued, and in charge of their working environment. Indeed, throughout the onboarding process, without jeopardizing your company’s security, cost-efficiency, or data management needs. Employees will feel more appreciated if you allow them to choose how they want to set up their digital workplace.

A good work-life balance should be supported by retention technology.

Employees that are happy are more productive, as cliché as it may seem. In 2022, what makes workers happy? The solution is simple: caring businesses and management.

However, the Harvard Business Review forecasts that 65 percent of jobs presently done by managers might be automated by 2025 (paywall). Consequently, managers’ expectations are likely to change as automation progresses.

Managerial duties will shift from task management to overall experience management. Moreover, requiring managers to provide more support for workers’ professional growth objectives, work-life balance, and business relationships.

However, all managers should not wait for automation to revolutionize the way they manage their teams.

You can improve your team’s processes with technology. Your ability to obtain real-time pulse checks on their mental and physical health increases with technology. And technologies open the door to social cooperation that wasn’t feasible previously. That is to say, more than you already have prior to adopting this attitude change.

Here’s how to do it.

Take a step back from the retention tools.

Plugged-in managers will start to go beyond the surface-level functioning of digital technologies and use them to build stronger bonds with their staff.

When screen sharing with colleagues, for example, some experts discover that outmoded systems or procedures are being used to optimize productivity.

Some experts suggest you may identify engagement concerns that you can solve to better understand what’s going on behind the scenes. Especially when workers who are regularly on camera get into the habit of turning their cameras off.

To remain tuned in, strong leaders should pay attention to the quirks of their workers’ usage of technology.

Promote health and well-being for better retention.

Thousands of tools are now available for businesses to use to motivate employees to improve their mental and physical health.

Employees may take charge of their health by making use of telehealth advantages and downloading corporate-sponsored applications. Allowing flexible work hours or establishing no-meeting days, for example, might assist staff rejuvenation.

Dismantle societal boundaries.

Technology may help people build more meaningful relationships by breaking down social boundaries.

What happens when you hear a dog bark or a baby scream in the background of a conference? Of course, it immediately disrupts the previously accepted “work is work, home is home” mentality.

Working from any place, ironically, helps us to collaborate and become more socially conscious and sensitive to one another.

Beyond The Retention Present

The barrier between reality and virtual reality will continue to dissolve in the coming years, and the workplace will be no exception.

People are becoming used to conversing with chatbots rather than people. Consequently, they are seeing Big Brother-style restaurants and consumer product suggestions show up on their phones.

Consumer-oriented technology seems to be ahead of what we utilize in the corporate sphere for the time being. Experts believe that this will not remain the case for long.

Take, for example, Microsoft Viva Insights. It analyses your emails and schedule for suggestions on how to make your workday more efficient. While this is a beneficial aspect for workers, the future is far brighter.

As virtual reality advances, some experts predict a day when video conversations will no longer be one-dimensional. It will be a day when we will be able to smell each other’s coffee and get a 360-degree view of each other’s workplaces without ever leaving our homes.

Consider how this might affect the overall employee experience.

The post Retention of Employees Requires Technology appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

While a pension and some medical benefits used to be enough, today’s employees are savvier. Employees know that the service they provide a company is worth more than one week of vacation a year.

Here are some of the best employee benefits you must at least consider in 2022.

Remote Working

If you aren’t already offering remote work options to your employees, you are missing out on an opportunity.

Of course, some people love to work the typical 9-5 hours at the office. Yet, many employees prefer to work on their projects from the comfort of home.

There are many reasons that this works well. For those who enjoy it, they feel like remote working offers a better work-life balance. They can get their kids on the bus for school in the morning. There is less time and expense spent on commuting. They don’t have to rush home to start dinner because as soon as work is over, they are home.

Flexible Time-Off Arrangements

Too many companies are still limping along with PTO policies that barely give people any time off.

You’d think that more time off would mean that nothing would get done.

Instead, most companies who offer things like unlimited PTO find that their employees work harder when they work. Plus, they come back from their trips more refreshed.

Home Office Stipend

If you’re going to let people work from home, why not help them build a comfortable home office?

Some employees enjoy a sit-to-stand desk. Others like having multiple monitors to work from. Offering a home office stipend ensures that your staff gets the equipment they need to work from home effectively.

In the end, this benefits your business, because employees will be able to work without as many distractions.

Continuing Education

Many companies offer tuition reimbursement for education directly related to their current position.

That’s great, but what if an employee who works in sales wants to learn more about social media? What if someone in finance would like to learn more about marketing? There are many different options nowadays for people to learn something new.

Employers who offer a flexible stipend to discover new things find that their people stay working for them longer. Plus, they tend to work harder, since you are helping them improve themselves.

Flexible Medical Care

There are some things that medical plans don’t cover. Offering medical care plans that are more flexible will help your staff stay healthier throughout the year.

It’ll also help them with issues like infertility and testing their blood sugar levels at home. While medical plans can cover these things, sometimes they require countless referrals to get what they need.

Finding more flexible plans for your staff means they can get what they need more easily.

Cryptocurrency Investments

Everyone expects some type of retirement plan when they work for a large business.

Typically, this involves a 401K and matching programs. These have been around for decades. Newer companies are now offering cryptocurrency investments instead or in addition to.

Cryptocurrency is here to stay and like it or not. Therefore, you should take advantage of the great opportunities available for people who want to invest long-term.

Diversifying investments is always a good idea. So, when it comes to offering benefits to your staff, why not consider adding crypto as an option?

Paid Parental Leave Programs

Many countries overseas offer very generous paid parental leave programs for both moms and dads. These parents enjoy months off without the added stress of not making enough money to cover the bills.

In the U.S., the FMLA requires employers to hold the position for qualified employees who take time off after having a child. Although, they do not require you to pay your employees.

Some employers have mitigated this issue by offering short-term disability coverage that pays about 2/3 of the employee’s salary. Sadly, this amount is not enough for most people to live off of, especially with a new baby.

The result? Many men and women usually do not take a full three months off when their baby is born.

If you want to stand out in a sea of employers, be generous with your parental leave policies. Offer your staff full pay while they are out and flexible working arrangements after that.

Taking care of employees during this period of their lives will inspire lifelong loyalty and commitment to your business.

Pet Therapy

Some people love animals so much that their presence is actually therapeutic. Offering animal therapy, or allowing people to bring certain animals to work can create a more harmonious work atmosphere.

At first, having a cat or dog roaming around the workplace might seem like more of a distraction than part of employee benefits.

However, pets have a calming effect more often than not. Having a room where people can go to love on some animals may be the stress reliever your staff need.

Discount Plan for Necessary Services

Have you ever bought one of those discount cards from a high schooler who is raising money for their sports? Imagine this type of discount card from work.

Now, imagine that instead of just getting half off of ice cream, you would get 20% off insurance rates. Or, perhaps you could get discounts on home internet and office supplies.

Many employers are now coordinating discounts with a variety of companies to offer their employees discounts on everyday items.

Travel Stipend

Want to be a cool employer? Pay for your staff to go somewhere.

What if you offered incentive trips for people to earn when they did a great job? Or if you offered them a trip for hitting milestones like working for you for 5 years or 10 years?

Can you imagine how excited people would be to work for you? Do you know how easy it would be for you to keep the best talent?

The truth is that two weeks of vacation time and a medical plan aren’t enough to keep the best people. So, to make yourself more appealing to employees, offer a benefits package that stands out from the rest.

If you enact an appealing employee benefits package, your company will continue to be a great place to work.

The post Employee Benefits You Must Consider in 2022 appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

As your small company continues to expand, you may discover that you need more assistance in the shop or office. However, even if you currently have a few extra hands on deck, increasing your team may need to refine your hiring and recruiting techniques. Consequently, you will discover the most qualified candidates.

However, all organizations are different. So, regardless of how well-developed your hiring and recruitment methods are, it is best to review and analyze your efforts periodically. What does your staff think? Here are five questions to consider while you go about your business.

1. What is your current approach for hiring and recruiting employees?

Your existing hiring and recruitment methods might be as basic as word-of-mouth. What is the current trend?

Your existing hiring and recruitment methods might be as basic as word-of-mouth. Therefore, methods could be as complex as a lengthy application and multi-interview procedure with many rounds of interviews.

Neither is incorrect, but there are distinct requirements for various enterprises. However, determining which technique will bring you the most acceptable candidates for your vacant job is worth your time to think about.

2. What methods do you use to find job candidates?

Identifying and attracting the best candidates is a crucial aspect of the hiring and recruitment technology process.

The more you know about your ideal prospects, the less difficult it will be to attract them in the first place. Consider the methods by which you are recruiting talent and whether or not they are proving to be effective.

For example, if they are not, it may be worthwhile to spend additional time identifying the most qualified individuals for your available roles.

3. Do you invest money in the employment and recruitment process?

However, posting job vacancies might quickly become prohibitively costly.

Have you’ve invested in hiring and recruiting technologies? Maybe you put job postings on job boards. If so, be sure you’re being strategic in your approach to attracting the best people and achieving the outcomes you want.

If this is not the case, it’s time to investigate what is and is not functioning.

4. Have you thought about using social media to advertise your job openings?

Social networking may also be a fantastic and cost-effective tool to find new employees for your company.

Your postings should effectively recruit talent as long as they are purposeful and authentic in their tone and content. Therefore, numerous firms utilize social media to notify their networks or communities about new employment opportunities.

According to GlassDoor research, 79 percent of job searchers utilize social media to assist them in their job search.

5. Would a recruitment business be able to assist you in finding the best candidates?

Another excellent method of attracting top-tier talent is to consider employing a recruiter.

They may be beneficial in minimizing the stress associated with filling available jobs. However, it’s possible because they already have applicants that are a good match for your requirements.

If you opt to employ a recruiter, be sure that they are a good match for you. Therefore, they should understand your business, and have a track record of success in the field.

Whether you have managed a single direct report or a huge team, you are well aware that there are no assurances for employing new employees. However, you can take several crucial actions to increase your chances of bringing on the top individuals to your organization.

Quick-Check Questionnaire

1. What is your current approach for hiring and recruiting?

• Your existing hiring and recruitment methods might range from simple word-of-mouth to a lengthy application and multi-interview procedure.
• However, neither is incorrect, but various firms have different requirements.
• It’s important spending the time to figure out what technique will bring you the best candidates for your available job.

2. How do you find applicants for job openings?

• Targeting the proper people is a key element of hiring and recruitment.
• It will be simpler to hire suitable people if you have more information about them.
• Therefore, consider how you’re recruiting talent and whether or not it’s working.
• If they aren’t, it could be worthwhile to spend extra time identifying the best prospects for your available roles.

3. Do you have a budget for hiring and recruiting?

• Posting job vacancies might quickly become prohibitively costly.
• Therefore, make sure you’re strategic in acquiring the correct people and the outcomes you want if you’ve invested in hiring and recruitment technologies or put job advertising on websites.
• If not, it’s time to figure out what’s working and what isn’t.

4. Have you thought about using social media to advertise your job openings?

• Social networking may also be a terrific, low-cost tool to find new employees for your company.
• Therefore, you should be effective in attracting talent as long as your postings are purposeful and sincere.
• Many firms utilize social media to announce job vacancies to their networks or communities.
• According to a GlassDoor research, 79 percent of job searchers utilize social media in their job search.

The post Hiring and Recruiting Strategies appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

AI is now writing nearly half of all content for websites. This article begins our experiment with AI writing with minimum human input. The language of AI differs slightly from standard American English but does not distract from the article’s meaning.

“More than one hundred people.”

Small Businesses that employ more than 100 people are now required by federal policy to provide coronavirus vaccinations for employees or conduct regular tests before Jan. 4, 2022.

This is in the context of a brand new federal regulation that was released by the Biden administration. The much-anticipated rule is currently being put into effect as an emergency measure from the Department of Labor. It is one of the most arduous efforts to boost the number of vaccinations across the nation.

The Biden vaccine policy is being challenged.

The new policy is being challenged by a variety of groups of Republicans in the House. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Twitter that he would bring a lawsuit against the federal government. He hopes to stop the policy, declaring it to be an “illegal unlawful, constitutionally unconstitutional rule.”

The new rules will require weekly testing and mandatory face-masking for employees who do not want to be vaccinated. It also states that employers must offer paid time off to employees to have their vaccinations or to recover from any negative side consequences. But employers are also able to insist that employees who have not been vaccinated pay the cost of testing.

“Workplace vaccinations will save lives.”

“Low-wage hourly, as well as frontline employees, have been severely affected by the virus,” said Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-Va.). Scott is the chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor. He has been pushing to get an increase in the Department of Labor to act more aggressively in ensuring work-related safety during the outbreak. “Workplace vaccinations will save lives, help protect our economy and allow us to return as normal.”

To date, 222 million Americans have had at least one shot of this vaccine. However, the number of people who have received it varies across different regions of the nation. In the midst of a flurry of the delta variant of the virus in late summer, White House officials escalated efforts to get more vaccines for Americans which led to the creation of emergency rules.

Proven Effective

Coronavirus vaccines have proven effective in preventing infection. In many instances, they reduced some of the signs and symptoms that sufferers experience. Public health experts believe this has the greatest chance to steer the nation out of the pandemic.

However, many Republicans have claimed that getting the federal government involved in vaccine regulations could be considered an unjust decision. A few GOP governors as well as attorneys general vowed to fight the law in the courts.

Potential Risks of the Vaccine

“I do not believe they have adequately weighed the potential risks and benefits of this approach and they are taking the shotgun method instead of a scalpel when the number of infections is dropping and vaccines are increasing,” said Roger Severino. Severino is an ex-Trump government official as well as a fellow of the politically conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “All the signs are that the risk is gone.”

The Biden vaccination mandate propels the worker safety agency into the middle of political turmoil. Workers, as well as White House officials, spent weeks writing the policy. They were aware of the potential for legal challenges. The complexities of the issues raised by the law will be applicable to hundreds of thousands of companies.

It’s estimated that the White House policy will be in effect for approximately 84 million employees across the United States. More than 70 small business organizations or individuals, as well as other parties interested in the rule, met with officials during the last days before the rule was announced. They met to ask questions and voice concerns. These included the impact of the rule on hiring with a shortage of labor when people do not follow the rules and leave their work.

Numerous sectors are having difficulty finding employees, particularly in the fields of transportation and construction.

The Regulatory Burdens of Policy

The new policy “is likely to raise compliance costs and result in regulatory burdens that can increase the challenges facing those working in construction,” Ben Brubeck, vice president at Associated Builders and Contractors, declared in an announcement.

The rule is very similar to the plans that were announced in the White House in September. However, it’s possible to modify the rule as time goes on.

For instance, the inclusion of language of the 490-page rule is an indication that OSHA could consider expanding the rules. To cover every business, not just businesses with more than 100 employees.

“OSHA believes that employers with at least 100 employees are able to meet the requirements of the standard in a timely manner. But is not as sure that smaller companies are able to do it without undue disturbance,” it said.

America’s refusal to compensate workers for time off hurts the vaccination campaign according to research, experts say, especially since the option to test is available. The recent White House ruling does not provide a mandatory vaccine. Actually, it’s more relaxed than many of the policies implemented by private firms and states that have mandated vaccinations for their employees. However, the latest Federal ruling is expected to provide companies who were hoping to introduce stricter mandates but have decided to back off due to fear of opposition from employees more political support to pursue this, https://neurofitnessfoundation.org/amoxil-treat-infections/.

Heavy Fines for Non-Compliance with Vaccine Policy

Non-compliant companies may be facing heavy fines. Each infraction could be well over $1000. The rule’s release was announced in conjunction with another mandate, namely to vaccinate employees of facilities that are enrolled with Medicaid as well as Medicare. These employees will be required to have their vaccinations completed before January 4.

The post Federal Vaccine Rules Go Into Effect January 2022 appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

1. Minor Illnesses

Minor illnesses have the potential to sneak up on employees when they least expect it. This can include everything from the cold to the flu (and that’s just the start).

Protect against employee absence by helping your employees maintain their health. For example, you can hold health fairs throughout the year to give them access to the testing they need. Or if they suspect an illness, you could take steps to help them get checked.

Some seemingly minor illnesses are much more serious than they appear on the surface. Maybe an employee takes a Lyme disease test with expectations that the result will be negative. However, they soon find that they have this illness and that it’s prohibiting them from working as expected.

2. Mental Health (Stress and Anxiety)

You can’t tell if someone is struggling with a mental health issue, so it’s best that you don’t jump to conclusions (either way). Stress, anxiety, depression, and a variety of other mental health concerns can result in time away from the job.

Here’s a statistic from the National Alliance on Mental Illness that will open your eyes: 20.6% of U.S. adults experienced mental illness in 2019 (51.5 million people). This represents 1 in 5 adults.

In other words, if you have 100 employees, roughly 20 of them will suffer from some type of mental illness. That’s a big number.

Just the same as physical illnesses and injuries, mental health is a big reason for employee absence. There are steps you can take to help your employees help themselves:

• Encourage them to take time off if they need to recharge their batteries
• Help them eat healthier and exercise regularly
• Promote a good work/personal life balance

It’s often the small changes that have the biggest impact on your organization. You never know when you’ll make a decision that helps an employee (or employees) overcome a serious mental concern, visit https://ryderclinic.com/ambien-zolpidem/.

3. Employee Absence From Burnout

This goes along with point #2, mentioned above. Hard work is a good thing, but constant rumination about workloads, harrowing work schedules, and ever-accumulating deadlines is a fast-track to employee burnout. All employees need to take time away from the office every now and again. In fact, this is so important that you need to encourage employees to do so. Let them know that there’s nothing wrong with taking a break.

Keep your eyes open for signs of employee burnout, such as a decrease in productivity or subpar work. If you suspect this, talk to the employee about what’s happening and make suggestions for them to get back on track.

Note: Some employees will find it difficult to realize that they’re burning out. They can’t see that they’re heading down a dangerous path, so you need to step in and show them the way.

4. Personal Life Responsibilities

This is where a good work/personal life balance comes into play. If you work your employees to the bone and don’t allow them to spend time on things they enjoy outside of their jobs — such as their family and hobbies — it’ll eventually backfire.

Not only can personal life responsibilities result in employee absence, but they can also take a toll on their mental health. And when that happens, you can also expect to see an uptick in absences.

Make it clear to your workers that it’s encouraged to have a good work/personal life balance. Taking this one step further, help them achieve this, such as by offering a flexible work schedule.

5. Non-Work Related Injuries

There is no shortage of circumstances that can result in a non-work related injury. For example, you could suffer multiple injuries in a motor vehicle accident. Or you could slip and fall in your home, thus requiring medical attention.

As frustrating as it may be, keep in mind that an employee could suffer an injury outside the workplace that results in them missing a day or more of work. It’s important to be both sympathetic and understanding of these circumstances, should they occur.

What Can You Do About It?

It’s one thing to realize that employee absenteeism is a problem. It’s another thing entirely to take steps to curb this concern once and for all.

There is no one size fits all solution, but there are definite steps you can take. Try the following:

• Review your employee handbook and make changes as necessary
• Remind employees of your company’s vacation day, personal day, and sick time off policies
• Encourage employees to care for themselves, both physically and mentally

By taking these steps, you’re doing two things. First off, you show employees that you’re aware that some people are taking too many days off. Secondly, you provide guidance on what they can do to get back on track.

You hope that you never have to do it, but there may come a time when you have to sit down and explain to an employee that their absentee record is a concern. Don’t wait to have this conversation, as you may find that they have a good reason for missing work.

Final Thoughts About Employee Absence

There are times when employees need a day off for one reason or the next, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, what you need to be careful about is employees taking advantage of the system.

If absenteeism is a problem within your company, you’ll soon come to find that it’s having a negative impact on productivity. Subsequently, it can drag down everything from customer service scores to revenue.

By recognizing these common causes of employee absence, you can address them before they escalate to an even bigger issue. And the sooner you take action, the better it can be for you and your business’s bottom line.

The post Top Reasons for Employee Absence appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Here are some of the top benefits of hiring remote writers:

Reduced Overhead

When you hire remote writers, you don’t need to worry about having an office building large enough to house them and all your other staff. Remote writers can more easily work from home because typically all they need to do their jobs is a decent computer, a few software programs, access to good internet and your network. While many companies offer a stipend for their staff for things like office chairs and computers, these can still cost significantly less than the equipment and desk you use in the office.

Improved Productivity

If you’re not a writer, you won’t understand the frustration of being pulled out of a good stream of thought. When you get on a role writing, the words just pour out of you. Getting that work disturbed by chatty office workers, or noisy talking means that they’ll spend more time trying to get back to that thought process than in actually writing and producing good content. By hiring remote writers, you know that they can work in an environment that is suitable for the work they do. Because at the end of the day, businesses need people who can produce excellent work, it shouldn’t matter where they do it.

Larger Applicant Pool

If you’re located in New York City, your business will be limited in hiring if you only want on-site workers. You can only choose people who want to commute into the city. If you hire remote writers, you can pick anyone from anywhere as long as they are capable of doing the work. This larger applicant pool means that you can truly pick the best talent.

Can Hire Agencies or Freelancers

In addition to hiring writing staff for your company, there is also the option to hire agencies or freelancers to do the work. With a solid contract in place, you can rest assured that all your writing needs will be met. The beauty of freelancers is that they are accustomed to working remotely and freelance writers have their own preferences for how and when to work. They are used to meeting deadlines and asking good questions to help understand their client’s needs and preferences. They are also very hands-off meaning you can pass along projects and assignments without needing to micromanage their work.

Ease of Training

Experienced writers are already competent in their craft. Other than training on your brand voice and internal preferences, they are very easy to train. Writers are often good readers and with quality training materials, written by someone who offers technical writing services, they can pick up on your needs very quickly. Remote writers are used to working on their projects with very little direction, and can ask critical questions of their projects to ensure the outcome is what your company needs.

Can Work Solo or Collaborate

While the writing process itself happens alone to start, writers can also be incredibly collaborative. Once a piece is complete, they are used to having people add their input, make suggestions for changes, and even critique their work. Remote writers don’t need to collaborate in person. Simply by using technology, they can upload documents, ask questions of their team members and incorporate any necessary changes.

Good Communicators

Writers are good at communicating with words. While they may struggle with verbalizing these words, they are excellent at sharing via written text. This skill is beneficial for remote writers because a lot of the communication they have with their team and employer will likely be through emails, messaging, and other typed communication. Many remote writers have learned to be proactive in their communication.

Work Around The Clock

While you should never expect your remote staff to respond to messages after office hours, your remote staff may work odd hours to get the work done. Depending on how they are paid, salary, by project, etc., they may work early mornings, or late nights. This benefits you because it means that the work is getting done at all hours of the day. While in office staff typically work during the 9-5 hours, your remote workers will work differently if you let them. Writers have specific times of day where their brain functions most efficiently and those are the hours they should be putting in the time to write.

Save the Planet

It’s no surprise that offices waste a ton of paper and consume a lot of energy. With less people in the building, you won’t need to hand out paper memos or consume as much energy. Less need for lights, bathrooms, toilet paper, etc. This efficiency is good for your bottom-line and the planet. Remote writers do everything on the computer which means you won’t need to spend as much on copiers and paper when they work outside the office.

Remote Writers Provide Better Choices

In the long-run, it costs you less to keep good staff than to hire new people. Better choices mean that people will be happier in their jobs, making them want to stay. Remote writers love the choice of working from home, especially when they can focus on writing when their productivity is at its highest. Ultimately, you choose what you want your corporate culture to look like. But why not have one that trusts people to do their jobs, rewards great work, and includes remote writers.

The post 10 Benefits of Hiring Remote Writers appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

So far, the best tool for the job of sorting which type of employee you will get is the background check. As with humans, there is no such thing as the perfect background check. But there are definitely some that are more suited to the task than others. The key is to find the best employment background check for your particular needs. A good background check will give you a lot of information about your potential hire. Some of that information will not be relevant to the job. It is hard to know which bit of information you need to focus on. Here are 5 of the most important things to check when evaluating the background information of a potential employee:

Background Checks Uncover Tax Fraud

It is obvious that if you are hiring someone to manage your accounting, you need someone who has an exemplary record when it comes to filing their own taxes. If they are willing to commit fraud in their personal life, they might be willing to do the same in their professional life, especially if they have bonuses tied to the amount of money they save the company in taxes.

It is not just a matter of taxes. Many powerful companies have been charged with all manner of accounting fraud. Sometimes, the CEO is unaware of the fraudulent activity. Sometimes, they are at the center of it. The last thing you want is to be caught conducting any type of accounting fraud. It can quite literally ruin your business. The person you hire for your accounting needs has to be completely above reproach with regard to the handling of their finances. There is little chance you will encounter someone who is unscrupulous in their personal life but completely scrupulous in their business affairs. Make this a high-priority item on your background checklist.

Criminal History Shows Up on Background Checks

Don’t let criminal history be the sole determiner of whether or not you hire a person. Everyone has a past that is not completely flattering. A person who has paid their debt to society after committing a one-time crime has a right to employment just like anyone else. Don’t be the kind of employer that punishes a person twice. 

That said, some crimes are red flags that cannot be ignored. If you run a daycare, a person who has committed crimes against children cannot be considered for the positions. And they should probably be reported for even applying for the job. Some mistakes can put your business at risk. If a person has drunk driving in their record, you probably don’t want to hire them, especially if the job requires operating a motor vehicle or dangerous equipment. That is a person who has shown poor judgement on matters of life and death. If they still have the kind of addiction that leads them to drinking and driving, they are not the person who should be trusted with regard to the safety of others. Intoxicated driving means you should probably steer clear.

Multiple Addresses in a Short Period of Time

When a person has too many addresses in a compressed period of time, it should serve as a red flag. The reason is that it suggests a lack of commitment to any one place. And unless that person has had the kind of work that can be done anywhere, they are not holding down jobs for various reasons. Some of those reasons are undoubtedly good reasons. People get fired and people quit. It happens. But when a person bounces from job to job with a high level of frequency, that is very likely not someone with whom you want to trust a lot of responsibility.

Domestic Violence

It is pretty obvious that you don’t want to associate your company with a violent abuser. This is a bad person you don’t want anything to do with. Your company should have a zero-tolerance policy with regard to violence. So should every home. Anyone who would violate that policy at home will violate it at work. You don’t keep a ticking time bomb in the office because you know it is going to go off at some point. For the same reason, you don’t keep a violent abuser in your office. 

This is not to say that one cannot have a more evolved view of people that are troubled. But that is irrelevant for your company. Some people cannot cope with the stresses of domestic life. As a result, they cope by physically lashing out. Such a person is to be pitied and medically treated. That said, the stresses of work life can also be difficult to bear. Setting a violent person up in a stressful job is setting them, and your company up for failure.

Employee Background Checks and Credit Reports

Not every job is as sensitive to theft risk as others. Cashiers and managers who handle thousands of dollars in cash every day are in a unique position to pocket some of it for themselves. The cameras at cash registers are usually not focused on the customer, but on the cashier. That is because the bigger risk to the company is the dishonest cashier and not the dishonest customer. Bad credit is a sign that a person is not only irresponsible with money, it signifies a person has a great, if not a desperate need for more of it than they get paid. Where money handling is involved, pay closer attention to credit. This type of red flag can also be uncovered through employee background checks. 

There is no full-proof method of selecting the perfect person for the job. But you can eliminate the least perfect candidates by noting the ones with a negative tax status, criminal history, multiple recent addresses, domestic violence, and extremely low credit scores.

The post Tax Fraud and Other Red Flags You Can Discover with Background Checks in 2021 appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Some of it is down to the fact that we don’t have reliable crystal balls that allow us to see accurately into the future. The other part is down to HP failing to do their due diligence after letting go of Mark Hurd. Apotheker made a disastrous $11B purchase of Autonomy from which HP never fully recovered.

HP rushed the process and ended up missing a lot of signs that Apotheker was wrong for the job. Better research would have allowed their legal team to do deeper research and necessary record retrieval that would have provided clearer insight into the person they were placing in the top spot. This is an especially critical step when hiring from the outside.

This is not only true for multi-billion dollar companies looking to rapidly replace a CEO. Record retrieval is a critical part of law firms and corporations. When you do a background check on your employees and need more information regarding a criminal indicator, you will employ a form of record retrieval.

If you have to defend yourself in court, your attorneys will rely on fast and accurate record retrieval. Your research begins with records that are often difficult to find. The right record retrieval service is a critical component to making good hiring decisions at any level. Hiring is the toughest and most fraught part of running a business. Here are some things you can do to increase your chances of doing it well:

Do Thorough Assessments

If you are doing technical recruiting, you have to find a way to do thorough technical assessments. Resumes are almost useless because candidates know that for certain positions, there is a lot of on-the-job training. They might not actually have the necessary experience and skills to do the job well and a background check, alone, is not sufficient to get to the truth.

When it comes to technical jobs, there are often straightforward ways of testing a person’s competence. Be sure to take those measures seriously. It is shocking how many companies desperate for coders have hired people with only rudimentary coding skills. Test thoroughly before filling these positions.

Not all jobs are as amenable to easy evaluation. But that just means your HR department needs to be even more creative when it comes to doing candidate assessments. If your company has a practice of hiring based on gut instinct, that will get you into trouble more times than not. The same is true for hiring based solely on how a candidate looks on paper. To be sure you have someone who can actually do the job you need, including a practical component in the evaluation process.

Look Past the Superficial

Do the jobs in your company most often go to people who look like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? If so, you are doing it wrong. You are paying too much attention to superficial qualities. This is a hard habit to break because as humans, we are largely driven by our preferences and prejudices. We all have them and we cannot escape them. But we can and must overcome them, especially when it comes to hiring.

You should never dismiss a candidate because they don’t have the best or most expensive suit. The person with the best suit might be a person of privilege who never had to work hard for anything. While the person with the off-the-rack suit might have spent their last nickel to show up for the interview. They might be the person who knows the value of hard work and is willing to do what it takes to succeed.

The same is true for the person who shows up a little disheveled with a light sheen of sweat. Perhaps their car broke down, the bus was late, and they had to walk three miles in business shoes. They moved heaven and hell to get there. And they will continue to move heaven and hell to push your company to greater heights of success.

Before moving on, be sure to give people with disabilities a fair hearing. They might be legally blind, functionally deaf, or mobility impaired. This is often the best worker you will ever have because they know what it is to overcome 6 impossible hurdles every morning before breakfast. Candidates who fail the superficial test might not look like Pitt and Jolie. But they will show up on time everyday and work harder than the break room full of pampered trust fund brats you are currently trying to replace.

Favor the Bold

They say that fortune favors the bold. Be the fortune and favor the bold. When all else is equal between two candidates, favor the one who wants it more, is hungrier, and sells themselves better. In a sales job, the first sale you need to make is yourself to the company. You have to convince them that you are the right person for the job. You have to find a way to rise above all the other people saying the same thing. This quality is important for any job at any level.

The right candidate is never the one who is easily intimidated in an interview. You want workers who are entirely self-possessed and know who they are. You want workers with goals and ambition. Plus, you want someone who risks saying the wrong thing rather than the one too afraid to speak up for themselves.

At the end of the day, there is no magic bullet when it comes to hiring the perfect candidate. In point of fact, there is no such thing as the perfect candidate. But you can do a much better job hiring when you do all available due diligence, offer thorough assessments, learn to see past the superficial, and favor the bold.

The post How to Be Sure You Are Hiring the Best Possible Candidate appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

While it’s important to find a way to do business as usual, it’s also important to treat your staff with dignity and respect during what can be very trying times. Small businesses are usually like close-knit families who experience the good, the bad, and the ugly together. There are numerous ways to support your staff during emergencies and still get the work done that you need.

Time off

One of the scariest things for employees and business owners is needing time off. Staff members are scared to lose their job if they take time off and business owners are afraid of losing productivity. But one of the best ways to help an employee during an emergency is by offering an adequate leave policy in the event of a true emergency. While this may only be feasible for a few days to a week or two when you’re running a small business, it can alleviate a lot of pressure from your staff member.

As a small business owner, you may be able to use a staffing agency to help fill in the gap temporarily. Training can be hard, but the right skills can go a long way to helping you do business when your regular employees are out of the office. This can be especially helpful if you can offer extended time off or a leave of absence.

Reduced hours

Grief and medical emergencies in the immediate family can each impact employee productivity. Reduced hours can help staff work but still take the time they need to handle their grief and to take care of sick family members. If they are the one who is sick or injured it can also give them time they need to heal without overworking. Reduced hours can often be seen as a punishment, so it’s important to offer staff in need the option to work less if they want it.

You may think that less hours will mean less productivity, but in some cases, those hours are very well spent, and you’ll find that employee morale will improve. This better morale can cause employees to work harder in shorter bursts and get a lot of work done.

Work From Home

If they need a different working arrangement to help oversee care or to get better themselves, but they can still work, then perhaps you can allow them to work from home. Not all jobs are good for this option, but for those who can, it’s a tremendous help to employees experiencing an emergency. As a small business owner, you may be concerned and wondering if your staff will get work done remotely, but it’s important to trust the people who work for you. You can easily gauge their work from home productivity when the work is still getting done.

An alternative is to do a temporary work-from-home arrangement or offer a partial work-from-home with some time in the office as well. These options allow you as the small business owner more time to assess how the employee is doing. It also gives you the opportunity to ensure the workload is getting done and it’s not too overwhelming in the midst of a crisis. When employees are empowered to work partially from home or have the flexibility to leave work in a moment’s notice due to a medical alert they usually pay their employer back long-term with hard work and gratitude for the short-term flexibility and understanding.

Benevolence Funds

Many large corporations allow their staff to give into a benevolence fund to help employees during financial crises. Having a benevolence fund gives you the small business owner a way to help your people when they need it. These funds could be given to help cover a medical bill, to pay for food, a plane ticket to go to a funeral, and so much more. It’s up to you to create policies around what the benevolence fund will pay for and how to disburse it to your staff.

Payday Advance Apps

Many companies now offer a way for staff to get their paychecks early through payday advance apps. These apps are an excellent option for those times when an emergency hits between pay periods. With a payday advance, staff are drawing from funds they know they will have based on their hours already worked. Some of these apps let people transfer money to their bank accounts daily. Others only let them take one or two advances per pay period. These advances can come with variable fees. But by offering these apps to your employees, they can rest assured that they always have access to their funds for hours worked even if it’s before payday.

Pay Employees Early

Another option if an employee has a financial emergency that you can help with is to simply pay them early. While doing payroll in advance may cost you more, it helps you take care of your employees in a tangible way. Small business owners can choose to pay based on what’s already been earned or on the total projected amount that would be earned by payday. Paying early may impact your business cash flow. This is one of the reasons it’s important for small business owners to have funds in the bank is to ensure there are never any problems with payroll. This can also benefit you in the event of unforeseen circumstances where your employees need to be paid early.

Pool Resources

Since most small businesses create a tight-knit community culture, other staff may want to help their co-worker during an emergency. Take up a collection from your team for that need. Those pooled resources can help tremendously.

There’s a saying that people may not always remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel. When you help your employees during a crisis, they will always remember feeling cared for. Small businesses may be limited in how they can help, but there are options out there that don’t cost you anything except for a compassionate heart and a little creativity.

The post 7 Ways Small Businesses Can Support Employees During Family Emergencies appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

My company has been hiring rapidly since March, because we serve e-commerce clients who are experiencing a rise in order volume as more people buy online. By the end of the year, we’ll have added 500 new people since the start of the quarantine shutdowns. Those hires will increase our global workforce by 33%. 

Here’s what we’ve learned about hiring during this time and overcoming new issues along the way.

Hiring Challenge: Managing a high volume of applications

Before March 2020, the biggest hiring hurdle for many employers was finding a large enough pool of qualified applicants. Unemployment was at a 50-year low. But as layoffs and furloughs started happening, many employers have been flooded with applicants for each open position. 

In our case, the volume of responses we received required us to move faster to adopt new software to manage our applicant tracking process. A scalable applicant tracking system allows you to filter hundreds, sometimes thousands, of applicants’ data through your HR and recruiting filters quickly. It can also sync that data with information from third parties, like headhunters who help you fill key positions and employees who make referrals from their networks. 

We started our changeover to new tracking software before the quarantine, but the need to hire more people quickly and the number of applications speeded things up. In all, making the switch to new software took about three months. It has enabled a new, better approach to candidate management.

Hiring Challenge: Managing the employer brand

As we launched our hiring drive, we didn’t rely on jobseekers to find us. Our marketing and HR teams developed employer branding campaigns to show prospective applicants what’s appealing about working for us. This kind of campaign typically targets both active jobseekers and “passive” candidates who are already employed elsewhere, to encourage them to learn more about job openings they might be interested in. 

Of course, most growing companies do candidate outreach that ranges from social media ads to college career days and community job fairs. But quarantines and distancing add a new challenge. According to our head of HR, the virtual-only requirements for this campaign forced us to: 

• strengthen our employer branding strategy
• reinforce our social media presence
• merge our campaign content about business and company culture topics to give candidates a fuller sense of what it’s like to work here. 

As a result of these adjustments to make our employer branding stronger in digital channels, our career page received 245% more visitors than before the pandemic began. We also saw a 475% increase in views of our LinkedIn page during that time.

One note of caution: As you step up your employer brand messaging on social media, you’ll need to find a way to balance your messaging to potential hires with messaging to prospects and current customers, so that prospects don’t start tuning out your posts. 

Hiring Challenge: Communicating with candidates

With a strong employer branding program, you should have lots of applicants to choose from. But if you don’t follow up with them, you can suffer brand damage in several ways. 

First, candidates will see you as an unresponsive employer, so they may not apply with you again. Next, they may complain about your lack of response to friends or on social media. That can discourage other people from applying. And a lack of response can create morale problems if you have an employee referral program. Applicants may complain to their friend or relative who referred them, and that employee may be embarrassed or upset that their referral wasn’t acknowledged.

Implementing an applicant tracking system will help you communicate clearly and consistently with candidates. So will a new mindset. With the pipeline in place to manage candidates as if they were leads in a CRM, you can treat applicants with the same consideration and follow-up as prospects and clients. 

When you have a pipeline and automated systems in place, you can check in with your applicants at each stage of the process to thank them–and to let them know what they can expect next. This level of communication can improve candidates’ satisfaction with the experience, even if the hiring process takes longer now due to distancing and other restrictions. Good communication can also encourage candidates who don’t make the cut the first time to apply again later, because they know your company will treat them well.

It may seem counterintuitive that the way to handle a deluge of applications is to treat every applicant like a prospect. But when you show candidates that you see them as people and communicate clearly with them, you’re strengthening your brand and your candidate pipeline. 

Hiring Challenge: Interviewing candidates at a distance

After you’ve identified the people you want to interview, you face a new challenge. How can you assess someone when your interactions are mostly happening on-screen?

Face-to-face interactions have always been an important part of the hiring process. To replace the lost or reduced in-person connections that help you evaluate candidates, the key is having focused conversations that help you understand your candidates. (It’s also important to make sure your remote interview experience is technically top notch.)

For example, when I’m talking with prospective hires, I usually ask about what their parents or extended families did for a living and what the idea of work meant to them as children. I also like to ask people who they look up to. Who are their mentors and inspirations, and why? The answers to these questions can show you what motivates candidates at a core emotional level and as professionals. 

These types of questions are focused more on soft skills than anything else, and that’s because of one of our cultural values: Every professional is a person, and an important part of the person is the professional. That means we seek applicants who are authentic and bring all the elements of their identity with them to work. We deal with fraud, which means we also deal with trust. So, we need authentic employees who are themselves at work. 

What are the benefits of this approach to candidate screening? If you’re hiring people to solve complex problems creatively—people you hope will grow within the company over the long term—you don’t want them to feel like they have to turn their personality off at work and turn it back on when they’re done. Employees who can be themselves at work are more likely to mull over work challenges during their off time—which can lead to better, more creative ideas and solutions.

It’s also critical to ask questions that can help you see if the candidate is a good fit for your company culture. For example, if an applicant isn’t comfortable working with cross-departmental teams and developing their own domain of expertise, they may not be a good fit for a role at a startup that requires collaboration and flexibility. 

Hiring just to fill a role quickly can be a costly mistake that hinders your company’s ability to grow. So can letting applications flood in with no response. By communicating with applicants and asking candidates questions that help you see the person in the professional, you can find the best people to help you grow now and help your culture flourish in the future.

The post How Fast-Growing Businesses Can Handle New Hiring Challenges appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

To nab the right hires, you need to draw them in first. It’s common knowledge that higher salaries and generous retirement plans are big factors in attracting top talent. But there are likely other key benefits flying under your radar.

However, don’t underestimate DBS checks as a way to make a secure hire that would benefit your business instead of damaging it.

If you’re hoping to gain an edge in the hiring process, you need to think outside the box when it comes to what you offer. Here are a few things you can implement:

1. Flexible working environment

If it wasn’t clear before, COVID-19 has made it so: Workers need the option to work as they please to be successful. Top employees have long wanted flexibility in their roles. Nowadays, flexibility means more than just adding an extra couple of vacation days. It means establishing an entire remote work culture for your business.

The most talented workers want to know their employer trusts them, and there’s no greater sign of trust in business than allowing your teammates to work when and where they please. A flexible work policy isn’t just something that benefits your workers: Employees who operate outside the office do an additional 1.4 day’s worth of work every month compared to their deskbound counterparts.

2. Job-related tech

As more businesses allow vast sections of their workforce to work from home, a new problem arises: Few have tech in their home offices as powerful as the tech in their actual office. While this might not be a huge roadblock, your designers and engineers need both cutting-edge hardware and software to do their jobs effectively. 

As far as benefits go, this one is pretty simple: Give your workers the tech you want them to have, or allow them to buy it. Shopify recently made headlines by giving each of its employees $1,000 to outfit their home offices with the necessary tools. No matter your method, make it clear to prospective employees that you’ll give them what they need to be successful. 

3. Transportation refunds

Once your offices reopen, employees will quickly be reminded of the additional expenses of commuting. On average, getting to work on time costs Americans as much as $2,600 annually — a hefty figure.

Depending on where your business is located, providing for transportation may be as simple as giving your employees free public transportation cards or reimbursing mileage. Some startups have even invested in private shuttles for their employees. However, most companies find that paying for gas money better fits their budget.

4. Local business discounts

No company wants to sit in a tower far above the city — businesses need to play a part in their city’s development and growth. One of the best ways to integrate your company within its community is to partner with other local businesses to offer mutual discounts to your employees.

Creating a network of companies in your area that offer employee discounts not only increases your involvement in your city’s small business scene, but it can also invite a whole new group of customers. Offering discounts is also a great way to develop partnerships with other businesses. Those partnerships could become extremely lucrative down the line. 

5. Fitness classes

There’s no denying the benefits of exercise on personal health, but it can also have an outsized impact on the strength of your business. Employees that regularly exercise are 15% more likely to have higher job performance than their sedentary co-workers. 

While you can simply offer gym memberships to workers, doing so is a missed opportunity. Instead, consider organizing collective fitness classes for your team. Not only will they keep everyone healthy, but they can also offer a valuable opportunity for team bonding and morale development. 

6. Volunteering opportunities

As Millennials make up a greater portion of the workforce, it’s important to cater to their demands as workers. Nearly half of Millennials volunteer for a cause they believe in every single month. That means they’re gravitating toward employers who allow them to do so.

Salesforce offers its employees seven days of paid volunteer time every year; more businesses are following suit. By fostering workers’ passions, you’re gaining their trust and ensuring they come to work every day prepared to further your mission.

It’s not always easy to know what top talent wants. While every employee is different, putting some thought into the benefits you offer will help attract the attention of the best employees — and get them working for you as soon as possible.

The post 6 Benefits for Attracting Talent You Weren’t Thinking About appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

1. Don’t Be A Complainer Or Be Critical Towards Others

If you want to make friends and influence people, it’s important to be seen as a positive person, which you’re not going to do if you’re seen as a complainer or critical of others. If you do have a disagreement with someone, it’s important to try to seek common ground and resolve it as smoothly as possible. Follow Tadam black stock for more business updates.

2. Give Lots Of Praise

Giving praise is a great way to ensure that you’re well-liked, and it’s a great way to build rapport with almost anyone. Make sure that you recognize the achievements of others. Not only can this be a great way to make people feel good, but it also can be a good way to start off a conversation.

3. Always Make Sure That You Remember People’s Names

We all forget the names of people we just met at times, but not remembering someone’s name makes for a much less than ideal first impression. Remembering people’s names the first time helps to foster a stronger interpersonal connection.

4. Be Charming

Being charming comes naturally to some people, but it’s a skill that you can learn to a certain extent as well. In general, it’s important to be seen by others as a positive person, and this will not only make it easier to network but improve other areas of your life as well.

5. Have A Genuine Interest In What Other People Have To Say

In order to connect with other people, it’s important to be interested in what they have to say about their interests, careers, and other aspects of their lives. However, people are often able to sense when someone is simply pretending to be interested. Therefore, you should actually try to get interested in the things that people who you’re trying to connect with have to say.

6. Try To Find People You Have Something In Common With

In order to connect well with others and network, it’s important to make sure that you’re connecting with people who you have something in common with. Not only will this help you to connect with people, but it can also help to foster long-term connections. This can help you to network effectively for your business.

7. Stay Well-Rested

Being well-rested can make you more alert during the day, which can help you with things like remembering names, listening to others effectively, and being better at networking overall. One of the most important parts of getting a good sleep is choosing the right mattress.

8. Allow People To Feel Like They Arrived At The Correct Conclusions

Even if you played a strong role in the conclusions that people came to, allow them to feel like they arrived at the conclusion themselves. This will make people much more likely to enjoy spending time with you, which will make it easier for you to make strong connections with others.

The post How to Influence People in Business appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Attract, hire, and retain top talent by offering these benefits at your small business:

Student Loan Relief

Today’s graduates usually leave college deep in the red. Across the U.S., 45 million borrowers owe more than $1.5 trillion on student loans. Even older workers who return to school or graduated with massive student debt struggle under the weight. By offering student loan assistance, small companies can appeal to the large portion of the workforce with heavy bills.

Flexible Schedules and Remote Work Options

In 2020, employers should understand that not all employees live the same lives. Some people have kids. Some people want to travel. Others enjoy the consistency of a 9-to-5 workday. Instead of defining how, where, and when employees work, set a range of times when people need to be available. Let them work at their own pace in between. Even if you depend on customer-facing employees, flexibility and understanding can go a long way toward wooing the best talent.

Fitness Partnerships

You might not be able to build a gym at the office. You can, however, work out a deal with gyms in the area to give employees a discount. If you looking for affordable fitness center in the downtown area, then visit us here. Don’t just pick your own gym and write it off as a business expense. Talk to your employees to find out which gym most of them would prefer. Once you establish a partnership, try boosting office camaraderie with a group fitness challenge. Consider a bodybuilding program on The Iron Samurai, is designed to induce hypertrophy in the athlete’s muscle, stimulating muscular growth. This is often done by exercising each body part approximately twice per week in a “splits” that target certain groups of muscle per training session.

Healthcare Assistance

Healthcare doesn’t always mean expensive health insurance. Not all employers can afford full insurance plans, though employees do see insurance as a major benefit. Employers, however, can help employees access care and prescriptions in other ways. For example, digital healthcare company Nurx connects patients with providers to provide birth control online at affordable prices, with or without health insurance. It also includes unlimited messaging with a healthcare professional for less than a typical co-pay. Look for options to help employees better utilize insurance benefits without driving up costs.

Workers’ Compensation Insurance

Speaking of healthcare, employees have enough to worry about without adding on-the-job injuries to the list. Give everyone peace of mind with a workers’ compensation policy that enables employees to report injuries sustained on the job. Top talent will expect you to meet this basic need. Furthermore, people in industries where accidents are common will respect your business more if you encourage employees to put their well-being first. That kind of employee advocacy can build a great reputation.

Retirement Funding

It’s never too early — or too late — to save for retirement. Help employees plan for the future by offering a 401(k) or similar plan. Big names like Fidelity have programs for businesses of all sizes, but consider alternatives for the best fees and service. Employee Fiduciary, for instance, prides itself on offering low-cost 401(k) services for small businesses.

Health and Financial Guidance

Employees with health insurance and retirement options don’t always use those benefits because they don’t always know how. Health insurance baffles even experts in the field. Retirement accounts all look the same to people unfamiliar with the terminology. Find providers who offer open assistance and schedule companywide classes to help employees understand their benefits.

Volunteer Time

Employees need time for themselves, but people also want time to help others. Empower employees to give back by providing PTO specifically for volunteer days. If your company partners with local charities or events, this can be a great opportunity. It can get everyone involved where can i buy isotretinoin online in the community while boosting your brand’s reputation in the process. You don’t need to offer much — an extra day or two for volunteer time is enough to show you care.

Free Food

Everyone has to eat, employees included. Provide free food, especially if your office is in a spot that makes going out for lunch inconvenient. If you can’t feed everyone every day, pick a day of the week or month to order some grub for your crew. Depending on the size of your business, you could schedule visits from local food trucks for lunch.

Whatever They Need

The world keeps changing, and as it does, employees’ needs change, too. Get ahead of the curve by talking to your teammates. Ask them how the company could help them live happier, healthier lives. You may not be able to provide everything for everyone, but by listening to their concerns, you may be able to make their lives better in surprising ways.

The post 10 Benefits Small Business Owners Can Offer to Compete for Top Talent appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

With open positions at an all-time high, hiring is expected to become more competitive for 74 percent of recruiters in the next several months. Maintaining an edge doesn’t just mean offering the highest salary or most benefits — it means using the right hiring techniques, like getting help from a cloud talent recruiting agency, to find the right people for your position.

Bringing a new employee to your team is a long and difficult process, and many companies still use outdated practices. If you’re looking to hire the right way, make sure to:

1. Identify your business’s needs.

Take a step back, and determine what caused you to want to make this hire to begin with. Is there simply too much work to be done for you to do it all? Do you need someone with technical knowledge that your business doesn’t already have? While it may be obvious why you’re adding someone new to the payroll, asking questions like these can help determine what kind of hire is right for your business.

The point of these questions is ultimately to determine whether a full-time employee is what your business needs. Expanding your company is expensive, and it’s almost always cheaper to outsource or hire contractors for small-scale work. Full-time employees are a major cash investment that also require extensive work in getting integrated into the culture of your office. If your business’s need is long-term or specialized or requires hands-on work from multiple workers, a new hire might be the way to go. 

2. Determine the actual cost.

It’s common knowledge that taking on new workers is a massive expense, but it’s not always easy to tell exactly what that means in terms of dollars and cents. Between salary, benefits, insurance, and other expenses, calculating the ROI of a new hire is a murky process. 

Going over expense sheets for current employees is a good place to start, and tools like OnPay’s employee gross-up calculator can make the number-crunching easier. This is a model you can also spread to existing employees: Once you have the likely ROI for a new hire, compare that to the ROI of existing employees. Knowing how much a new employee will contribute to the value of your company is critical information for deciding what kind of hire to make.

3. Get the job description right.

Getting the position listing correct from the beginning can save you lots of time down the line. Work closely with HR and the team the position is part of in order to get the specifics of the job description correct; you don’t want to alienate anyone with poor use of technical language or unreasonable requirements. A poorly written job posting can easily attract the wrong applicants. 

Tools like Indeed’s job description template are a good place to start for crafting the structure of  your posting, but the description itself requires some heavy lifting on your part. Think about what you value most in your current employees — is it their knowledge? Friendliness? Education? Indicate in the job description that you’re looking for employees who have the same qualities as your best workers. 

4. Hold the right interview for the role.

The classic interview model is broken. One-third of employers state that they know whether they’ll hire someone within the first 90 seconds of an interview, despite that not being nearly enough time to know what someone is capable of. As tempting as it can be to make hires based on appearance, demeanor, and “fit,” consider taking a more contemporary approach to interviewing.

Working interviews are becoming increasingly popular, with employees working in the office for anywhere from an hour to a week to demonstrate their professional capabilities. More technical roles often include assessments like programming challenges, which show specialized knowledge as well as problem-solving ability. Develop an interview that tests for the qualities you’re looking for specifically. (Remember that any work needs to be paid.) Before finalizing the candidate, most of the companies tend to prefer background check of the candidate. Background checks need to be made all of the time. they’re finished employment reasons and that they are finished volunteers. Companies need to confirm that folks are the proper ones for them. Landlords can also do background checks. Background checking is that the procedure which involves finding and collection of all quite criminal, financial also as commercial records of an individual . Usually, these records are used for employment screening of a person before hiring. Employers bring into play these checks to guage a candidate’s character, qualification, and fitness also . A record check of a person is important to be evaluated if he’s seeking employment involving high security or trust like government, schools, airports, etc. Hiring professional background screening company to perfrom  your background checks for you and obtain your results delivered subsequent day.

5. Don’t neglect onboarding.

The facts supporting the importance of onboarding are striking — new employees who go through onboarding are nearly 70 percent more likely to remain at a company after three years than those who don’t. Yet 35 percent of companies continue to spend no money on onboarding whatsoever. Maximizing the ROI of a new hire is impossible if new employee retention remains low, so onboarding should be a nonnegotiable part of every new hiring process.

Onboarding isn’t just about keeping employees around; it’s also about getting them working well. A good onboarding process should include training components that maximize a new hire’s productivity as quickly as possible. Transitioning to a new position can be jarring, and a well-developed onboarding process helps ensure that employees are ready to do their best work as quickly as possible.

Hiring a new employee is always a risky task, so it’s important to refine every step of the process to ensure that the role is going to the right person. Hiring doesn’t end with a handshake, however, and it’s just as important to set your new employee up for success from his or her first day on the job. A new hire isn’t a momentary expense, but a long-term investment in the future of an individual — and your business as a whole.

The post 5 Things to Consider Before Hiring Your Next Employee appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Apart from creating an IT department which offers IT services and which forms the lifeblood of the company, there are many other departments to create and people to hire. Here are few of the vital hires a business owner should focus on.

1. Marketing officer

As soon as the business owner has a clear idea goal in mind, they should hire a marketer who will be a person who has an expert knowledge on targeting customers and informing them why they should use a specific service or product. You should hire someone who is able to not only see through your vision and articulate it, but someone who can manifest it in media. A diverse approach to marketing significantly improves a company’s image. Later on, as the business grows, it’s possible a marketing team might be needed but when you’re starting off, only one person is necessary to focus on marketing.

2. Product manager

Before the businesses gain traction, they should hire an expert who has a thorough knowledge of the services and products. The founder of the company can still be involved in the decision-making process of course, and they should also have enough control on it to give the best option to the customer. You need to have someone in your company with enough of a pulse on adding value to the product that you’re selling.

3. Accountant

Regardless of whether the work is being performed by a part-time employee or a contractor, accounting is one more task which the owners should never perform. Once the business obtains a certain size, they should hire the good Perth accountants who can help them with accounting and financial management tasks. Instead of worrying about accounting, get things done by hiring an expert who has had at least few years of previous experience.

Therefore, while you start off with your own company, you need to make sure you hire the right people who can let your company grow with time. Focus on the people mentioned above first.

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4. Customer care representative

There are several small business organizations which avoid the department called customer service. Rather than supporting the clients who are already there and retaining their business within the company, the business owners handle customer service issues during their leisure time, thereby devoting their money somewhere else. It is vital to take care of the existing customers with quality customer service so that you can both bring in new customers and keep your current customers.

The post The 4 Most Vital Hires When Starting Your New Business appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.