What 's your small business brand identity? Sure, you 've got a logo, a website, business cards, signage and perhaps even a storefront - but your brand is so much more than the "look" of your business. While all these can help you project a carefully crafted image to your customers, true branding runs a lot deeper.
In a highly competitive, global economy, small businesses need to use every possible resource to compete with the big guys. But many of us fail to recognize and develop one of our most valuable assets - our internal talent.
This outcome is all too logical; built from the ground up by an entrepreneur (or two) with a big idea, skill set, or personality, a business can become so focused around its founder’s vision that it fails to cultivate other talent.
As a manager you come up against tricky situations every day, and you know it's important to handle them sensitively or you risk offending your employees or clients. Even the most experienced managers would be hard pressed to get these 5 situations 100% right, every time they're encountered, but hopefully, this advice will help empower you for the future.
One of the most daunting challenges as a business owner is building the right team around you. After all, it has been said that your employees are your best asset. (And whoever said that was smart).
It's about getting the right blend of people, all of whom bring something different to the table and play a specific role in making the business run smoothly.
You interview a candidate who is the perfect match for the skills you need. She's eager to learn and grow and gets what your company does. She's great. You hire her. She's an asset almost immediately. She has good ideas, and you start to implement them.
Six months later, she quits.
This devastating scenario happens all too often.
Did you know that millennials (those aged between 18 and 34) now make up more than a third of the American workforce – making them the largest working generation? It's a pretty staggering fact.
From my experience of running a business, I've found they bring a lot to the workplace too. They have an amazing grasp of technology (let’s face it, most can’t imagine what life was like without cell phones or the internet) and are willing to work hard to satisfy their ambitions.
There are obvious benefits of offering health insurance to employees. The most obvious? If you don't offer health insurance, you won't be as attractive to the employees you want to attract.
But the fact remains that health insurance is an expensive benefit, even with the trend toward high-deductible plans combined with health savings accounts that shift more of the cost to employees.
One of the most expensive challenges for businesses is employee absenteeism. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) estimated that 3 percent of an employer’s workforce was absent on any given day. This statistic translates into lost productivity and a financial impact to the bottom line. It also can have an impact on workplace morale when employees have to pick up extra work because their co-workers aren’t in the office.
Guest post by Emily Burgess.
When making a new hire, it's important that the onboarding process is handled carefully. If it is not done correctly, then you could end up with a number of issues: hiring the wrong person for the job, seeing a rapid turnover rate, or having clashing expectations of the new employee's productivity and role, for example.
As a small-business owner, I recognize the importance of rewarding employees who perform well and exceed expectations. I appreciate their contributions and want them to know I'm grateful.
Unfortunately, my budget can limit financial rewards. So I was after some ways I could thank my employees without having to shell out a great deal of extra money, and that's when I stumbled across a great article from Inc.