Successful Blog

How Do I Keep My Employees Healthy?

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As a business owner, it is your responsibility to keep your employees motivated and productive throughout the day.

Part of this is helping them become healthier, physically and mentally. People who are living healthy lives tend to have more motivation to do a great job.

So by introducing healthier food options or wellness programs in the workplace, you’re not just helping your employees, but you’re helping your company’s success as well.

That said, what are you doing to help keep your employees fit and productive?

Provide Healthy Foods

Start by introducing healthier foods around the office.

If all you have in your office is coffee, donuts and vending machines filled with snacks and sweets, then that is all your employees typically have during the day.

A good majority of people are not going to bring their own lunches and instead go out to eat. So on the days when they don’t feel like going out or are hungry for a late morning snack, they head straight to the break room.

One way to improve their physical health is by offering healthy items instead of things like donuts and bagels. Have fresh fruit set out for employees, and stock the break room with snacks like yogurt, granola bars or even whole grain bagels with fat-free cream cheese. Put more healthy options in your vending machines as well.

Introduce a Wellness Program

Wellness programs have been very successful for companies who choose to utilize them.

A wellness program can include anything you like, such as on-site classes in yoga, Pilates or even CrossFit.

You can have someone offering stress-relief services for the wellness programs as well, such as massage therapy or acupuncture. This can become part of an employee’s signing bonus and benefits program. It helps your company by offering more benefits and being able to retain your employees, as well as getting more productive and motivated workers in return.

Offer Fitness Center Memberships

If you have a gym on-site, great! But even if you don’t have one, you can still encourage the use of fitness centers by offering memberships or discounts to local gyms.

Contact fitness centers in your area and see if they will offer discounts if you send your employees to their gym. Employees get a cheap gym membership and the gym get a good deal more business, so it works great for everyone.

Encourage On-Site Fitness

There are also ways to encourage physical activity in the workplace.

Start having stretches a couple times a day where you have everyone stand from their desks and perform stretches. This is going to help prevent injury from repetitive motion, such as doing stretches for the hands, wrists, arms, shoulders and back.

You can also give an extra 5 or 10-minute break to employees who want to take a walk around the building for some fresh air and exercise.

Your employee’s health should be important because it keeps them working every day and improves their productivity.

Another thing to note is that you should be offering them help for mental and emotional health through their benefits package.

Photo credit: healthline.com

About the Author: Tina Samuels writes on social media, healthcare recruitment, small business, and social media.

4 Key Time Management Tips for Even the Busiest Business Owner

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By Jennifer Dunn

Owning your own business is amazing, but there are times when it’s practically a nightmare. Sometimes it gets so hard you just want to give up and go back to a 9 to 5. This usually comes after you’ve tried and tried to catch up on tasks but can’t seem to find any time to keep your head above water, much less actually get ahead.

It doesn’t have to be like this! With a few simple tips you can turn your frazzled brain into a relaxed center of productivity. Don’t give up on your entrepreneurial dreams just yet – check out the following tips and see if any of them can help you.

Get Organized

This seems like an obvious thing to say, but it’s an important point to make nonetheless. Most business owners waste so much time searching around their office, store, or home for a paper or object that should’ve been properly stored away (think: tax time). Eventually you’ll waste so much time on this that other tasks fall to the wayside as you struggle to keep up.

Get an organizational process in place for whatever’s driving you nuts – for example, receipts should all go into a folder so you can find them easily. Alternatively you can use a service like Shoeboxed to digitize receipts for super easy retrieval. Are you always searching for files on your computer? Create a digital filing system. Do you spend hours resetting your passwords? Check out a password management system like LastPass.

Once you have this organization in place, keep it up! Don’t let it slip or you’ll go right back into your old habits.

Don’t Multitask

If you want to get more things done, common sense tells you should just do more things at once. This way you get done with tasks quicker, right? In fact, the evidence says otherwise – multitasking does more harm than good.

It’s all about spending energy – if you give 33% to three tasks, they may not turn out any better than if you spent 100% on one thing at a time. If something gets messed up, you just have to start over again anyway. Learn how to tackle one thing at a time properly so you don’t spread yourself thin. Welcome to “unitasking.”

Get Apps to Help

Tired of doing everything yourself? You may not be able to hire any help, but you can certainly afford to acquire some robots to aid you. Oh, you don’t have a connection to someone at a robotics factory? Then settle for the next best thing and grab some apps.

Whether you have a smartphone, a tablet, or laptop, there are hundreds of applications (and other software) you can grab to help you do simple tasks that eat up your time. Whether it’s financial tracking, task management, shopping lists, or a thousand other things, there’s a way to streamline it.

Step Away

Another bit of “common sense” that can get you into hot water is attempting to power through a task that’s driving you nuts. Once you get into the habit of doing everything yourself you tend to want to get it all out of the way as quickly as you can. However, like multitasking, this can actually do more harm than good.

Instead, take a nice break once in a while. Go outside, take a walk, play a game, read a book, or just stare at the wall – as long as it’s not about work. This break can not only give you a nice physical stretch it can free up your brain to come up with solutions to your problems quickly.

What are your time management tips for time strapped business owners?

Author’s Bio: Jennifer Escalona Dunn is the owner of Social Street Media where she writes about small business, tech and finance for sites like WePay and Outright. You can find her on Twitter @jennescalona.

Can My Business Survive Negative Press?

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A negative news story or bad review — in print or online — is almost inevitably a cause for alarm in a business owner’s life. Bad PR, whether justified or not, can cut into a company’s sales volume and ultimately tip the balance from profit to loss.

Although it’s hard not to panic when confronted with bad press, business owners should guard against that reaction at all costs.

Panic will do nothing to address the matter and could keep the company from taking timely steps to reverse or undo the damage from the negative publicity.

So, what are the steps to undertake when this situation occurs? Among them:

Evaluate Report

The first step must be a careful evaluation of the news story or online posting that is the cause for concern.

Is the report accurate? Does it make valid points about a product’s failings? A restaurant’s service?

Or is it a malicious — and unfounded — attack on the business? No matter what the report’s origins, steps can be taken to undo the damage. It may take time, however.

Although lashing out in anger may very well be the business owner’s knee-jerk reaction to bad press, this is almost certain to appear defensive and may only exacerbate the public relations nightmare that bad press can cause.

Although it’s essential to cool down before responding to bad press, a timely response is essential. It’s unwise to let too much time elapse before making a reasoned response, preferably in the same medium in which the negative report first appeared.

Own Up to It

Hopefully, a careful analysis of the negative report has determined whether it is justified or not.

If the criticism implicit in the report is valid, then the business owner must take responsibility for the product’s flaw and pledge to correct the problem before the product returns to the market. Owning up to a company’s failings and pledging to make things right tends to humanize the business and create a more favorable impression on the public.

In the event, however, the report is inaccurate, the business’s response should contain a calm and rational defense of the product or service in question.

If a news story is the source of the bad press, an attack on the reporter is senseless and, once again, comes off as uncomfortably defensive.

Reporters are human too and sometimes make mistakes, including failing to solicit comments from the subject of a negative story before the article is printed.

Gray Areas Exist

Not every instance of bad press can be subjected to a definitive analysis of right or wrong.

A restaurant review that suggests bad service or under-cooked food on the night the restaurant critic visited is virtually impossible to refute.

In a case such as that, the restaurant owner is probably best served by acknowledging that lapses in service and quality occasionally occur and by promising to do everything possible to avoid them in the future. Getting into a war of words with a restaurant critic only tends to call greater attention to the original negative review.

To help bolster a business’s ability to withstand negative publicity, business owners should work tirelessly to strengthen the power of their brands.

If the brand of a product or service strikes a strong positive vibe in the minds of consumers, it is better able to survive an instance — or prolonged assault — of bad press.

Solid Brands Weather Storms

Toyota, Ford, Tylenol, and countless others have been subjected to long-running struggles with negative publicity, some of it justified and some not, but so powerful were those brands that they emerged pretty much intact, if a bit battered.

It is, of course, unrealistic to expect small business owners that operate locally or regionally to attain a brand recognition comparable to these multinational giants. But consistent product and service excellence can establish a strong brand, if only in a somewhat smaller marketplace.

And a strong brand helps a company to survive negative publicity with little, if any, lasting damage.

Photo credit: zdnet.com

About the Author: Jay Fremont is a freelance author who has written extensively about personal finance, corporate strategy, and Amerisave.

Am I Missing Any Tax Breaks?

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If you run a small business, you know that every dollar really does count.

Whether you’re just getting off the ground or your business has an established track record, it’s still helpful to save money whenever possible.

Tax deductions are one area where a little knowledge can go a long way. The more breaks you’re aware of, the more opportunities you’ll see for your business to save money.

To give you an idea of what types of savings are available, let’s go over some of the most commonly overlooked small business tax deductions:

Bad Debts

One of the biggest surprises many new business owners have is just how hard it can be to collect money from certain clients or customers. This issue is especially prevalent among service businesses.

Even though it’s very frustrating to have clients who simply won’t pay what they owe you, the silver lining is bad debts can generally be deducted when you file for your business.

Mileage

Whether it’s driving to a meeting, attending a networking event or going to see a client, you’re allowed to deduct mileage that’s used for work purposes.

Just be sure that whenever you want to deduct mileage, you log the date and where you’re going, as well as the mileage at the beginning and end of your trip.

Charitable Donations

You may already be aware that eligible donations you make to charity can be deducted.

But what plenty of business owners don’t realize is it’s often more advantageous to make deductible donations through their business than from their personal money.

Cloud-Based Software

More and more software is moving to the Cloud.

The main advantage for customers is it allows them to access their software from any computer with an Internet connection. And one of the primary advantages for software developers is whenever there’s a bug, they can instantly push out a fix.

Because they provide ongoing service, many cloud software developers charge on a monthly basis. If you have one or more cloud software subscriptions, be sure to deduct all your monthly charges.

Business Trip Incidentals

Landline calls, lodging taxes, cleaning and laundry are all examples of acceptable incidentals from business trips that you can deduct.

And as long as you keep a log, you can also deduct train, subway, bus and taxi fares.

Loan Interest

If you borrow money against a personal loan like your mortgage in order to buy equipment for your business, you can deduct the interest on your loan.

The two most important things to remember about this break are that you need to use the money for your business, and you also need to document exactly how you used it.

As you can see, there are plenty of tax deductions available for small businesses. The key is keeping track of all of them.

By making it a priority to keep current and detailed records throughout the entire year, you’ll be able to maximize your deductions when the time comes to actually file your taxes.

Photo credit: American.com

About the Author: Jesse Galt is a freelancer who writes about a wide range of topics, including mobile credit card processing and small business marketing strategies.

Is It Time for a Business Partner?

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If you are a sole proprietor, there may come a time when you begin to wonder if it is a good idea to take on a business partner.

Getting a business partner can bring many changes, and you have to be prepared to adapt to a whole new way of running your business. It is important to make sure that your new business partner will contribute positively to the growth and success of your company.

So, when is the right time to bring on a small business partner?

You are unable to solely manage business growth

 While a growing business can bring more profits, it also requires you to invest more time and effort.

If you are running your business all by yourself, you probably have to oversee every aspect of your business and do all the decision-making yourself. Even if you are a very capable business person, there may come a point when you will not be able to cope with the growth.

Taking on a business partner is a good way to manage growth, because it enables you to share your management responsibilities with someone who truly wants your business to succeed.

A partner who has extensive knowledge and experience in certain aspects of management can be an invaluable addition to your business. He or she can also help ease your decision-making burden and contribute new business ideas.

You need to team up with another business to compete with the big players

If your ambition is to become one of the major players in your industry, joining forces with another company can help you reach your goal.

Partnering with another company can be beneficial in many ways. It enables you to obtain additional expertise and knowledge of your industry, increase specialization, access valuable assets and funds for new development, reduce costs and expand your market share. With a greater market share, you will have a more significant influence on market trends.

Your business is on the verge of closing

Getting a business partner does not only help you manage and stimulate growth; it can also be an effective defensive business strategy. If your business is in serious trouble, it may be better to form a partnership with a strong company than to close it down.

A business partner can provide the necessary expertise and resources to get your business back on its feet. However, one disadvantage of entering into this kind of partnership is that you will have less control over your business.

If you want to gain back full control of your business later on, you can make an agreement with your partner to end the partnership on a certain date.

Taking on a partner can be a great business move if you do it at the right time.

To ensure that the partnership will be harmonious and successful, it is essential that you select an individual or company that has the same vision and values as you.

Photo credit: kclink.com

About the Author: John McMalcolm is a freelance writer who writes on a wide range of business topics, from small business management to biographies of famous entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, Mark Cuban and Steve Wynn.

Great Team Ice Breakers To Loosen The Group Up

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By Deb Bixler

Whenever a group of adults come together for the first time, be it work-related or otherwise, the atmosphere can be a little bit uncomfortable.

After all, making friends and getting to know someone is oh so much easier as a kid than it is as an adult.

team meetingAll leaders involved in team meeting planning should consider incorporating ice breakers into every event.

When multiple people are coming together for the first time, you may want to try some team ice breakers.

These activities are great as group team building exercises and really allow people to get to know one another.

#1 – The Team Interview

You’ve all probably done this exercise at some point growing up, most likely at school. Interview is a simple game in which you divide your group into pairs. Each pair is responsible for interviewing each other and reporting their findings to the rest of the group. Encourage the participants to find at least three interesting facts about their partner to share with the group. This is a great way for your group to learn about each individual without the awkwardness of having to talk about yourself in front of a room full of strangers.

#2 – Fact or Fiction?

This is among the most popular team ice breakers out there. Have each person in your group write down two facts about themselves that most people don’t know and an additional fact that isn’t true. The entire group can then go over each list together and try and determine which two facts are true and which is the lie. It is a fun game that really gets people out of their shells.

#3 – My Name Is?

This fun activity is super easy. Have each person go around the room and tell everyone their name. They must also add an adjective starting with the same letter of their name that describes themselves. For example, someone named Joe might go with “Joyful” Joe. For the remainder of your time together that day, each person must refer to each person with their new name.

Getting a group of individuals together for the first time can be hard to do. Most people are very reserved and have their guard up to some extent. These team ice breakers are a great way to make people feel more comfortable in their new environment. It will make your team more productive and easier to work with. Give them a try!

Author’s Bio:
Deb Bixler retired from the corporate world using the proven business systems that made her a success working for others by incorporating them into her home business. In only 9 months Deb replaced her full time income with the sales and commissions from her home party plan business. Find her on Twitter at: http://www.Twitter.com/debbixler