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Do You Benefit From Offering Your Employees More Education?

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How would you like a more dynamic, skilled workforce without the hassle of taking on new staff?

If your company could benefit from more knowledgeable employees with skills relevant to your niche, it might be time to consider offering your employees tuition assistance.

Many large companies – Apple, McAfee and Starbucks for instance – offer tuition assistance to their employees. You might have some understandable fears about doing so – more on those in a moment – but in fact offering your employees educational opportunities can reap many rewards.

Read on to find out what offering educational assistance can do for you, and how to allay some of your fears.

Who Has Succeeded With Tuition Assistance?

United Technologies Corp (UTC) decided that the best way to attract the employees they needed was to shape their existing workforce through their tuition assistance program.

Employees can gain an Associate, Bachelor’s or Master’s, with UTC meeting the costs of tuition, fees and books. In turn, UTC has been rewarded with a more skilled and loyal workforce. Employees who have taken up their tuition assistance program are less likely to leave, and more likely to be promoted.

The Atlanta Police Foundation decided that tuition assistance was the way to go when it saw a need to better equip its staff and officers to cope with a very demanding job.

The Foundation wasn’t happy with the rate of officers leaving the force, and wanted to better retain its staff. By investing in tuition assistance to help officers earn their Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees, the Foundation was able to lower the number of officers leaving by 3%, and was rewarded with a more confident and capable workforce.

What if an Employee Gains More Skills And Leaves?

It’s an understandable fear. What if you invest in your employees education, only to find they take the qualifications you’ve paid for, and go off to greener pastures?

Yet as UTC and the Atlanta Police Foundation show, offering tuition assistance can actually help you retain employees.  It’s a hopeful thought, but of course as a business owner you want to ensure the investment you make in education benefits your company.

So what can you do to keep your newly honed talent in your fold?

* Make it relevant – If you fund educational programs that are relevant to your niche, you are empowering your employees to feel more confident within your field, and your company;

* Set some ground rules – Many employers include clauses such as only offering assistance to those who have been with the company for a certain amount of time, or asking employees to sign a contract saying they will stay for a set amount of  time after graduation;

*Offer opportunities for growth – you wouldn’t give someone the keys to a sports car, but no sports car. Offer your newly qualified employees the chance to grow and be promoted within your company.

How Will Offering Tuition Assistance Benefit the Company?

Tuition assistance offers many benefits for your company. How about:

* More skilled workforce;

* An incentive to stay with your company;

* The chance to find the qualified employees you need from within your own ranks;

* Better soft skills such as time management, teamwork and public speaking;

* Some educational benefits can be deducted for tax purposes;

* Better profile as a company who cares and invests in its employees.

Tuition assistance is a solid investment in your company’s future.

You’ll be equipping your employees with the skills they need to excel in your company, and offering them an incentive to stay and use those skills for your company’s benefit.

As a business owner, what if any educational opportunities do you offer your employees?

Photo credit: nydailynews.com

About the Author: Tristan Anwyn is an author who writes on subjects as diverse as health, marketing, bachelor degree jobs, and SEO.

Don’t Let Your Business Blog Content Become a Biology Project

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Just about all of us at one time or another has had to deal with rotten food.

In many cases, we leave something out too long or leave it in the fridge for an extended period of time; hence it soon takes on the junior high science project that many of us thought was cool back in the seventh grade.

In our adult years, however, such projects are not only viewed as unfavorable, but they can be costly when running a business.

Working in marketing full-time and doing freelance writing on the side, I literally come in contact with dozens and dozens of business blogs on a daily basis. The number one threat to their existence in my opinion is stale content.

When some business heads feel like the content is just there to fill space and show both current and potential customers that the site is active, I just want to come up to them and shake them for about five seconds. My main question as I am shaking them is what are you thinking? In many cases, they probably are not doing much of that in the first place.

What is the Purpose behind Business Blogs in the First Place?

Company blogs come in all shapes and sizes, be they for someone just beginning to run a business or someone who’s been around the block a time or two. In many instances, the blog is used as a tool to attract current and potential customers to the site, and then provide them with worthwhile information that they can take away.

On the surface, that sounds like a great premise for having a blog in the first place. Where that becomes an issue is when the lead content is left to sit on the site for days and days and days and….

Soon, visitors coming to the site begin to see the same old and tired copy anchoring the site. Before long, what was once good content starts turning into that bagel or loaf of bread that was left sitting out on the counter for weeks and weeks. You get the picture, it isn’t pretty.

As someone that has written and overseen a number of business blogs over the years, I cannot stress enough the importance of maintaining fresh content on the site.

Among the obvious reasons to do so:

  • Search engines will be more favorable to your site if the content is regularly updated;
  • Fresh content puts your company blog out there as an authority on a subject or subjects, singling you out from competitors;
  • A continuously updated blog site makes it much easier to approach potential advertisers that will want to get their name linked to your site;
  • With updated blog content, you can have real-time interaction with readers, leading to more opportunities to convert potential customers into customers.

One small business blog I recently came across, one which I will not name, was last updated in the fall of 2011. Last time I checked the calendar, we were coming up on the middle of March.

My first thought was maybe this company had gone under and the site was still showing up on Google searchers. As it turns out, the company sure is still business and looking for new clients as we speak. If I were consulting them, I would not advise them to start their sales pitch by referencing the site’s blog.

I make it a habit to clean out my refrigerator once a week so that nothing can become a biology project behind that closed door.

Perhaps more business owners should take on a similar project to make sure their company blogs are not festering something nasty.

Remember, the time for conducting science projects was back in school, not when you are running a business.

Photo credit: marqui.com

Dave Thomas, who covers among other topics workers compensation and credit card processing, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

Time is Money!

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While the old adage of “Time is Money!” still holds true, is your small business accurately tracking employee time in order to get the most out of your workers?

In today’s day and age where companies scramble to keep up with customer requirements and maintain revenues in the black and not the red, worker productivity is critical to meeting those needs.

Even though all businesses want to have the services of productive workers, certain lines of work stand out in such a need, including areas like manufacturing, accounting, law firms, auto repair shops, medical services and more.

If your small business is not up to date on keeping employee hours through the various applications available on the market or you’re about to open a business and need some guidance on such matters, keep several things in mind.

First, do you understand the importance of keeping employee time?

The main reasons are to track payroll, expenses for an employee’s time that is directly charged to a customer, and when your employee’s time is tied to the expense of a product.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, business owners can monitor their employees’ hours however they deem necessary, provided it is correct and complete. Employers are required to maintain timekeeping records for two years at the workplace or at a central records locale.

Time tracking is also important due to:

Attention to Detail – Those employees who arrive and leave on time daily are more likely to be your better disciplined workers. Those who test the boundaries by arriving or leaving early may lead to problems down the road;

Accountability – Tracking employee time forces them to be accountable for their actions. While all employees should be adults about this matter, sometimes a little electronic reinforcement doesn’t hurt;

Cost Effectiveness – Employees who are productive are also going to provide your business with more cost efficiency. Having an automated system in place allows your administrative personnel to focus on other matters and not tracking who is coming and going and when they’re doing it;

More Production – When employees are aware that their time is being tracked, they are more apt to provide you with better production results. Not only will your product offerings be improved, but you are likely to see better customer service too.

 

Clocking Better Efforts in the Workplace

In the event your small business is in need of tracking metrics, there are different options available.

Among them are: Punch cards, paper forms, wall mount biometric or swipe clocks and web clocks.

Not only can time and attendance systems monitor in-house employees, but they can also be used for your employees who telecommute and/or are on the road a large portion of time.

Businesses that assign time-based tasks which require monitoring can utilize time tracking systems and job scheduling software to be sure their employees are hitting their requirements.

Managers, meantime, can use job scheduling software to map out timelines for different prospect jobs which generally utilize the data recorded from in-place time and attendance systems.

No matter which form of time and attendance software you decide to employ, take the time to make sure it is the one that fits best for your small business.

Photo credit: sodahead.com

Dave Thomas, who covers topics like securing small business loans, writes extensively for Business.com , an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.