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Managers Need to Formulate a Strategy

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Chess SuccessBusy managers are like busy mothers.

They get it from the top (spouses, in-laws, and teachers) and they get it from the bottom (kids).

Just like time-strapped mothers, busy managers are ground zero for everybody’s problems, including supervisors, owners, employees and even customers.

Think about it. No irate customer ever says to a surly employee, “I want to speak to your colleague!”

Moms Have All the Answers

Well, moms may not have all the answers, but they have all the answers to a busy manager’s problems.

If busy managers want to stay focused and in control amid all their responsibilities, taking cues from busy moms is a good place to start.

Let Them Eat Cake

When the kids are inconsolable after a loss of a big game, moms know just what to do.

Whip out the cake mix. Nothing makes a kid smile faster than a waft of chocolate cake baking in the oven.

Beleaguered managers trying to placate dissatisfied customers so they can get on with their day need to adopt the same strategy.

Pull out the treats and lay on the icing. Everybody likes “free.”

Simply commiserating with the customer’s trouble and quickly opening up the candy jar (of free products, services, etc.) will oftentimes turn an unhappy customer into one willing to take the treat and run.

Given that every business deals with unhappy customers from time to time, the manager can head-off minor issues before they become major problems. In order to be in control of your business situation, check out the article “7 Tips for Busy Managers.”

Teach Them to Fish

Even busy moms secretly love to be needed.

The sweet sound of, “Honey, where’s my tie?” or “Mom, have you seen my hamster?” is enough to melt a mom’s heart.

But she’s also smart enough to give her needy family enough tools so she can hide in the tub with a juicy novel when necessary. Show me a mom with a new bottle of bath bubbles and I’ll show you a kid with a new hamster cage.

Busy managers need to empower their staff to make decisions independently when the manager is not around or can’t be disturbed.

Teaching decision-making skills to underlings not only frees up the manager’s time so they aren’t pestered by small nuisances, but it helps to bolster employees’ morale and sense of worth in the workplace.

(This sense of worth, by the way, has been scientifically proven to enhance employee engagement in the workplace.) This is not delegation.

This is empowerment on a deep and meaningful scale that can lead to higher productivity levels in the department for which the manager can take partial credit, along with their staff.

Give Away the Answers

Busy moms are masters of organization and communication. Busy moms receive a white board as part of their initiation into motherhood, which are hung where everywhere will see it, right next to the refrigerator.

The white board contains all the info the family needs.

What needs to be bought on the next grocery store trip, what time mom will be back home, when the baseball try-outs are, and how many days are left until Christmas.

Busy managers can give away the answers by keeping their bosses in on the loop. Instead of waiting for a request for a status report, email weekly updates to the boss.

Rather than being called in to a long meeting for a short 5-minute presentation, print out a 5-slide PowerPoint presentation with the information and ask the secretary to hand it out in your absence. Giving away the answers ahead of time saves busy managers from losing ground during a hectic work day.

It could be argued that moms invented the skill of managing.

It’s not a stretch to see how managers can benefit from the lessons of mom.

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com

About the Author: Kate Supino writes extensively about best business practices.

Should You Be Prone to Hiring Big Data-Skilled Workers?

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Keyboard With Key LearnShould you be hiring candidates with big data skills?

As big data becomes a big part of many businesses’ operations, there are more candidates out there who have gained big data skills either through their job, or by specializing in big data during their studies.

If you’re considering taking on candidates with big data skills, what can those skills do for your business?

Big Data and Business

Big data has a wide variety of uses for your business. Sometimes the difficulty is deciding what to focus on first.

You can use big data to analyze your customers’ behavior.

This could include anything from purchasing trends to how they interact with your website. You can gain insights into who these individuals are, where they are, what they want and how they interact with you.

You can use big data to track your business processes and finances.

From tracking the way sales ebb and flow throughout the year to analyzing data from different departments, big data can give you insights into the way your business works.

You can use big data to keep your social media game on top form.

From figuring out which posts are getting the most customer engagement, to finding out what customers are  saying about you, big data gives you insights via social media.

Where to Find Your Big Data Candidates

So just where can you find your big data candidates?

There are two main ways:

Hiring a candidate who recently studied big data, or looking for someone with experience. Both have their advantages.

With more schools offering big data courses these days, you can find candidates who have been taught an in depth knowledge of big data.

As the article “Hiring Smart: The 5 Best Schools Cranking Out Big Data Job Candidates” says, big data students will have learned while training on real data sets, giving them the skills your business needs.

You can also hire candidates who already have experience in the field.

With more businesses making use of big data, so more professionals are learning big data skills and applying them in their roles.

Whether you hire a dedicated data scientist, or a skilled multi-tasker with big data smarts, experienced candidates will bring expertise to their role.

Big Data Can Be Applied In Many Roles

With so many uses for big data, there is the potential for you to make use of big data skills across departments.

Candidates with big data skills will bring an in-depth knowledge of how big data works, and how to make the most of it. Those skills can provide a real boost to your business; giving you candidates who can undertake in depth analysis and use the insights they gain to drive your business forward.

From analyzing data about your business processes, to streamlining your marketing efforts, candidates who can handle big data can do a lot for your business.

As well as hiring someone specifically for the role of data specialist, you will also benefit from looking for big data skills in any candidate who will be in a position to use data to gain insights.

There’s no doubt that big data is here to stay.

By hiring candidates who are confident handling big data, you will be providing your business with valuable skills that will benefit you in the long term.

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com

About the Author: Tristan Anwyn is an author who writes on a range of topics including social media, SEO that works, and how to make big data work for your business.

Do Your Workers Need More Education?

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secretary-and-boss-discussing-10054901

If you are reviewing your employee benefits package, you may want to consider continuing education.

While not one of the traditional components of benefits packages for employees, it is an attractive addition.

People like the idea of getting education for free to help their careers and income potential to grow.

Benefits for Employers

Offering continuing education doesn’t just benefit the employee; it provides advantages the employer as well.

The most obvious advantage is the fact that you can promote from within when a higher position opens up. Instead of hiring strangers to take a supervisory position, you can place someone you already know and trust in that job.

It also helps reduce the cost of turnover because employees are more likely to stay with an employer if they feel they can continue to grow and advance.

They also know that they will make more money if they can promote up through the department or even move into a new department within the same company.

Happy Customers

The better trained your staff is, the better satisfied your customers will be.

This translates into more revenue for you. Even small businesses can benefit from helping their employees get more education.

For example, say you own a beauty salon.

As the following article looks at, by offering your staff the opportunity to take cosmetology online classes, they can learn new techniques or expand their knowledge while continuing to work. They can sell their new skills to customers in the form of additional services.

This concept works for just about any small business, so explore how it can help your company.

Are There Any Downsides?

Even if you can see all of the advantages to offering employees continuing education, you may wonder about the downside. The first is the cost.

Of course, you can limit the cost by offering to pay only for tuition or for a portion of the tuition.

To prevent your employees from getting the training and then leaving immediately, you can also include a requirement of service for a reasonable period of time.

For instance, an employee may need to be employed for at least a year and plan to stay at least a year after completion of education.

The other big disadvantage to employers is that employees have gained new skills that they can take elsewhere. However, this is not as big of a problem as you might think.

By offering educational help as part of the employee benefits, you show that your business cares about the people who work there. It inspires loyalty in the staff and the employees are less likely to leave.

People who make a decent salary and have the opportunities to grow and face new challenges in their jobs are less likely to look elsewhere for jobs.

Instead, they will turn their focus inward when they are ready to make changes.

By offering continuing education to employees, you equip them to become even more valuable to your organization and encourage them to stay and share their new skills with your company.

Photo credits: Images courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net and Got Credit

 

About the Author: Joyce Morse is an author who writes on a variety of topics, including business and education.

Make It Your Business to Know Google Chrome Extensions

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software-development-diagram-100101781You might be surprised to find out how some of the newest Google Chrome extensions can help your business run more efficiently or improve productivity to increase the bottom line.

You must select the ones that have the best benefits for your company and know how to use them properly.

With that in mind, check out:

Smartsheet

This app allows you to manage projects and work with team members.

It looks similar to a spreadsheet, which makes it easier for anyone to learn. You can set deadlines and even choose the priority level of each project. You can even create assignments within assignments.

One of the big benefits with this extension is that it allows you to attach documents, videos and other files so that everyone can have access.

You can also check your calendar and timeline to see how each project fits into your overall schedule and what is coming due when.

Business Hangouts

For those familiar with Hangouts will appreciate this app.

It includes special features just for businesses, such as the ability to manage who is attending your meetings and send out invites and reminders.

Another benefit that will be important to many businesses is the fact that you can include people who are not part of Google Plus. When you install it on Chrome, it only takes a click to set up a meeting.

Evernote

Listed as one of the top extensions in the article, 7 Killer Google Chrome Extensions for Your Business, Evernote is well-known but not everyone is taking advantage of its features.

For those who are always on the go and accessing information on multiple devices, Evernote lets you keep all of your notes in one place where you can retrieve them from anywhere.

It has been compared to the paper Post-It notes, but it actually does a lot more. You can even search for your notes and place everything together for fast access.

Wave Accounting

You can manage your own finances with this app.

It runs right in your browser and is ideal for small businesses. You have the option of entering expenses manually or allowing the process to work automatically. It also allows you to create invoices for your customers and even send them straight from your computer. You can even accept credit cards for payment.

Like many other complex and expensive software programs, Wave Accounting allows you to create reports and balance sheets so you can manage the financial aspect of your business.

Each of these apps works with Google Chrome and can provide a significant benefit for your business.

By using one or more of them, you can organize your time, documents and work flow so that you can keep your company on track. By automating as many processes as you can and using quick and easy apps to manage certain aspects of your organization, you can spend more time on other tasks.

These apps also allow you to function like any other business no matter how small your company is.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Joyce Morse is an author who writes on a variety of topics, including business and technology.

Is Starting a Small Business a Health Insurance Headache?

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multi-ethnic-team-during-meeting-10066408If you’ve been thinking about turning your hobby into a small business or even buying an existing business, you may be hesitant after you start looking into the health insurance aspects of hiring employees.

Thanks to Obamacare, more small businesses are now required to provide health insurance plans.

That’s all well and good for owners who have the resources necessary to fund such plans, but it bodes ominous for startups that are bootstrapping their business.

In fact, the sole requirement for a health plan can deter new businesses from starting up in the first place.

Don’t worry.

Starting a small business doesn’t have to be a health insurance headache.

There are ways around the Obamacare mandate, just as there are ways to comply with the law in ways that won’t negatively impact your business finances.

Here are some effective ways to get your small business up and running – and keep it running – while dealing with health insurance requirements:

How to Get Around the Requirement

If you have zero funds available for a health insurance plan, yet still need employees to operate the day-to-day tasks of your business, hire independent contractors. Independent contractors are in business for themselves.

As such, they are responsible for their own taxes and health insurance.

They work for you on what’s called a “work for hire” basis. You assign them tasks based on their expertise and specialties, and they invoice you for work that is satisfactorily completed.

Independent contractors don’t technically work for you, and are not your employees. Thus, you are not liable to provide health insurance for them.

The management of your independent contractors needs to be systemized so that in itself doesn’t become an organizational headache.

If this is an avenue you’re interested in pursuing, consider hiring a project manager and investing in some kind of online collaborative software to ensure projects get done on time and under budget.

Keep in mind that if you want or expect your business to grow, eventually you’ll need to move to a traditional employee model.

At that time, you will need to implement a health insurance plan for them, and you’ll need to save in order to manage that scenario.

How to Work With the Requirement

The fact is, there are so many complicated requirements within the Obamacare mandate that it can be compared to the complexity of the overall tax law in general.

As the following article shows, a small business owner, will be hard pressed to research and understand the basic key health insurance terms, let alone come up with a health plan by themselves that satisfies the vast legal requirements.

Your best course of action is to outsource your health insurance plan management to a professional company that specializes in working with small businesses like yours.

Otherwise, the vast amount of your time and the time of your admin team will be spent trying to navigate the minefield of employee health insurance.

Whatever you spend on the health plan management company is tax deductible and the return on investment will prove substantial, even in the short term.

As a small business owner, how are you dealing with the new health insurance requirements?

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Kate Supino writes extensively about best business practices.

The Business of Preventing Fraud

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fraud-calculator-indicates-rip-off-and-calculate-100303071While both large and small businesses can fall victim to fraud, its small businesses that are at the highest risk, with a frequency around 31 percent, according to Association of Certified Financial Examiner’s (ACFE) 2012 Report to the Nations.

The report states that the most common types of fraud amongst small businesses are billing fraud, corruption, check tampering, skimming and expense reimbursement fraud.

Sadly enough, close to half of the fraudulent individuals had been with the company between one and five years.

Breakdown of fraud in the workplace: The ACFE found that of those that are guilty of fraud, 42 percent are employees, 38 percent are managers and 18 percent are business owners or executives.

Fraud Can Occur Just About Anywhere

Surprisingly, even physicians can be affected by fraudulent acts.

The article “Physicians and Stolen Tax Returns: Avoiding medical malpractice fraud” states that physicians in Texas, in addition to other states, are victims of bogus filers that are trying to scheme millions of dollars from the federal government.

While typically the physicians aren’t responsible for these acts, being a victim of fraud takes a tremendous toll on one’s life by adding an immense amount of stress that could have been avoided.

How to Stay a Step Ahead of Fraud

For individuals, such as the physicians mentioned above, they can protect themselves by contacting the Identity Protection Specialization Unit and filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, the US Department of Justice and the Social Security Administration.

Businesses can protect themselves by:

  • Use highly-secured computers – For all banking and financial duties, you should have a computer strictly for those needs and those needs only. No surfing the web, no sending emails and no playing games. Install antivirus software on the computer to prevent your information from being hacked.
  • Keep tabs on your money and personal information – Never wire money unless you know for sure that the recipient can be trusted. Also, do not give out your personal business information to those that you do not know. Check all your bank statements on a regular basis to make sure there is nothing sketchy going on with your accounts.
  • Always perform background checks on employees – Ensure that their past is clear by performing background checks on all potential employees.
  • Insist employees take time off – A main characteristic of a fraudulent employee is someone who insists on never taking any time off of work. The reason being is that they do not want anyone else doing their job for them and perhaps catching them in their fraudulent activities. Have employees work in teams and check each other’s work regularly.
  • Encourage an honest environment – By encouraging honesty throughout your company, keeping tabs on employees and even setting up an anonymous “fraud tip” phone line, you lesson your business’s chances of falling victim to fraud.

While fraud cannot always be prevented, it does tend to happen more often in businesses that are not actively trying to avoid it.

Always have your guard up, follow your accounts closely and if you suspect something suspicious, confront that employee immediately.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Sarah Brooks is a freelance writer living in Charlotte, NC. She writes on a variety of topics including small business, social media and personal finance.