Archive for the ‘Employees’ Category

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If you want your business to become ever more successful and you want a team around you that is loyal and trustworthy, one of the best investments you can make is to further educate for your employees.

This could include helping with college bills, but it also encompasses a wide range of education opportunities including attending conferences, listening in on webinars, reading books and blogs, and more.

To educate employees is like reinvesting in a stock that offers you a great dividend and a long term upside. Yes, there is a chance that the stock will go south, and there is a chance an employee that you invest education dollars in will move on. But the potential reward is a loyal workforce that is committed to improving themselves and your business.

Here’s the thing. The business world is changing. These changes will have a bigger and bigger impact on your business. You can keep yourself and your employees up to date, or you can just hope that you will still be able to compete.

Kathi Elster, co-author of Working for You Isn’t Working for Me, offers this advice:

“Invest in educating your people – webinars, classes, books, guest speakers – this is the time to learn what is NEW and how that will impact your industry and your company.”

If you have employees, the great news is that you do not have to stay on top of changes all by yourself. By offering up education, you can recruit your workforce to help your business grow and continue to succeed, even in an ever-changing environment. Not investing in education will leave you far behind. If your sales rep still uses a Rolodex, it is time to upgrade. And it is far better and cheaper to upgrade through education than through firing and hiring.

Not only will a better educated workforce be able to do a better job, your business will also benefit from more engaged employees and a greater level of employee loyalty. Here is what Alan Vengel, author of 20 Minutes to a Top Performer, has to say about engaging employees to build loyalty.

“Take care of your people. These are the employees who have survived with you and helped your business stay afloat in the last 18 months. Most business owners and managers have been so focused on keeping the business going, and keeping revenue flowing, that they have forgotten to take the basic steps necessary to keep loyal employees motivated and engaged. Right now would be a great time for leaders and small business owners to begin to reengage their workforce with conversations about professional needs to improve engagement in the work and future personal development. The same people who helped sustain your business will be the people who grow your business as the economy improves. Businesses that focus on their people will be best for prepared for success in the future.”

The personal development of your employees is more important than you might think. You should seek to create a company full of specialists whose skills complement one another. By creating a culture of improvement, you will increase engagement and loyalty in current workers and be able to attract the best new hires.

Do you do anything now to encourage or help employees get further education? Training and personal development is a big key to success. You can start rather cheaply, even connecting employees with some free web resources. Pass on books that will be helpful to employees as they do their jobs. Of course, a commitment to company wide improvement means that you also need to be committed to your own self improvement and education.

What are you going to do about this?

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp. I am an education-junkie, and can’t begin to tell you how much my thirst for learning has helped me. You can connect with me on Facebook or Twitter.

photo credit: debaird™

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This post is part of a series on Success. See more posts from this series. Get a Free Report on Success for Small Business.

Managing employees is one of the most difficult things for many small business owners. As owner, you have a lot of influence over their lives. One of the things that is heart-wrenching for most is to have to fire a good employee simply because there is not enough work. But it is also important to keep your business solvent so that you and everyone else keeps an income.

The trick is to not grow too fast when times are good, and to maximize your staff so they stay busy, even during the growing pains of your business.

In our free report, The Number One Thing You Can Do To Make Your Small Business More Successful in 2010, Randy Morris of Middlebury Inn offers this advice:

“Flexible staffing is a must. If you can cross-train your staff to perform multiple duties, you can alleviate costly overtime and retain employees. While many companies are reducing hours or laying off employees due to reduced workload, we are cross-training employees which helps to create a full work week for some while giving others the ability to take time away from work for illness related incidents while avoiding overtime to those who are filling in. The other reason we have found cross-training to work well is that business is booking at the last minute and it is critical to pull help from multiple sources and make scheduling adjustments on the fly. Only flexibility of staff can accomplish this.”

This is one of the strengths of a small business, where every employee knows each other and the owner can communicate the stakes. Cross-training not only helps you fill in holes, but it also makes employee (rightly) feel more essential. For the most part, people are okay with variety at work, and even welcome it.

Of course, this is easier for some businesses than for others. It might not work very well in a hospital, for instance. But for most small businesses with a small staff, cross-training can be the answer for handling growth wisely. The alternative is to hire help when you are in a pinch and flush with cash, only to have to let them go when the growth stops.

By investing your time into your current employees and finding ways to keep them busy, and thus keep them essential, you can save money and save jobs. And that is an idea everyone can get behind.

If you do it right, you will also build a stronger culture at your company, one where everyone is happy to roll up their sleeves and get the job done. No longer will one employee have to stay late because she is the only one who is trained on a certain task. Employees can better help each other, fill in for one another, and keep your business going strong when they have a broader base of skills to work from.

So, instead of hiring a part time employee, see if you can pull from your current resources. If you can, you will be taking steps toward a more sound company, even when times get tough.

What are some ways you can cross-train your current staff?

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp. I am a big fan of Johnny Cash. So is my wife, which is pretty cool since she didn’t listen to any Cash before we were married. Some things just work out like that. I also have a passion for helping small businesses succeed. I do it here by providing my best advice and over at BroadRiverCreative.com where I build websites specifically designed to work for small businesses. The best place to interact with me is on Twitter, or in the comments section below.

There is a lot of talk these days about hiring freelancers instead of employees. With the web at our fingertips, it is easy to find highly specialized individuals to do certain tasks, and to pay them just for those tasks. Many experts recommend doing this, and I have as well.

James Little, of the Fusion PR Group, is a fan. He says that “small business owners can be more successful and save money by working with freelancers and consultants.”

Diana Ennen, of Virtual Word Publishing, has similar advice, but more specifically about virtual assistants. She says, “The #1 thing you can do in 2010 is to hire a virtual assistant and not do all the work yourself. This allows you to not only focus on what you do best, but also allows you to get out there more in front of your clients. Virtual assistants can handle all your social media and social marketing, publicity, administrative tasks, etc. Focus on the areas that make you the most money, and let someone else handle everything else. Plus, they can help your business be consistent with blogging, tweeting, being on Facebook, etc.”

It seems the best argument for a small business to hire freelancers is that it will free up the owner to focus on what he or she is best at. There are other benefits, of course. For one, getting a highly qualified person to do a job is a plus. To hire that person full time is out of reach for most small businesses. The alternative has always been to hire people who do good enough. In today’s business world, good enough isn’t cutting it. Employees need to specialize, and small businesses need to hire specialists.

Hiring someone on contract, as a freelancer, is usually more cost effective than bringing on an employee. For one thing, there is no workers compensation or additional taxes to worry about. Sure, the freelancer comes at a higher “price-per-hour”, but you only need to use them for the hours it takes to get the job done. A freelancer can usually do the job faster and better then a general employee.

But there are things freelancers can’t do. You can’t have them help out on the production line for the day. They can’t be a fill-in. Getting freelancers to understand and embrace company culture is harder (but not impossible, especially if you hire the right freelancer). Since most freelancers work long distance, they don’t become part of your office environment. The biggest downfall here is that you don’t have direct control over the freelancer. They usually work from their perspective. This isn’t always a bad thing, but your goals as a small business owner may include building a great culture, helping employees to improve themselves, and being able to see everyone face to face. If so, freelancers are probably not the route that you want to take.

Overall, I would say that freelance employees are great when you have focused tasks that you need to complete. This could be marketing, web design (ah hem, I can help with those two), accounting, law, personal assistants, data entry, typists, public relations, or any number of things. If, however, you want to groom someone into a management role, you need to hire and train.

So look at the things you need to do for your business that aren’t core to your culture and outsource those things. Keep important tasks under closer control by hiring employees.

Here is a final example. If you use sales reps, you can go in house or outsource. If you don’t care how your product gets sold, just that it does, you can hire a freelance salesperson. If you want to provide scripts, track progress daily, and train your reps a certain way, you need to hire in house sales reps.

Freelancers can do a great job. In many cases, better than you or any of your employees. Use them in these instances. But make sure you are developing a company at the same time. You need employees for some things, people who are going to be accountable to you and who are going to be flexible to grow with your business.

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Hi, I’m Bradford Shimp. I head things up here at All Business Answers. If you want to write for this blog, please send me an email. If you have a question that you want answered, click here. If you just want to be my friend, send me an @reply on Twitter or join me on Facebook.

I build Wordpress websites and themes for small businesses. Check out my business at BroadRiverCreative.com.

What do you want out of your employees? Chances are, you are not just interested in them giving you their time, on a set schedule, every week. But yet, that is how most of us structure our businesses. We pay for time. What we should be paying for is results.

But results are often a lot harder to measure than time. It takes some extra effort to measure results. Yet, that extra effort can pay off in some pretty big ways.

Outsourced Effectiveness

First, I want to riff on outsourcing. Why does outsourcing work? Often, you need to pay someone more money to do a job when you outsource than you would ever pay an hourly employee. Yet, outsourcing can be cost effective and is especially results effective. That’s because when you outsource a job, say typing up reports, you are paying someone directly for results. Sure, sometimes you are still being charged by the hour, but you hire the person who can get the most quality work done per hour.

When you outsource a project, you pay to get that project done. You look for things like quality, speed, and expertise. You don’t pay one dime for downtime, training, or any of the other extras that come with a payroll employee.

Its not that payroll employees are a bad thing. Its just that many small businesses are not using them as effectively as they could.

Creative Freedom

When a worker can focus on results and not time, they are able to get creative. I have written in the past on the best times of day for creativity. It is different for each person. Why not let your employees get the job done on their own creative schedule?

Creativity doesn’t exist in an 8-5 box. If you can start to think about results, and not just hours, you can turn your business into something exciting and very effective.

Creativity starts from the top. Ask yourself why you measure and pay based on time. Is it because you need someone to answer the phone from 8-5? Why not hire a receptionist company to answer your calls, not just from 9-5, but 24 hours a day. This could free you up from “manning the phones.” Think of what you could get done if you had 4 hours straight with no phone call interruptions. If you get creative, you can start to make things like that happen.

Get More Done in Less Time

What if you started paying employees for what they got done? For instance, you might have a series of tasks to do in a day. You could tell the employee that when he is done with the tasks, he is done for the day. You would pay the same whether it took a full day or whether it took half a day. That employee would have an incentive to work harder and faster.

For this to work, you would need to have a good understanding of the worth of the work. You would also benefit by segmenting tasks by employee. For instance, you never want to have to pay a person just to be there. But small businesses do this all of the time. Whether it is to answer the phone, to wait for the next task to start, or to keep the store open, there are a lot of people getting paid to wait. This is of course not cost effective.

If you own a retail store, consider this. Rather than pay for a traditional clerk, hire a person as a salesperson. She could get paid by number of sales made. Now she is not just standing behind the cash register. She has incentive to engage customers when they come in. And if customers aren’t coming in, maybe she can go out and get them. Her livelihood is tied to making sales, just like yours. Before you say this can’t work, look at car dealers. Many car salespeople are paid just this way. They get paid when they make sales.

What if you already have plenty of traffic to your store? You can still pay for performance. Say you have a grocery store. Pay your cashiers by how many items they check through in a day. I bet lines would move a little faster, and cashiers without a line would actively direct customers to their register.

Make Employees Super Happy

Paying for results instead of time is not just about cost effectiveness. Done right, you and your employees can both end up making more money. In fact, results based pay is great for good workers. It is a way to find the best employees and reward them for their skill and effort.

When an employee knows he can work harder or smarter and end up getting paid more for better results, he has the opportunity for greater fulfillment in his job. People like to accomplish things. You are better off having your company staffed by employees who go after results than by employees who get trapped in mundane days of clock watching.

Yes, you may end up asking an employee to do more. Some may resist. But the kind of go-getter people you need in your small business will appreciate the rewards, both monetary and emotional, that come with accomplishments.

photo credit: evelynishere

Have a Small Business Question? Ask me and I will answer it here – email me with your question now.

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Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com

Good decision making is key to running a business. There are two main aspects to being a good decision maker. One is that you make good decisions. The other is that you aren’t afraid to go ahead and make a decision in the first place. But how do you tell if you are a good decision maker or a bad one?

There are two measurements that I want to talk about. First, there is the questions of whether your decisions stick. Second, there is the question of whether you consistently have to figure things out in the moment.

Do Your Decisions Stick?

You can measure whether or not you make good decisions by figuring out if the decisions you make stand the test of time. Sure, not all decisions, even good ones, will be relevant in the future. And you should be flexible enough to change your mind. However, if you find that you have a pattern of going back on decisions, you have a problem.

If your decisions are constantly changing, it is because you have not been putting in the time and thought you need to make the right decision. If you are a pizza shop and you decide to place an automatic gratuity on the bill for house deliveries, but then change your mind because of customer complaints, it turns out you made a bad decision. Again, this type of thing would have to happen over and over again for you to determine that you are a bad decision maker.

The way to cure bad decisions is to do the work up front. Learn how to research the possible effects of a decision. If you are going to make a decision that effects customers, consider asking a panel of customers about it first. If you want to buy a piece of equipment for your business, work out a plan that looks at cost and return on investment. To make good decisions, you need to be realistic. To make bad decisions, you just need to fly be the seat of your pants.

One other reason you may find yourself having to constantly amend your decisions is because you are making them for the wrong reasons. Your decisions should be based on your goals and vision. If you are making decisions out of pressures from customers or employees or vendors, you are not making them for the right reason. Run every single decision past your company vision and goals.

Are You Always Figuring Things Out in the Moment?

The other side of the coin is the person who never really makes decisions. If this is you, you probably find yourself always “putting out fires” and figuring things out at the moment of need. You may make decisions, but you don’t usually write them down and incorporate them into procedure. Your business is run by you, and your people look to you for all things, from mundane to monumental.

Unless you need to feel important, you are in big trouble. When you put off making decisions and instead just providing answers when they are needed, you are also putting off building a business. If all of the big stuff and most of the small stuff needs to go through you, what happens when you are not here?

It is pretty frustrating to employees when there is not a clear procedure they can follow to solve problems. Sure, some things will come up that you could never plan for. But most things can be figured out ahead of time and dealt with by competent employees. By maintaining control and not giving them the tools to make the call, you are telling your employees that they are less than competent.

The problem is that you just don’t make decisions. If you do, you don’t make them long term by writing them down and turning them into company policy and procedure. You may be the ace in the hole when dealing with issues on the fly, but your company can not be sustained on that. Instead of putting decisions off to the last minute, you need to empower your employees by thinking ahead a little.

Thinking ahead is the key to good decision making. With that skill, and by knowing who to ask for advice on a decision, you can go from bad decision maker to good. You owe it to yourself and the future of your business to work hard to make good decisions.

If you are generally a good decision maker, but have made a really bad decision, thats okay. Yes, you can loose money or a good customer or even worse, a good employee, from a bad decision. But you are going to make some. The key is to make sure your good decisions far outweigh your bad by committing to think about your decision ahead of time so you can stick with it and so it can become easy to follow procedure for your employees.

Have a Small Business Question? Ask me and I will answer it here – email me with your question now.

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Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com