It's the People

One element shared by every great business is the people. From the process of finding the right candidates to making sure they’re incentivized to stay, finding, and keeping, good people is at the core of success.

Contract and Part-Time Employees Are Not the Same

Every small business owner needs an extra hand now and then. Often, the answer is a contractor; someone who can meet your needs without the overhead involved in hiring. A contractor is a great solution, but there’s one stumbling block that can often cause problems: misclassification.

Firing the Difficult Employee

All employees are essential, but they’re even more critical at smaller companies. But, at some point, you may have to cut the cord with a problem employee. The question is, how do you do it right?

Letting Go to Grow

It seems like common sense, but all too often, organizational objectives suffer due to problems with delegation. The bottom line: If you want to grow you have to let go and have more people do some of your work.

Being a Good Corporate Citizen: The Business Benefits of Volunteering

Volunteering your time makes you feel good. But the benefits for your business may even surpass those personal “warm and fuzzies.”

Extending a Helping Hand

If you’re seeking to develop a volunteering program for your company, or just offer access to opportunities to your employees, volunteer centers exist that can help you connect to thousands of organizations and people in need of your help.

Creating a Retirement Strategy

It makes sense to take a timeout and work on preparing for the Golden Years—both for yourself and your employees. Based on your age and tolerance for risk, there are several vehicles that can work for you and your company, regardless of its size.

Outsourcing: Lightening the Load

Growing your business often requires more time and concentration than you can muster. One way to bridge the gap is through outsourcing. It gives you the opportunity to save on labor costs, overhead and benefits, all while tapping expertise you might otherwise not have.

Outsourcing Resources

Outsourcing may work for your business, but you have to do your homework. When you clearly understand the overall benefits, how you can make it work for your specific needs and what the possible downsides are, you put yourself in the best position to find the right outsourced resource.

Key Business Insurance Coverages

Few things are as difficult to deal with as finding the right insurance policy for your business. The process is expensive and time-consuming, and even those with claim-free policies are finding renewal rates climbing. The following checklists outline key business insurance and supplemental coverages that may apply to your organization. They can help you understand your needs before you sit down with your agent.

Cover Yourself with Employee Background Checks

Regardless of what any resume might tell you, you never know who’s coming through your door, and it only takes one employee to affect your entire operation. Here’s how to protect your company with a solid background check.

Background Checking Resources

If you’re searching for resources that can help you in the background check process, here’s a list of free and low-cost services, as well as clearinghouse sites, that can get you off to good start.

How Entrepreneurial Execution Determines Success

Entrepreneurial execution is about bringing together the right team and aligning all aspects of the company toward achieving a common goal and doing it with maximum efficiency. If your product, service or concept is a good one, success or failure is determined by execution.

Hiring Right: Skills Are Just Half the Equation

It pays to hire right the first time. The direct cost of a bad hire can be as much as one-and-a-half years of the position’s salary. It can also damage customer relations and disrupt the culture, productivity and, ultimately, profitability of your company.

The Benefits of Sales Reps

When you need help selling and you don’t have the income for a full-time hire, a sales representative or rep firm—someone with the right contacts who earns money only if you do—may be the right answer.

Health Savings Accounts: Affordable Health Care

HSAs are an excellent alternative for small-business owners, their employees and their families because they provide a more affordable alternative, but still allow owners to get, and provide, the health care coverage they want.

Is Your Office in Compliance?

The U.S. Department of Labor has determined that employers of all sizes must have certain notices posted clearly in the workplace. Here’s what you need to know about federally mandated notices about the Federal Minimum Wage/Fair Labor Standards Act, overtime, Federal Withholding and more.

HSAs, HRAs: Saving for Health Benefits

The world of healthcare for small business continues to be an imperfect one. In fact, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 47% of businesses with fewer than 10 employees offer healthcare benefits. While there is still no healthcare silver bullet, shifts in legislation have made a couple more opportunities available for small business.

What Makes a Leader?

What does it take to be a good business leader? Today’s leaders demonstrate a wide variety of specific characteristics and traits. Do you see yourself in this inventory?

Ethics: Setting the Standard for Your Business

Having a code of ethics or written policy in place sends a message to your employees, vendors and customers. It clarifies your expectations for trust, meeting obligations and even serving the community around you, which can define the foundation of your business.

Creating “Intrapreneurs”

Giving your employees more responsibility for developing and “owning” their parts of the business can help make them intrapreneurs; extensions of yourself. And that sense of ownership that can drive your productivity and profitability to new heights.

Easing the Pain of Termination

It’s never easy letting someone go, and it’s not unusual to drag your feet—the process is a tough one. But if you do it right, you can save yourself both legal and morale problems in the long run.

Building an Ethics Policy

Research has shown that businesses with ethics policies in place outperform those that don’t. If you’re looking to create a policy—and it doesn’t have to be voluminous—here’s a set of tools that can help direct you.

Record Retention: What to Save, How Long to Save It

Retaining certain records does more than help you out at tax time. It can support you if you’re audited by the IRS, help protect you against fraud and in resolving disputes and assist you when employees, vendors or clients seek copies of certain records they may have lost.