February 23, 2012

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Save Money by Improving Your Employee Relations

It pays in big ways to have excellent employee relations. By keeping your staff happy, they’ll be more likely to continue working for your company. This saves you a bundle of money because you won’t constantly be spending money on new hires. Consider these strategies for improving your employee relations.

Create a Committee

So, nobody likes to be on a committee, especially at work. However, this committee is special because its members will develop ways to make the workplace more enjoyable. Recommendations might include giving employees one or two days off during a slow period for your company, offering on-site childcare, and giving wellness incentives. Some of these measures can save employers money in the long run in the way of lower healthcare costs and fewer sick days.

Offer Flexibility

If you don’t feel like you can give your workers additional time off, be creative in developing other ways to reward them. For example, find out if some jobs could be performed at different hours. Some parents might welcome the chance to work earlier hours so they can end their work day at the same time the kids get out of school. Additionally, many employers are making 30 hour work weeks available for certain positions. (Ideally, the employee continues to receive benefits, including health insurance.) There are cost savings because the employees take home three-fourths of the pay they received when they worked 40 hours per week. It’s a fair trade for many employees who enjoy having additional time off.

Keeping your employees happy may cost you up front, but many of these measures save you time and money in the long run.

Filed Under: Business Costs, Employee Relationships Tagged With: , ,

Benefits are Changing; Top Workplaces Offer More Than Vacation Packages

What is considered a ‘good employer’ has changed. It used to be, all a boss had to do was offer a decent wage, paid lunch hour and some health insurance, and people felt they got benefits. However, looking at the list of the top 100 businesses to work for makes that seem minimal.
Here are some things the top companies are offering their workers:
  • Flexible work schedules – Some people cannot fit into the ‘9-5’ model that America’s gone by for so long. It’s important to let employees have a sense of control over their own lives and making a schedule that they like makes fewer days missed at work.
  • Child-friendly Workplaces – It’s okay to take several weeks off when a child is born, but now mothers are finding it’s okay to bring baby to the office while they work. Software firm SAS offers employees on-site health care, child care, and in summer they even provide summer camps. Many places are also becoming pet friendly.
  • Atmosphere of fun and creativity – At Facebook employees get around from meeting to meeting on scooters placed around the floor, and ping pong and foosball tables are scattered here and there, as well.  At Qualcomm employees enjoy baseball games, surfing lessons, kayaking tours and lots of other fun things.
  • Rewards great service – When people feel appreciated they make a point of doing a good job. The Methodist Hospital system gives quarterly bonuses of $300 to non-management staff. Annabelle’s Restaurant gives employees parties with great prizes like airfare and massages for high-revenue days.
  • Understanding employee’s lives – acknowledging that real people are working and not robots means that at times some amendments to scheduling may have to be made. Johnson Financial Group gives employees leave of absences with full pay.
  • Good incentive programs – every company on the list has some sort of great benefits for meeting incentives.
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Bank of America Buys up Domain Names to Keep Offline

Shareholders carry a lot of clout in any company, especially when it comes to getting approval. Company executives will do most anything to appeal to shareholders, sometimes creating highly complicated accounting strategies to make it seem like more of a profit is being made.
Some will do everything they can to keep the shareholders from seeing bad news about the company. Brian Moynihan is the most hated BOA exec and he’s drawing a lot of fire from the populations.
BOA executives are scrambling to buy up domain names that put BOA in a bad light. It’s almost comical, as they snap up such domains as brianmoynihansucks.com and brianmoynihanblows.com and even names like brianmoynihanisugly.com. Any domain name that can make a derogatory remark about BOA or its executives is being figured out and purchased.
Domain Name Wire Gets Jackpot

Domain Name Wire, an Internet company who often buys domain names for big corporations just bought hundreds of domain names in hopes of keeping them offline. It’s a last-ditch effort to keep clean the name of the company that was just convicted of putting people out of their homes illegally during a recession.
Also, one BOA customer alleged that a bank employee broke into her home (after an illegal foreclosure) and stole the ashes of her dead husband (and other items) during the illegal foreclosure process. BOA isn’t just disliked, it’s becoming hated.
BOA bought all the domains they could think of that have anything to do with the bank, Brian Moynihan or Charles Noski and other members of the board.
As if that isn’t enough of a problem for the BOA, there is now a rumor that the bank will be the subject of another release by WikiLeaks, the Internet‘s national tattler.  If anything is known about WikiLeaks it’s that they’re thorough when they rake someone over the coals, so it doesn’t sound good for BOA.
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Recruiters Need Marketing Skills to get Good Help

Recruiters today have to fill openings and put out notices for the help wanted. They’ll get a glut of applications, with possibly all of them being wrong for the job, or not skilled as wanted. They then must pick through a stack of applications looking for someone they can fit into the hole.
A pharmacy might need technicians, and those are a dime a dozen in the US. However, not all pharmacy technicians will qualify for the spot if the recruiter is looking for someone with more skills than just pharmacology. A qualified applicant might be one who likes working in the health care field and has experience working with the public.
Fish Out the Necessary Information, Then Hire Accordingly
More data is needed to find out the hidden qualities a person has that aren’t listed on their resume. They may enjoy working their job, but hate working with the public, for example. A good potential applicant would want to demonstrate their previous success working with the public by listing those jobs and skills, even if they don’t relate to the position being offered.
A recruiter hiring for the pharmacy position can market the job by using adjectives that describe the whole attitude of the person needed; good communication skills, good organization, good attention to detail and good interpersonal skills, etc.  Then, there’s the fact that most pharmacy customers are ill or in pain, so having compassion for the sick and being able to comfort them is also something a recruiter might require.
How does a recruiter find good quality candidates? Interview top performers in the position. Find out what they like or dislike about their jobs, what motivates them and what they like best about doing their work. Find a common ground between them. What do they find particularly satisfying? Or, dissatisfying? With more information a recruiter can find who is best for the position, and not just choose someone to fill a spot.
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Employee Morale too Low in the UK

Workplace dissatisfaction is running high in the world, with employees being overworked due to shortages in revenue, stagnating the hiring process and creating a workload too heavy for the current employees. The workers who are left have all the work piled upon them, making them tired and discouraged as other jobs are given to them on top of what they‘ve always done, and they aren‘t being fully compensated for it.
King’s College in London recently took a survey of over 500 HR managers and found that over 46% of employees experienced or witnessed stress-related problems on the job and 42% expect the situation to worsen in 2011. The survey shows there’s been a direct link between higher levels of stress and stress-related illness and absence in the workplace.
Over half of the survey respondents indicated working overtime due to staff shortages and although they’re doing more work, they aren’t getting raises or bonuses like they should. This causes stress for the managers as well as the employees, and the survey also shows that poor relations with managers are responsible for the higher number of grievances being reported. This also results in growing levels of employee absence.
Everybody needs their jobs, but overworked people don’t produce as much and unhappy people add to workplace unrest, which raises turnover levels. The thing is, not all companies can afford to replace and train people, so when some quit they aren’t replaced, adding to the already heavy workload on those that are left.
The survey revealed that workers anticipate seeing a further deterioration in employee relations and the number of employee grievances will climb even higher. Morale is just too low.
Employers and HR managers that try to involve their workers in workplace events and offer a light at the end of the tunnel or at least open communication have workers with less stress-related absence and less open unrest. Employers must remember that without these workers their business could not run at the current pace, so making a more comfortable place to work can only behoove them.
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Cautious Hiring to Begin in 2011

Hiring is predicted to be up in 2011. During the last several years there have been more hiring freezes and layoffs due to the slow economy, and it looks like that may be lifting for some cities. Slowly, people are starting to get jobs and it’s beginning to look a little better – but we aren’t out of the recession woods just yet. To err on the side of caution can’t hurt.
CareerBuilder.com did a survey of 1350 businesses with 500 employees or less, and found that over half of small businesses are expecting to hire permanent, full time staff in 2011 to keep up with production and demand, even if they are being cautious about it. Nobody trusts it when the job market looks up a little, but acting carefully can make it possible to navigate toward success.
Hiring in 2011 Will Improve, but Cautiously

Just 14% of those small businesses surveyed said they wouldn’t be able to keep up with current demand, so hiring more temporary and contract workers to help them get caught up is all they plan to do. However, 31% of those small businesses said they would take those temporary new hires and convert them into contracted or full time employees. That is good news.
Many small businesses expressed frustration at not being able to get the credit they need to support their businesses during 2010, and a quarter of those said they were unable to add more employees because of it.
Another 66% of businesses that were able to get credit did hire on new permanent employees, and survey responders indicated dissatisfaction with the associated costs. A full 50% cited higher costs in healthcare benefits, 27% cited marketing expenditures and brand-building, 26% indicated a lack of qualified applicants and 19% cited the relative challenges of hiring new people.
Six percent of the small businesses will actually downsize this year, reducing full time jobs by 6% and part time jobs by 3%. Between 64% and 66% will make no changes at all.
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Human Resources: Types of Business Loans

It is not free to start a business. Most businesses require that you have some type of financial backing to be able to create the business of your dreams. Financing is so important to the business world that there are half a dozen different loan options out there for a business owner. The type of loan that you choose will depend on what you plan to use the money on.

Here is a look at the different types of business loans and financing that are available to business owners.

Term Loans. These are the common loans that any business can apply form. Term loans require that the bank give the business owner a set amount of money and the business owner will pay it back over a period of time. Term loans are generally used to develop some type of capital for the business.

Short Term Loans. Short term loans are similar to term loans but instead of being paid back over a period of years. These require that they be paid back over a short period of time. Short term loans are usually used for seasonal business needs or an emergency repair job.

Equipment Financing. These are the easiest types of loans to get for businesses. An equipment loan is where a bank or financial institute gives business owners money to get equipment for their business. However, the equipment or goods are collateral and can be collected if the loan is defaulted on. This collateral option is why this financing option is so easy.

Lines of Credit. Lines of credit allow businesses to have a set amount of money that businesses can borrow from. The money is only used when the business uses it and it does not have to be repaid back until it is used. This flexible option is great for businesses that only need to use the money temporarily. However, if you default on these types of loans interest rates are really high.

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