Does Flextime Benefit You More Than Your Employees? |  |
- Does Flextime Benefit You More Than Your Employees?
- Navigating the Recruiting Maze
- New Bulk Listing Management Tool From Google Places
- All Eyes Are on Facebook With Multibillion-Dollar IPO
| Does Flextime Benefit You More Than Your Employees? Posted: 16 May 2012 11:30 AM PDT Are you resisting offering employees at your small business flexible working hours because you think it'll give them an excuse to slack off? Well, some new research should convince you otherwise. It seems flextime may actually be less flexible than a regular schedule.
The 2012 National Study of Employers, released by the Families and Work Institute (FWI) and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), found that U.S. employers are offering employees more options for managing when and where they work. The tradeoff for the employees, however, is that employers offering more flexibility are also requiring them to essentially work more. Compared to 2005, the study found significantly more employers are allowing at least some employees to:
But although employers were offering more flexibility in some ways, they were offering less flexibility in others. The study found significant decreases in the number of employers allowing at least some of their employees to:
In other words, fewer companies are letting employees take extended time off. So what are the costs and benefits of flextime? You're probably getting more work out of your employees in the short term; a 2010 Brigham Young University study of IBM employees found that those with flextime worked an average of 19 hours more per week than those on traditional schedules. But are you risking burning them out in the long term? Don't get me wrong—I'm a huge proponent of flextime and, as the study noted, offering some form of flexible hours is pretty much essential to attract employees these days. But as entrepreneurs, we have "flextime" too—and it doesn't take a study to convince any smartphone-toting business owner that flextime doesn't necessary lead to work-life balance. Flextime is a great option for employees, but make sure you give them some real time off, too.
From Small Business Trends |
| Navigating the Recruiting Maze Posted: 16 May 2012 08:30 AM PDT For a lot of hiring managers and small business leaders, hiring remains the most crucial pain point. If you magically get the right people, stuff just gets executed. However, we never make the perfect hiring decisions all the time. Sometimes we are in a hurry to fill the role, and the options available seem more attractive than the list of skills and qualities we carefully created.
Of course, every manager has a different outlook – some of us "hire fast, learn fast and fail fast," whereas some of us passively look at many resumes and only make an addition to the team when it feels right. I’ve made my fair share of errors and would like to share an example that might help when you are at the next crossroads and in a hurry. I was looking for an online marketing person and started furiously going through LinkedIn for profiles that had keywords of certain skills that were required. After I found a few profiles, I cold wrote to a particular prospect and heard back from her. She shared her detailed resume with me and it looked like a dream. After I explained the role to her, she seemed positive that it was her domain and she joined the next day. Over the next few weeks, she worked very hard and made a difference to our efforts. Her skills were matching with many peripheral tasks, except for the core role she was hired for. And the mistake was entirely mine. I made a few notes to myself: Never Absorb The Resume Or The LinkedIn Profile On Face Value Get evidence of past work or go through some testing or sample review. For engineers, this can be writing a piece of code during the interview. For content writers it would be writing a sample piece. Understand The Cost Of Hurrying You can fill a role quickly but if the person is not taking your load off instantly, then chances are they are increasing the load. The relevant experience can contribute to your workload, but if a person needs to be taught everything from scratch – you will be taking time out of your job to show them the way. Depending on how fast your small business is growing, this can be challenging. References Are Not Always Helpful When you ask someone for a reference, of course they are going to give you a positive one. Skip this step. Especially if you are a small business without corporate guidelines. Go with your gut and use logic. Lots Of Trial Projects If you can, take people on short-term projects to help you with different parts of your business. As a small business, you have to depend on freelancers and consultants for certain roles anyway. Make sure you have a good pipeline of folks helping you as freelancers. As your business grows, you will have the opportunity to offer full-time roles to these folks, and you will know them extremely well by then. There is no perfect hire and there are no perfect hiring tips or guidelines. We can simply learn from our own mistakes and hopefully from mistakes of others. Maze Photo via Shutterstock From Small Business Trends |
| New Bulk Listing Management Tool From Google Places Posted: 16 May 2012 06:00 AM PDT Businesses with multiple locations should be breathing a heavy sigh of relief now that Google has introduced a new and improved bulk listing management tool designed to make the whole process easier and faster for business owners.
Google revealed several new changes last week which have been implemented to help SMBs and enable the follow actions:
Google has also uploaded two tutorial videos to walk both new and verified users through the process. Tutorial for new, unverified users Tutorial for Verified Users If you've visited your Google Places dashboard recently, you may have already noticed that it went through a makeover. Personally, I find the updated dashboard considerably more user-friendly and intuitive. I especially like how easy it is to find listings with errors. The easier it is to spot errors, the easier it is to fix them! If you're a business owner with 10 or more locations and you've been avoiding uploading and/or correcting your information on Google Places because it was too much of a hassle or you weren't sure where to start, these new upgrades and the accompanying videos help remove both of those obstacles. We've said this many times but taking the time to ensure that all of your online business listings are claimed and showing correct information is one of the most powerful things you can do to build your Web presence and your offline customer base. Nearly 20 percent of all Google searches are users accessing Google Place Pages – that adds up to millions of searches a day! If a user can't find you or it looks like your information is incorrect, they're not going to keep trying. It's going to deter them away for your business and push them toward your competitor. This isn't something you can afford. The release of this new tool from Google is a good reminder of how important it is to claim and optimize all of your business listings. If you haven't checked to make sure they're accurate, use today to do it. Consider it a little Spring cleaning as you:
The updated Google Maps Bulk Listing management tool is great for businesses for with 10 or more locations, but even if that's not you, it's also an important reminder that these listings matter and that Google is looking at them hard to determine relevance and search placement. If it's been awhile since you've optimized your Google Place listings, give it another look. It could be the difference between showing up and being invisible to your audience. From Small Business Trends |
| All Eyes Are on Facebook With Multibillion-Dollar IPO Posted: 16 May 2012 02:30 AM PDT Facebook is a big deal these days, not just because of its multibillion IPO, but also because of the impact the social networking giant has on the 900 million who use its tools. Some of those are small business owners who depend upon FaceBook to provide services they cannot do without. That’s why today all eyes are on Facebook. Facebook in the NewsFacebook raises its IPO range to meet demand. The price range on the social network’s public offering rises from $34 to $38 per share, targeting a valuation exceeding $100 billion. As big as it has become, Facebook started from humble beginnings as a company founded in the Harvard dorm room of CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Reuters Facebook founder gives up US citizenship. Billionaire co-founder of Facebook Inc. Eduardo Saverin gave up his U.S. citizenship recently ahead of the multibillion-dollar Facebook IPO in an effort to avoid a possible tax increase on top earners. Apparently he didn’t get the Warren Buffett memo about paying more taxes. Bloomberg “Hoodie Gate” a test of leadership. Whether you believe Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s insistence on wearing his signature hoodie at presentations connected to his company’s first public offering smacks of immaturity or individuality, it’s another sign of the important tone a leader sets for his/her organization. Computerworld Why Use Facebook?Facebook social ads, sponsored stories, promote engagement. Online advertising-management platform Marin Software reported an increase in the level of engagement on Facebook ads by 50 percent over the last 12 months. Are you using these for your business? AllFacebook Why your business would want to be on Facebook. This important statistic should remain on your mind. There are 900 million and counting users of the massively popular social network. Think of the potential customer base Facebook represents. Pagemodo How-ToHow to use the Share button to amplify your message. To really get your content seen by your network on Facebook, having them like your most recent post just isn’t enough, says one blogger. Learn why the Facebook share button is your best friend here. Ryan Hanley Getting noticed through Facebook ads. David Siteman Garland interviews Victoria Gibson, The Facebook Ad Queen, for a detailed explanation of how to use Facebook ads to build a brand and get noticed. Watch the video for more of Gibson’s insights. The Rise to the Top Timeline TipsExamples of great timeline pages for business. The latest look for Facebook pages gives businesses in particular an opportunity to get creative. Here blogger Rachel Parker shares some of her favorite timeline business pages thus far. Resonance Timeline and other tools. The timeline isn’t the only change Facebook users, including business owners, have been through recently. Blogger Allison Semancik shares three tools that will help you come to terms. Idea Sprouts Final ThoughtsFacebook isn’t the only game in town. Community manager Megan Eckman asks whether Facebook or Twitter is the better choice when promoting your business. Her answer is the same as I’m sure many of ours would be. “It depends on your customers!” CreateHype From Small Business Trends |
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