The Number One Reason Employees Stay in a Small Business, According to Employers |  |
- The Number One Reason Employees Stay in a Small Business, According to Employers
- Jim Fowler of InfoArmy: Creating An iPad Army of Competitive Intelligence
- Times Are Tough
- Supreme Court Rules on Healthcare: How Your Business Will Be Affected
| The Number One Reason Employees Stay in a Small Business, According to Employers Posted: 29 Jun 2012 11:00 AM PDT If you’re like most small business owners, you’ve invested a sizable chunk of your company’s time and money into recruiting, onboarding, and training employees. Naturally, you do not want to lose good people — because then your investment is wasted. On top of that your business may be plunged into a mini-crisis by losing a great performer who is difficult to replace. But the question on the minds of small business owners like me is, what exactly does it take to attract and retain good employees today? And can small employers compete with large employers able to offer bigger financial packages? A recent survey has some good news. Among employers polled, the number one benefit offered was … drum roll please: paid vacation time. That is the top benefit that employers surveyed in the GrowBiz Media Small Business Hiring and Retention Survey 2012 said they offered their employees. Over sixty-seven percent (67.7% to be exact) said they offered paid vacation. To me that’s not surprising — it doesn’t necessarily cost anything out of pocket to offer paid vacation. So it’s within the reach of more small employers to offer paid vacation than to offer benefits that cost additional out of pocket. If anything surprised me, it’s the percentage of employers who said they do NOT offer paid vacation. I find it remarkable that in this day and age, nearly one third of the employers said they do do not offer vacation. The Top 5 Benefits Offered And what about other benefits? The benefits most often offered by small employers with between 2 and 50 employees include, in order:
The Number One Retention Factor Is Not Benefits At All But if you really want to know what keeps employees around in a small business, it isn’t benefits at all. It’s the relationship the employee has with management — at least, that’s what employers say. Those surveyed said the following were the top factors influencing employees to remain:
The survey results did not include a question about salary, so we don’t know where pay fits into the mix. No Upside to Burning Out Your Employees When you look at this list, it shows you that investing in relationships and working conditions helps your business compete against larger employers for the available talent pool. From the employer side you are getting something good in return. Refreshed, happy, well-balanced employees are typically better performing. They are more likely to stick around longer term, meaning less turnover and repeat hiring, onboarding and training for you. As a result, your business runs more smoothly and there’s less churn. That’s good for business. Let me offer an analogy: employees are an asset like anything else in your business. You wouldn’t run a valuable piece of equipment into the ground without maintenance, until it breaks and is worthless. Your employees deserve at least as much consideration and respect. And remember: this is not asking employees what factored into their decisions to stay with their existing employers, but rather focused on what employers thought influenced employees to stay. Still, it points out that small business employers believe they have something to offer that employees want: good working relationships and a good company culture. Oh, and some benefits, too, especially quality of life benefits. View the full employer survey results. Are you surprised? And employees, you’ve heard from the employers — now, what do you say?
From Small Business Trends      |
| Jim Fowler of InfoArmy: Creating An iPad Army of Competitive Intelligence Posted: 29 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT Imagine an army of iPads marching towards you, about to hand you all of the valuable research data you’ve been searching for in the blink of an eye. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Even better, that vision has actually manifested into reality. Tune in as Jim Fowler, CEO and Founder of InfoArmy, joins Brent Leary to share these latest developments in the world of technology, data and research. * * * * *
Jim Fowler: After we sold Jigsaw, I took some of my winnings and funded InfoArmy. We just launched about a week ago. The concept for InfoArmy is recruiting an army of disciplined global researchers to build a data base of what we call competitive intelligence reports. In three words, the concept of the company is “crowdsourcing competitive intelligence.” Small Business Trends: How does this compare to what you did with Jigsaw? Jim Fowler: The concept is similar. InfoArmy is just a much bigger and more ambitious project than Jigsaw. Jigsaw was about business card records. InfoArmy is about taking a big form that we have our researchers fill out about a company. In particular, we are looking for specific things like what other companies like this particular company competes with. We call this a competitive eco system. We are looking for people at the company. We are looking for estimates of revenue and a number of employees. Each one of these competitive intelligence reports is completed by the researchers and then we compare the data and track them over time. So our ambition is to create a really, really invaluable set of data that can be used broadly across many industries. Small Business Trends: How does the iPad figure into this? Jim Fowler: We have built our product from the ground up for consumption on the iPad. Meaning that these reports are designed to be read on the iPad. Our basic thought is information on an iPad is a living, breathing thing. On paper, it is as dead as the tree that it is printed on. You can learn in two minutes what it would take two days or more to learn on your own with the ability to move through data quickly on the iPad. Small Business Trends: Do you foresee changing the way that the analyst community works because of the approach you are taking with InfoArmy? Jim Fowler: You know, I do Brent. At the beginning there is no question we are creating a set of data we think no one really wants to collect. Our researchers update these competitive intelligence reports every quarter so we think it provides a baseline of information everyone can use. It just does not exist right now. Over time, we do believe that we will start offering higher end products that start encroaching into where the analyst lives today. But for now, we just have to build a critical mass of these reports. Small Business Trends: What are your expectations for InfoArmy, if we look out a year or two, or even five years from now? Jim Fowler: Eventually, we want millions of these reports globally in multiple languages. You have a global set of data and you can read a Twitter report in English, or German, or Swahili, because we will have tens of thousands of researchers that are building these reports. The other big goal is to have a platform that researchers can literally earn a living on. We have a vision that there is a lot of need for business information. It is a multi-billion dollar business. We would like to see the old rules change, where you can use the crowds, and crowds can actually earn a living as researchers on this platform. Small Business Trends: Would you have been able to do something like InfoArmy five years ago? Jim Fowler: I think the technology existed to do this concept, but people would have been reading these reports on the web. Now the web is a step up from paper and tablets are a step up from the web from a consumption standpoint. Our researchers are building these reports on the web as it is too difficult to actually input the data on an iPad. So the input is done on the web. But I truly believe there is no way they can have the power of consumption and the power of readability that living, breathing data has on an iPad. I'd encourage people to download the free InfoArmy on iPad app. We have a bunch of free reports available. Look for ones that have trend analysis. Every quarter they're updated and you can literally just swipe through quarter over quarter and see the change. That is really when you see the power of the mobile device. Small Business Trends: We are now at a point where we are actually able to provide the kind of things that we always wanted for consumers? Jim Fowler: I think so. But I think the crowdsourcing movement is the bigger change here. The tablet is the next step of the technology, but crowdsourcing is the next step of how people work, think and build information together. To me that is the part that is most exciting. Small Business Trends: So technology is the enabler of the crowd being able to collaborate and the outputs of that collaboration is more exciting to you? Jim Fowler: You nailed it. Exactly Brent. You think about the massive transformation and information, and then look at Wikipedia. I mean the crowdsourcing model has taken this industry and completely changed it. It's like Encyclopedia Britannica is basically dead. They have quit publishing books on paper. I think if you look at business information, models like Jigsaw and InfoArmy have the ability to take big established brands like Dun & Bradstreet down completely. I think we are going to see that happen. Jigsaw had great success in taking an old industry like business contacts and making it into a crowdsourcing play that had a lot of value. Jigsaw was purchased by Salesforce.com for $175 million dollars. It was a relatively small database of 21 million records. You can put that on a flash drive now. Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more about InfoArmy? Jim Fowler: Visit InfoArmy.com and you can go in and see the reports or you can sign up and become a researcher. This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.
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| Posted: 29 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT When I had a day job, few things bugged me more than painfully obvious corporate waste. Instead of hiring a service to come in twice weekly to water the plants, maybe you could have someone at the company do that. Or maybe we didn’t need to fly the whole company down for the weekend to show us a powerpoint. And I’m betting we could’ve done without that awful puppet show at the regional meeting. (I’m not making that up.) I’m not saying that focusing on your strengths, or fostering unity, or, well, puppets, aren’t important, but when times are tough, maybe scaling back a bit on some of the obvious extras might not be a bad idea. From Small Business Trends     |
| Supreme Court Rules on Healthcare: How Your Business Will Be Affected Posted: 29 Jun 2012 02:30 AM PDT Healthcare reform in the US is still a hotly debated topic, even after a long awaited ruling by the Supreme Court was handed down on Thursday. Here are details of the court’s decision, and how businesses in particular could be affected. Supreme Court DecisionWhat the ruling says. It’s a decision that stunned some pundits and will undoubtedly send ripples throughout the business community. The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that Congress acted within its rights to require most Americans to carry health insurance. The law also carries requirements for businesses regarding healthcare for employees. Boston Herald What it means. What the decision means to you depends greatly upon the size of the business you operate. For example, if you own and operate a one person business, the impact will be much the same as it is for an individual. If you have more than 50 employees on the other hand, the impact on your business could be quite different, depending upon whether or not you currently provide healthcare coverage for workers. The Wall Street Journal Reactions & ReflectionA mixed bag. The Supreme Court decision will likely mean higher costs for small businesses, especially some that may not currently offer healthcare coverage for employees. But the reaction among small business owners and groups has been a bit more varied, with some concerned the decision represents a terrible blow to entrepreneurship while others believe it will bring down costs. The Washington Post A moment of clarity. Some small business owners are less than happy with the Supreme Court ruling on healthcare and requirements that they must now supply coverage or be hit with a fine. But economists argue the ruling does provide one benefit to business owners: the clarity to finally know how to plan for the future. Los Angeles Times Healthcare ImplicationsWinners and losers. As the 80′s rock band Journey once sang, “Some will win, some will loose, some are born to sing the blues.” In the same way, some businesses will be winners and others will be losers with the Supreme Court ruling on healthcare. Businesses in the healthcare industry, for example, will in many cases be doing better. However, some businesses that don’t currently provide healthcare are in for a big cost increase. ABC News Benefits vs. costs. Another way to look at the Supreme Court ruling is to think of it in terms of benefits and costs for all businesses. For example, some argue the insurance requirement will have the overall impact of lowering costs as the pool of healthy people expands. On the other hand some businesses will pay more for mandated care. Entrepreneur Cost controls. One major question that remains to be answered is what the Supreme Court ruling will do to healthcare costs. Of course by now, most business owners understand the existing legislation would force some companies to spend more. But will the requirement cause overall healthcare costs to rise or fall? Bloomberg Businessweek Some UncertaintiesDoom and gloom. Will the US supreme court ruling on healthcare reform really destroy businesses? The National Federation of Independent Businesses predicts the legislation, if left in tact, would cause businesses closures and job loss. But not everyone has the same dark predictions. CBS Chicago Questions unanswered. But while many experts insist the ruling resolved the issue of healthcare for businesses, some say the decision leaves questions unanswered. These critics believe many businesses may simply hold off on hiring until after the US presidential election, since one candidate vows to get rid of the law if elected. CNBC Healthcare ElsewhereA new business model. Elsewhere, like in the UK, healthcare costs have lead to new business models, including outsourced care. Here one such insurance product is reviewed. Those selling the package claim to cut costs by as much as 50 percent over other programs by providing access to a network of international hospitals. IFAonline From Small Business Trends     |
Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and InfoArmy?
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