Should you sweeten your benefits with snack foods?
For quite some time we’ve been reading that small business owners want to expand their teams, but are having a hard time finding the qualified candidates. So here’s a question to consider: If the path to your small business is paved with snack foods, will desirable recruits start pounding at your door, wanting to get in? A recent article in USA Today said that free snacks are the key to employee happiness and an informal survey of some high tech firm employees ranked free food as their second most desirable non-traditional perk, right after game rooms. Further, it seems that having a good assortment of free snacks handy is particularly important to Millennials, so if that’s the demographic you need to bring on board, you may want to push “stock up on snacks” higher on your to-do list. However, if you’re planning to open your wallet and start satisfying your employees’ hunger pangs, you need to know what you’re getting into so you’re ready for the problems that might arise. Snack food snags When I started to provide food at one of my companies, I quickly learned a lesson that all restaurant owners know: employees will walk out the back door with food and take it home with them. This is just a fact of life. You will experience “snack shrinkage.” Of course, some employees leave with reams of paper and other small items, so this isn’t really anything specific to snack foods. Stacy Williams, who is the Director of Consumer Experience and Operations at her company, SERVIZ, makes a good observation that applies to many small businesses and startups. “Buying snacks for the office can be tricky and if not done with care can end up alienating rather than motivating employees. Especially at a startup where there usually isn’t an office manager dedicated to these things on the payroll yet,” she explains. When she started buying snacks for her team she asked for input, but this “quickly spun out of control as I started getting too many individual requests for specific items no one else wanted and I noticed some things were running low too quickly which meant people were ‘hoarding’ them in their desks or taking food home,” Stacy says. She scaled back on the requests, noted dietary restrictions and eventually everyone settled into a routine. Spoiled fruit James Armstrong of Wooden Blinds Direct had similar hassles when they decided to start bringing in fresh fruit: “Initially it was a great success, but problems with the quality and selection of fruit soon emerged, and low level conflicts began around certain employees taking all the choice pieces for themselves.” They decided that it just wasn’t worth the trouble and cancelled the order. Something that’s fundamental for everyone to understand is that the snacks aren’t “free.” Ultimately, the money comes from payroll as do all other benefits. And since we’re on the topic of money, it’s important to know when you can feed your crew without getting into trouble with the IRS. Bringing Uncle Sam to the table The IRS has two tests that must be met for meals to be excluded from income tax reporting requirements: The meal must be served on the premises, and The meal must be furnished for the convenience of the employer. Rakini Chinery,...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: Make your blogging painless and beat your anxiety
If blogging is an important part of your social media marketing program, this week’s curated content contains a lot of great tips you’ll be able to use immediately. We also have information to help you deal with anxiety, personnel, a website launch and much more. Marketing and sales If you’re like Jeff Bullas, and every other blogger, and have nightmares about no one reading your stuff, you need these 21 power tips from Jeff to get your blogs shared. And if it’s Facebook likes that you’re after, this article will steer you in the right direction. But maybe once you adopt the six habits of successful bloggers outlined in this post, you won’t be stressed out anymore anyway. Psst: Need some new places to steal ideas for your next social media campaign? If so, read this. In this short post, Seth Godin discusses the other element of guerilla marketing. Apparently there is a world of marketing that exists outside of the digital realm and this article delivers five offline techniques to boost your small business. Leadership, management and productivity Sometimes we need to push ourselves to achieve success. Evan Teague shares five tips. But if all that pushing causes anxiety, you need these eight ways leaders can reduce anxiety on the job. A good hire is gold. A bad hire will sink you as sure as a lead weight sinks a stinkbait. You need to know what characteristics to look for when hiring for your startup or small business. And if you have a good team, you’ll probably want to do like the small business outlined here and pay as much as twice the minimum wage…or more. Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation Small businesses are just starting to do great things with beacon technology. This Entrepreneur article explores some innovative and creative uses. Getting ready to launch a new website? Here are 10 essential items for your final checklist. If a new small business is in your future, this overview gives you a good idea of the various directions you can take. Politics, government and the economy Is Amazon killing small business? If you think Amazon is threatening your small business, Ian Altman has analysis and advice for you. Written by a franchise small business owner, this essay explains how the National Labor Relations Board is threatening small...
read moreIs Your Small Business Facebook organic reach down? Stop guessing. Here are the facts.
Much has be said about changes at Facebook in recent months. We know that Facebook is pushing small businesses and others to advertise and not depend totally on their fans and friends seeing their posts in their news feeds organically. We can’t be too critical of Facebook for this strategy. After all, millions of people around the world use the social media platform for free; Facebook needs some way to make money. Although this infographic is a bit dated, it shows that Facebook organic reach isn’t dead, and depending on your industry or the nature of your Facebook page, it could even be up. To get an accurate and up-to-date picture of the “state of the union” when it comes to Facebook organic reach, Agora Pulse, which published this infographic, has a Facebook Page Barometer that updates. You can also use it to benchmark the Facebook organic reach of your small business, and then see if your small business organic reach goes up or down over the months. For many small businesses Facebook organic reach has been a vital part of their marketing, branding and even customer service strategy. It’s critically important to understand how well that is working for you today and not assume that you’re getting the same reach you had yesterday. With that information in hand, you can make an informed decision when Facebook asks you if you’d like to “boost” the reach of any given post. Courtesy of:...
read moreFour Reasons You Need to Launch Your Startup Early
Talk to successful veterans of the startup world and one piece of advice most will give you is to launch your startup early. Let’s unpack this a little. I suppose we could say that there are three possible times to launch your startup: Early, Right on time, or Late. We can eliminate “late” because by definition it’s a mistake to launch late. So that leaves us with early and right on time. Next we can eliminate “right on time” because you can never know this until much later down the line…if at all. So that only leaves the option of launching early. If you don’t feel like you’re launching early, you’re probably launching late. Before we go too much further, we should talk about what an early launch is. The way I’m using the term, it means that not everything is in place. For example, if you’re launching a service that will be ultimately automated via software, with an early launch you might use people power in place of developing all the software. In other words, you haven’t burned through all your development money yet. With that background, let’s look at some of the advantages gained by an early launch. 1. You learn the market. No matter how much market research you do, there is no substitute for actually being in the market. For example, you can ask rooms full people if they would by this new Acme Widget with all of its great features and how much would they pay. But until they are actually faced with the prospect of the money coming out of their bank accounts, you won’t really know if they’ll pull the trigger on the purchase. With an early startup launch you can get a real sense of what the market will bear and because you haven’t spent all your development money yet (hopefully) you’ll be better positioned to take the next steps. 2. You get great feedback. Not only will you get an understanding of how price sensitive your market is, you’ll soon find out what product or service features are popular and which are a waste of your resources. This will help you tailor you offering to exactly fit what your customers or clients want and will prevent you from wasting money developing features that don’t increase the desirability or value of your product. 3. You suffer fewer financial pressures. The above two points both illustrate the fact that an early launch helps save money. In those examples I’ve implied that you have received startup funds from some source. Frankly, we all know that the source of those funds might be your savings account, charge cards or even a mortgage on your home. Let’s consider a worst-case scenario for a moment. (It’s painful, but always a necessary exercise.) If you do an early launch and the only response you get from the market is the sound of crickets on a warm summer night, you can pull the plug early. The longer you wait to launch your startup, the more money you will have invested and the more difficult it will be to walk away from your startup. Let’s be honest: Sometimes walking away is the smartest thing you can do. It typically takes entrepreneurs three tries to become successful. 4. You beat...
read moreVeteran Benefits For the Men and Women Who Serve and For Your Small Business
In business, the ideal outcome is the classic “win-win.” When you make a sale, your customer should benefit as should your business. I think there are a lot of opportunities for your small business to experience a win-win where the other “winner” in the equation is our country’s military personnel returning to private life. There are several ways you can support your veterans as they transition out of the military. The single biggest is hiring a veteran. Hire a vet There are many skills and traits that are acquired while serving in any branch of the military that transfer well to private employment. First, as a small business owner, you know you’re getting a person who doesn’t shy away from difficult challenges. The training and duties that service men and women go through stretch them in ways many of us can’t even imagine. Of course, many pick up skills that transfer to a wide range of job duties, but frankly, in almost any work setting, the specifically required skills are transferred via on-the-job training. This is the same way most veterans learned their duties while in the military. But more important than specific skills, I believe, is the ability to work as a team. When I talk to small business owners across the country, what they prize most in employees is reliability and the ability to work together as a team toward a common goal. These traits are at the core of what makes a good soldier, sailor, aviator or marine. By the way, there are various tax incentives from the federal government for hiring veterans. You can get an overview on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs website. Raise awareness Even if you don’t have any slots on your staff right now for a veteran, consider supporting their cause. When they are on active duty and in uniform, it’s common for people to approach them and thank them for their service. However, once they’re discharged, it is easy for our veterans to just blend into the background of our society and disappear. I often encourage small business owners to become involved in civic causes and local charities and to publicize their work. It raises awareness of the cause as well as of your business and it demonstrates your commitment to the community. Local residents like to do business with people who they know are invested in making their towns better places to live. Recently, many buildings and stadiums in cities across the United States were bathed in pink light at night to help raise awareness for breast cancer research. In a similar way, the color green has become a way to show support for veterans. With the sponsorship of Walmart, Greenlight a Vet encourages people to keep one green light burning to show support for veteran causes. If you have a window display at your small business, or another area where you could keep a green light going, why not participate? The idea is to promote a national conversation on how we might better recognize and support our veterans. Burning a green light at your small business would probably spark a few questions and conversations. I encourage you to consider the ways you can support your local veterans. Any effort you make will be helpful and well received...
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