As an employer, you want to cultivate respectful relationships with everyone who works for you. And you want to do whatever you can to build a solid team that will help you ensure the long-term success of your business. But some employees may hinder the respect, success, productivity, and teamwork you’ve worked so hard to build, and it’s in these kinds of situations that you may have to terminate an…
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Believe it or not, a lot of business owners don’t take the time to create standard operating procedures. After working as an HR and leadership consultant for many years now, I’m sad to say I’ve seen this time and time again across all kinds of different clients in a variety of industries. Either they come to me to write their standard operating procedures because they’ve never bothered to do it…
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After working in human resources for several decades, it has become painfully obvious that many business owners have no idea what an HR person does. And oftentimes, their ideas about what they should be doing couldn’t be any further from the truth. Generally speaking, HR people tend to do just about everything, whether that’s bookkeeping, office management, hiring, firing, or just ordering some pizza for an employee meeting. That being…
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If you own a business, you want your team to hit the ground running as soon as the new year begins. And if you want to make sure that happens, you can’t wait until the spring to set business goals, define accountabilities, or decide how you’re going to evaluate your employees – you need to do it now before it’s too late. This way, everyone on your team will be…
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Since March of 2020, business owners have been living through one nightmare after another. Some new start-up businesses didn’t even have a chance to get their feet wet before everything came crashing down around them! Whether it was because of limits on capacity or operating hours, supply chain issues, or having to shutter their businesses entirely, most business owners have been severely affected by the policies imposed during the pandemic.…
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The last couple of years have been absolutely devastating for business owners, and even more so for those who run small businesses. Whether it was supply chain issues, lockdowns, reduced hours, increased cleaning requirements, or some other kind of restriction on how businesses are run, very few business owners made it through the pandemic unscathed. A survey from OnDeck, which took place from March through April 2020, shows just how…
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Building your ‘A’ team is one of the most important jobs you have as a business owner or manager. Get it right and you are well on your way to a profitable business. Get it wrong, and you’ll waste a lot of time and money on recruiting and training new people, adding unnecessary stress and overwhelm to everyone else on your team. There’s no doubt that attracting and choosing the…
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When you’re the owner of a small or medium-sized business, you’re often also the accountant, HR person, marketing director and office manager! I’ve worked with so many business owners who struggle with the same problem: there’s not enough of them to go around and you are having to do things that you really have no business messing with! It’s admirable that you roll up your sleeves and get into the…
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It’s just three letters, but they’re critical ones. If you haven’t heard the acronym SOP (often referred to as SOPs), it stands for standard operating procedures. SOPs are the documented processes that help employees effectively and safely perform their jobs. Every single employee in your organization needs to understand, complete and follow these step-by-step desk procedures—especially right now. I like to use the example of the fast-food chain McDonald’s: Regardless…
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You may have noticed I’ve been very focused on this topic in the past few months. It’s because I’m really concerned for small and medium-sized business owners. Each day I’m seeing articles like “A ‘tidal wave’ of Covid-related workplace lawsuits could be on the way” and noticing the numbers going up on Littler’s COVID-19 Labor & Employment Litigation Tracker. According to Littler, an international employment law firm, since March 12…
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