Originally written by Rebecca Siciliano on Small Business
If you feel like you’re drowning in work, hiring a great personal assistant may be the best solution.
Providing an extra pair of hands to assist with admin, diary management, gatekeeping and more, a PA will enable you to work smarter, delegate more efficiently and manage many of your day-to-day tasks. In short, they will help you get more work done, and ensure you focus on the most important tasks to help your business grow.
Those with a PA actually work nine hours less per week than those without the extra support – time which is invaluable to achieving a healthy work-life blend and maximum productivity during the working day.
So, if you’re on the hunt for a PA to lighten the load in your business, what skills should you be looking for? Personality fit is a great start, as you will be working very closely with your PA on a daily basis, so an ability to get on at a personal level will mean the difference between a smooth transition and a bad hire.
However, there are a few additional core skills that are essential when choosing your perfect personal assistant. Hone in on these skills
Tag Archive for Employing & managing staff
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How to stop your small business getting bad reviews on Glassdoor
by Jonathan Richards • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Jonathan Richards on Small Business
Turn over any newspaper and you won’t be surprised to see yet another corporate scandal, or an accusation that a company’s culture is “toxic”. It seems the outrage is arriving thicker and faster than ever.
Smaller businesses may feel far removed from the outrageous stories in the news, yet there’s a significant connection. Even organisations that would never dominate the national or global news agenda need to recognise that problems in their internal culture can and will surface online.
Toxic cultures no longer need to be reported by lone whistle-blowers, or even undercover journalists — the reality inside British SMEs is being openly shared on the web. Renewable energy supplier Bulb recently found this out the hard way, when the Telegraph reported on “growing signs of employee discontent” and complaints of a “toxic work culture” based on the firm’s Glassdoor score, a website where staff can anonymously review their employers.
Glassdoor is certainly influential: it gets 67m unique visitors each month and hosts 49m reviews of nearly 1m companies worldwide.
Most business owners are already aware of how much online reviews can affect their ability to recruit and retain talent. Glassdoor itself suggests that 70pc of people
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What we can learn about managing staff from soccer’s top managers
by Jacqueline Benjamin • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Jacqueline Benjamin on Small Business
There is no shortage of successful business people proffering top tips on how to run a small business, or how to get the most out of your workforce.
But when it comes to seeking inspiration for your business, it sometimes pays to look a little further afield. And by “afield”, we literally mean a football pitch.
The football pitch can offer many valuable insights, particularly when it comes to people management.
After all, football managers are not dissimilar to any manager of teams of people (with the exception that few managers have their work appraised so passionately by hundreds of thousands of fans each week). Each football manager bears significant pressure and responsibility for getting the most out of their team. And each approaches it in their own unique way. Some favour the “carrot” approach, such as Gareth Southgate, who led England’s team to unexpected success at the last World Cup with his particular style of gentle, thoughtful management. Others prefer the “stick” – Alex Ferguson springs to mind, who famously kicked a football boot at David Beckham’s head when unhappy with a performance.
Two of today’s most revered football managers – Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp and Man
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7 tips on how to manage freelance workers remotely
by Andrew Wray • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Andrew Wray on Small Business
The explosion in flexible and remote working is one of the biggest changes we’ve seen to our working lives in the past decade.
In the UK this is largely being driven by a surge in the number of freelancers – up 46pc since 2008 to two million.
When this type of remote working is done well, it can be a real enabler for workers, giving them their commute time back, allowing them their very own personalised (and hopefully optimised) work environment, not to mention that extra accessibility to family and loved ones.
However, in the last year or so, we have seen a bit of a business backlash, with companies like BNY Mellon making plans to stop all flexible working, so as to “maximise the benefits of people working closely together while maintaining some degree of flexibility”. After campaigners protested – their plan was shelved. But it raises an interesting question. How do you manage freelance workers effectively?
Keep technology up to date
Just as technology is the enabler that has driven this big shift in working patterns, it becomes an inhibitor if it’s not quite up to scratch. So, make the investment in the right software to
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How to set up a share options scheme for your small business
by Timothy Adler • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Small to medium-sized business owners know the importance of incentivising and retaining key employees using a share options scheme.
They’re both tax efficient for the company and the employees who benefit.
However, there are practical problems which mean that such schemes may not work. If this happens, the company and employees may find that the tax incentives which led them to implement the scheme are not available or that the scheme did not achieve its desired outcome.
Enterprise Management Incentive
The most common scheme is the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) scheme. Typically, once a young business becomes established, the company will offer key employees share options under the EMI scheme. Commonly, employees are only allowed to exercise the option when the company is sold and therefore receive the value without accruing any rights as shareholders. This allows the employees to participate in the sale at no direct cost to the company or its founders.
How the EMI works
Implemented properly, the scheme allows the employees to pay capital rather than income tax on the proceeds of sale of shares after exercising the option. Employees may also able to claim entrepreneur’s relief, which further reduces the capital tax payable. The
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How to avoid discrimination when it comes to employee dismissal
by Sue Morrison • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Sue Morrison on Small Business
There is a general perception among business owners, especially SMEs, that terminating the employment of a problematic employee – especially if that employee has a protected characteristic such as their race, sexual orientation, religious beliefs or a disability could cost them dearly.
Many SMEs simply decide to do nothing as employee dismissal is too high risk.
However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Being a smaller company on tighter budgets without an in-house lawyer or HR professional shouldn’t be a barrier to dealing with a situation that can negatively impact your whole workforce.
So, what’s the best way to handle an under-performing, problematic employee, while being entirely mindful of any potential legal challenges?
When length of service doesn’t matter
Consider the scenario – you have a member of staff off on long term sick or they are unreliable in terms of attendance – intermittently but persistently signing themselves off for short durations at a time. They have worked with you for less than two years – and so can’t claim unfair employee dismissal – and you want to dismiss them because you don’t have endless resources to cover the gaps they create. It seems pretty cut and
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6 simple ways to create a healthy workplace environment
by Karen Meager & John McLachlan • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Karen Meager & John McLachlan on Small Business
How to create a healthy workplace
A healthy workplace is one which works for everyone and it’s important that adequate time is spent trying to create this.
“Healthy” workplaces are ones that provide an open environment in which everyone feels comfortable to approach both managers and colleagues about any stresses they may have, but it is also a company culture which does not reward or prioritise unhealthy working behaviours.
Instead of standalone initiatives that often do not have sustainable results, focus on determining the root cause and integrating employee wellbeing into all your processes. By following a strategy that places employee wellbeing at the heart of your company culture, you can begin to create a healthy workplace.
However, it is important to remember that this is a process that should be continually revised in order to ensure no-one is slipping through the cracks and everyone is always seeking ways to improve.
Consider root causes, not quick fixes
Even when you think you have processes in place to prevent instances of stress or conflict from occurring, sometimes circumstances will occur where you need to manage these behaviours. Rather than focus on a quick fix which may remove
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Workplace pensions and keeping staff auto enrolled
by Stephanie Spicer • • 0 Comments
Employers face a challenge to keep their employees within their workplace pensions schemes following the increase in contributions each month. Employees must increase the contributions to their pensions as much their employers from Saturday 6 April. The increase saving could benefit employees by allowing them a much higher pension pot in retirement than they would
The post Workplace pensions and keeping staff auto enrolled appeared first on Small Business.
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Pensions auto enrolment – a basic guide for employers
by James Brown • • 0 Comments
Pensions auto enrolment (AE) was introduced by the Government as a way to help employees save in a tax efficient way for their retirement with the help of their employer and to reduce their reliance on the State Pension. Under AE legislation, employers have a legal obligation to automatically enrol eligible employees into a workplace
The post Pensions auto enrolment – a basic guide for employers appeared first on Small Business.
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7 hiring strategy dos and don’ts for high-growth SMEs
by Hannah Dawson • • 0 Comments
Hiring new staff is one of the biggest decisions you can make as an SME owner, especially if your goal is scalability or to secure funding. In my experience, choosing the right hire at the right time can be the difference between launching into space or crashing back down to earth. With this in mind,
The post 7 hiring strategy dos and don’ts for high-growth SMEs appeared first on Small Business.