Blogs

How Much Do Your Employees "Actually" Cost?

Look online and you’ll see plenty of guides telling you how much your employees “actually” cost. What does this “actually” usually include? Well, in addition to salary, there’s taxes (Social Security, Unemployment, Medicare), employee benefits, recruitment, space, equipment, and other sundry costs. Add those things up and you’ll have your employees’ “actual” cost.

Job Costing Vs. Process Costing: What's the Difference?

If going into business was cheap, everyone would do it. But the truth is, there is a lot of money being spent before even so much as a dollar is made in return. And to ensure that your business is, in fact, profitable, you have to be able to calculate the total cost that you are spending and weigh it against your revenue. Without a thorough understanding of the cost of doing business in your industry, you may quickly find yourself falling into the red.

The Best Tips to Boost Employee Performance

It’s happened to all of us. One sales person is rude, unhelpful or indifferent and we don’t want to step into that store again — even when we really love it. That’s the remarkable power of customer service. And that’s the reason businesses search high and low for actionable ways to improve employee performance.

5 Ways to Tactfully Navigate Workplace Politics

Workplace politics: they are rampant in every place you'll ever work.

What to Do When You're Experiencing High Turnover

Amongst the most frustrating and even confounding issues a business may face is a high turnover rate. Although turnover itself is something that will occur in any business, high turnover signifies a greater issue. Something with the fundamentals of your practice, policies, and/or individual management may be conflicting with the expectations of your employees. Having excellent soft skills helps with tackling these types of problems, and finding the necessary solutions.

8 Ways to Stop Over-Servicing Your Clients

Over-servicing a client happens on many occasions. More often than not, we’re talking about a longtime client who’s become friendly with your company and occasionally asks for additional tasks to be completed. Other times it can be about keeping a valuable name brand happy and bending over backwards to keep them. Unfortunately, this is a drain on your company’s resources, and it could be forcing you to use far too many labor hours. In fact, several small tasks can turn into a significant amount of time if you’re not careful, and over-servicing costs can easily reach 500K/year.

5 Critical Metrics for Project Management

Those in project and time management know that measuring is everything! Regardless of what industry or space you’re in, there are certain metrics set in stone. Project managers and executives need KPI’s, or Key Performance Indicators, to gauge several different components. There are many different metrics to keep tabs on, but these 5 are integral to any project:

5 Ways to Increase Customer Retention

Depending on who you ask, retaining customers is either valuable — or really, really valuable.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Flex Time

Offering more flexibile hours can boost employee satisfaction — but there are drawbacks.

4 Problems with Employee Engagement Surveys

Employee engagement surveys are designed to provide employees with the opportunity to tell their management team how they’re feeling at work. That means all the positive AND negative thoughts and feelings are supposed covered in a survey lasting 100+ questions. Theoretically, this exercise leads to a perfect picture of what’s going on in the office.

How to Build the Most Effective Work Schedule

Have you ever kept track of how much work you actually complete during the day? This timesheet template can help you get started. Whether you’re sitting at a desk from nine to five, a freelancer working odd hours to meet a deadline, or an entrepreneur spending your days networking, it can be hard to set an effective work schedule that keeps you on track. Office workers might argue that they don’t literally need to be in the office five days a week; entrepreneurs will say their effective work schedule starts with morning routine.

How to Justify your Hiring Needs

If you’re running even a small part of a large organization, you’ll eventually come up against the hiring problem. You know the scenario: you and your team are working hard. You’re doing good work. But you’re just barely keeping up, and you know that one or two new hires would really push you all into new territory.

5 Types of Leaders for Remote Employees

Managing a remote team is not a task for the faint of heart. This is especially the case with the current COVID-19 pandemic as we move towards a remote workforce with little to no preparation.

How to Make a Truly Beneficial SOW (Statement of Work)

Here’s one for the kids. In the 1980’s the band Van Halen became famous when somebody discovered that the band’s standard performance contract — the one they gave to all venues — called for their dressing room to contain a bowl of M&M’s from which all the brown ones had been removed.

15 Employee Engagement Activities For Your Small Business

Employee engagement is more than a buzzword.

6 Proven Ways to Get Referrals Without Asking for Them

One major consequence of the internet has been the proliferation of choice, in all arenas.