Small Business Tips and Ideas - BizSieve.com

Disability Insurance Requirements for Your Business

It may be difficult to think about what would happen to your business should you or your partner experience something unsavory, but it could happen. Your business depends on you, and your health and an injury or illness could prevent you from earning a paycheck. Protecting your company against any kind of income loss as a result of an accident or sickness can provide you with peace of mind, that’s why disability insurance is a smart choice.

What is Disability Insurance?

Disability insurance can replace a portion of your salary should you become disabled due to an illness or accident. It’s also an excellent safeguard for business owners and partners to help keep their company up and running during this difficult time. Depending on the coverage, you could expect to receive approximately fifty to eighty percent of your gross income. While it’s not the full amount, it’s definitely better than nothing, and it gives an individual an incentive to get back to work. However, whether you can go back to work or not is dependent on the problem or situation. Unfortunately, insurance companies may not always play fair, and you may be denied the benefit of receiving disability rewards. If you had a claim of disability denied, you can seek legal representation to appeal your case.

The Benefits of Disability Insurance

There are numerous benefits to securing your business through disability insurance that includes protecting your assets in case of an unexpected emergency. It can also provide income while you’re unable to work and cover overhead to pay for your lease, rent, taxes, salaries and any expenses related to the operation of the business. Key personnel disability insurance pays money to the business in case the primary business person is unable to work due to an illness or injury. It can also be used to hire a temporary replacement or outsource the individual’s job duties until they are able to work. In the event of death or a permanent injury, buyout insurance coverage will allow the remaining partner to purchase their portion of the business.

What to Look for in a Policy?

In order to keep your premiums to a minimum and to avoid the risk of not being insurable, you want to buy your policy at an early age. It also helps if you purchase something that caters to your specific business needs. Some insurance companies will only take care of certain areas of your employment, while other policies ensure that you have the best possible coverage, so you need to do your research beforehand carefully. Disability insurance can also extend to your employees and coverage can protect them, any personal debt, and the costs necessary to run your business. Guaranteed insurability saves you time since you won’t have to re-qualify for future coverage. You can also lock in your rate with a non-cancellation policy, to keep your premiums and benefits the same.

Disability insurance is a safeguard for business owners who want to protect their well-being along with the company that they’ve worked so hard to establish. It also has a variety of terms and uses, so you need to do some investigative work to ensure that you’re getting the best policy for your company’s specific needs.

Author Anthony Joseph likes to write about different legal and small business topics for people who may be interested. It can be a terrible thing to have your claim of disability denied. The law firm of Marc Whitehead & Associates is fully dedicated to get justice for individuals who have been wrongly denied for their long term disability benefits.

Maintaining Company Culture Remotely

When you have employees working remotely from various different locations, it can be difficult to maintain a consistent company culture. Your company culture is comprised of how each person thinks, makes decisions, works, and communicates – and it can have important ramifications for how productive and satisfied your workers are.

You can maintain your company’s attitude and values remotely by recruiting the right people, communicating effectively, and promoting an inclusive atmosphere for both local and off-site workers.

culture management — photo credit: niels-mulder via photopin cc

Recruitment

Leading with your culture in your recruitment strategy can ensure that you hire remote workers who hold the same values, goals, work ethic, and attitude as the rest of your company. The more you can ensure that your new hires fit with your culture from the start, the more likely you’ll be able to continue promoting that culture in your relationship with both local and remote employees.

Your job listing have to convey not only the position and the requirements of the job, but also information about the company itself and its values. Use your job applicant recruiting software to post listings that sell your company and use language that is appropriate for your company culture.

Look for potential employees who have the right attitude for working from a distance. If you plan to give your remote workers free reign over their projects, look for candidates who excel at time management and self-motivation. Should you desire more day-to-day managerial control, find candidates who are excellent communicators and good at taking direction.

Open-ended interview questions that seek to determine what kind of work style and environment the candidate is most comfortable with. Whether the interview takes place in person, over the phone, or through your office’s video conferencing software, it is integral that you assess potential remote employees beyond a resume read-through.
Don’t neglect reference checks. Try to get a sense of what kind of values the candidate has and how well those fit with your company.

Communication

Communication is key in any business, but it is especially important in one that deals with a mobile or remote workforce. The more closely you communicate with your employees, the better you will be able to maintain the relationship according to your company’s culture and values.

Make sure your remote workers have the right communication skills. They should be comfortable using web conferencing, telephone, email, and social media to touch base with their managers.
Chat clients – whether cloud-based, located within the email client, or installed on the desktop – help employees communicate more efficiently. They can message their team members or managers instantly in order to ask a quick question or get into a lengthy discussion.

Inclusion

One of the dangers of hiring remote workers is their exclusion, due to location, from their coworkers and the rest of the company. You can increase the inclusiveness of your company by implementing an enterprise social network (known as “Facebook for business”).

Employees use the platform as a means of communication inside of and between different departments, helping them to align goals, increase productivity, and promote interdepartmental cooperation and collaboration. Since the discussion is all taking place on the web, it matters little whether the participants are located across the office or across the country.
Since all conversations are open, everyone can see what everyone else is working on. Coworkers can provide input and align their own work to fit better with company-wide efforts. Everyone –whether local or remote – feels more tied to the company, its goals, and its culture.

Although it may be difficult to promote your company culture with employees working remotely, the right strategy and tools can make it much easier. Work on hiring employees who have values that align with yours, communicate with them regularly in accordance with those values, and help them feel included with the rest of the company.

About the Author: Megan Webb-Morgan is a business blogger who focuses on startups and small businesses. She writes for lead-generation provider Resource Nation. You can find Resource Nation on Facebook and Twitter!

What Does Your Domain Name Say About You

Designing and publishing a website for your business is an important way to enter the world-wide market and choosing a domain is a critical step to that process. Experts agree that choosing the right name can help the success of your business when it’s to the point and describes what your business does.

What is a Domain Name?

A domain name is the way consumers look for a particular business by typing it into the browser. It can also lead to an individual website via your business link. This small line of text can aid users in navigating the Internet with ease. Imagine if the Internet didn’t use domain names, and you were required to utilize a string of numbers instead to search for a company. Domain names are registered daily and can cost the user between a minimal fee and thousands of dollars depending on the level and value of your search engine. There are many domain names for sale that can be purchased through a Domain Broker.

Finding and Being Found

The name that you choose is important and can help you reach your consumer base. Many businesses think up catchy names that have nothing to do with the services or products that they offer. As a business strategy, this makes zero sense and will only lead to confusion and aggravation. Setting up your domain name and website are important steps to a successful business, and you don’t want to change it later on. This could cause you to lose loyal customers and make your company look unprofessional and scattered.

Choosing the Right Name

Select something that showcases your business in the best light and tells them exactly what you do. If your company handles myriad services, focus on the one thing for your domain that you do best. You can easily add additional pages that will outline your other services or products.

Building a Solid Reputation

To ensure your business has a solid business reputation, you’ll want to choose the perfect domain name. In case your business grows and expands in the future, you may want to find something broad based. This allows you to add things down the road. It also gives you a bit more creativity with the actual name. Some well-known online retail establishments have found success with a particular domain, and the name has had nothing to do with the products that they offer. They also offer more than just books and may include DVDs, electronic gear and much more. You can also find success with something specific that targets exactly what you do or sell. Choosing something synonymous with what you do can generate greater search engine optimism and promotes the exact name in the URL window.

Selecting the right domain name is important from the beginning and can help consumers find the goods or services that you offer with ease, and the right amount of accessibility. It’s also imperative that it sends the right message to your customer base, and the image that you want to portray to them. Not only will it help your business achieve success, it will make you stand out from the rest of the competition.

Author Anthony Joseph enjoys writing about new business subjects to help offer information to start up companies. Toby Clements, a self made Domain Broker, is one of the top dealers in the world – creating millions of dollars in sales on a consistent basis. Buying and selling of these names are happening everyday, and knowing which one is best can have a significant impact on how well your business succeeds.

Business Isn’t Always Glamorous

When many of us think of long-term, sustainable profits we may envision a large multinational import-export company or a banking conglomerate generating billions in revenue each year. While these sectors are all indeed vital to the economy and can pull in uncounted millions, an often-times overlooked area that offers the opportunity to produce a steady and dependable income stream is the area of waste management. Let us get a better understanding as to why this industry is one of the most profitable business sectors.

Trash Does Not Disappear

Whether we find ourselves in a booming economy or one where the word “crisis” tops the headlines more often than we would prefer, societies still generate rubbish. Simply because an economic downturn may grip a region does not mean that people are consuming less goods. In fact, there may actually be more trash and junk to collect as individuals and households relocate; leaving massive piles of refuse and goods on the street. Therefore, the fist advantage of junk removal is the simple fact that there will always be business.

Better Usage of Waste Materials

The days of taking a few tons of trash and depositing them in an unsightly landfill are quickly coming to a close. 21st century environmental policies now dictate that much of the waste generated must either be recycled or even used as an alternative source of energy production. Thus, the waste industry has rapidly “gone green”. The main advantage here is that this situation gives junk removal companies the ability to diversify their current operations. This allows waste industries to realise more profits as they now can offer a valuable commodity to other organisations. Many CEOs are highly aware of this, as seen in this article.

Government Subsidies

Another benefit not to be overlooked is the fact that many governments are now providing handsome subsidies to those companies who develop and maintain environmentally-friendly policies. This lower carbon footprint is actively encouraged and industries such as waste management have the ability to take advantage of this extra influx of funds. Also, let us not forget that these more ecologically-aware policies will help protect our environment for generations to come.

Turning Trash into Cash

While these aforementioned benefits are particularly relevant for larger corporations, let us not forget that smaller enterprises can benefit from other aspects of junk removal. Not only can one person’s trash be another person’s treasure (as in the form of antique furniture, copper pipes, etc.) but due to the fact that we live in what has been called a disposable society, older electronic devices are more frequently thrown away. There are many rare-earth metals in this equipment including silver, palladium and even gold. Many smaller disposal companies will actually reprocess these for the metals they contain and turn a considerable profit from what would otherwise be simply known as refuse.

So, it is easy to understand why waster disposal represents a significant income opportunity. Although not the prettiest of industries, the profits that can be generated are quite attractive.

About the Author: John is a freelance business feature writer working with Skip & Bin hire in the UK – a comparison site for waste management services who work with skip hire companies to help promote their best deals when availability is high.

Business Partners: Are You Responsible For Their Ethics?

Friction between business partners is common without a clear delineation of duties. Partners frequently have different ideas as to how to run the business and invest capital. Unfortunately, some businessmen seek to enrich their companies by committing fraud and tax violations. Whether an unwitting business partner is liable for that malfeasance depends upon the circumstances surrounding the people involved, the act, and even the company itself.

Privately-Held Companies and the Mens Rea

A wide array of federal crimes, including tax evasion and false claims made under the False Claims Act, require a certain level of intent to commit the act or knowledge that they were committing the act. Mens rea means “guilty mind” in Latin and is used to denote intent leading to culpability. Strict liability offenses do not require a mens rea, as intent is not required.

This means that individuals are generally not personally liable for the actions of their business partners, as the intent to commit the offense lies with the partner. Such actions can harm the company by resulting in regulatory backlash such as hefty fines. Since many business owners have not only an income interest but have also personally invested in the business, this can be painful to the partner. However, direct regulatory action against the innocent victim is unlikely.

Public Companies and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

The matter becomes considerably more complicated if the company is public. Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 after a series of accounting scandals around the turn of the century, most notoriously involving Enron and WorldCom. Sarbanes-Oxley imposed significant requirements upon publicly traded companies, most of which were aimed at ensuring the integrity of the company’s financial reports.

Among other requirements was the mandate for certain executives to certify the company’s periodic financial reports. The executives must certify that the statement contains no misstatements or omissions of any material facts pertaining to the company and its subsidiaries and fairly represents the financial condition of the company and its condition. Executives must also certify that the company has internal controls and that these controls have been audited in the last 90 days.

This means that if one company’s principal officers is involved in an ongoing fraud against the company and the other officers know about it, they are personally liable if they sign off on the corporate financial statements. Penalties range from a $1,000,000 fine to 10 years imprisonment or both per violation. This ensures that the controlling officers at a company cannot misrepresent their company’s financial position, including tax liability, without incurring personal liability.

Blowing the Whistle

Blowing the whistle on ongoing fraud is a personal decision with benefits and detriments. From a financial standpoint, whistleblowing activities aimed at a company in which one has a controlling interest are likely to reduce the value of that company as the government not only demands compensation but also high punitive damages. On the other hand, whistleblowers are generally entitled to a sizeable portion of the funds received from government actions. Additionally, from an ethical standpoint, fraud and misrepresentation are morally reprehensible activities that cost the taxpayers money.

Individuals interested in blowing the whistle on unlawful activity should contact an experienced false claims attorney such as Goldberg Kohn,Ltd. The whistleblowing process usually starts with a qui tam action served upon the Attorney General of the United States. The government will have the opportunity to pursue the claim itself or reject the claim, in which case the plaintiff may pursue it privately. In either case, the plaintiff is entitled to a percentage of the recovery.

No matter the source, federal investigations targeted at a company in which you own a sizeable stake are not fun. A prolonged investigation will take time and if the fraud is big enough, the ensuing regulatory action, lawsuits, and negative publicity against the company can destroy it. However, by failing to take action, executives who mistakenly went into business with a criminal condone such conduct. When a source of liability is discovered, the correct course of action is to stop all illegal activity and seek legal counsel immediately. Anyone who fails to do so may find that a lawsuit for a breach of a fiduciary duty is the least of his or her problems.

A former news journalist, Ann Bailey reports on this issue of ethics and consequences for anyone suspecting their partner of underhandedness. Goldberg Kohn,Ltd is an aggressive legal voice of protection for any client choosing to become a whistleblower to seek right from wrong in their business arena.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dellphotos/8430831912/