What you Should be doing

Losing team members is never fun and no one ever wants to sit town and tell an employee that they are terminated. However, it is a natural part of business that will occur so it’s important to understand how you can learn from them. Employers tend to only recognize the fault of the termed employee but there is always something that you could or should have done differently to avoid the termination.

Always ask yourself the following questions after you term and employee:

1. Why am I letting this person go? What did they do or what did they not do?
2. Where there any signs in the beginning that I missed from either the hiring process or the introductory period?
3. Did I properly educate the employee on how to complete their tasks properly to meet company expectations?
4. Did I avoid counseling the employee to help create action plans for improvement because I “didn’t have time”?
5. What should I do differently next time?

The harsh reality is that people repeat behaviors until they understand how their behaviors should be changed. Employers must understand and accept responsibility when employees are failing at their job. Take the time to ask these questions before you get to the point of no return. If you fail to do this, you will continue repeating the process.

Do Your Employees Love their Job?

The reality is that most employees aren’t loyal and enthusiastic about their position with your company. Why? Well they’d like to be but they really need you to practice the following in order for them to feel happy about their job:

1. Get the Right People on the Bus! Your team wants nothing more than to have good co-workers that they can depend on that share the same vision as them. Many employees are constantly frustrated with one or more co-workers who barely contribute resulting in everyone else having to pick up their slack. When all the right people are on the team tasks and processes are completed with ease and growth is constant.
2. Cross Train! Employees want and need to understand how other departments work together to achieve the same goal. The great thing about cross training is that employees learn new things on a continued basis allowing them to contribute more to the entire team. This is also handy if someone is out because someone else will likely know how to fill in and help cover their duties.
3. Communicate! Wow – this is a huge one and the sad part is that many companies fail at this. All employees want is to feel as if the “know” what is going on around them and with the company. You can and should share just about anything that happens in your company. You also want to communicate the bad news. Some companies just focus on the good as they’re worried about telling the team about the bad.
4. Provide Positive Leadership! Recognize staff excellence because it’s free and everyone appreciates it. Provide feedback on how employees are doing and help them by creating action plans to continue successful behavior and how to improve weaknesses. Mistakes will happen – use them as learning opportunities. Far too many leaders punish employees for honest mistakes and it incredibly de-motivating. It also puts a bad taste in their mouth and they start to lose respect for you as their boss. They expect you’ll be upset but they don’t need you to lash out and throw darts at them. It solves nothing.

Leadership Greatness

Being a leader is incredibly important because your team depends on you to help them create and obtain continued success. Anyone can be labeled a leader but true leaders invest in their team, guide and train them, as well as, commit to the vision and strive to constantly achieve greatness.


Tips on how to be a Great Leader:

1. Create a Vision for Growth and Make Sure its Known: Your team needs to know what your vision is so they can align their goals and contributions to support the vision. The reality is that many companies fail from not having a vision or by having a vision that has not been shared throughout the company.
2. Maintain 100% Integrity at All Times: As the leader you must stick to your vision and core values. Failure to do so will result in holding back the company and your team. You must stand up for your self, your team and the company at all times. Your team will respect and honor you.
3. Be the Ultimate Resource: Your team needs to know that they can depend on you. If you don’t know the answer then they will expect you to guide them to the answer. Make sure you know your stuff. There’s nothing worse than having a leader who you can’t depend on or look to for answers.
4. Be 100% Committed: If you believe in something and know that the result will support your vision, show uncommon commitment. Expect positive results by turning disadvantages into advantages and by always looking for opportunities.
5. Make Your Team Feel like #1: Leaders are only leaders because of the people they have following and helping them achieve their ultimate vision. Commit to them as they commit to you. Find what they want to achieve and leverage that to help them grow into great team members. They will appreciate your support and know that your there for them which will result in 100% commitment from your team.

Pass the PEOs Please

By Harley Luplow, columnist

The last quarter of the year is a time when many businesses review, renew and modify their insurance and employee benefit plans. Health insurance premiums have dramatically increased for a number of area companies, and it's been a challenge to maintain current coverage without passing on costs to employees.

Of course, employers can shop around for a new health-care provider and absorb some of the cost increases themselves. But there is another option that may prove to be more optimal: entering into a co-employment agreement with a professional employment organization or PEO.

The co-employment relationship is one where a company's workers become employees-of-record with the PEO.

The working relationship between the company and its workers essentially remains the same but for payroll, tax and insurance matters that are managed for a fee by the PEO.

The PEO is able to reduce benefit costs because it has a larger number of employees and can negotiate better rates for health care and workers compensation insurance.

Beyond the cost savings on health and workers compensation premiums, a PEO can handle administration of payroll processing and tax payments, 401(k) plans, federal and state unemployment obligations, EEOC claims and other issues.

A PEO can also be effective for small and medium-sized businesses by lifting the traditional human resources burden off the administrative staff so it can focus on core business issues.

Liability risks are often minimized as the PEO will stay abreast of, and in compliance with, new worker safety, hiring/firing and tax issues that may be difficult for small business owners to track.

While each company's situation is unique, annual cost savings can range from $25,000 for a 20-person firm to $250,000 for firms with more than 100 workers.

From several experiences using PEOs at public and private firms, I was able to reduce costs substantially and really enjoyed the online access so our workers could administer their own payroll and benefits accounts.

With online access, workers can review federal and state withholding deductions, track vacation and sick day accruals, read over health benefit plan details and access and print out pay stubs.

This saved me and my staff countless hours, plus the workers felt more in control of their finances and benefits.

As with most important longer-term decisions, it pays to investigate and compare costs and employee features of PEOs.

The cost stabilization of utilizing a PEO allows companies to consider offering enriched employee benefits that can help retain and attract top performers.

While it may seem a bit different to have someone else manage your workers' payroll and benefits issues for you, it can truly pay dividends for your company and your staff.

And it's really nothing new, as the basic PEO concept of employee leasing started in the U.S. in the 1940s.

Harley Luplow (JD Indiana University & MBA Georgetown) is a local business consultant

City Sidewalks, Busy Sidewalks, Lots of Stress in the Air ...

Wait a minute, that's not the right lyric, is it? But it may be a more realistic sentiment for your workers. Millions of Americans experience increased stress levels around the holidays. Stress is not only a health risk; it's also a safety risk. Stressed-out workers are more likely to have accidents.

Along with the decorations, shopping, and celebrations during the holiday season comes a heightened concern for safety. All the activities, partying, driving, and stress at this time of year can increase the risk of accidents. So although OSHA doesn't require it, providing holiday safety-awareness training would certainly be an excellent idea.

With all the hubbub during the holidays, some of your workers might be distracted on the job. They might be thinking about holiday plans and preparations instead of focusing on their work, and that could lead to carelessness and accidents. Other employees might not be getting as much sleep as usual, what with parties, shopping, and other after-work holiday activities. This means they might come to work tired, or even a little hung over, and that could be dangerous, too.

Be on guard during the holiday season by practicing a little extra supervision and giving additional safety reminders. Here are some simple ways your employees can manage holiday stress and still keep safe and enjoy the season:

• Plan. The earlier they make arrangements for parties, presents, travel, and so on, the less pressure they'll feel.
• Scale back. Cut back on or eliminate one stressful part of the holiday season. They don't have to do it all!
• Ask, don't guess. Ask people what they want for presents. Think of all the time and effort they'll save—and they'll be able to give just the right thing.
• Don't skip meals. Getting proper nutrition when they're on the run is essential for avoiding headaches and keeping their energy up.
• Stick to normal sleeping and waking times. Lack of sleep can add to stress and tension.
• Drink in moderation. Sip alcoholic beverages slowly. Alternate nonalcoholic beverages, such as soda or water, with alcohol.  

White House Fact Sheet

Although details of the agreement have yet to be released, its major components, as described in a Fact Sheet released by the White House, are as follows:

• Current income tax rates would be retained for two years for everyone. Presumably, current law’s favorable tax treatment of long-term capital gains and qualified dividend income would be retained as well.
• A two year alternative minimum tax (AMT) “patch,” which would prevent exemption amounts for individuals from dropping and allow personal credits to offset AMT.
• Retention of “key tax cuts” for working families (earned income tax credit, child tax credit, American Opportunity Tax Credit).
• Allowing businesses to write off 100% of their equipment and machinery purchases during 2011.
• A two-year extension of the R&D tax credit and other tax incentives to support business expansion. (It is not clear at this point whether the bipartisan agreement will extend all of the business and individual tax breaks that expired at the end of 2009.)
• Reducing the workers’ share of Social Security tax for 2011 from 6.20% to 4.20%.
• Extending unemployment benefits for 13 months.

Reportedly, the bipartisan agreement also would reinstate the estate tax with a $5 million exemption amount and a 35% top tax rate.