How To Create The Perfect Benefits Package For Your SME

Attracting and retaining staff is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses and organisations. Recruiting staff is time consuming and expensive and a settled staff line-up means more productivity and continuity as opposed to interruptions and slow-downs caused by gaps in the workforce and the time taken to replace them.

Along with a competitive salary, an attractive and flexible benefits package is a major driver in attracting and keeping staff. Indeed, some 60% of employees say the benefits package heavily influences their decision to join and then stay with a given company or organisation.

Once you’ve got quality staff in place, you must look to keep them.

How to choose what benefits to offer

Much may depend on the types of employee you’re recruiting and certain benefits will appeal to people in different age ranges.

Offering flexible hours with the option to work from home could be worthwhile if you find flexibility is a barrier to attracting the right staff. Employees with young children may also find flexible working a key attraction

It’s important to offer benefits that are appropriate to your staff and, ideally, serve as an incentive to improve their performance as well help to retain them in your organization.

It’s also worth looking at your rivals too and seeing what your up against but, in general, some of the most popular employee benefits to consider are:

Pensions

A good scheme is a sound option for both younger and (especially) older employees. It’s compulsory for many firms to have some sort of offering but smaller firms might want to look to match this and offer something a little bit better than the mere basic.

Company car

Although taxed as a benefit in kind, it’s still a popular choice. Perhaps subsidised help with learning to drive would appeal to some employees – or the carrot of a company car would at least encourage new recruits to get on with passing their tests.

Healthcare

Various benefits could be offered under this heading such as health screening, dental cover and private medical insurance.

Shares

A great way of enhancing loyalty as the employee feels more connected to the business with a ‘stake’ in it, and it may make them feel extra incentive to perform well.

Gym membership

Encourages employees to be healthy, and shows you’re interested in their well-being outside of the office.

Childcare benefits

Can remove a major obstacle for employees facing childcare costs while they work.

Season ticket loan

Helps employees buy cheaper travel as opposed to purchasing weekly or monthly passes.

Flexible working

Popular with employees with families, this can include job sharing options, working from home days and variable start and finish times.

The benefits of benefits

While you’ll inevitably weigh up the costs of providing fixed or flexible benefits packages, it’s also worth considering the costs of not offering one – or a very limited one.

It’s clear that, if you get it right, a good benefits package helps with both recruiting and retaining staff, and so is a sound investment in your business from an operational point of view. Less money is spent on recruiting and training with a more stable workforce, and benefits can sometimes replace a salary rise.

For example, some employees would happily take a lower salary if they could work from home part or all of the time to avoid the daily commute. This run down of how a benefits package helps the employer offers food for thought.

The intangible benefits to you of offering a benefits package can include; parity with competitors, improvement of staff wellbeing and the meeting pensions regulations before they are imposed.

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thinkbusiness

Gilligan Meats at “I Believe” in CHQ

As part of “I believe“, Ulster Bank has given a stand to their clients to sample the Christmas atmosphere, sell and make the public aware of their offerings.

Over the next weeks you can visit them at the Food and Craft market. On Wednesday 9 December it is the turn of Gilligan Meats

Gilligan Meats

Gilligan Meats is one of the few family owned and run, farming and butcher operations in the country. The company comprises of a dual partnership between father and son, Padraic and Alan Gilligan who look after everything from growing the crops to rearing all the livestock to processing the meat and finally selling the products in their newly developed onsite shop. Gilligan meats provide a complete service from farm to fork.

Visit them at the fair or visit their website.

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5 Mistakes that Leave Clients Unsatisfied

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Modern advertisement techniques abound on the Internet, television, radio, and everywhere else you turn your eye and ear. For the most part, however, the focus seems to be entirely on how to get new customers rather than on how to retain old ones. Both are valid, in fact necessary, goals. These two twin goals ought be the two legs that your business walks on, the two indispensable wings without which it could not fly. Since keeping existing customers satisfied seems to be unduly under-emphasized, we shall endeavor here to point out five mistakes businesses make that result in customer loss.

 

Poor Customer Service

The number one key to customer retention is excellent customer service. If you continually frustrate your clients and ruin your relationships with them, you cannot expect to long retain them.

Only one percent of customer loss occurs because customers have passed away, three percent because they have moved away, and nine percent because the prospect of lower prices has lured them away. An astounding 68% of customers who chose to take their business elsewhere did it because they felt ignored or mistreated by the staff.

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Comfortable Atmosphere

Ambience is important for clients to subconsciously make a decision about you and your company. First impression can start with having an atmosphere in the office that is comfortable. If you want to be lavish then the direction you can go is to purchase some cheap modern office furniture. But, if you are on a budget you can always find some cheap office furniture that expresses class and practicality. What other companies have started doing is having window walls to create an atmosphere of trust, which can go a long way for clients.

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Poor Communication

Though partly related to the above point, poor communication is also a broader concept. It extends, for example, to misleading advertisements that make special deals only seem worth it until the you read the fine print. It involves not listening and attempting to understand customer complaints and questions. It takes into account the failure to inform your customers of pertinent information and the inability to converse with them about your services/products in other than a specialized lingo that most people don’t speak.

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Lack of Reward for Loyalty

While discounts and deals to reward new customers abound, there is often little or no benefit to be gained from customer loyalty. Perhaps this is why the average business will lose half of its total customer base within a three-year period. New clients keep coming in for the special treatment but then quickly disappear once the honeymoon is over.

The best way to stop this “rotating door” is to show your existing customers that you appreciate them. Reward them for their loyalty, and they will reward you by conducting friend-to-friend, word-of-mouth promotion of your business. They will do it without pay- the cheapest form of advertisement in existence! Add to that the fact that it is simply cheaper to retain a customer than to pay for expensive ads to bring in a new one, and you can see how much sense it makes to give deals to your regular clients. If you don’t reward long-term customers, that may be one reason why you don’t have very many.

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Inconsistency

Sudden changes in your prices, product sizes, or service policies ought be the exception rather than the rule. If customers don’t know what to expect out of you, they may choose the competition simply because it is a known, stable quantity. The fear of being hit with hidden fees and adversely affected by new rules is very real to many customers. You need to build a reputation of trustworthiness and tend to make changes small and incremental.

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Too-Frequent Staff Replacements

While vacancies occur and the need to fire a poor employee will inevitably arise at some point, you should understand that many clients develop relationships with your staff. They may come to your establishment because of who works there just as much as because of other factors. Another aspect of this is that, if you mistreat employees and cause them to constantly quit, your reputation in the community will be hurt.

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Bizimply Wins the Web Summit 2015

Dublin-based tech startup Bizimply is delighted to announce that it is the winner of both of the top startup prizes at this year’s Web Summit! The company was awarded first prize in the 2015 ESB Spark of Genius Award on the Marketing Stage at midday, before being announced the overall winner of the Audi Pitch Competition on the main Centre Stage later in the afternoon on Thursday 5th November – the final day of the Web Summit.

This is the first time that the same company has won both of these accolades, marking Bizimply out as one of the world’s hottest tech startups.

Bizimply is a cloud-based software-as-a-service company, providing workforce management software to businesses with hourly paid employees. Bizimply was founded by Gerard Forde (Cork), Norman Hewson (Wicklow) and Mikey Cannon (Galway). The company’s suite of tools allows customers to manage their employee scheduling and time & attendance, all within one easy-to-use interface, reducing time spent by management on these tasks from hours to minutes, leaving these managers free to focus on growing their business out on the shop floor, rather than being stuck in an office working on admin.

Having come out of beta at the end of 2014, Bizimply is now used at hundreds of locations across 11 countries in restaurants, cafés, bars, hotels and retailers, as well as businesses in the childcare, manufacturing, beauty and healthcare sectors. The company is now set to scale, focusing on sales into the UK and US markets over the next 12-18 months.

Lear more here.

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Breaking Down Business Processes to Maximize Efficiency

If you want to maximize efficiency in your business, you must take two big steps. The first step involves identifying the business processes you use to conduct your business. As an experiment you should monitor everything your business does for one month. How do you collect sales reports? What systems do you use to pay your employees? Where do you store tax records?

Once you have identified the depths of your processes, you must then analyze them to figure out how you can improve them. Try to think of all the time you could save by switching your business processes around to use different types of software. Your business would benefit greatly from new software such as workflow software. You might also consider using business process software.

Consider these tips for improving business processes for maximum efficiency in your business.

Workflow Technology for Better Communication

Have you ever assigned more than one employee to complete the same task? How much time and money did you waste by paying the second employee? Workflow technology can help your business stay organized. Everyone can figure out which projects they should be working on. The interactive nature of workflow software allows for easy and thorough communication between management and employees. Your productivity in the workplace will increase to levels you thought were impossible.

This software also helps you to communicate better with your customers. Once you make the initial sale, your goal is to bring that customer back again. Workflow technology helps you store vital information about a customer. You’ll know their buying habits, their contact information, and even their birthdays. People will love to buy from you if you remember their birthday.

Business Process Management Software

Have you figured out how much time you spend doing paperwork? What could you do with all that extra time? You could save yourself more than an hour each day with the help of business process management software. That pesky paperwork slows you down from contacting your customers and communicating with your employees. It’s time to let the modern software take care of the tedious tasks people used to do on a regular basis.

You’ll be amazed at the speed and ease of the paperwork. Business process management software can help you organize all the legal and financial aspects of your business in one convenient place. You’ll never lose track of those vital tax records again. Better organization will always lead to a more productive working environment for managers and employees. Let the computers do your paperwork so that you can spend your time on more profitable assignments and projects.

Emphasize Teamwork

Your employees might often forget that they work as part of a team. Even if they have individual sales goals, they should always be looking to help a fellow employee make their sales. There can be a lot of competition for commission checks and bonuses, but a helpful team member will be well-respected at work. Teamwork helps people communicate more effectively, and it provides motivation for everyone to do their best. Nobody wants to be the weak link on a team.

The employees could take turns learning and performing all the different operations at your company. An employee could run the business process management software one week and the workflow software the next week. Alternate their roles between customer-facing duties and administrative duties. This knowledge will help them function better as part of the team. Every team member should know each requirement of each process in your company. You’ll be able to find out where the next manager comes from when you cross-train everyone for success.

Consider New Technology

In addition to the new software for workflow and business processes, you could also implement other technology for your company. Work processes become much easier with newer computers at your disposal. You’ll be surprised at how much your current computer slows you down when you run your paperwork through the new computers. Old technology probably costs your company more time and money than you realize.

You can always find deals on the latest computers and smartphones. You’ll stay connected with customers and employees. Connectivity boosts productivity. Your processes at work will run more smoothly when everyone is on the same page. And you won’t have to sacrifice customer service for the sake of making more sales. Sales will increase naturally thanks to a more efficient business. So what are you waiting for? Analyze your processes today to see how you can take your business to new heights.

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thinkbusiness

Excellent Young Farmer event at Corrin Centre Fermoy

The event was facilitated by Katherine O’Leary of the Irish Farmers Journal. Panelists were Anne-Marie Butler (Ulster Bank), Alan Jagoe (dairy farmer, President of CEJA 2015-2017), Ed Donovan (dairy new entrant), Brendan Horan (Teagasc Moorepark) and Patrick Ryan (pig farmer).

Next generation

Katherine O’Leary spoke about the enthusiasm of youth and how she personally had experienced the process of commencing hand over of the reins to the next generation. Understanding on both sides will be required in this circumstance and sometimes compromise is not the answer. What really came across was the need for certainty around delegation – 2 people can’t decide where the cows go today – every day!

Farms country wide

Anne Marie Butler of Ulster Bank has responsibility for the 26 counties and spends her day on farms country wide. She offered the benefit of her experience with family farms and the need for structured meetings – example given of the family meeting that was held every Friday – and ended in a row – every Friday!! Formal meetings are critical to the success of family farms. She also spoke of the need to have experience milking cows and to represent yourself well to the Bank eg “I don’t like milking cows on a Sunday – robot can do it!!”

Expansion

Alan Jagoe of Macra gave us some of their expansion at home on the dairy farm. He emphasised the need for time management and also referred to the importance of quality of life. A simple example was how he tries to finish at 11am on a Sunday to spend time with his young family. Also, the importance of cash management in a changing situation was obvious – they have recently changed to concentrate on cows and through gentle persuasion, they no longer have cattle – all bull calves are sold by Patrick’s day to simplify the system at home.

Returning home to the farm

Ed Donovan is the father of 2 small girls and told us how he completed an agricultural science degree, worked in the construction industry for some time with 6 employees, worked as a branch manager in Goldcrop for 5 years, and decided to return home to farm in 2013. They had a tillage farm at home but dairying was the only sustainable option. His main word of advise was to get a contractor in if completing a development as Edward and his dad did a lot of the work themselves- tiring when trying to establish a dairy herd.

Learning from your peers

Brendan Horan of Teagasc spoke of keeping things simple and learning from your peers. The importance of going away to learn from another farm was emphasised – be it locally or abroad doesn’t really matter but it is important to broaden experience.

Setting up the farm well

Patrick Ryan is both a pig farmer and dairy farmer. He spoke of how the farm was well set up at home when he started farming and how that was a great help. He is maxed out at the number of cows he has at moment and the pigs offered him a chance to expand. He spoke of how the best laid plans can fall by the wayside eg when someone gets sick and you have to spend time re-training a new staff member – the importance of maximising the output of every staff member is critical. Pat also reassured us that while you won’t get everything right, there are the days you walk down the yard and see the things that are right!

Break out session

The seminar concluded with a break out into 4 groups to allow for feed back – the most common theme was the need to experience different situations and farming methods if at all possible before returning full time to farm. It is appreciated that this is not always possible – however it does offer benefits if it can be availed of.

Ulster Bank

The seminar was closed by Pat Horgan Area Director who thanked all present and emphasised how Ulster Bank punch above their weight in the young farmer sector with 25% of the market. Well worth attending and a very enjoyable event!

Find out more

If you want to find out what Ulster Bank has to offer, click here.

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thinkbusiness

The 3 Risks of Not Making Your E-Commerce Site Secure

According to the FBI, preventing computer fraud, network intrusions and identify theft are the key priorities of their Cyber Crime branch. Cyber-crime is on the rise as more consumers rely on the Internet and mobile technology to do things like shopping, banking and investing. As illustrated below, insecure e-commerce sites will result in serious risks and financial losses.

Vulnerability to Hackers

Everyone is aware that websites, networks and email accounts are vulnerable to hacking attacks. However, more and more consumers are primarily accessing the Internet through their smart phones. As a result, hackers are taking advantage of the lack of mobile security technology standards to target smart phones. According to Computer Weekly, Blue Coat Systems’ research shows that mobile attacks are becoming more common and malicious. For example, one of the most infamously popular methods is cyber-blackmail, when mobile ransomware penetrates and takes over a user’s phone. In order to unlock their phone, the user is required to pay money or divulge personal information. In addition to this, spyware is the second most popular malware program. After it surreptitiously installs itself on the user’s phone, spyware programs will monitor online habits, behaviors and preferences. Therefore, online consumers are naturally apprehensive about e-commerce sites that appear suspicious. When they arrive at the check-out page, they may not end up purchasing because they aren’t sure if credit card information will be safe. The best way to overcome this problem is through having well-recognized security certifications that will dispel any consumer concerns over financial and identity theft. For example, a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) will encrypt consumer information the moment it’s entered on the website. In order to raise consumer awareness, be sure to provide visual clues and colored icons that alert online consumers when they are in a secure or insure part of the website.

Data Breaches

According to technology magazine Wired, mobile giant T-Mobile recently suffered one of the biggest data breaches in business history. T-Mobile had contracted with credit rating agency Experian to perform credit checks on potential customers. However, savvy hackers stole the personal information of approximately 15 million people. This included basic information, such as names and birthdays, and encrypted sensitive information, such as social security and drivers’ license numbers. While there was no financial or banking information, there is still plenty of information for cyber-criminal to commit identity fraud. Online identity theft is the biggest risk of unsecure e-commerce sites. Consider the fact that online consumers must submit both personal and financial information in order to make a purchase. Therefore, an unsecure site is a gold mine for unscrupulous hackers to target. After stealing the personal data, they can sell every victim’s personal information for anywhere from 50 to 100 dollars through underground, online black markets. Once dishonest individuals obtain this information, they can do anything from open a mortgage to apply for credit cards.

Business Interruptions 

As mentioned above, hackers that breach websites can steal information for personal gain. However, as a result of this, customers and the public will lose confidence in the company. For example, in just one night, T-Mobile lost the confidence of 15 million current and potential customers. Assuredly, there will be millions of potential customers who will avoid doing business with T-Mobile in the future. Consequently, insecure e-commerce sites may result in a serious PR debacle that will need the expert assistance of a costly reputation management to restore consumer and investor confidence. 

Keep in mind that a massive data breach or loss of consumer confidence over insecure websites will disrupt business, drive customers away and reduce revenue. There may be other unforeseen financial costs, such as legal fees or IPR lawsuits. There may also be other problems, such as strained partner relationships or government regulatory body investigations.

In summary, an insecure e-commerce site is a recipe for PR, operational and financial disaster. Companies can minimize these risks through following standard online security protocols, investing in cutting edge security programs and incorporating online risk management into executive strategic planning.

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Starting A Business Abroad

The bureaucracy associated with starting a business abroad is shocking and is enough to deter even the most confident entrepreneur. European countries such as France, where many Brits now call home, is regarded as a red tape jungle and can be quite difficult to establish a business due to the amount of paperwork involved. However, having said that, Europe is traditionally a country of small businesses and individual traders where the economic philosophy actually encourages and even nurtures their creation.

Things to Consider

It’s often wise to work for someone else in the same line of business in order to gain experience, rather than jump in at the deep end. Always thoroughly investigate an existing or proposed business before investing any money. As any expert can tell you, an overseas business venture is not for amateur entrepreneurs, particularly amateurs who don’t speak the language! You should also take into consideration the culture of your host country and the prospect of increased business travel and time away from family and friends.

Buying an Existing Business

It’s much easier to buy an existing business abroad than start a new one. The paperwork for taking over an existing business is also simpler although still complex. If you plan to buy a business, obtain an independent valuation and employ an accountant to audit the books. Never sign anything you don’t understand completely; even if you think you understand it, you should still obtain unbiased professional advice.

Establishing your Business

Most people are far too optimistic about the prospects of a new business abroad and over-estimate income levels. Be realistic or even pessimistic when estimating your income. While hoping for the best you should plan for the worst and have sufficient funds to last until you’re established. New projects are rarely if ever completed within budget and you need to ensure that you have sufficient working capital and can survive until a business takes off.

Location

The location for a business is even more important than the location for a home. Depending on the type of business, you may need access to major air, road and rail links or be located in a popular tourist area. Local plans regarding communications, industry and major building developments, e.g. housing complexes and new shopping, may also be important.

Employees

Hiring employees shouldn’t be taken lightly abroad and must be taken into account before starting a business. In France for example, you enter into an employment contract under French labour law and employees enjoy extensive rights. It’s also very expensive to hire employees, as you must pay 40 to 60% of salaries in social security contributions. You may even want to give preference to those who speak English depending on the type of business you intend to own.

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