Lead Generation with Marketing Automation

Are you spending too much time and money chasing your big lead instead of focusing on the fundamentals? Well! The majority of the marketers fail to focus on the basic practices that ensure success. As businesses gain access to a larger amount of customer data and customers have more options for services and products, marketing strategies have become more complex. However, technology driven marketing plan can certainly increase your lead generation.

One such technology that is transforming the marketing realm is the use of marketing automation.  According to Salesforce, 2015, marketing automation will be one of the most piloted marketing technologies. The solution helps you to focus on your customers and better understand which marketing programs actually work and which does not. In short, marketing automation helps your business manages your lead base.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is software and tactics to nurture prospects, convert them into customers and finally turn these regulars into delighted customers through personalised and behaviour-trigger content. The strategy typically generates significant revenue for the companies and ultimately provides an excellent return on investment.

Why marketing Automation for your Business?

Track Consumers Interaction with Brand

Marketing automation platform enables you to track how the prospective interact with your brand. It could be in the forms of email clicks, content downloads or website clicks. These digital indications give you supreme insights into your prospect’s readiness to buy so that you are ready to deliver timely marketing message to accelerate the buyer’s decision making process.

Accelerate your Sales Funnel

As you can track engagement and behaviour of the visitors through pre-and-post buying process, you can prepare your campaign accordingly that can build trust and minimise sales resistance.

Build Stronger Relationships with your Audience

Marketing automation helps to accumulate data that can make each communication personal. It also provides deployment tools to reach your prospects in every major channel.

What are the Fundamental Elements that Drive Results?

Marketing automation program can help your company produce enormous leads and boost revenue. It lets you know when your leads are ready for a call from sales… you can know what else your system needs to be able to do. Here’s how the fundamental elements help to accomplish all your goals…

Email Marketing

60 percent of consumers read marketing emails. It has been observed that email can promote a purchase 3x times more than any social media. However, you need a strong marketing strategy to make the most of it.

  • List Segmentation

Segmenting your audience will make the impact of delivering the right message to the right person stronger.

  • Designing the Email Campaign

A professional looking email campaign including custom email authentication, SPAM analysis, and automated CAN-SPAM compliance enables you to make the most of your email marketing efforts.

  • Personalised Content

Making messages relevant to the unique needs of each recipient is key to effective content marketing and lead nurturing strategy.

Landing Page

An optimized email campaign send leads to landing page where they provide contact information in exchange for valuable and relevant content.

  • Page Design

Build and activate professional and attractive forms in minutes.

  • Profiling

Allow your visitors to bypass the fields they had to fill in the past and provide you with valuable additional information. This increases the conversion rates and helps you to learn more about your prospects.

  • Routing and Automation

Make your leads automatically move through sales cycle and into nurture automated workflow by creating rules and dependencies.

Website Tracking

Buyers are almost 70% through their buying process before they engage with a sales representative. You need to know what additional you can offer to add value to your conversation

  • Visitors Activity Tracking

Track your visitors activities including when they visit your site and what do they download. Make a comprehensive report of email response, website visits, and registration or form impressions.

  • Identification of Anonymous Visitors

Discover the companies of unidentified site visitors and expose potential leads.

  • Tracking Custom Link

Website activity sourced from specific efforts and related to third-party websites can be tracked by creating custom links. The activities include pay-per click programs, shared links or social media efforts.

Lead Scoring

At this stage you have to determine lead quality and prioritise them according to their interests in your products and demographic characteristics.

  • Develop Scoring Model

Scoring model is required to automatically score prospects based on their behaviour and demographic characteristics in response to marketing plan and online activities.

Increase Visibility

Connect the lead score model with the CRM. This will provide the sales team with activity score to report on engaged prospects.

A Few More Activities to Follow

Incorporation of CRM

Assimilation of marketing automation and CRM platform is important in delivering sales intelligence the sales representatives require to improve their conversations and follow-up work.

Integrate Web Events Platforms

Showcase your expertise, engage your audience and generate more quality leads with online events.

A/B Testing

Knowing what resonates with your target audience beforehand can ensure your emails; landing pages and forms are optimised for conversions.

Social Media Marketing

As the majority of the current and prospective customers spend a lot of time on social media, it is easy to educate and engage them. Share your messages, discover new audience, generate leads and increase sales through social media tools.

According to Nucleus Research, 2014, marketing automation drives 14.5 percent increase in sales productivity and 12.2 percent reduction in marketing overhead. The biggest benefit of marketing automation is its ability to generate more and better quality leads.

The post Lead Generation with Marketing Automation appeared first on Small Business Can.

12 Tips Every Budding Entrepreneur Needs To Know

The world has seen a lot of entrepreneurial activity over the last two decade. Start-ups have turned into billion dollar enterprises and this can be attributed to new technology and funding from angel investors. If you have the right idea and a strong business plan, it is worth taking the risk and walking the entrepreneurial path.  While most entrepreneurs walk the less walked path, it is important to follow a few basics of the game. Here in this brief write-up we shall discuss 12 tips that every budding entrepreneur needs to know.

1. Do Not Expect Overnight Success – Most entrepreneurs start off with big expectations and when results don’t come by in quick time they lose the zeal to succeed. There is no time frame for success in business and what you should initially focus on is incremental growth. Monetary success isn’t easy to come by and you need to wait for your time.

2. Take Risks – Ability to take risks is a part of being an entrepreneur and this is what takes small start-ups on a long journey towards success. It is a thrilling experience when one of your decisions pays off well. However you need to make well-calculated moves combine them with your instincts.

3. Learning Never Stops – As an entrepreneur you need to learn every day. You need to constantly keep updated with the latest trends in the market and know customer expectations. Most of your knowledge would come during hours of crisis. Also knowledge often comes from unexpected quarters and you should never shut your eyes and ears to even the weirdest of suggestion.

4. Brand Yourself – One of your initially goals is to create a strong brand for yourself. You need to work towards drawing a line between you and your competitors. In the initial days brand image is all that should focus on. A strong brand image allows you to earn customer loyalty.

5. Pick Up Emailing Skills – You would have to write dozens of emails while starting your business and you need to pick up the skill of writing an email. Keep it short and sweet as a potential investor may not have the time to read your complete story.

6. Be Willing To Innovate – Don’t spend your time reinventing the wheel. As an entrepreneur you should strive to introduce new products and solutions in the market. Always be willing to look beyond the obvious.

7. Develop Business Plan – It is famously said “It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” Having a mere idea won’t take you the distance. You need to develop a strong business plant around the idea to attract investment.

8. Network Constantly – In today’s world of business networking is as important as doing business. You need to network in all directions upwards with people who have achieved success; downwards with the green horns and horizontally with your peers.

9. Use Social Media – There is no better way to network and promote your business than the social media. LinkedIn is a must for every entrepreneur to network within the industry. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. allow you to reach out to your potential customers.

10. Learn To Disconnect – Most budding entrepreneurs start with a flash and then burn out. You need to learn the art of disconnecting from work. Your brain needs rest and only a relaxed brain can afford to think.

11. Listen To Others – You may be passionate about your ideas but never let your emotions take charge of decision making. Listen to what your friends, employees and others have to say before taking a decision.

12. And Don’t Listen – You would be flooded with advice, many of them unsolicited. Don’t let everything you hear influence your decision. Analyze the pros and cons of your decision and learn to trust your gut.

These tips would help you scale your way up the ladder and turn your small business into a brand. It is however very important for you to enjoy what you are doing and always listen to your heart. And most importantly put all efforts into the business and leave no room for complacency. “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” Want to read more such 10 or 12 awesome list of things? Then check out top 10 hq.

The post 12 Tips Every Budding Entrepreneur Needs To Know appeared first on Small Business Can.

How to Spice Up Monthly Company Meetings

Employers often look for ways to spice up company meetings. Making these regular business sessions more interesting and engaging for participants can inspire creative new ideas. The level of enthusiasm an office demonstrates also contributes to morale.

Below are seven ways to generate more productive meetings every month.

  1. Begin with a smile

While employees wait for everyone to arrive at the meeting, don’t waste potentially useful time. The person opening the monthly meeting should go around the room and ask each person already in attendance to share a clean humorous story or joke with the group. The person who comes up with the most, i.e. drops out of this game last, receives a surprise employee recognition certificate for a free meal or other small gift at the end of the meeting.

This type of informal exercise holds value because (1) it places everyone in a better mindset at the beginning of the meeting, and (2) the process of laughter relieves tension in the room and produces a physical state of greater relaxation and awareness, mixed with camaraderie. Although these benefits seem rather subtle, they may lend surprising strengths to a subsequent discussion.

  1. Stop for brief physical activity

If the speaker notices energy flagging among those in attendance during the meeting, or eyelids sagging, allow the speaker to call a brief spontaneous two minute halt to the proceedings to lead a simply physical activity session. This can be as simple as standing and stretching upwards or involve something more complex, such as a brief follow-the-leader session or a participatory Tai Chi exercise demonstration. No one should suffer criticism for their wandering attention; keep things upbeat.

People in a company maintain different “biological clocks.” Some employees find themselves operating at peak efficiency later in the day while others maintain naturally higher levels of energy in the morning. The goal of this strategy remains simple: bring everybody’s attention back to what is going on around them in their immediate environment. When all group members focus again on the subject at hand, resume the meeting.

  1. Try to keep meetings under an hour

Although not always possible, it makes sense to try and limit the duration of regular monthly company meetings to as brief a period of time as possible. An ideal time may be 45 minutes, if regular meetings occur between some of those in attendance on other days. A brief, highly productive session trumps a drawn-out proceeding any time.

  1. A standing leader

For the same reason that elementary school teachers usually stand when addressing young children, it makes sense for the person leading the discussion to adopt a standing position. This posture infuses more energy into the group than a sitting leader offers. Additionally, by standing, the speaker usually obtains better eye contact with everyone in the room.

  1. Try to elicit full participation

In order to maximize contributions at the meeting, the person leading the discussion should set a goal of achieving full participation. Some employees may feel shy about addressing the group; the leader of the discussion should gently seek to draw out their opinions and views, also. Remote employees should still be able to participate fully through tools like video conferencing. By encouraging full participation, the meeting’s organizer can enhance a sense of company inclusion and joint commitment.

  1. Provide snacks and beverages

A regular monthly meeting will proceed better when the employer makes certain that participants can munch on snacks and beverages during the session. The presence of these items may offer extra comfort to some employees, for instance by preventing anyone from becoming thirsty. However, the sharing of these items also denotes a welcoming environment; on a subconscious level, it lets employees know the company appreciates them.

  1. Switch seats after breaks

Some experts also suggest that if a meeting proceeds long enough for breaks to be conducted, then everyone should receive encouragement to switch seats upon returning to business. The simple act of physically moving from one position to another in a room can place participants in the mode of viewing events from a fresh perspective. This process may assist the course of the meeting. It can also offer new, unexpected insights.

The post How to Spice Up Monthly Company Meetings appeared first on Small Business Can.

Protect Your Data: Could it Be Your Most Valuable Asset?

In 2015 Uber, the world’s largest taxi company owns no vehicles, Facebook the world’s most popular media owner creates no content, Alibaba the most valuable retailer has no inventory and Airbnb the world’s largest accommodation provider owns no real estate. This statement made me think about these companies and what, in the absence of tangible assets could their most valuable asset be? It’s simple; it’s in the millions of data records which each of these companies holds.

Reports of data breaches are all too common these days hitting some of the biggest names in business such as Sony, Target and Home Depot. Whilst the big brand names occupy the media headlines, business owners should no longer be complacent towards the value of the data within their business. It is no longer a case of if but when a business will suffer a security breach. It’s time for every business to start treating data as an asset. To today’s cyber criminal, data is the new cash!

Cyber Criminal Activity

Findings from the 2014 Gemalto Breach Level Index found that over 1 billion records were successfully intercepted by cyber criminals earning 2014 its name as the “Year of the Hack”. In comparison to 2013, this represented a 78% increase in the number of breach incidents. That equals 2.8 million records stolen every single day!!
As large corporate companies sit up and take note of the increasing threat, cyber criminals are recognising that small to medium sized enterprises are easier targets where online security tends to be weaker due to a lack of trained resource and robust security policies.

Recently Bitglass undertook an experiment geared towards understanding what happens to sensitive data once it has been stolen. In the experiment, a fake list of 1500 employees which included social security numbers, credit card numbers, addresses and phone numbers travelled the globe, landing in five different continents and 22 countries within two weeks.

The experiment offers insight into how stolen records from data breaches are shared, bought and then sold on the black market. The falsified data was placed on Dropbox as well as on seven Dark Web sites believed to be frequented by cyber criminals.

The result of the experiment found that within 12 days the data was:

  • Accessed from five continents – North America, Asia, Europe, Africa and South America
  • Accessed from 22 countries – United States, Brazil, Belgium, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Finland, the Maldives,
  • New Zealand, Canada, Norway, the Russian Federation, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Turkey
  • Accessed most often from Nigeria, Russia and Brazil
  • Viewed 1,081 times, with 47 unique downloads.

Treat every record within your business as if it has commercial value. It may look like a list of names and addresses but the underground hacker markets are thriving with counterfeit documents to further enable cyber criminals to then utilise the compromised data to commit online fraud and identity theft.

Protect Your Data

Simple Steps to Protect Your Data:

  • Manage email security and validate potential threats.
  • Enforce strict password policies and ensure that passwords change on a regular basis.
  • Manage privileged user accounts.
  • People can often be the weakest link. Invest in your people and train your employees.
  • Ensure that your software is up to date and that security patches are set up to automatically update.
  • Implement a robust records management policy and only store data for as long as it is required.

The post Protect Your Data: Could it Be Your Most Valuable Asset? appeared first on Small Business Can.

Cyber Security Tips: Stay Smart Against Cyber Hackers

When it comes to corporate cyber security attacks, the biggest threats originate from an unlikely and most of the time, unaware source—the employees.

According to a recent SolarWinds study, untrained employees are noted as the largest threat at federal agencies (53%). Furthermore, organizations without security awareness programs report security incidents costs to be four times higher than their peers. And as recent attacks have shown, recovering from the hack is no small cost.

Simply put, employee actions are one of the biggest threats when it comes to the fight against cyber hackers. Reasons range from lack of awareness, lack of training and lack of organizational security protocols. From sending emails to the wrong recipient to opening attachments from unknown senders, everyday employees add risk to their organization’s work and data. But the threats don’t just come from lack of email training either. Weak passwords are an additional risk, as more than one billion passwords are already stored in a Russian database.

The first step in the fight against cyber attacks is by having employees become aware of their actions. Below are SolarWinds’ 7 Simple Cyber Security Tips every employees should know and use in their daily work.

7-simple-cyber-security-tips

The post Cyber Security Tips: Stay Smart Against Cyber Hackers appeared first on Small Business Can.

Organize Your Business In 60 Seconds

Organize Your Business In 60 Seconds: Getting your business more organized can improve efficiency and reduce unnecessary overhead costs associated with archaic systems. Here are some simple yet highly impactful ways to start organizing your business in one minute or less:

Make your screen singular. If you leave windows on your computer screen to ensure you never miss an email, instant message or social media interaction, you’re adding unnecessary distraction to your day. In fact, workplace productivity studies conducted at Microsoft indicate that it takes about 15 minutes to reclaim focus to a task (especially one requiring concentration) just for quickly diverting your attention to another window on a computer screen.

Know where your time goes. Schedule “to do” lists with a purpose — including how much time you’ll devote to each task before finishing it, or moving to the next. Though even menial tasks are sometimes unavoidable, they zap you of mental energy, time and potential opportunity cost of not focusing on something else that stands to deliver a bigger benefit based on business goals. Evaluate how much time you’ll spend on each task on your list to ensure you don’t reach a point of diminishing returns — and hold yourself to it. Before starting any new task, set a timer on your computer. When it signals the time to put a task aside for another day, focus on when you’ll complete it, or re-evaluate its perceived importance altogether if it proves more of a time investment than its ultimately worth.

Bring integrity to your inbox. Jordan Weissman, writer for The Atlantic, estimates that workers spend a whopping 650 hours a year tending to business-related email, based on figures compiled by the McKinsey Global Institute. Minimize the amount of email waste by reserving your inbox for exactly that purpose. Before you start sifting through your inbox and firing off replies, organize it into appropriate folders — which may include business categories like “finance” or “operations,” or by relevance to a particular project or client.

Craft a happy-centric business culture. A 2012 study conducted by professors at the University of Warwick revealed that happiness actually boosts workplace productivity by more than 12 percent. In the study of 700 participants, some were shown a funny movie clip or treated to free chocolate, drinks and fruit. Others were questioned about sad events, like recent family tragedies. The study revealed that those whose moods were brought down in the study were indeed, less productive for the remainder of the day. “The driving force seems to be that happier workers use the time they have more effectively, increasing the pace at which they can work without sacrificing quality,” explain the authors. Know what your employees value, and implement such activities into their workday that deliver on what makes them happy, whether that means an on-site fitness program, the option to maintain flexible hours, or have lunch catered to their desk.

Minimalize your workspaces. Visual clutter in the form of files, stacks of papers and Post-it notes strewn about can create feelings of stress and anxiety. Take advantage of document management tools that offer customized solutions for your business, which may include digital storage, or off-site file management to make a space that makes employees feel more mentally free to create and produce.

Promote employee partnership. In the paper “European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2013” authors examined the best practices of three separate Irish companies known for innovation and engagement. The companies shared one common characteristic: A strong sense of social partnership among all employees. You can implement the same approach with basic shifts in workplace communication. For example, simply holding “town hall” style quarterly meetings with employees of all levels increases transparency, and feelings of inclusion. Invite employees to offer input on critical business processes and decisions. Empower employees to be accountable about their contributions, and the subsequent outcomes they present. The impact of such small changes can immediately improve the efficacy of all involved: When “managers gave more responsibility to employees, staff became more [conscientious] about quality standards and more engaged with fixing problems,” conclude the case study authors.

Author Bio
Denny Hammack has over 25 years of experihttpence working in the records management business for more than 25 years. He is currently the President of FileSolve, an industry-leading supplier File & Document Solutions.

The post Organize Your Business In 60 Seconds appeared first on Small Business Can.

What You Should Know As an Entrepreneur before Embarking On International Business

After most businesses become successful in their area of trade and in a particular locale, the entrepreneur usually seeks the next challenge. The next challenge is usually to grow beyond the borders and become a global business. Not everyone can manage to get into international business as seamlessly as they should, and to be fair, not every business is meant to be a global business.

The challenge in growing beyond the borders then becomes: how you can leverage your skills and current expertise into being a success in the global arena? After all, you don’t want to remain the biggest fish in a small pond. You want to become a success by embracing international commerce and availing your goods or services to the rest of the world.

Below are a few pointers or tips that you should consider if you want to run a successful global business.

  1. Develop a global mindset

Every entrepreneur has a particular temperament that has made them successful at what they do. At the same time, you have to be able to do some inner reflection to know that you have the right skill set and attitude to be able to operate on a global scale. You have to be able to differentiate how being a success in a local business differs, or is similar, from/to being a success on a global scale.

In other words, you need to have a global mindset or quickly learn how to think with a global mindset. But with all the different qualities and temperaments of successful global entrepreneurs and international expansion executives, they all have a few traits that are consistent. These include;

  • Self-awareness
  • Awareness and sensitivity to cross-cultural similarities and differences
  • An open and authentic attitude to the world
  • A need to engage with different cultures and do business under diverse conditions and circumstances
  • Being able to adapt quickly
  • An adventurous spirit with some international travel experience
  • Core business and life competencies

If you can genuinely say that you have these skills or that you will be ready to put in the work to achieve these skills, then you will most likely find a way to succeed in international business as well.

  1. Is your business ready for the global arena?

The next most important step after determining that you are ready for international business is to determine whether your business is well placed for international trade. One of the best ways to do this is to find out if you will be relevant on a global scale.

It may be best to have organic growth and test a particular market before jumping in with both feet. This means that you should have an international mindset, but have a local mindset in the countries where you will be operating.

For example, if your business has a product line that includes 20 different products that have been a success in your country, you should realize that it may not be so in a foreign country. The people in the foreign country may be used to choosing between one or two products only.

Other considerations include;

  • Do you have enough production capacity that can be committed to the new international markets?
  • Does your company have the financial resources to support the growth and expansion into new markets including administrative capacity, marketing, legal, import/export, customer care, etc.?
  • Does your company have the skill and expertise to dedicate staff, time and resources to the global expansion plan? Or can you acquire the same?
  1. Put in place the right team

After you ensure that your business is ready for expansion, then you will need a specialized team to ensure that your business will be a success in the global arena. Your most important goal, as you begin to put your global team together, should be to get the following skill sets as a priority:

  • An accountant with international credentials and experience: your accountant should especially have skills in accounting standards, taxation and currency trading. The accountant should be able to help you avoid overpaying taxes due to operating in two different jurisdictions and protect your cash flow from attrition due to international transactions including currency conversions.
  • A lawyer with international trade and commerce experience and with good networking skills: The lawyer will help you play hard ball when you need to while at the same time helping you remain within the confines of the law, as well as protecting you and your business from those who want to take advantage.
  • A savvy banker with international skills, who has put together, or used, different international financial vehicles: The banker can help you finance an export sale while protecting your investment and the banks at the same time, advise you on the risks of international transactions as well as protect you from them and help you structure competitive payment terms.
  • An expert in international logistics and experience in import-export and different government customs and tax regulations: A logistics expert is important in ensuring that goods move safely from the country of origin to the destination, negotiates with taxes and customs officials in foreign countries, organizes the safe shipping of goods while ensuring the correct goods are sent to the right place.

A seasoned logistics expert will help you use the path of least resistance while doing things legally. They should also minimize your risk and costs of doing international trade.

Other members of your international team will also be necessary, but the ones mentioned above will be crucial to get as soon as you are ready to begin planning your expansion.

Putting together such a team will definitely require a lot of resources and networking on your part, but if you succeed in putting together a good team, you will have more than halved most of the problems that would have been stumbling blocks and prevented you from succeeding in international business.

Author bio: Charlie Brown is a web developer and UI/UX specialist at http://remotedba.com/. He works at a Remote DBA Expert firm, having founded the same firm 9 years ago. He likes to share knowledge and points of view with other Oracle developers and consumers on platforms.

The post What You Should Know As an Entrepreneur before Embarking On International Business appeared first on Small Business Can.

Confidential Company Information – A Lesson from Game of Thrones!

Game of Thrones is arguably the biggest television series of all time with each season eagerly awaited. As such, it would have caused its broadcast network (HBO) some consternation when four brand new episodes were leaked online in early April before the episodes were due to air on TV.  This raises the question of confidentiality and how many companies will need to protect their valuable confidential company information to remain competitive and successful in their industries.

General Options

The main options open to HBO in this scenario, and any employer in general, are as follows:

  • Learning points on how the company can prevent the same from happening in the future.
  • Commence an investigative process and consider possible disciplinary sanction up to and including dismissal;

Prevention Better than the Cure

Employees of HBO will no doubt have very robust confidentiality clauses in their employment contracts which prohibit them from disclosing any information relating to the company and/or their products. Such confidentiality clauses act as a deterrent and mean that employees are less likely to disclose confidential information or data. In the event that an employee does disclose confidential information then an employer will have a clear policy in place to justify taking disciplinary measures up to and including dismissal. Having signed agreements for confidentiality is absolutely key in these cases, as the most basic response from any employee would be to plead ignorance of any wrongdoing “I didn’t know that I couldn’t”, “Nobody told me” etc.

A strong signed agreement will negate any such response and clearly show that the employee signed their understanding of a confidentiality agreement. If such clauses are outlined in the Employee Handbook, then it is again hugely important that an employer gets signed understanding of the company handbook returned from each employee. Ensuring the most up to date IT and Confidentiality policies available are in place should also be paramount if security of information is key to the business. Reviewing these policies regularly and updating them in light of any technological or relevant advancement should also be a proactive approach taken by the company. Remaining successful in any business area should always involve being proactive to change, instead of being reactive once an issue has arose.

Another avenue which employers should be interested in exploring is issuing “reminders” to employees in advance of any upcoming area likely to have risk of confidentiality issue. A lot can be said for simply holding a meeting with employees to advise them of what lays ahead and how the company envisions risks coming from this. Reminding such employees of the agreements they have made and how serious the company would view any breach of this would go as far as any method in protecting against a disclosure of private information. It would also be a good approach during this meeting for the company to flex their muscle in advising how robust their IT and Confidentiality policies are, which may act as a deterrent to any employee considering a breach.

Disciplinary Procedures

With these preventative steps, and a fact finding investigation completed beforehand, the employer can easily proceed to disciplinary procedures against the employee. Depending on the scale of the confidentiality breach and circumstances involved, such disciplinary proceedings may be viewed as Gross Misconduct in which case the employee should be suspended in light of the formal disciplinary proceedings. Previous precedent of how the company has dealt with confidentiality breaches would also have to be considered and followed again when applicable or possible.

Resignations

Employees who have resigned and are working out their notice period, as well as those who are in the final days of a fixed term position are naturally those most likely to be involved in a secure information breach. While this may seem unfair to suggest, it is one of the most common queries we HR Consultants receive with regards to confidentiality and resignation.

For simple and obvious reasons such employees are the most “at risk” to be involved as they are in a period of transition and the trust involved in the employment relationship can potentially be affected by an employee having one foot out the door. One way to approach this potential could be to discuss such concern informally at the acceptance of resignation meeting, or if the employer has heard through the grape vine that an employee is likely to breach confidentiality, a short letter could be issued to them after an exit interview to remind them of the agreement they had made. As the employment agreement ends once the person leaves the company, such agreements can be a lot more difficult to pursue as a matter of civil law. Therefore, a short letter reminding the exiting employee of the agreement, but also suggesting legal proceedings would have to be taken against the person should a breach come to light after they have left, would also go a long way to protecting the valuable information of the company, and ensuring the trust involved in the employment relationship holds strong both during and after the employer/employee relationship.

In addition, an employer may consider exhausting any Garden Leave clauses whereby the employee would not be required to attend for work for the duration of their notice period. Garden leave allows an employer to ensure the employment relationship subsists, thus ensuring the confidentiality agreements remain actionable, whilst an employee is out of work and cannot cause any further damage.

If you have any queries in respect of the above article then please do not hesitate to contact our 24 Hour Advice Service on 01 855 50 50.

The post Confidential Company Information – A Lesson from Game of Thrones! appeared first on Small Business Can.

How to Grow your Business: Financing vs. Bootstrapping

SMEs in the UK are borrowing more than ever to help startups and small businesses grow, but alternative means of finance are also gaining popularity.

This infographic looks at the most popular ways to finance a business in the UK, including a look at traditional financing vs. the “bootstrapping” method.

Growing Your Business - Financing vs Bootstrapping infographicCreated by County Finance Group.

 

 

The post How to Grow your Business: Financing vs. Bootstrapping appeared first on Small Business Can.