Business and Your Education

There isn’t a child in the world who hasn’t been asked the question, “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” And depending on their personal situation, external influences and experiences, their answer will change by the day. As we enter high school we become clearer about what drives us, fuels our spirit and motivates us to do better. The clock is ticking to choose a path for our lives, our careers and our futures. Entering college and choosing to complete your academic journey with a business degree always seems most desirable when we are looking to go into business for ourselves, climb the corporate ladder or just not sure about where we might be headed in life but still want to keep the most options open to ourselves. But as a small business owner, how does the integration of an individual’s educational focus and training impact her success—or does it?

There are those who believe if a student wants to succeed in the business world, then receiving an education in business is where she needs to begin her career. Her education in any subject matter will ultimately support her…

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Human Resource Management

Every organization has a human resource department of its own. Regardless of the number of employees or members of an organization, the organization survives—and thrives—because of the capabilities and performance of its people. As a small business owner you may not have an official HR Department, but as the owner of the company you are ultimately responsible; you may not even have employees. Neither of these situations releases you of the necessity of thinking and organizing your company’s activities to ensure the policies and procedures you implement along the way support your success.

Human Resource Management (HRM) implements and manages recruitment, training, career and organizational development initiatives within an organization. The aim of HRM is to maximize the production of an organization by maximizing the effectiveness of its employees while simultaneously improving the work life of employees and treating employees as integral resources. As a small business owner with no employees, are you scratching your head as to how this is even applicable to you? HRM focuses on promoting personal development, employee satisfaction and compliance with employment-related laws. Still confused? Good. The purpose behind this article is to help you understand as a one-person-shop how HRM is critical to your overall success. Following are a few perspectives normally used by HRM and how they translate into small business.

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Employee Training and Development

Employee development training is an essential part of the success of any company. Implementing specifically designed training programs to assist employees in keeping updated (as an example, with current technology) is part of any sound employee training program. It is also important for employers to identify those employees who have the ability to grow within the company and develop their skill sets to fill critical roles that will open in the future – also known as succession planning.

However, it is one thing to acknowledge employee training as vital and quite another to invest the time in developing a comprehensive training program into an already busy schedule.

A few preliminary steps a business owner or leader needs to take are identifying what needs or skills are required for each key position and understanding that the training ultimately enhances your business opportunities. A complete skills analysis to determine the real need for employee training will take care of this preliminary step. As a follow up, you will need to make sure the training opportunity you are providing will address the challenge you are targeting to solve and is, in fact, a basic training issue.

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Skills of a Successful Entrepreneur

So you want to go into business for yourself, do you? Well, there are a few skills every successful entrepreneur needs to either have himself or the resources (both monetary and human) available to him. We are not all born to entrepreneurship; and even if we grow up in an entrepreneurial family setting, we still need to have a certain amount of drive and basic skills to achieve success.

It is a given that successful entrepreneurs need to begin their journey of being in business for themselves with a certain degree of courage combined with the ability to plan before entering into the business world—let alone meet or exceed the challenges they will face. The following are eight basic skills you need to achieve success as an entrepreneur.

#1: Value

The first and the foremost skill before embarking into business for yourself is to ensure you will be providing value: value to customers, the industry, vendors as well as to yourself. Once you enter the business world, you will face tremendous challenges and a new competitor at every turn. It is important to try to discover new ideas of promotions and do what others are not providing to your target market. It will be important to work hard to maintain your value on a scale that is equal to or greater than your competitors.

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Managing Employee Turnover

Employee turnover is a huge concern in certain industries and is one of the main reasons for sleepless nights among managers. Turnover is simply the superficial problem; the crux of the problem is much deeper. What really needs to be studied and analyzed is the reason behind the high turnover rate of an organization. There can be various reasons that may induce employees to switch jobs: lucrative offers by other companies, long working hours, stress at work, inadequate training and development, fewer growth opportunities, etc.

Understanding Employee Turnover
A high turnover rate obviously has serious side effects such as increased expenditures and efforts in hiring and training as well as a greater risk of information leakage.

As we have already discussed, there can be several reasons for a high turnover rate; the most alarming ones are what are commonly called “dysfunctional turnovers.” These refer to cases wherein talented and hardworking employees decide to leave the organization.

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Human Resources: Employee Engagement

Employees are the key differentiating factor in any organisation. After all, they are often the ones who are instrumental in giving an organization an edge over its competitors. It is therefore essential for HR departments to ensure employees stay fully committed and motivated while performing their responsibilities; in other words, they must use effective Employee Engagement strategies.

Five Categories of Employee Engagement
Employee Engagement is a measure of how emotionally attached employees are to their organization and how passionate they are about their job and responsibilities. According to HR Anexi’s survey, employees tend to fall into one of the following five categories in terms of their engagement.

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Manpower Planning

Irrespective of the size of your organizations, you must make staffing decisions carefully. After all, poor manpower planning results in either overstaffing or understaffing—both of which can act as major roadblocks in an organization’s growth.

Understaffing often results in unnecessary delays, unproductive hours, unsatisfied customers, unfilled orders, and last but by no means least: uncontainable losses! On the contrary, overstaffing leads to additional and pointless cost burdens and diminishes the competitive advantage and efficiency of the business. To add to these problems, eliminating extra staff can lead to legal complications and extra costs in terms of compensation.

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