Elevate Your Business 24.03.2014

Welcome to “Elevate Your Business”, a compilation of articles, news and information selected specifically for Australian SME business owners and managers, to elevate your understanding, passion, differentiation and of course… to raise the bar for SME Payroll and HR compliance.

As this is a new newsletter, I am including content that I believe will be of interest to SME’s, but please! if you have questions or areas that you would like more information on, let me know.

May you be encouraged to take a few more steps forward in elevating your business!

What Fair Work Needs Us To Know

Recently, the Minister for Employment announced that small business operators will now be able to rely on advice from the Fair Work Ombudsman without fear of prosecution… which in my mind should have been a given from the inception of the Fair Work Ombudsman…

Read Best Practice for Relying on Fair Work Ombudsman Advice to identify the best practice for acting on Fair Work’s advice (or anyone’s for that matter).

What’s an enterprise agreement, and how is it different from a modern award?
If an employee is on annual leave and they get sick or injured, can they take sick leave instead?
You need to consult with employees before changing their regular roster or ordinary hours of work.
Do employers need to give employees 3 warnings before they fire them?
Make sure you give the right amount of notice when ending employment.

New Australian Privacy Principles

On March 12th, 2014 the New Australian Privacy Principles came into force replacing the National Privacy Principles. These principles apply to all organisations with some exceptions and their objective is to ensure that organisations manage personal information in “an open and transparent way”.

Your first task as a business owner or manager is to verify whether these principles are a requirement of your business… and even if they aren’t, you can’t go past utilising them as a best practice personal information management tool for your customers and employees.

My article Payrollers! Are You Prepared for the New Australian Privacy Principles? will explain more and has valuable links for more information.

Hot Topic – Employee Engagement

Kevin Kruse in his Forbes Magazine article “What is Employee Engagement?” writes:

“Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals. This emotional commitment means engaged employees actually care about their work and their company. They don’t work just for a paycheck, or just for the next promotion, but work on behalf of the organization’s goals. When employees care—when they are engaged—they use discretionary effort.”

Read Kevin’s article and the ones below to learn more about employee engagement and the difference it can make to your business in so many ways.

Why Engaged Employees Can Make Or Break Your Business
A Manager’s Style DOES Have a Great Impact on Employee Engagement
25 Warning Signs That You Have a Low Trust Organisation
How to Make Work Matter
5 Ways To Keep Employees Happy And Engaged In Tough Times

What’s News in the HR/IR Space?

Small business roundtable: Workplace relations, Fair Work laws and red tape on the agenda
Union right of entry to workplaces: employers should know their rights
Leaked draft for terms of reference of Fair Work Act review: SME’s react
Penalty Rates on the Table as Employment Minister Meets With CCIQ
WA Fast Food Chain Forced to Pay $32000 in Back Pay

Brand Your Business

How to Be What People Are Interesting In, Rather Than Just Looking At
Brand Building Through Random Acts of Kindness
Personal Branding for Leaders
Rethink Your Branding to Create Crazy Love From Customers

Business Technology

The Mobile Youngpreneurs Transforming Small Business
Getting Rid of Paper…Or Not

Build Your Business

Key Person of Influence Chief Explains the 5 Main Issues Small Business Face (and How to Get Over Them)
Why SME’s Need to Make Succession a Priority
6 Strategies to Compete In Business

Business Financials

Great insights from Dunn and Bradstreet Small Business Blog:
Freeing Yourself From Credit Card Debt
Getting a Better Business Banking Deal
5 Common SME Financial Problems
How to Estimate Start-Up Costs for Your Business

Kick It on Social Media

How SME’s Use Social Media
6 Ways to Immediately Improve Your Website Content and Design
Can Your Customers Hear You?
How a Local Business Can Do Better Online in 5 Easy Steps
LinkedIn: Five Tips for Developing Your Strategy
How Small Businesses Can Leverage Linkedin

Provide Stand Out Service

What are the 9 (plus 1) Behaviors of Truly Loyal Customers?
Take a Service Action that Starts a Chain Reaction

Develop As a Leader

8 Easy Ways to Be an Extraordinary Boss
The Power of a Grateful Leader
Four Steps to Developing Yourself and Others
Individual –v- Group Effort: 3 Leadership Strategies for Maximising Both

Business Writing Essentials

7 Tips for Writing an Email Message
How to Write a Memo
How to Write a Report

Sell Like a Master

Sales Culture Questions You Must Answer
3 Things You Should Never Say When Presenting

 

 

Elevate Your Business 03-Mar-14

Welcome to “Elevate Your Business”, a compilation of articles, news and information selected specifically for Australian SME business owners and managers, to elevate your understanding, passion, differentiation and of course… to raise the bar for SME Payroll and HR compliance.

Another fortnight has passed by so quickly, but here’s a host of new links to thought leaders and pro’s on business, leadership, marketing and more.

May you be encouraged to take a few more steps forward in elevating your business!

What Fair Work Needs Us To Know

A Fair Work Amendment Bill tabled in Parliament will see employers able to trade penalty rates for increased flexibility, as foreshadowed last week. Read the full Smart Company article

Fair Work Australia’s responses to the 3 most common workplace myths

Another Workplace myth: I’m a ‘permanent casual’. There is no such thing!

Employers have to give all employees a pay slip within 1 working day of their pay day, even when they’re on leave

FWA fact sheet on employment entitlements during natural disasters or emergencies

ACCC Guidelines for Online Testimonials

ACCC has released new guidelines to curb the practice businesses publishing false or misleading online testimonials with penalties of up to $1.1million.

The practice of providing incentives to customers in return for favourable reviews and the practice of deleting unfavourable reviews are two key risk areas for business.

Download the What You Need to Know About Online Reviews guide for businesses and review providers to ensure you comply.

Hot Topic – Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

Business Process Outsourcing or BPO as it is commonly referred to relates to all non core business processes that can be outsourced to a third party provider, such as payroll, accounts, salary packaging, HR management, recruitment and many more.

If in-house payroll processing is driving you crazy and you are considering outsourcing or buying into an online product… there are a few important things you should consider before signing up.

I wrote an article for corporate payrollers on how to compete against outsourced payroll providers, which has some key points of consideration for smaller businesses when it comes to the “all-so-amazing” benefits that will be sold to you.  If you are considering outsourcing your payroll (or any part of your business process for that matter), I suggest you read this article first.

Payroll Tax

If you pay payroll tax in more than one state, there is a new Combined States “Payroll Tax Australia” Website to make your search easier.

News from mybusiness.com.au: NSW follows South Australia in payroll tax reform

Taxation

The advantages and pitfalls in the ATO’s Independent Review process for resolving tax disputes.

What is the ATO Doing to Assist Small Businesses?

Brand Your Business

Top 3 Ways to Make Your Brand Work For YOU

Finance Matters

Are you in the market for an accounting package? Check out this Review of 7 Australian accounting packages for SME’s

Could you afford to lose all of your business’ critical data?

Article – Half of Small Business Owners Will Rely on Pension

Dunn & Bradstreet Small Business Tips – Improving Cash Flow Through Payment Behaviour

Dunn & Bradstreet Small Business Tips – Tips to Relieve Small Business Debt

Business Technology

New Tool Helps Merchants Manage Social Media Marketing… built for eBay, Etsy & Amazon stores

Build Your Business

The Eight Touchpoints of a Customer’s Consideration Phase

Where B2C and B2B Blur

7 Deadly Sins Businesses Make With Their Reputation

The Brilliance of Asking Incredibly Naïve Questions

How to Get Paid Exactly What You’re Worth

What Info Do Consumers Value on Local Business Websites?

Kick It on Social Media

How to Turn Social Chatter Into Sales Leads

How to Write a Professional Bio For Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook & Google+

How to Get Customers to Post Instagram Pictures of Your Products

18 Free Marketing Guides on All Things Social Media

17 Content Marketing Experts Give You Their Best Tips

5 Questions to Help You Tell Your Business Story

How to Find Free Images For Small Business Websites

Provide Stand Out Service

Don’t Make These Common Customer Service Mistakes

What are the 9 Behaviours of Truly Loyal Customers?

Growing Your Business With Service Recovery

Customer Loyalty in the Restaurant Business

Why a Customer Obsessed Culture is About More Than Persona

Develop As a Leader

Be a Leader In Your Industry By Helping Others

The Costs of Poor Management

How to Manage a Team That’s Older Than You

Build an Awesome Team

The Power of Clear Values & a Trusting Environment

The Make-Up of An Ideal Start-Up Employee

11 Great Employee Qualities – Does Your Team Have Them?

Use Your Time Wisely

Unburying Yourself: Advice for the Overloaded

Infographic: How to be Productive

Business Writing Essentials

Email Writing Essentials

How to Write a Proposal

Sell Like a Master

How to Sell More of Anything

How to Plan Your Sales Week

Elevate Your Business 10-Feb-2014

Welcome to the first fortnightly edition of “Elevate Your Business”, a compilation of articles, news and information selected specifically for Australian SME business owners and managers, to elevate your understanding, passion, differentiation and of course… to raise the bar for SME Payroll and HR compliance.

The abundance of resources in each edition will provide more business improvement ideas than many of us would ever have the time to work through each between editions.

Please give us feedback and ask all the questions you want on payroll and HR, so we can you the answers you are searching for.

Enjoy the read and I truly hope you find inspiration!

What Fair Work Needs Us To Know

The National Anti-Bullying Laws commenced on 1 January 2014.

An employer can ask their employees to work on a public holiday if the request is reasonable.  So what’s reasonable?

What happens when a business changes owners? Understanding your obligations to Transfer Employee Entitlements.

Plus in other government news… New Australian Privacy Laws & Credit Reporting Changes… are you prepared?

Hot HR Topic – Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD as it’s commonly known, refers to the practice of employees using their own personal devices for work purposes – such as laptops, smartphones and PDA’s.

While cost and other practical operational benefits exist, there are multiple risks for businesses that participate in any form of BYOD including IT security, data security, intellectual property protection.

BYOD Security Advice from Australian Signals Directorate

BYOD Trend Has Risks, But Benefits Too

Embrace BYOD and Manage The Risks

Payroll Compliance

The Australian Taxation System places the onus on employers to apply and pay the correct taxation on behalf of employees.  The two major areas of misunderstanding that I’ve witnessed in my consulting career are:

How to Compliantly Manage & Interpret an Employee’s Tax File Declaration form

Correctly identifying taxable and non taxable employee payments.

Even in the corporate world, payroll officers with years of experience are getting it wrong.  Review each of your current non-taxable payment types with against ATO Table 1 and ATO Table 2 to ensure you are correctly calculating PAYG.

One of the most common errors is untaxed Travel Allowance… unless the employee has an ATO issued PAYG Tax Withholding Variation or there is a documented exemption… it is fully taxable.

Should your business face an ATO audit and employees are identified as being taxed non-compliantly, your business is liable to pay the tax owed and the associated fines, not the employee.

Superannuation

Are you paying compliantly?  I’m ever amazed at the volume of employers who are incorrectly paying SGC… both under and over-paying.  The Professional Payroll Manager can perform a quick and simple review of your payment types to ensure your business is paying correctly.  Contact us to discuss it.

Check out ATO advice on changes to Employer Superannuation and SMSF’s

Benefits of a Self Managed Super Fund

Super Opportunity for Small Business Owners

Salary Packaging

What is Salary Packaging?

The No. 1 Unknown Consequence of Salary Packaging Your Employees Need to Know About

Brand Your Business

10 Ways To Build Your Personal Brand

25 Rules for Leaders: Building a Great Brand, Business, and Company Culture

Build Your Business

Entrepreneurs versus Business Owners… how & why the two are very different, according to a new study

Why Building Authority is Critical to Your Personal Brand & Business Success

Kick It on Social Media

17 LinkedIn Profile Must Haves

How to Write Your Social Media Plan in 8 Steps

Brilliant Ideas for a Creative Facebook Cover Photo

Provide Stand Out Service

Fix Your Perception Points to Improve Customer Service Quality

Everyone agrees customer service is important. But just how important is it?

Whose Customer Is It, Anyway? 3 Ways to Balance Individual & Organisational Roles

Develop As a Leader

5 Biggest Hiring Mistakes Leaders Make

Ten Ways to Prepare for a Tough Negotiation

Top 10 Ways to Ensure Your Best People Will Quit

10 Tips For First-Time Supervisors

Build an Awesome Team

Making Them Feel Like They Matter

How To Create a Shared Vision That Works

Use Your Time Wisely

The Power Of “No” For Entrepreneurs: Tips For Reclaiming Your Time

10 Time Management Tips That Work

Business Writing Essentials

7 Tips for Better Business Writing

How to Write a Speech

Sell Like a Master

So You Want to Be a Trusted Advisor?

4 Critical Questions to Outsmart Your Competition

Stay Tuned to Your Small Business Minister on Twitter

Senator Nick Sherry, Federal @SenNickSherry

John Banks MP, ACT @JohnBanksPR

Katrina Hodgknson, NSW @KatrinaHoddy

David Tollner MP, NT @DavidTollner

Jann Stuckey MP, QLD @JannStuckeyMP

Tom Kenyon MP, SA @TomKenyonMP

Rebecca White MP, TAS @bec_white

Bruce Billson MP, VIC @BruceBillsonMP

Liza Harvey MLA, WA @LizaHarveyMLA

Useful Government Links for Small Business

Learn more about The Australian Small Business Commissioner, whose role is to represent small business interests and concerns to the Australian Government.  They have a great blog with articles such as How Your Local Council Can Help.