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Archive for the ‘Benefits’ Category

Marketplaces for Health Insurance would Benefit Small Business

Posted on July 18th, 2011 by The BizFilings Team
Category: Benefits, Healthcare, Small Business, Small Business News

With the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010, states were made responsible for setting up their own health insurance exchange programs. According to a column by John Arensmeyer, CEO of Small Business Majority, “if lawmakers set up these marketplaces correctly, this legislation will help small business owners provide quality, affordable health insurance policies just like those of big businesses.”

States are given the option to set up their own marketplace, or have the Department of Health and Human Services set it up for them if they miss the 2014 deadline. Arensmayer says, small businesses would greatly benefit from the states setting up their own marketplace.

“With each state setting up their own marketplace, they are much more knowledgeable of the needs of their small businesses”, writes Arensmeyer. The Center for American Progress and Small Business Majority created a report in early July to show legislators how to conceive a health insurance exchange to drastically lower premiums for small businesses.

One state that that is already planning to pass legislature on the health insurance marketplace is Oregon. In June, Governor John Kitzhaber said he would sign Senate Bill 99, approving the Oregon Health Insurance Exchange.

“Oregon’s health insurance exchange puts the power into the hands of consumers and small businesses,” said Kitzhaber.

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Advice for Limiting Workers’ Comp Bills

Posted on March 28th, 2011 by The BizFilings Team
Category: Benefits, Grow a Business, HR, Start A Business

Healthcare costs are already out of control for small businesses; the last thing entrepreneurs forming a business need is a bloated workers’ compensation bill.

Consider a recent court ruling in Montana, wherein a man was granted workers’ comp for being mauled by a grizzly bear, despite having acted “mind-bogglingly stupid” by smoking marijuana and then deciding to feed the animal in a free-roaming bear reserve, according to the New York Daily News.

The lesson: Stupidity does not disqualify entitlement for workers’ compensation. However, business owners can still cut back on the impact of the expense by promoting both a safe work environment and business practices.

“Be sure to provide the proper training and instruction employees need to perform their jobs safely – starting on day one,” writes Don Sadler for AllBusiness.com. “Then look for opportunities to offer ongoing education in the form of workshops, training, and seminars to help employees stay up-to-date on the latest safety practices for their jobs.”

Businesses can also implement a corporate wellness or incentive program that rewards healthy living. However, even the most expensive and comprehensive strategy cannot eliminate the possibility of human absentmindedness or foolishness.

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Three Incentives that Actually Work

Posted on February 1st, 2011 by Jodi
Category: Benefits, Grow a Business, HR

Employee EngagementEmployee engagement is very much on the minds of business leaders at all levels today. And well it should be, whether you are starting a business or bringing it to the next level, having an engaged team is paramount for success.

Because they have a sense of shared interest in the company, employees who are actively engaged are the ones who keep an organization moving forward. Reports from Towers Perrin and the Hay Group indicate that engaged employees believe they can positively impact the quality of the organization itself as well as the lives of the customers they serve and are more willing to give the time and effort required to help the company succeed.

Given the importance of engagement, the 2011 Employee Engagement Report issued by BlessingWhite isn’t encouraging. Just 31 percent of respondents to that survey qualified as “engaged.”

Employers who have registered the vital importance of employee engagement are scrambling to create that connection with their employees. But many are stopped in their tracks by the mistaken belief that increased pay is necessary to motivate workers to the highest levels of productivity and engagement.

But it just isn’t true. According to 2010 study at MIT, if a job requires any level of creativity and thought, money isn’t the main motivator. It isn’t even in the top three. The study affirms the idea that you must pay a fair wage, but increasing pay after that point doesn’t increase productivity and engagement. In fact, for all jobs beyond rote manual labor, it can do the opposite.

So what does work? It turns out that the more effective incentives are intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivators—specifically purpose, mastery, and autonomy.

1. Purpose
If your intention is to inspire employees to care about the company and to tie their destiny to it, telling them that their efforts are all about winning an additional 2 percent of market share from your competitor, there’s not much for them to hang their hats on. Such a goal does not encourage someone to pour his or her heart into the work.

But imagine instead that the job is about improving lives, bringing families together, or reducing fear or loneliness? Suddenly the heart is involved, and productivity and engagement can soar. The more you can connect work to a sense of purpose, the more purposeful and meaningful it becomes, and the more the employee connects and engages with the enterprise.

2. Mastery
Mastery refers to marked self-improvement. And the MIT study clearly indicates that once a fair wage is reached, opportunities for mastery are more important to engagement than additional money.

Training for mastery reframes skill building as personal development. The language and approach used should underline the employee’s awareness that he or she is getting better, not just the skill. It’s the difference between saying, “We improved our production numbers last year” and saying, “You came a long way as a contributor to the team last year!”

Best of all, this kind of reframing doesn’t have to cost a dime.

3. Autonomy
Oversight is part of a good process, but every step a manager can take to give employees a feeling of trusted autonomy will go a long way toward increased engagement. Take a few extra minutes to be sure instructions are clear enough for a given project, then give the employee space to feel some autonomous ownership of his or her work.

What are some innovative incentives or ideas you’ve implemented to motivate your team?

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When More Is Less: The Surprising Paycheck Paradox

Posted on January 26th, 2011 by Jodi
Category: Benefits, HR, Small Business

© Ginasanders | Dreamstime.com
© Ginasanders | Dreamstime.com

 Are you having a difficult time with employee morale? Providing larger cash bonuses may not be the answer.

One of the most surprising studies yet on motivation came out of MIT in 2010. Researchers gave subjects a set of challenges with three different reward levels. Subjects who achieved the objective by a small margin received a small monetary reward. Those who did moderately well received a moderate cash reward, and the subjects who hit it out of the park received a substantial cash reward.

You would think the result was obvious—that the incentive of a large reward would lead to improved performance in subsequent challenges—but that was not always the case. If the task at hand involved nothing more than mechanical skill, with very little demand on the brain, the system of rewards worked as you would expect: the prospect of more pay led to greater productivity. But once the task called for even a little bit of brainpower or creativity, the larger reward not only failed to motivate, but actually caused performance to decline.

This shocking result was consistent through all levels of compensation, and the effect actually increased as pay increased. In short, when subjects got the highest compensation of all, their subsequent performance was the worst of all.

If you’d like to dive deeper into this study watch this 10 minute video presentation -The surprising truth about what motivates us.

This is just the latest indication of a disconnect between what employees want and what employers think they want. A study by the NOVA Group asked employees to rank ten incentives according to their importance, then asked their employers to guess how their employees would answer. 

Employers thought their employees would rank the incentives as follows:

  1. Good wages
  2. Job security
  3. Promotion opportunities

 In fact, these ranked 5th, 4th, and 6th respectively. 

More important to the employees were:

  1. Interesting work
  2. Appreciation and recognition
  3. Feeling “in on things”

Now before you go out and slash your workers’ salaries to get better results, read the fine print. The MIT researchers found that pay is far from irrelevant. People must receive enough money to take the issue of compensation off the table. But after that point, once fairness has been achieved, money is much less important than other considerations for jobs that require any degree of thought. Autonomy, a sense of larger purpose, and opportunities for mastery all rank higher than compensation.

This result is a wake-up call for employers who put employee engagement on hold, thinking money was required and knowing it wasn’t available. Companies that quickly incorporate the lessons of the MIT study into their incentive programs can energize their employee engagement without breaking the bank.

For more in this topic visit Toolkit.com:

How to Recognize and Reward
What Rewards Can you Give?

What are some of the innovative ways you motivate your team?

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Two Small Business Human Resources Trends Expected to Unfold in 2011

Posted on January 17th, 2011 by The BizFilings Team
Category: Benefits, HR, Internet Marketing, Marketing

While the first few weeks of 2011 already noted a number of encouraging signs for the coming year – lower unemployment, higher small business borrowing, gains in manufacturing activity and small business employment – there are a number of critical changes expected to unfold this year -we’d like to explore two additional topics: healthcare reform and social media.

  1. Healthcare reform. Healthcare reform has been one of the most hotly debated issues in the country in recent years, even as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law last March. Although it is expected to be implemented gradually over the next several years, some key provisions will be enacted this year, including a provision that provides tax credits to small businesses to help cover up to 35 percent of employee healthcare premiums – a measure that is expected to free up budgets and boost business filings.
  2. Social media. Last year also marked a revolution for social media, as businesses began to embrace the phenomenon in droves. This trend is expected to continue through 2011, but as social networks are used most significantly for personal reasons, small businesses should consider adopting social media policies for their employees.

“A number of problematic workplace issues can arise when your employees engage in social media activities at work without a formal company policy in place,” writes Burton Goldfield for Entrepreneur magazine. “They might divulge trade secrets, violate confidentiality and their productivity could decline, to name just a few.”

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Healthcare Bill May Be Spurring Small Businesses’ Purchase of Coverage

Posted on December 29th, 2010 by The BizFilings Team
Category: Benefits, Small Business, Start A Business

The healthcare reform bill passed earlier this year may be prompting many small businesses to sign up to provide their employees with health benefits, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The surge in accounts from small businesses among the nation’s insurers may indicate that the reform bill is working to help provide a greater percentage of Americans with healthcare coverage.

A major incentive for the hike is likely a tax credit stipulation in the new healthcare bill that insurance marketers have been touting aggressively as a reason to buy. The credit is targeted at small businesses as a means to offset the price of the coverage and is also one of the first laws from the reform bill to have already gone into effect.

“We certainly did not expect to see this in this economy,” Gary Claxton, who oversees an annual survey of employer health plans for the Kaiser Family Foundation, told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s surprising.”

Healthcare coverage has been a matter of great contention among small businesses in recent years. As costs skyrocket – due largely to the country’s declining health – small firms have been pressed to foot a bill that many simply cannot afford.

With greater financial incentives to purchase coverage, it may become easier to start a small business.

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California Assemblyman Introduces Workers’ Comp Bill for Small Business

Posted on December 9th, 2010 by The BizFilings Team
Category: Benefits, Form My Business, Grow a Business, Small Business, Start A Business, Work For Myself

A Pasadena Assemblyman has introduced legislation aimed at alleviating financial burdens on California small businesses. If passed, Assembly Bill 11 will establish a 20 percent tax credit for qualifying small businesses and provide help to entrepreneurs forming a company. .California_opt

The bill is designed specifically for workers’ compensation expenses, which have risen steadily for California small businesses in recent years.

“I’ve been reaching out to small business owners in my district for thoughts and ideas on how to help them during these difficult times,” Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, who sponsored the bill, told the Pasadena Star-News. “The single biggest complaint I hear is the high cost of workers’ compensation insurance.”

The bill is also an attempt to stem the tide of cuts and layoffs which has stricken the Golden State and the rest of the country since the recession began.

But amid a state deficit that is projected to reach $25 billion, Portantino asserted that the tax credit initiative will not deepen the state’s budgetary woes.

Earlier this week, outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency and called the state legislature to a special session to address the looming deficit crisis.

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Socking Away for the Future: Retirement Plans for the Self-Employed

Posted on September 29th, 2010 by Joey
Category: Benefits, Grow a Business, Incorporation, Small Business, Work For Myself

retirementAs a small business owner, you may say “retirement schmirement.” But there really are options that exist in helping entrepreneurs and self-employed individuals save for the future.

To start with, here’s a little history lesson from the small business experts at Business Owner’s Toolkit: “Before 1963, sole proprietors and partnerships were allowed to have qualified pension and profit-sharing plans for their employees, but the owners of these businesses could not get the tax benefits of the plans because they were considered owners, not employees. The only way to get the maximum retirement benefits for the owner was to incorporate” – (which by the way still is a great way to protect your assets, build credibility and enjoy certain tax advantages.)

 “The Self-Employed Individuals Tax Retirement Act of 1962 (also called HR-10 or the Keogh Act), and its subsequent amendments made it possible for owner-employees of unincorporated businesses and other self-employed persons to be covered under qualified retirement plans. Over the years, this tax-favored treatment for retirement plans was extended to individuals not covered by other private qualified retirement plans. Available options include Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA) and Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) plans.”

As a self-employed small business owner, your options include:

  • Keogh  plans
  • IRAs
  • SEPs
  • SIMPLE plans

And here’s a rundown of each type of plan:

Keogh Plans: Identical to corporate retirement plans, the Keogh plans for self-employed individuals come in two basic kinds: defined benefit pension plans and profit-sharing plans. To obtain a deduction for the  current tax year, the plan must be established before the year’s end. Once you have achieved this, actual contributions can be deferred until the extended due date for that year’s return. For Keogh profit-sharing plans, annual contributions are based on a percentage of self-employment income or compensation and subject to a $49,000 ceiling. Keogh defined benefit pension plans are designated to deliver a targeted annual retirement benefit. An actuary calculates each year’s contribution. The precise amount depends largely on your income, years until retirement and anticipated investment returns.

IRAs: IRAs serve as personal tax-qualified savings plans. Business Owner’s Toolkit reveals, “anyone who works, whether as an employee or self-employed can set aside up to $45,000 in an IRA in 2010, and the earnings on these investments grow, tax-deferred, until the eventual date of distribution. Persons 50 and over may contribute an addition $1,000 annually … IRAs are set up as trusts or custodial accounts for the exclusive benefit of an individual and his or her beneficiaries. You can set up an IRA simply by choosing a bank, mutual fund, brokerage house or other  financial institution to act as trustee or custodian.”

SEPs: Along the same vein, a SEP is defined by www.toolkit.com as a, “written arrangement that allows an employer to make contributions toward his or her own and employees’ retirement without becoming involved in more complex retirement plans. The contributions are made to special IRAs set up for each individual qualifying employee.

SIMPLE plans: Last but not least, there’s the SIMPLE plan option. Just like its name, the SIMPLE plan may be adopted by employers with 100 or fewer employees who received at least $5,000 in compensation during the preceding year. To establish this type of plan, it must be the ONLY retirement plan you have. Additionally, they may be structured as an IRA or as a 401(k) plan. To learn more, click here.

So if you think saving for the Golden Years is out of the question as a self-employed individual, think again. There are several options to choose from.

Check out these other helpful resources on your quest for more information about saving for retirement:

http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/28/retirement/retirement_roadblocks.moneymag/index.htm

http://www.smsmallbiz.com/benefits/Tax-Free_Retirement_Accounts_for_the_Self-Employed.html

What options are you looking into for retirement?

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