The process of dismissing an employee, and why you need advice from a professional.

Dismissing an employee is no small task. Before you do anything, and I mean anything at all, you need professional advice. It is fraught with danger, stress, and problems, so seek help as early on as possible and avoid the many and deep pitfalls of this nasty but necessary activity. There are more government rules and regulations surrounding the dismissal of an employee than you could poke a stick, and if you digress even slightly you will be subject to very heavy and serious legal action. Don’t let it get to that point. If you have already let it get to that point, and you are being sued for unfair dismissal, you need to take action before it’s too late.

Many a business has been ruined by by costly and unnecessary legal action that drains resources from the business. If you have received a letter from fair work Australia, seek legal representation immediately. A specialist like Australian Dismissals is the best option. A dedicated company will have seen many cases like your and will know how to proceed. As long as you have followed every correct procedure in the process of dismissal, then you won’t have a problem. The correct procedure include keeping a written, dated record of every digression and incident in which the troublesome employee is involved, issuing the appropriate formal warnings, and having a witness present at every point.

If you’re responsible for your company’s staffing plan, this means that likely responsible for outsourcing some elements of work to third-party providers and independent contractors in addition to recruiting and screening potential employees. You may even be responsible for identifying areas where it may be better to seek assistance for certain types of services from outside the organization rather than hiring internally.

Three Frequently Outsourced Functions

Call Center Operations

The physical space needed for call center services can be very costly. Many companies are deciding that it makes more sense to use specialty telephone customer service providers to handle this aspect of their operations.

Medical Billing Services

Not only do medical billing services require physical space – something that is at a premium in medical office buildings – they also require very specialized expertise. It often makes financial sense to contract with medical billing experts for this important cash flow function.

Website Development

While space isn’t necessarily a factor when it comes to having someone develop your website, expertise certainly is an important one. So is software cost and the matter of ongoing payroll expenses for services that you aren’t likely to need day in and day out. Rather than hiring an employee to design and build a website, it makes sense to work with someone who specializes in this type of marketing to provide only those services that you need.

If you are hosting a special event, you’ll need a quality vendor to provide event supplies and concession machines.

Businesses need an active presence on three major social media networks in order to gain new customers and build brand loyalty. Just how important is social media to business? British rock star Peter Gabriel found out. Although he had an official website since the late 1990s, his site only generated a few thousand hits per day. Once he started his official Facebook page in 2011, hits to his website jumped to over 100,000 per day.

The major networks for a business to be on are Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. They help businesses quickly spread the latest news and products and also connect directly to customers. They also help a business manage public relations and reputation. What is online reputation management? As its name suggests, this entails making sure a business is considered to have good character and maintain positive standing with its customers.

How Much is Too Much?

New social media networks are popping up every day. Spending time on all of the networks will take time away from other areas of running a business. Setting up a news alert on the three major search engines can quickly notify a business when negative comments or reviews are posted. These can be addressed quickly before these reviews spread and harm a business’ online reputation. Social media should not take over completely from traditional advertising media such as print ads or radio ads.

For example, a seller of hearing aids may have a customer base which does not use social media or even have access to the Internet. For this particular company, it makes sense to use more traditional advertising methods rather than social media. If businesses know their customers, then they can better judge if they need to use social media.

New Uses of Social Media

There are other ways businesses can use social media rather than for advertising or reputation management. They also can use it to help find new employees. It only takes a few minutes of an online search to check the character of a job candidate by what they post on Facebook or Twitter. Headhunters can also find the right candidates even before the candidate applies for a job. Even top firms like The Reznik Group search LinkedIn to fill jobs.

Another use of social media has been for employee communication. Facebook, for example, offers a free tool called Secret Groups that cannot be accessed by the general public. These can help increase communication and morale inside of a company. All of these tips will help to make social media work for your business.

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As a strategic human resource management professional, it’s important for you to develop an understanding of all aspects of the business operations. While you need to be the leading expert within your company when it comes to matter of HR, it’s important for you to have knowledge about the other departments as well. Purchasing is an important function to learn about.

Three Purchasing Considerations

1. Source Reputable Vendors

It’s critical to have relationships in place with quality vendors that offer the types of products and services that you need. When a need arises, you don’t want to have to start from the beginning identifying places where you can find necessary items, particularly those that are highly specialized or hard-to-find. For example, if you need to find tactical communications equipment to support a sensitive operation, your need will be immediate. You won’t have time to conduct a thorough vendor review when it’s time to make a purchase decision.

2. Negotiate Purchasing Agreements

See about getting negotiated agreements in place for equipment and supplies that you’re likely to need to purchase at a high volume. You may find that some vendors are ready to provide special discount pricing to customers they know are going to come back time and time again to re-order similar types of merchandise. Saving even a few percentage points on your company’s equipment needs can have a significant impact on your bottom line, especially when you are sourcing high dollar and/or frequently purchased items.

3. Quality Considerations

While negotiating for the best prices is advisable, compromising on quality is not. Seek out suppliers that follow high quality standards in their business practices. Learn what you can about internal quality procedures and ask for customer references so you can determine if others who work with the organization are pleased with the level of quality received.

Running a business takes a lot of energy, forethought, and endurance. Handling challenging situations, clients, and employees is always in a day’s work and gratitude is not often forthcoming. Some weeks – or months – more than others can be particularly tiring. It is important to do what you can to boost your motivation and enthusiasm. But in focusing on your own state of mind don’t forget to pay attention to your employee’s feelings as well. If the pace of work in your office is slowing down and mistakes are on the rise, take a look around you and search for signs of tiredness. Here are eight important signs of employee fatigue that you should be on the lookout for in your place of business.

1. Irritability – Next time one of your employees responds to you with a sense of frustration, annoyance, or irritation take a step back and consider the situation before responding with your own emotions. Irritability is a major symptom of employee fatigue. If you are seeing this in certain employees, pay attention to them and see if you can think of a way to offer them a boost.

2. Sleepiness – This sign can be easy to spot. An employee looking particularly sleepy, maybe even dozing off at their desk is something most managers have seen before. Though commonly attributed to just plain old laziness, this can actually be a sign of a bigger problem like employee fatigue.

3. Loss of appetite – Did your normally cake-obsessed employee sit out on partaking at the last birthday party? Have you noticed anyone that has stopped taking lunch? These may be signs of a number of problems, as loss of appetite can occur for a number of reasons. But it is also a sign of employee fatigue so pay attention!

4. Giddiness – Though this may sound counterintuitive, giddiness can also be a sign of fatigue. “Giddiness” does not mean “happiness,” but rather refers to hyper, excited behavior that often has no real reason behind it.

5. Digestive Problems – Of course you cannot be expected to measure your employees’ bathroom breaks, but if you do notice one particular employee spending an unusual amount of time in the lavatory, maybe that person is physically ill and perhaps employee fatigue is behind it.

6.Tiredness – Tiredness is similar to sleepiness but doesn’t require the heavy eyelids and nodding off. Your employee might be standing and having a conversation with you and yet still be visibly tired. If this becomes a recurring pattern, there may be a bigger factor at work than failure to get a good night’s sleep.

7.Depression - When an employee seems to be down in the dumps for a long period of time, you might begin to wonder if he is depressed. This is not a diagnosis you can make, but rather requires a medical professional. Yet that does not mean you can’t take notice and try to ease that employee’s burden.

8. Higher Susceptibility to Sickness – It is easy to get suspicious of an employee that calls in sick over and over again but maybe there is a legitimate reason behind it. Fatigue lowers the immune system’s ability to respond to pathogens and so makes people more susceptible to illness.

Why should you care about employee fatigue? Because it makes your employees less effective, directly hurting your business.

About the Author: Steven Burrell has written extensively on the subject of small business solutions. He believes that aptitude testing for employees and students can result in a more successful, productive workplace.

Recruiting employees is essential for any company that wishes to grow beyond its first roots, but that doesn’t make it a simple or fast process. Without aid, a company can receive numerous applicants for any job opening they advertise, a problem that gets more and more serious the larger the company is. What’s more, people that are already employed need to be regularly evaluated to ensure they are working up to standard. When done manually by one or even a team of people, this can be a major problem. Thankfully, there are many software tools that can help.

Just keeping track of employees and applicants can be a challenge that software can fix easily. Even if you’re not comfortable letting a compute judge the applicants themselves, software programs designed for the task like those from Bullhorn Software can do wonders. Just being able to easily compare applicants strengths, weaknesses, and what the interviewer thought of them in an easy to read template in an easily accessed and compared database can halve the process time, if not more. There are other programs that can help with the preliminary processes as well, more specifically background checking programs. Talentwise for instance checks anyone’s criminal records, and offers access to numerous places to perform drug tests to streamline the process.

All applicants are different, as are employees. Even so, you need to know that they can perform the job they have been given effectively. Giving an employee or applicant a test to evaluate their skills is a great way to discover just how much they know in numerous areas, but making a test is both time consuming, expensive, and if not given to a professional can be less than effective. Software can again help here. First Advantage Assessments, a subsidiarity of Bullhorn Software, has numerous tests already prepared for many different industries, in numerous different languages, which can be short or long depending on how long you wish the interview or evaluation to last. This just goes to show how many useful tools can be found under a single company if you take the time to look for solutions.

Evaluation software isn’t perfect, and it isn’t a replacement for evaluating someone personally. It is however a great tool that makes the entire process quicker, simpler, less expensive, and less prone to unfair human error. As such, it’s a great system for employers and employees.

Are you involved in the strategic management and goal setting process for your organization? If so, chances are that you are involved in helping to decide what changes and upgrades will be made to your company’s facilities, infrastructure and procedures for the near-term and long-term future. If your organization is looking for a way to modernize its way of doing business, there are a number of potential options to consider.

Hybrid Company Vehicles – If your company owns its own vehicles – a few or a significant number – updating from traditional gasoline-powered models to hybrids the next time you purchase or lease new ones can be a beneficial upgrade that can help the company before more green and also save money on fuel expenditures.

Solar Electricity System – If your company is looking for a more efficient option for power, installing a solar electricity system can be a wise choice. This option is one that can help the organization reduce its carbon footprint while also saving money on overall electricity expenses. While some investment will be required to install the system, chances are that that investment will be recovered in electricity savings very quickly.

Paperless Office Process – Implementing a paperless office is a good way to make sure that you are making the most of the technology that is available to you while eliminating the need to set aside office space to store large numbers of paper records. You can also save on personnel expenses, as implementing electronic records management processes utilizing modern information systems makes it much easier to set up and manage the flow of your company’s records.

As an entrepreneur, it’s likely that you will at times find yourself dealing with circumstances that lead you to seek out small business credit solutions. No matter how well-capitalized you are in the beginning or how strong your sales may be, there’s always a chance that you might experience cash flow challenges, resulting either from unexpected expenses, customers not making payments when they are do and other potential related problems.

Fortunately, finding credit solutions tailored to the needs of small businesses does not have to be difficult. Depending on your particular circumstances and needs, there may be several options available to you. You may be able to get a signature or collateral loan for the business itself, for example – thought this option is likely only to be available to established companies with successful track records and positive credit history. Look for an SBA-approved lender or a small-business friendly financial institution in your local community.

If a true business loan is not an option, you may be able to take out a personal loan that you sign for yourself, but that is used for business purposes and paid back by the business. If you have a relationship with a bank or credit union already, that is generally a good starting point for seeking options for this type of loan. Consumer finance companies may also be an option.

Credit cards are another possible solution for small business owners who need cash flow, especially if the need for immediate funds is likely to be relatively small and short-term, or if you need to take care of a few specific bills in order to maintain relationships with vendors during cash flow lulls. Look for an account with no annual fee and that offers low – or no – interest financing for the period of time you think it might take to repay the amount that you charge.