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How File Cabinets Are Putting Your Business at Risk – WorkIntelligent.ly

The reasons to digitize your records are simple: paper documents put your information at risk, cost you money and slow your business down.

Even if you’re not in a heavily regulated industry there are plenty of scenarios where the loss of records can put your business at serious risk. You may need them for tax purposes, or to defend your business against litigation from a disgruntled employee or customer. The onus is on you to maintain this information, so “the dog ate my payroll records” is not an excuse that will fly with a Sarbanes-Oxley auditor.

Of course, the easiest way to ensure that you don’t need to worry about physical records is to implement systems that digitize them as they come in or use digital workflows to begin with. Transitioning paper-heavy processes such as employee onboarding to digital forms can improve record integrity and save time for both end users and HR.

Mitigating risk and increasing efficiency can obviously have financial benefits for your business, but digitizing records can save you money in more direct ways as well. Between reducing paper and print costs, eliminating storage expenses and freeing up office space for other uses, digitization can have an immediate impact on your bottom line.

Source: How File Cabinets Are Putting Your Business at Risk – WorkIntelligent.ly

If you are ready to go digital with your records, contact us!

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9 Unique Traits of High Performing Teams

The team at weekdone came up with this great list of traits the strongest teams and businesses maintain. Managing the people and the process can be difficult in any organization. Refer to this list regularly to help you stay focused on your businesses growth.

 

Checkout the summary below or visit the source for the full article and infograph.

1. Talent Magnet

To spot a strong team you simply have to look for the team everybody wants to be on. For example, Google recruits on the basis of having passion, intelligence and a “learning animal mindset”. The insight here is to look for potential stars who are looking for challenges and a place where they can demonstrate their skills.

2. Healthy Heated Debates

The difference between HPT and LPT is that a heated debate doesn’t cause HPTs to fragment. Instead of becoming more isolated during tough times, these teams actually gain strength and develop cohesion. According to Gallup, HPTs contributed more equally to team’s discussions, rather than letting 1 or 2 people dominate the group. As a team leader you should make sure that everybody talks in equal measure and keep their contributions short. Team members should face one another keeping conversations and gestures energetic.

3. Diversity

Diversity unlocks innovation and drives market growth. Most engaged teams welcome diversity of age, gender, and race, while disengaged teams may do the opposite. Apple has made diversity a priority by hiring 65% more women, 50% more Black and 66% more Hispanic employees. In the process of putting together your team make sure you have people with different backgrounds, gender and strengths.

4. Mind Reading

Researchers from M.I.T. found that HPT members scored higher on a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes. It measures how well people read complex emotional states from images of faces with only the eyes visible. It is also known that people with high emotional IQ work well with others and are effective in leading change. For instance, Google relies more on recruits with emotional intelligence rather than the grades they received in school. Therefore, find a suitable test or interview format to find people with higher emotional IQ.

5. More Women

In this case it is not “diversity” that matters for a team’s intelligence, but simply having more women. Teams with more women outperformed teams with more men. Coming back to the previous point, it’s partly explained by the fact that women, on average, are better at “mindreading” than men. In order to have a HPT, recruit more women on your team or company who also have other “high-performing” qualities.

6. Laser-like Focus on Goals

HPTs are able to keep the larger goal in view. They are consistently able to put what’s best for the organization ahead of their own egos. In addition, they seek out evidence and try to remain as objective as possible. Once a decision is made, these teams are remarkably quick to rally around it. As a team leader, you should establish an overall goal and make it visible for the whole team and set key metrics to measure them. The most popular method for that is Objectives and Key Results, which is used by the likes of LinkedIn, Google and Intel.

7. Doing Your Best Every Day

Deloitte used the Gallup 1.4 million employee study to see what are the similarities between high and low performing teams. Most powerful commonality between HPTs is the belief that they are doing their best every day. In order to capitalize on that knowledge, team leaders should help team members to define their strengths and give tasks accordingly. For instance, Deloitte set out a clear goal: “We want to spend more time helping people use their strengths”.

8. Work-life balance

Most successful teams have members who are equally engaged to their personal lives as they are to their work. Mervyn Davies, former chairman of Standard Chartered’s, said that he took as much pride in the amount of time he spent with his family as he did in his bank’s extraordinary performance. Therefore, you should look for people who are equally committed to work and their free time.

9. Group Engagement Outside Formal Meetings

According to M.I.T. Human Dynamics Laboratory, the best predictors of productivity are team’s energy and engagement outside formal meetings. These two factors explained ⅓ of the variations in dollar productivity among groups. The laboratory used a call center for their study and asked the manager to make the employees have a coffee break at the same time. That little tweak increased the overall efficiency by 8% and 20% in worst-performing teams. As a team leader, make sure you create communication opportunities for your team outside the formal environment.

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Small Business Finance Basics

It is more than possible for you to manage your own books when starting your business. It is important that you do not underestimate the significance of bookkeeping. Be sure to set yourself up for success by using bookkeeping software that can handle tracking your business. Small Business Trends offers basic advice for small business finance:

6 Small Business Finance Basics You Must Understand

Bookkeeping is vital to properly managing your business resources. Additionally you will need these records for tax purposes. Whether you DIY or hire someone to keep track of everything you.

Revenue and Expenses

Every transaction should be recorded. How much is coming in and how much is going out and where is it is all coming from and going to.

Cash

It is important to record the cash your business spends so you’ll have an accurate number of expenses each year. Writing reimbursable checks and keeping detailed petty cash records are both valid methods of documenting cash expenditures.

Inventory

Maintain records of all inventory! This will help you to forecast for the upcoming year by tracking trends, prevent stealing and misplacing merchandise and keep inventory holdings to a minimum. Dates purchased, stock numbers, purchase prices, dates sold, and sale prices are all relevant information for inventory records. And keep personal and business finances separate!

Accounts Receivable and Payable

Always keep track of what customers owe you and what debts you owe others. It’s prudent to record as much data as possible including invoice dates, numbers, amounts, terms, dates and amounts paid or due, balances, and client information in real time.

Employees/Payroll

Hiring even one employee invokes your responsibility to file and pay forms and payroll taxes and each state has its own tax obligations. Employers are responsible for maintaining employee forms such as the W-4 (Withholding Allowance Certification) and the I-9 (Employment Eligibility Verification). You are responsible for maintaining records on withholding, employer matching, unemployment and worker’s compensation.

Preparing for Tax Time

With your books in order, prepping for taxes should be a breeze. With everything in order from the beginning it saves you from having to go back to try to figure things out. Don’t forget about the small things like car mileage and petty cash.

Source: 6 Small Business Finance Basics You Must Understand