Why your Company Can’t Afford to Skip Safety Protocols

Each year, thousands of workers are injured on the job throughout a variety of industries, including construction, carpentry, automotive, and even people who work regular office jobs.

For this reason, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) created a set of safety regulations that all businesses must follow. Most businesses do a good job of meeting these regulations, but sometimes safety gets skipped for the sake of convenience. This is always a bad idea.

Caution signage

image credit: Rawpixel / CC0

There are serious consequences for ignoring your company’s safety policies and procedures. Here’s why your business can’t afford to put convenience ahead of safety.…

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Should You Serve Alcohol at Company Parties?

Alcohol is sometimes expected to be served at corporate parties and events, but it’s not always the best idea. The legal risks of serving alcohol are great, and if you’re considering serving alcoholic beverages, like beer, wine, or mixed drinks at a company event, here are some important things to consider first.

Outdoor office party

1. Is it legal for you to serve alcohol in the first place?

First and foremost, you need to know if you can legally serve alcohol at your function. If it’s not legal, don’t do it because you can get your business license suspended. If it is legal, make sure your lease allows it, or you could find yourself facing an eviction.…

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Reasons to Choose a Metal Building Over Standard Wood

You can have a building created out of many types of materials, like wood, metal, brick, and more. Despite all these options, wood has long been the standard for homes and commercial spaces.

Metal barn

If you’re thinking about contracting a new building, wood might not seem like a bad idea, but you do have other options. There are pros and cons for every type of material, but here’s why metal buildings are superior to wood.

Metal buildings last longer

When choosing a material to build with, longevity is important and that’s why metal is the best choice. Wood is an organic material that is prone to fire, severe damage from impact, and disintegration when it gets wet.…

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4 Things to Know About Embezzlement

Were you aware that employee theft costs companies approximately $50 billion annually? When companies hire and pay workers, it’s sad to think they encounter dishonesty of epic proportions.

Unfortunately, plenty of statistics suggest that sometimes an employer’s most formidable threats are internal rather than external. About one in five small business owners say workers have stolen from them. And the average embezzlement situation results in $357,650 in losses. These losses can add up and make it difficult for some businesses to stay afloat and remain in business.

Embezzlement

Embezzlement refers to the misappropriation of funds belonging to someone else. It happens when employees wrongfully defraud their employers by stealing money or other things.

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Why You Must Always Hire a Licensed Electrician for Electrical Tasks

When you need electrical work done in your building, it’s crucial to only hire a licensed electrician to get the job done. DIY electrical jobs are always a bad idea, even when you think it’s just an easy fix. Most of the time, DIY electricians fall short of enough knowledge to work to code and ensure your safety.

Licensed electrician

Whether you need to install an appliance that requires its own breaker, or you need to hardwire something into an existing circuit, the only person who should be touching your electrical components is a licensed and insured electrician.

Here’s why.

Poor installations can cause major problems

Anything electrical that gets installed wrong can cause major problems in the short-term or long-term.…

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4 Things Your Growing Business Needs (PR Company, Marketing, and More)

Getting a new business up and running is quite a feat. If your business is still going strong after years, you’ve beat the odds and clearly worked hard to get there. Still, success and rapid growth can have some significant learning curves.

Growth planning

After initial success, you’ll want to work towards growth. While growth looks different for every business, the companies that are expanding rapidly will need a solid game plan – that’s because growth without a strategy can actually damage your business.

While you may have figured out the basics of running your business, everything can change as you scale. So, as you gain success, what do you need to ensure things run smoothly?…

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Strengthening Cybersecurity for a Small Business

How strong is your cybersecurity posture? If you got hit with ransomware tomorrow, how long would it take for you to resume operations? Would a regulatory fine for a data breach threaten to put you out of business?

Cybersecurity posture

If you’re not 100% certain a cyberattack would only be a minor inconvenience to your operations, your security posture could use an upgrade. Here’s what you can do to protect your company from the negative impact of preventable incidents.

1. Keep all worker devices updated

It’s critical to keep all devices updated that connect to your company network. It doesn’t matter if the item is an iPod, iPad, Android tablet, smartphone, Windows laptop, Macbook, or any desktop computer.…

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How Healthcare Impacts The Employer’s Bottom Line

Lactation benefits for employees are often underutilized, overlooked, and forgotten.

By focusing on this coverage, employers can help change their work environment to benefit new parents and create a better culture of health, family, and productivity.

Lactation healthcare support for new parents

Studies show that nearly 83% of millennials would change jobs for better family benefits. By offering better benefits, you are more likely to attract a higher caliber of workers and have a more welcoming work environment.

What is Lactation Healthcare?

Lactation healthcare covers a variety of resources and tools to help new parents with their breastfeeding goals. This healthcare covers consultations with International Board Certified Lactation Consultants (IBCLCs) and helps pay for breast pumps.…

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5 Tips to Develop Effective Risk Management Strategies

Having an effective risk management strategy is crucial because it empowers you with the tools you need to identify and manage potential risks. You can only mitigate the risks you can identify.

Risk management strategies

Generally speaking, there are five main steps you need to integrate into your business in order to effectively manage risk and control potential threats to an organization’s capital and earnings.

Workiva outlines these five risk mitigation strategies as follows:

  • Define business strategy and objectives. Business strategies must integrate risk management frameworks into the planning stage.
  • Establish KPIs. Key Performance Indicators should be specific enough to see where improvement is needed and how risks can be measured.
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5 Tips To Improve Business Trips For Your Employees

When employees go on business trips, you want the experience to be straightforward so they can achieve what needs to be done. You want to ensure they’re able to accomplish their work and also uphold a good reputation for the business.

Co-workers on a business trip

Both of these goals are easier to achieve if your employees feel they can focus less on the travel aspect and more on the business aspect of the trip. If they don’t have to worry about many of the small travel details, they’ll enjoy the process more and likely be more productive.

If your company is often sending employees on business trips, you might be looking for an easy way to improve the process.…

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