Tips for Managing Remote Worker Programs

managing remote workersSpeed. It is one of the core changes about working. This speed has been written about and studied in many places, but what do we do about the “always on, always connected” and never disconnected situation we now live in? Four tips can help us navigate this remote work environment.

Rob Eleveld at Shiftboard, an online scheduling platform, recently made a comparison between the new workers with the person who volunteers (busy, but able to donate their time) and Carl Lewis, famous Olympian athlete. The point: People are moving faster and need the tools and technologies that let them manage their work lives better.…

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Five Tips For Small Businesses Hit By Natural Disaster

tips for businesses surviving a natural disasterBack in late June 2006, after a lifetime of erroneously thinking that living in the Northeast meant I was immune from natural disaster, I learned that I was wrong when the Susquehanna River flooded its banks and chased me and my family to a mat in the middle school gym.

Looking back, I could nod and agree with all the standard advice about natural disasters but I think it might be more helpful for me to tell you a few things that can help your small business in similar circumstances but that nobody is likely to tell you.

Be prepared. Most of the time, major weather events (such as storms and floods) and certain other natural events (like wildfires) will let you know they’re coming.…

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Growing Pains – Positioning Your Business Now for the Upturn

recovering from the recessionWhat do you see your business doing 12 months from now, when we’re out of the recession and making the upturn?

If you’re like many U.S. businesses, you will be playing catch up to where you were before you cut staff and put projects on hold to reduce costs.

You don’t want to be behind when the economy begins strengthening and coming out of recession. Many companies are going through tough times right now, but the smart ones are positioning themselves for growth so they are ready when the economy recovers.

Four Problems You Don’t Want to Have to Deal With

What happens when companies grow before they have the processes and technology in place to support the growth?…

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Creating Organizational and Individual Accountability In 5 Easy Steps

Creating Organizational and Individual AccountabilityHere’s a five-step process for creating organizational and individual accountability, which will help to achieve extraordinary results in any organization:

1. Establish the organization’s top three objectives. This means the significant few, not the important many. (This is what we at Six Disciplines refer to as Vital Few Objectives- VFOs). Once identified, these vital few objectives must be clear, concise, measurable, obtainable – and assigned to one individual to be responsible for achieving.

2. Assign each of the objectives to a specific team member.

3. Ask each team member what resources he or she needs to win. To help people win, team leaders must remove the barriers or roadblocks that stand in the way.…

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Improve Performance Through Time Tracking

time trackingIf you want to improve performance, or likewise increase capacity or capability, you need to track the one thing that you’ll never get back: time.

In order to improve effectiveness and efficiency, you must understand how your time is being used. With all of the technological advances over the past two decades, we’re continually forced to do things “better, faster, cheaper.” In other words, all of these advances have taught us how to be more efficient.

But – have any of these advances (spreadsheets, email, cell phones, IM, etc.) made us more effective?

The difference between the two?…

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Getting More Out of PPC Advertising: 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Landing Page Now

optimize landing pages for PPC advertisingSo you think you’re ready for PPC management? Fantastic. But before you throw the kitchen sink at it, make sure you are prepared to succeed.

If your company is showing signs of growth, one of the first things to evaluate is the quality of your landing page. While PPC advertising can do wonders for your business by boosting your online visibility, driving qualified traffic to your website, and reducing wasted advertising spending, bidding on keywords and placing text ads in the search engines are not the only steps. Before you go on the hunt for the perfect PPC management firm, make sure you are sending people to a landing page that gives them what they want and makes it easy for them to take action.…

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6 Tips For Buying An Existing Business

tips for buying an existing businessBuying an existing business is a good option because it saves the buyer from hard work establishing a new business and promoting it. Buying an operating business is always considered a way of less risk because it brings a lot of current customers with itself.

So if you are planning to buy a business because of its advantages, then this article is for you. In this article I will discuss some basic things each buyer should think about before making a final decision to buy or not.

1. Assess Your Skills – You should be completely aware of your skills. You should be ready to handle the responsibilities which come with a business.…

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Increase Flexibility and Reduce Costs with Targeted IT Outsourcing

Targeted IT Outsourcing

Are you looking for ways to minimize increases in long-term staffing commitments, yet want to position yourself for growth once the economy recovers?

Outsourcing is a great way to create flexibility while meeting current demands in the organization, particularly in small and mid-sized businesses. (Throughout the remainder of the article I’ll refer to small and mid-sized organizations as SMBs).

In trying to solve current issues, companies may create new issues by turning over their IT department to an outsourcer without oversight, or negotiating outsourcing agreements solely to cut costs. Costs escalate because normal updates or company growth wasn’t included in the contract.…

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Small Business Tips For Staying Organized With Your Online Efforts

Staying organized while running your online business at home can feel like there are just never enough hours in the day to achieve anything. And then when 6pm comes along and it’s “time to go home”, you think that nothing has happened to move your business forward.

You know you get the calls to help with the kids, go shopping or just “do this because it’s only going to take you 5 minutes” when actually you know it’s going to take more like 5 hours.

Or that “you can get this done now because you’re only surfing the net” *sigh*

So what can you do?…

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Email Marketing – 7 Methods For Connecting And Keeping Subscribers

You have conducted the preliminary research and built a thorough direct email marketing list. Each entry represents a potential buyer and future opportunity for your business. A proven autoresponder service has been employed and is in position to follow through with the direct email marketing of your product. You wonder, Is this the right campaign? Will the recipients bite? How can I be sure the campaign will make buyers out of readers? The following list of 7 methods for capitalizing on direct email marketing will guide you through the process from list construction to list activation.

1.) From Friendly to Familiar

For many businesses, customers are drawn to a recognizable trade name or a well-known endorser.…

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