Our last blog post explained the reasons why having a healthy business culture is crucial for your brand. The positive effects of a healthy culture are many, while the impact of letting the culture of your company degrade can be very detrimental indeed. In our earlier post, we touched on ways to measure the cultural health of your company, but just how do you boost that culture if needed?

If you have established that the culture of your company needs some adjusting or refreshing, there are a few questions you will want to ask yourself first:

• What attributes do you want your company’s atmosphere to convey? Inventiveness, respectfulness, acceptance, fun, etc.
• What are your company’s values and how can the culture reflect them?
• How is information presently distributed in the company and just how does this affect the culture?
• Do you reward employees and in what ways? 
• Does everybody in the company feel heard? If not, how might you improve this?

More questions than answers may come up, so brainstorming with your colleagues is a great strategy for finding creative answers. Below are a few ideas to start with:

Suggestion/Thought box – This is an good way to let individuals to share opinions regarding the current events within the company. The employee could elect to make the suggestion anonymous or not, and any ideas or concerns could be addressed in monthly company gatherings.

Empower employees – Let your employees make decisions. Treat your staff as peers; let them have a say and listen to their ideas. Also be a transparent leader. Don’t just tell your employees when things are great, but also let them know tactfully when things aren’t going so well.

Flexible hours – Trusting your employees to get their work done is key. Don’t constantly hang over or micro-manage them. Trusting your employees to get their jobs done will give you less stress, as well as result in the general company culture more respectful.

Dress code – These days it is unusual that individuals are required to dress in suits and ties on a regular basis.  Allowing employees freedom to express themselves with their clothing is a simple technique to make them feel accepted for who they are. To take this one step further, think about themed days: silly hat day, bright clothing day, 80’s day, etc. It’s amazing how important self-expression can be.

Celebrate – Your company is the sum of everyone in it. Celebrate your team with group activities.  For instance, cater lunch for everyone, have a movie or game day, or just throw a party. This can bring about more communication in your team and promote cooperation.

Here are some things companies do to give their culture a fun edge:

• Spontaneous Nerf gun wars
• Painting inspirational quotes on the walls
• Hitting a loud gong when there is a success to let the whole company know
• Foosball tournaments
• Lunchtime Yoga
• Lunchtime Crafting Club
• Monday Mad Libs, whoever wishes to contribute, does, and then the completed Mad Lib is emailed to the company

Often, in business, concentrating on the strategy of the company is the main focus.
Is that because it’s the most crucial aspect to concentrate on? Many businesses think so, but primarily focusing on strategy can lead a company into stagnation. People make up a company and they collectively create the culture of the company. Culture does not just impact the employees in your office, it has effects on your brand, marketing, and how the public in general views your business. Without a healthy prospering culture a brand has little chance of long-term success.  When we examine brands like Apple, Google, or Starbucks we not only recognize the logo, but we associate a variety of feelings and thoughts about these businesses. This is largely due to the culture of these companies.

Why Culture is so Important

Giving your employees a feeling of ownership over their jobs makes them feel empowered, and empowerment encourages innovative thinking. This all begins with a healthy workplace culture. If people feel invisible or stifled in their work place, they will do the bare minimum expected of them. It’s human nature to want to feel like we are part of something and that we have some control over our lives. Don’t forget that your brand is comprised of the individuals in your company. So nurturing a good company culture is not just the responsibility of the HR department, but of everyone, from the CEO to the janitor.

A healthy culture has numerous benefits. Here are just a few and the reasons why they can have such a considerable impact.

• Focus – When people are focused on the same goal, that goal is much more easily attained. Companies that have a healthy culture, have employees that care about the collective goal and sincerely strive to reach it. Unhealthy cultures can result in cynicism because individuals do not feel connected to the goal. Their goal is to simply make it through the day.

• Cohesion – Healthy culture can bring about strong communication in good and bad times. In a place where there is unhealthy culture people may frequently resent being told what to do because they don’t feel their opinions are listened to or appreciated. When a problem occurs they may avoid pointing it out as they fear backlash.

• Motivation – A inspired workforce gets things done. That might seem apparent, but companies that do not pay attention to the health of their culture may be suffering when it comes to efficiency. Being motivated to work hard is a trait that should be present in every individual in the company if the culture is healthy.

Measuring the Cultural Health of Your Company

You should assess your company’s culture a few times a year. How can you do this? First, consider how your employees are managed. It is true that a few individuals may never be happy but, in general, if the opinion is negative begin thinking about modifications to improve the culture to help your business. Tune in soon for a few tips on making your company culture more positive.

You opened your own catering business because you love to cook. You went into the bakery business to sell pastries and cakes. You didn’t open your own landscaping company because you love paperwork. Yet to be a prosperous small business owner, you can’t ignore the financial side of your business, and this means that you have to make sure that you correctly invoice your clients. Forgetting to invoice your clients can leave you with a significant cash flow problem, one that, if left unchecked, could put you out of business.

Invoicing help online

Fortunately, there are lots of online invoicing services created to make life easier for the small business owner. By using one of these services, you can quickly — and depending on your clients, automatically — distribute your invoices each month. It’s one less job for you to handle. Below is a glance at some of the better online invoicing services:

A free but powerful invoicing service

First, let’s look at a zero cost system: BillingBoss. Of course its greatest advantage is that it is 100% free, but that doesn’t mean it’s not powerful. Most small businesses will be pleased with BillingBoss’s capacity to automatically invoice customers on a monthly basis and send once-off invoices for more infrequent clients.

A power tool

AcceptPay isn’t free. It costs $30 a month, but it’s a robust program. Offered by American Express, AcceptPay works with QuickBooks, will accept online payments, and of course, gives you a wide range of options with regards to sending out invoices and collecting payments. The $30 expense is a small price to pay for such a effective online invoicing tool.

Invoicing for the tech-savvy

Lastly we’ll look at the most customizable option of the bunch, BambooInvoice. This open source program is hosted on your own servers and can be easily customized for your business’ needs. So if you require more control and are a bit tech-savvy, BambooInvoice may be your best choice.

The best news for business owners is that these services are merely a small sample of the many online invoicing services available, most of them free or low-cost. Those business owners who want to quickly gain control over their invoicing process should check them out.

If the rumors are true, Microsoft is stepping up significantly to join the fight against cyber crime. Allegedly, Microsoft is developing a real-time feed that documents current cyber threats and gives necessary steps to safeguard against them.

With Microsoft’s achievements in tackling botnets, they’ve been able to acquire a lot of information around the specific threats these botnets pose. By allowing the botnets to infect highly monitored environments, Microsoft had been able to identify and remove the destructive bots and also learn how they work.

This collected information is now given to ISPs, private and government organizations, & CERTs. While real-time data may not decrease the number of attacks by destructive code, the impact of sharing this data will most likely be quite remarkable. IT security companies should be able to respond more quickly to these threats and thus be able to decrease the amount of damage they can cause.

Microsoft’s live threat feed may have a much more important impact: It could lead the information security industry to share more data. For too long, companies have hesitated to share important security information that they fear can result in a copycat attack. This is a mistaken belief as cyber criminals are already swapping information among themselves. It makes sense, therefore, for security professionals to also share real-time information.

Let’s hope that security professionals soon realize that sharing information is more valuable than secrecy. And let’s hope that Microsoft’s move is a first step in this change of attitude.

Many small business owners have utilized the cloud during these challenging economic times. Business owners can save money by utilizing programs within the cloud, from Photoshop alternatives to project-management tools. Nevertheless, the cloud can be a bit questionable when it comes to security. Documents stored in the cloud can be compromised or damaged.

Password issues

One of the biggest security issues when dealing with the cloud is password protection. This is also one of the biggest security issues outside of the cloud.

Business owners must be careful to select passwords for their cloud projects which are challenging for others to guess. The best solution is for owners to include a blend of letters and numbers in their passwords. Owners should also be cautious about sharing their passwords with a lot of people. The more people who have access to passwords, the more in danger important data and documents are.

Hacker alert

A few serious problems that will not soon go away for anybody who uses a computer are hackers, malware, and spyware. As business owners have little control over how secure the cloud is this aspect of security can be very alarming indeed. Companies like Microsoft and Google must create their own security measures to protect the data stored in the cloud.

Common sense protection

There are a couple common-sense practices that will help protect small business owners who choose to keep information in the cloud.

First, owners should consider what type of information they are storing in the cloud. The most sensitive data, data that could damage a business if it is lost or stolen, may not be suitable for cloud storage. Instead, this data may be better preserved on a business owner’s individual computing system and reliably backed up.

Secondly, be careful about who is allowed access to the data stored in the cloud. It seems obvious that business owners protect their laptops and desktops with passwords. The same should be applied to the cloud.

The advantages of cloud computing are apparent. Not only can you free up needed space on your servers and computers, you are able to backup important data and effortlessly share it within your company. But when considering data sharing and storage for your business, you might have some questions about cloud security, particularly if your business requires you to protect consumer data in a manner that is compliant with HIPAA, PCI or Sarbanes-Oxley regulations.

It can be hard to tell if your cloud storage solution adheres to these requirements, as many don’t state in their privacy policies. To help you navigate these difficult waters, let’s consider this topic in more detail below.

Compliance

More and more companies are turning to the cloud for storage. For obvious reasons, it is a very affordable strategy to use. However, improper handling of your client’s information can harm your reputation and lead to a loss of business for your company. If your company requires that client data be handled in a controlled way, you need to first learn how secure the cloud service is and what regulations does the cloud service providers abide by. If a company has not specifically said they comply with certain regulations, it’s safe to assume they do not.

Who is responsible

Cloud security is vital when handling your sensitive data, but whose responsibility is it? Should you assume that if it is not explained in the privacy policy, that a service provider doesn’t follow these regulations? Even though this is clearly the safest option, it may leave you unable to use cloud computing at all. Many services fail to provide detailed information in their privacy rules, possibly to reduce their liability. The hope is that with time cloud storage and sharing will become better self-regulated and corporations will choose to reveal their individual practices to the businesses they serve. While such self-regulation is not required right now, many businesses think it is their duty to display clear warnings, explaining what they don’t provide or guarantee.

In the end, as cloud computing service providers are not required by law to be transparent regarding their security, the responsibility rests in your hands. If you choose to use the cloud, it’s your responsibility to pick a service provider you trust. Weigh the advantages and disadvantages and make the best decision for your business.

Disasters can happen to any business and they come in many forms and severities. They can be everything from a natural disaster, to a well-meaning employee accidently downloading a dangerous virus, to something crucial getting mistakenly deleted. These what-ifs can keep you up at night, so for your own peace of mind develop a disaster recovery plan.

Decide What’s Important

The first step is to determine what data is crucial to your business. What data must be recovered quickly for your company to run? This will tell you what you should back up.

Make a Plan

Your next step is to consider what steps you should take if something happens. Begin with the worst possible scenario and create a plan for that. What technology do you need if everything is destroyed, what data, and what systems must be back up ASAP? Write down all of these in order of importance.

Know Your Workflows

While you have the overall picture of how your business runs, you probably don’t know every single process everyone does. Have your staff document the processes and workflows they perform to complete tasks for the company. In the event of something tragic, anyone can read the process document and preform an important task.

Decide Who is in Charge

Depending on the kind of disaster you experience, your employees could panic.  Before this happens, select one levelheaded person in the organization to be “in charge” of the disaster recovery plan. They ought to know the plan as well as you do and maybe have helped you create it. This is the person you turn to for execution of the plan, so that you can be the strong leader your employees need at a time like this.

When we hear of disaster people often think it can’t happen to them, but we never know what is around the corner. It’s important to be prepared. Having a strong disaster recovery plan will not only make you feel more secure, but will comfort your employees as well.

The name Segway is synonymous with tech failure. After all, inventor Dean Kamen once believed that his two-wheeled scooters would become a substitute for cars. He pictured a future in which people buzzed to the supermarket, library, or work on their Segway PT scooters.

That hasn’t happened. However, Segways are still around. In fact, Segway celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2011, and it is not completely rare to see the devices zipping along downtown sidewalks. That’s a rather impressive feat for a tech “failure.”

Let’s talk about how the Segway actually works though.

Powering the Segway

The Segway PT is powered by electric motors.  Those motors are fueled by a series of lithium-ion batteries which are easily charged by a standard household electrical socket. Five gyroscopic sensors, two tilt sensors, and two computers with specialty software prevent the Segway from tipping over.

Making the Segway Move

The sensors register if the user shifts their body weight to switch the direction and speed of movement. Basically, when you wish to move forward at a quicker pace, you would pull the handlebars closer to the body and lean forward slightly. The Segway’s current top speed is 12.5 miles per hour and is ideal for areas with plenty of wide, flat sidewalk space.

Lowered Expectations

The buzz was pretty big around the Segway when it was initially introduced, but it never quite lived up to it all.  Some even believed that the Segway would be more popular than the Internet as a whole!

In the 10 years since its release, the Segway has not entirely failed, but its strange appearance and goofy riding style has made it nearly impossible to achieve its expected level of success.

As a small business, there is a good chance you have to manage projects and people that are not always located in one area.  So how do you manage these projects and off location employees while still having the capacity to share updates, documents, and delegate tasks?

Project management solutions

Fortunately, numerous companies offer top-notch project management tools for small business owners. By employing these tools, you can keep your various projects on track and avoid costly missed deadlines. Here is a glance at some of the best project management tools currently available:

Basecamp

Many entrepreneurs use this tool for project management solutions. Basecamp creates a platform to manage your small business projects: share materials, correspond with coworkers, assign tasks, and set up project calendars. Basecamp’s client access allows clients to monitor and comment on the progress of their projects. 

Quickbase

Quickbase has a lot to recommend it, not least of all the fact that the maker of Intuit business software is behind this program. Quickbase performs similar basic tasks as Basecamp. However, it provides a unique version of a simple interface and is equally helpful for both large and modest small businesses.

Huddle

Some projects need more creativity than others. This is where Huddle really shines. This project management tool is designed specifically to handle the more creative marketing and advertising projects that small business owners must occasionally take on. Huddle contains a power live-conferencing tool that can make holding impromptu meetings a hassle-free task.

Deskaway

DeskAway is a good tool for providing you with an instant snapshot of the progress that’s been made on a project. After reviewing this progress, you can use DeskAway to deliver quick messages to team members to either congratulate them on their work or to ask for changes or updates. DeskAway also gives you the capability to create and post to a blog developed specifically for your current project.

There are many other choices for project management tools, each with their own benefits for individual businesses. Be sure to look for the one that will help your business manage your projects and personnel the best.

We’ve been hearing about the paperless office for what seems like years now, yet most workplaces today still depend on fax machines, copiers, and forests worth of paper documents. Is the paperless office like the personal jet pack? Long promised but never delivered? The simple answer? No. The world is still moving toward paperless offices. It’s just taking longer than some would like.

The advantages of paper

As great as it would be to have everything in digital format, paper continues to be useful. The primary reason it’s still around is that paper is portable. It is simple to scribble a note and slip it into your pocket. Even the most eco-friendly offices still find uses for paper. If you’re an editor, you probably know how hard it is to edit a digital copy. Lots of people prefer to proofread important documents in hard-copy format. It is sometimes easier to spot mistakes when the file is printed out.  

Less paper than ever

Most offices today rely less on paper than they ever have, and that’s no myth. Employees do the majority of their writing with word-processing programs. Rather than sending written notes to one another, they send communications through e-mail and instant messages. Marketing campaigns are created and stored on computers. Meeting notes are typed in tablets. Meeting agendas are written not on sticky notes but on smart phones. Think of how far offices have come in just the past decade. Paper, though not obsolete, has stopped being king.

The future

Clearly the future of the office is using less and less paper, but will it ever be absolutely paperless? Will notepads and sticky notes go the way of the milkman? Maybe. Let’s look at the milkman: some still prefer to get their milk hand-delivered to their homes, but most of us just pop out to the store and pick some up when we want it.

Paper will likely end up exactly the same. As we turn to business solutions such as the cloud, smartphones, and computers for invoicing, writing and spreadsheets, there will still be people that prefer the physical  feel of pen and paper.