General | International Business Solutions

Small Business Expansion Overseas

Many small business owners are always looking for ways to expand and grow the company. This will usually lead to more revenue and possibly options for franchising or selling portions of the business in order to gain profits. Choosing to expand to an overseas market is a tough venture, but can be very profitable if all necessary steps are taken prior to the change.

There are a few things to consider before starting the expansion. Different countries often results in drastic differences between cultures, and some business practices could be interpreted as offensive or rude. Language barriers can also be a hindrance for those who don’t speak the native tongues of other countries, so having to understand and speak properly in a new language can be difficult. Finding a representative in the country is often helpful, but it can be hard to find a trustworthy individual.

If all of these issues have been measured, and the positives seem to outweigh the negatives, the expansion can begin. With Internet access being available just about anywhere, business owners can do a lot of the legwork online. If the company features a product or service that needs to have a store in the country, employees can often be hired from within the community. This may mean different labor laws and wage requirements, so learning a great deal about business practices in the country is important.

Corporations that are able to expand overseas will often see a great deal of success. Although the road may be rocky, it could end up leading to drastic increases in revenue and potential customers.

Filed Under: Business, General Tagged With: Business, Internet access, Small business

The Importance of Hiring for Attitude and Training for Skill

Hiring managers are faced with the unenviable task of finding and hiring the perfect person to fill vacant positions. It’s important that the person they hire be the best possible choice, since there are great costs – in terms of time and money – associated with hiring and training new employees. To hire a new employee only to have them leave and be replaced shortly thereafter can have quite the impact on a company’s budget. This is one of the reasons why good managers know to hire for attitude and train for skill.

Imagine two candidates interviewing for the same position: One has extensive experience in the field you’re hiring for, but you’re not impressed with his attitude or demeanor. The other is friendly and outgoing, with many of the skills you’re looking for but no experience in your industry. Which applicant would you hire?

Managers who hire for attitude would recognize the potential of the second applicant and hire her, understanding that attitudes are ingrained and not likely to change, whereas skills can be taught. Additionally, an employee with a good attitude is liable to have a positive effect on other employees whereas an employee with a bad attitude is likely to spread that attitude around to those around him.

While it’s important to seek out the most qualified applicants when filling vacant positions, it’s equally important to not rule out a candidate with the right attitude just because she may not have the exact experience you’re looking for.

Filed Under: Financing, General Tagged With: Employment, Hiring, Human resources

Gilbert’s Behavioral Engineering Model: How Six Boxes Influence Employee Performance

Too often, companies seek to address issues of poor employee performance by requesting that employees undergo more training. Some times this is exactly what is needed, but more often it is not. As part of his Behavior Engineering Model, Thomas Gilbert proposed a Six Boxes model that can be used to identify where and why performance breakdown occurs. Three of the boxes deal with environmental factors (that is, the company) and three deal with the individual.

Gilbert’s Six Boxes are as follows:

Data (Environment)
Do employees understand expectations? Are they given feedback?
Instruments (Environment)
Do employees have the tools they need to succeed?
Incentives (Environment)
Are monetary and non-monetary incentives available? What about career advancement opportunities?
Knowledge (Individual)
Does the employee posses the skills and knowledge needed for the job? Have they been properly trained?
Capacity (Individual)
Does the employee have the ability and aptitude to do their job?
Motives (Individual)
Are the job and incentives worth it to the employee? What is the employee’s motives?

The answers to the questions posed in these six boxes will show why performance is either enabled or obstructed. According to this model, if there are gaps in any of the six boxes, there will also be a gap in performance. And if the gap occurs in any of the three environmentally related boxes, training won’t be able to help improve performance.

Filed Under: Financing, General Tagged With: Employment, Human resources, Thomas Gilbert

Taking Advantage of Online Training and Development Advancements

We live in an age of technological advancement, where many young employees have never known life without a computer. From books to music to college courses, more content is being made available electronically to anyone with an Internet connection. Successful Training and Development departments are taking advantage of this by augmenting instructor-led classes and presentations with online courses.

There are many pros to offering online courses:

With no travel or booking expenses for off-site training and no need to provide food or drinks, overhead can be cut, especially when considering that presentations can be recorded and reused.
Scheduling can be a nightmare, but online training allows for capturing a wider audience by removing the need to have everyone together in a single location.
People today have shorter attention spans than those of prior generations. Online training at its best accommodated this by being kept short, meaningful and targeted.
Thanks to advancements in eLearning creation software, online courses can easily be made available to users at any time. No longer is the presenter or instructor’s availability a restrictive factor: Presentations can be recorded and accessed at any time.
Online classes can lead to greater efficiency and better time management. Recorded presentations can often be made searchable, saving employees from having to replay the entire course if they missed a piece of information.

While traditional training has many practical applications and will never be replaced, the emergence of technology allowing for online courses is a benefit to corporations both large and small.

Filed Under: Business, General Tagged With: E-learning, Training and development, Virtual education

Looking for Employees? Perhaps it’s Time to Send in the Headhunters

Imagine you are an employer searching for an experienced applicant for a specialized position. You’ve spent hours creating detailed job posts, scouring online job seeker databases and interviewing one unqualified applicant after another. Unfortunately, you have not yet found the perfect fit. Perhaps it is time to consult with a third-party headhunter.

Recruiters, commonly referred to as headhunters, are individuals who contract with employers to find potential applicants and help with some of the “heavy lifting” involved with screening qualified job seekers.

The biggest positive of using a headhunter is that he or she will seek out appropriate candidates for you and prescreen them prior to passing their resumes across your desk; this not only saves you time, but also from the frustration of sifting through large numbers of irrelevant applications. If you have a large number of specialized positions to fill, you might find a headhunter’s services to be in indispensable.

There are also some considerations and risks associated with employing the services of a headhunter. Recruiters, especially good ones, are not cheap – plan on paying for quality work. Also, some Headhunters are less reputable than others and likely to do little more than just scour sites like Monster.com for resumes, so make sure you do your research.

There may be times where it makes sense to outsource your recruitment work. But if you do choose to use a recruiter, never forget that you, the employer, have the final word. Always pick the applicant you feel best about.

Filed Under: Financing, General Tagged With: Business, Employment, Human resources

The Key to Small Business Success: Creating Something That People Want

Many people dream of becoming their own boss; indeed, the idea of being in charge and calling the shots is very appealing. However, only a small percentage of those with an idea and a desire to start their own small business do so – and the unfortunate reality is that an even smaller percentage actually succeeds. The fact is, slightly more than half of small businesses fail within their first 5 years. And if you are a first time entrepreneur, the odds are further stacked against you.

The reasons that a small business might not survive are many and commonly include a lack of sufficient capital, poor management or no idea how to effectively market. But one of the biggest mistakes that an aspiring small business owner can make is made at the formative stage: Deciding to start a business that nobody else cares about.

The idea of starting a new business is undeniably exciting, but just because the person with the idea thinks it’s brilliant and will change the face of industry, there’s no guarantee that anyone else will be interested in whatever’s being offered. This is why it is critical that a diligent amount of market research be conducted. Is there actual demand? Can it be proven that customers will be willing and able to pay for the product or service being offered? Are similar companies thriving?

Unless these questions can be answered in the affirmative, it might not be the right time to start a small business.

Filed Under: Business, General Tagged With: Business, DeskElf, Small business

3 Tips for Becoming a Better Employment Interviewer

If you are new to interviewing job applicants, here are three tips for creating an interview environment that is conducive to finding the best candidate for the job.

Outline the Necessary Qualities for the Job

The first thing you want to do is be clear about the types of qualities needed for the job. You may already have a sense of this from a clearly written job description. If so, review the job description and make a list of the competencies the job requires. This list will include specific skills as well as personality traits and characteristics. The job for which you are hiring may require someone who is both familiar with the company’s product and has a vibrant personality to sell that product to as many people as possible. Outlining the qualities will help you to keep them in mind during the interview.

Ask Open Ended Questions

Next, make a list of the question you will need to ask to assess whether the candidate possesses the qualities that you have outlined. Try to avoid questions that can be answered by a simple yes or no. You want to generate a discussion and get a good feel for how the candidate expresses himself. Questions should be respectful and not violate the candidate’s privacy.

Create a Comfortable Interviewing Environment

Some beginning interviewers are self-conscious and, as a result, they create a tense interview environment. The more relaxed you are as an interviewer, the easier it will be for your job candidate to relax and be himself. Be sure to smile, shake the candidate’s hand, and offer him a comfortable seat. A little bit of chit chat at the beginning of the interview about the weather and whether or not the candidate had an easy time finding the job location, or similar subjects, will put him at ease. Beyond that, just relax and rely on your preparation to carry you through the interview.

Filed Under: Business, General Tagged With: Employment, Interview, Job interview

Promoting Professionalism in a Small Business Environment

Small business environments can be fun work places. When everyone knows one another, the workplace can take on the feel of a small family, with each member concerned about each other’s well-being. This dynamic can sometimes also lend itself to a blurring of the personal and professional lines. Here are a few ways to promote more professionalism in a small business environment.

When a Small Business Feels More Like a Family

The reason that some small businesses have a family feel to them is that some of them were, indeed, started by family members. These types of businesses can sometimes be lacking in professionalism. The problem can be complicated when extended relatives are hired and not everyone gets along with one another. Even in situations where the small business was started by a few friends who collaborated on a creative idea, professionalism can sometimes go out the window. While in some cases this is not an issue, there are situations where a lack of professionalism can result in the demise of employee relationships and productivity, impacting the bottom line of the business.

Ways to Encourage More Professionalism

Some small businesses have an unprofessional atmosphere in that everyone knows each other’s business. Employee salaries, for example, which are often confidential for good reason in larger corporations are often common knowledge in a small business. Managers in small businesses can make an effort to protect this information by not broadcasting this information to members of their teams. Varied compensation can be a source of jealousy and discontent between workers and keeping the information confidential can minimize this problem.

Another common challenge in a small business is that individuals tend to socialize a great deal on the job instead of working. Managers and business owners must establish clear expectations and regular breaks for employees to socialize when they’re not on the clock. Putting rules in writing and holding weekly meetings to enforce them can also make a difference.

Filed Under: Business, General Tagged With: Employment, Family (biology), Professional, Small business

Are Your International Customers Happy?

Web localization is a growing trend in the online world. As companies continue to go global, they’re discovering they canattract more loyal customers by providing information in their users’ native languages. To go even further, smart business owners are including cultural differences in their content.

Asking Goes a Long Way

Before taking this approach, spend some time measuring customer satisfaction levels on your current site. As part of the online survey, ask your customers which country they reside in and their native language. This can give you valuable information to decide where to concentrate your efforts first. Once you’ve localized, you can even use online survey software to ask your international customers a set of questions in their native language.

Localization Increases Engagement

By speaking your customers’ language, they’ll feel like your business cares about them and their community. Instead of being a nameless, faceless corporate entity located in some far away land, you’ll be just as friendly as a neighborhood store just down the street. In fact, this is the way that many global companies have dominated the world market in recent years.

Translation Services are Available

There’s no need to hire a staff of customer service people who are fluent in each language to successfully deploy a localization strategy. With a wealth of translation services that employ linguists from around the world, you’ll have no problem receiving and sending translated communications. As a bonus, most of these workers live in your target countries. This means that they are immersed in the culture and will instantly know what’s acceptable and what’s not. If you’re not careful, you could easily insult a valued customer with a simple mistake in wording.

To satisfy both your domestic and international customers, present a website that represents their interests and use online surveys to measure both your success and your need for change.

Filed Under: Business, General Tagged With: Companies, Customer, Market Research

3 Strategies for Effective Employee Management

Managing people on the job can be a difficult task. A work environment comprised of many different types of personalities can create an innovative workplace. At the same time, different personalities can sometimes clash and this can present problems between employees, as well as between an employee and his boss. Effective management requires putting a few practices in place on a regular basis.

Communicating Clearly with Employees

One of the most important strategies for effectively managing employees is communicating clearly. Employees need to know exactly what is expected of them. Expectations can be outlined in writing. They can also be explained one-on-one by the manager. Weekly team meetings are also good opportunities for expressing job requirements without putting any one employee on the spot. Work environments with clear and consistent communication patterns tend to have fewer instances of conflict and discord.

Addressing Conflict Immediately in the Workplace

Another important strategy is to address conflicts as soon as they arise. Allowing a disgruntled employee to sit with his complaints for an extended period of time can create a negative atmosphere for everyone around. He might speak to others about his problems and create a ripple of negativity among employees. An effective manager takes the time to listen to grievances and addresses them before things get out of hand. Sometimes all that an unhappy employee needs is to be listened to and to have his value in the workplace acknowledged.

Rewarding Outstanding Job Performance

Employees need to feel appreciated. A good manager notices when employees do outstanding work. Rewarding praiseworthy work performance with a bonus, extra work privileges, or just a simple thank-you often goes a long way in helping workers to continue performing their best work. Drawing out the potential of workers can be greatly enhanced by instituting regular rewards for outstanding work performance.

Through clear communication, conflict resolution and acknowledgement of employee excellence, managers can create harmonious and productive work environments.

Filed Under: Business, General Tagged With: Communication, Employment, Workplace conflict