Working from home creates a few challenges – more distractions, an inability to work in the same room as your coworkers, etc. Each of these realities can have a direct impact on productivity. With more employees working from home than ever before, it’s important to take steps to set telecommuting employees up for success. Here are four ways that you can help your employees stay productive when working from home.

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Hiring the right person isn’t an easy task. It’s even harder to do so in a timely fashion. When your business is ready to hire, it benefits you to do so quickly. Not only do long hiring processes cost you time and money, they also delay you from filling a needed role on your team (and that’s not including your onboarding process).

Every hour spent during the hiring process is an hour taken away from other essential business tasks. However, it’s also vital to recognize that rushing a hire can lead to other costly issues. Settling for a bad fit – or worse, dealing with negligent hiring – will only set your business back even further. Hiring means you need to perform an important balancing act – speed up the hiring process while finding the right candidate.

While tricky, it’s not impossible to speed up the hiring process without rushing. Here are ways you can streamline your hiring process to get the candidates you need quicker than before.

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It’s not easy running a business. In trying times, it becomes even harder. Disasters, pandemics, and other events can wreak havoc on your business. While property damage and other issues can be calculated, it’s difficult to measure the impact these events have on a key element of your business – your employees. 

Difficult times can have a direct impact on your employees both professionally and personally. Supporting them during these times can help ease your employees’ situation, which can both resonate with your workforce and help improve productivity. Here are five steps you can take to make a difficult situation better for you and your employees.

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Over the years, remote work has become increasingly more common. According to SmallBizGenius, the number of people who work from home has increased by 140 percent from 2005 to 2019 – and that rate has probably grown even more as a result of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. In fact, Global Workplace Analytics estimates that up to 30 percent of the entire workforce will work from home at least a couple times a week by the end of 2021.

While technological advances make it easier for employers to provide work-from-home privileges to employees, it does lead to a good question: How does workers’ compensation apply to employers who work from home? Whether your employees are temporarily working from home or are full-time telecommuters, it’s important to understand exactly how workers’ compensation applies to remote employees (and what you should do protect you and your workers).

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In response to the economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act was signed into law on March 27, 2020. Among many different types of loans and incentives, the CARES Act introduced tax relief for businesses in the form of payroll tax credits, enhanced net operating loss (NOL) deductions, and payroll tax deferment. However, the payroll tax deferral section of the CARES Act raised several questions for small and medium-sized businesses, especially those that received loans from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

To help answer these questions, the IRS released guidance on April 10, 2020, regarding payroll tax deferrals. Here’s what business owners need to know when it comes to paying taxes on social security this year.

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Whether your business is facing a difficult financial situation or hit a slow season, it may seem like layoffs are your only option. However, there is another way that you can reduce payroll costs without completely cutting jobs: furloughs. 

Furloughs are a cost-saving measure that can provide employers with financial flexibility without completely severing ties with employees. Of course, you’ll need to ask yourself a few questions to figure out if furloughs make sense for your business. 

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As a business owner, you want your employees to come into work with enthusiasm and motivation to take on the day. After all, employee engagement can be very beneficial to a business in a number of ways. Yet, it’s not often that companies prioritize it. According to Gallup’s State of the American Workforce Report, only one in three employees are engaged at work. Below, we shared some ideas to improve employee engagement within your small business as well as a few key benefits.

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As the Coronavirus impacts businesses everywhere, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to provide some financial support during difficult times. The $2 trillion Coronavirus stimulus package contains a $349 billion lending program for small businesses, along with other means of relief.

For small business owners, this news provides a form of respite in a difficult time. Of course, now these employers may ask how these loans work and whether they can access them. Read on to find out if your business can apply for a loan and how they impact your operations.

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Health Insurance renewals may be one of the most important decisions an employer makes each year. For most small businesses, group health insurance is one of the largest expenses they incur, meaning the process can be quite stressful. To help, we put together some guidance on the renewal period and what you can do to streamline the process for your business.

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After years of proposed changes to overtime laws, the Department of Labor (DOL)’s new updates finally went into effect at the beginning of 2020. The new salary levels make roughly 1.3 million more workers eligible for overtime pay. This news means business owners across the country may have some work to do to keep up with these changes.

While the new standard salary level is a notable difference, it’s not the only change the DOL made. The department also revised rules for highly-compensated employees, regulations on overtime pay calculations, and other crucial details. To help, we broke down exactly what the DOL changed to help you know where your business stands and what you should do next.

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