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Get a New Hire Up to Speed Using Videos

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Get a New Hire Up to Speed Using Videos

When it comes to onboarding a new employee, a majority of small businesses use a traditional approach like an Employee Handbook. The problem with this training process is that it generally offers little visual assistance and provides plenty of boredom.

Colleagues In DiscussionNumerous businesses have brushed aside the boredom and monotony of the handbook, in exchange for the fast-tracking process of onboarding new employees with the use of short videos. Here are some tips on why onboarding videos can help to bring your new employees up to speed in no time.

  1. Being Visual is Vital – We live in an age dominated by technology, and more importantly, gaining information through a video platform. With computers, smart phones and tablets dominating much of our time in and out of the office, people are accustomed to gaining information via videos.
  2. Built for Any Business – Are your employees not in a position where they are placed in front of a computer? No problem. You can email the training videos to your employees to allow them to watch it on their phone, computer and tablet, whether they’re at work or at home. On top of that, many programs allow you to monitor that the video has been opened and viewed, to ensure your employee is completing the training. No book will give you that perk.
  3. One Piece at a Time – Training videos are generally short, in the three to five minute range. This allows for training to be broken down and processed a piece at a time. This keeps employees from becoming overwhelmed and allows them to absorb the information a little at a time. This allows them to absorb and retain the information better than if you them read 50 pages.
  4. Quickly and Easily Explain Change – Studies have shown employees prefer to watch a short informational video over holding a live meeting. These short videos can give you the opportunity to inform employees of changes in everything from insurance policies to business processes.
  5. Speed Up Training Time – Using short videos to onboard new employees allows for you to save money and time on training. This allows for your new hire to up to speed and get to work faster. The videos also allow them to refer back to the information should they have any questions, instead of taking up the time of a coworker with questions.

4 Tips For Getting the Most Out of Your Technology Investment

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How many times have you purchased new software or hardware, and avoided the help menu or user manual? Experts reason that about 90 percent of all features included with software go unused! Much of this comes down to lack of training for individuals using the technology – they use what they know and need most, and avoid anything that would require study or practice to implement. It’s human nature to take the path of least resistance, but with a little motivation you could better benefit from the money spent on technology for your business.Instead of letting your technology investments continue on underutilized, here are 4 tips for getting the most out of your technology dollars:

1. Put the client in the driver’s seat of communication.

You can improve the quality of customer service offered by your company through the use of simple technology. The more connected you are to your clients, the happier they are with your work. Use technology to give your clients a way to initiate discussion with you, either through blog interaction or a discussion forum. Set up instant messaging so clients can contact appropriate staff members as necessary. It’s simple technology, but will result in improved client retention, repeat customers and better communication.

2. Create a business culture of continuous improvement.

One of the most amazing aspects of technology is how quickly it is updated and improved. Just when you think you have the best of the best, new technologies and processes are created to improve productivity. Even in the sometimes mundane office environments, new ideas will enhance efficiency and productivity. Encourage staff and consultants to let the new ideas flow – continuous improvement is the key for making the most out of your technology.

3. Take advantage of training opportunities.

If the cost of sending staff to training courses is a bit much, and you’re unable to conduct monthly training seminars on your own – consider bringing in vendors and experts whenever a new version of software is released. You can also have managed service providers deliver training virtually as needed, in order to keep your staff up to date with the programs and tools used in the office.

4. Internal email newsletters with tips.

Most businesses recognize the value of sending newsletters to their clients to keep in touch and establish relationships, but what about internal newsletters among staff members? Send a weekly email to your staff with a single technology tip that explains how to do something that will improve their productivity or make their lives a little easier. Keep it fun and add a cartoon or a quick quiz to keep the staff looking forward to their weekly newsletter. Your ideas for topics can come from training and seminars you attend, or from questions staff ask the IT department. If one person doesn’t

Faced With Computer Crashes, A Lost Password Or A Network Failure With No In-House Computer Expert?

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Computer ErrorFaced With Computer Crashes, A Lost Password Or A Network Failure With No In-House Computer Expert?

Most businesses don’t worry about a computer crashing, a password being lost or a network going down when they have an in-house IT expert to handle it. But what happens if that IT guru suddenly isn’t there? That computer crash, lost password or downed network could suddenly be crippling your business and hindering the productivity of your employees.

Here are six tips to help you avoid this terrifying technology headache:

  1. Keep detailed network documentation about your business’s computer network. Be sure to keep track of what software licenses you own and what the administrator passwords to your systems and devices are. Don’t forget to keep an organized inventory of what hardware you own and when the warranties on the equipment you use expire. Be sure to take advantage of cloud vendors for email, online storage and security. And remember to NEVER leave all this information in the hands of a single IT expert in your company.
  2. Be certain you know where your backup files are stored and that they are being stored properly. Make time in your schedule to monitor or check in on your business’s system backups. If your database or network crashes, you want to be sure your data and information has been backed up properly.
  3. Make sure you have a written plan in place for restoring your network fast, so you are prepared in case of a disaster. Every business should develop and test a disaster recovery plan for their office. If your business is lacking such a plan, you could be completely lost in the event of data or network disaster.
  4. Keep track of where all of your software is stored. You have to take the time to organize and store your software and data in a secure location. This cuts down on the restore time of a program or software. It also allows you to avoid having to repurchase the software or programming, like you may have to if you are unable to find it.
  5. Know what routine maintenance must be done for your network and monitor to be sure it’s being completed. Familiarize yourself with your business’s servers, workstations and peripherals on your network. This may sound foreign or like extra work you don’t want to take on, but it’s crucial information to maintain and have in case issues arise.

Learn how to protect yourself from hostile security breaches in case your IT expert suddenly quits and still has access. Immediately task yourself or your staff with disabling the former employee’s access to your network and all your cloud based applications.

Data Backup: Are You Hoping For The Best?

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Data Backup: Are You Hoping For The Best?

Consider the “What If” Factor

Secure data backup for your business is an absolute must, but the real question is, what methods are you using? Although you may think you are taking extreme caution, such as saving data on multiple computers and physical drives, the scary truth is these items are still at risk for failing and leaving you helpless. While it may seem unlikely that your data backup computers and thumb drives would all fail or become lost at the same time, it has happened to many business owners before. Events such as burglary, fire other natural disaster are unlikely but still have the chance to occur. And the harsh reality of these events may not set in for you, until it’s simply too late.

What are the Chances

One example of these unlikely events becoming a reality is Bill Wiley of Computer Associates. Wiley took extensive measures to ensure the critical data of his company and his work were always backed up on two laptops and multiple thumb drives. However, these precautionary measures did Wiley little good on January 15, 2009, when his US Airways flight bound for Charlotte had to make an emergency landing that left both of Wiley’s laptops and his thumb drives floating at the bottom of the Hudson River. Furthermore, when Wiley’s computers and drives were brought up from the icy waters, they were held as “crash evidence” and he still hadn’t recovered them months after the crash.

Now compare Wiley’s experience with his fellow passenger, Paul Jorgensen. While Jorgensen was also panicked that his computer had met a watery end that fateful Thursday, he had his data backup on a cloud system and had fully recovered his files by that following Monday.

Don’t Leave Your Company’s Data to Chance

The lesson here is that you cannot simply rely on physical storage devices such as multiple computers and thumb drives for your data backup. While these are great “extra” data backup options, they shouldn’t be your main source. Offsite data backup storage systems, such as cloud services, provide the necessary safety net should your psychical storage options fail. The other key focus is to regularly check and monitor your backup systems. Ensure that all necessary data, files, applications and programs have been successfully backed up and test your restore process on a regular basis.

5 Reasons to Implement a Managed IT Services Solution

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Information Technology services are essential to the success of every organization, large or small. With increasingly competitive business environments, CEOs and small business owners are under great pressure to maintain a highly qualified staff and to make sure their technology is obtaining a better ROI than their competitors’.

These goals are not easily achieved, particularly for young or small businesses with less financial resources and time available. Having your own successful information technology department can eat up too much of the company’s budget and time resources, and eventually cause a loss of its competitive edge. These disadvantages of maintaining an in-house IT department are why companies of all sizes have turned to using managed service providers to either assist their existing IT department or become their virtual IT department, handling all of the technology involved in keeping their businesses running at optimal levels.

The benefits of using a managed services solution are numerous, but. . .

The top 5 benefits of managed services for business include:

1. Benefit from the expertise of a specialist, without having to spend time and financial resources training your staff to become experts.

2. Decrease your technology risks. Your company doesn’t have to worry about losing and trying to replace trained staff members, or about repairing, implementing or replacing complex technology solutions.

3. Enjoy access to the most up-to-date, sophisticated technology solutions without having to invest in expensive equipment.

4. Experience ultimate control over your business technology without having to manage an information technology department. This gives you the time you need to focus on what you do best: your business functions.

5. Reduce stress and improve efficiency of your staff. When you make good use of managed service resources, your staff isn’t tied up with IT concerns and they have more time to focus on tasks that are productive for the business.

Hang Up The Landline for VoIP

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Hang Up The Landline for VoIP

Considering the switch to a VoIP phone system? Not sure what advantages it will give you over a traditional land-line? Well, You’re not alone. A large number of business owners are making the switch from land-lines to VoIP phone systems for their business.

Don’t Break the Bank

What’s the number one reason for switching to a VoIP phone system? Cost! VoIP systems are surefire way to reduce the costs of phone services, especially if you are operating a business that has a large number of long distance or international calls for business purposes.

Keep Your Local Digits

There was a time when VoIP phone systems didn’t guarantee that you would be able to have a local phone number. That time has come and gone. There are numerous services now available that allow you to not just enjoy the cost friendly services of VoIP, but also allow you to keep a local phone number for it.

The Phone Will Ring No Matter Where You Are

VoIP also allows you the advantage of taking your phone service with you anywhere. When you leave the office, you calls and messages don’t have to stay behind. VoIP allows your IP phone to travel with you when you are traveling for business meetings, sales meetings or even vacation, although we don’t recommend taking too many calls during that last one.

Why Your Company Needs An Internet Use Policy

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Internet PolicyWith computers and Internet access such an integral part of every business, and the Internet filled with everything from gambling to x-rated websites, it is critical that every business has an Internet use policy in place. This policy can help prevent your employees from accidentally or intentionally causing harm to your company or your company’s reputation. While you don’t want to give your employees the idea that they are living in George Orwell’s 1984, you want them to have a clear understanding of practices that are and are not appropriate during work hours. It is necessary for companies to create an Internet policy that everyone can live with.

Why Have An Internet Policy?

The purpose of a business is to make money. In order to accomplish this, the company has to have productive employees. The Internet can be a time drain and often prevent employees from being as productive as they should be. With such a wide range of information available on the Internet, it is necessary to clarify the company’s expectations of its employees regarding Internet access. With a strong policy in place, the employee, as well as the employer, will find Internet use less confusing and frustrating.

Another important reason to have a strong Internet policy is to save your company from unnecessary lawsuits. Unless you have a clear policy on what is and is not acceptable on the Internet in your company, you can risk having an unfair dismissal lawsuit on your hands when an employee is abusing the company’s Internet.

What Elements Should Your Internet Usage Policy Contain?

When planning your Internet use policy, it should contain certain key elements such as:

The company Internet is for company business only and to be used only during company business hours
All work done on company computers during business hours, including all emails, is company property and can be accessed by the employer at any time.
Establish what type of computer use is unacceptable such as accessing personal social media accounts, personal email, pornographic websites, etc.
Employees must refrain from accessing websites, creating, or forwarding email that promotes any type of discrimination such as racial or sexual discrimination, or that is defamatory or harmful towards another person or group.
Employees are not allowed to gain access to or attempt to access other employee’s computers, employee stored information, or any information unauthorized by the company.

In addition to the guidelines above, inform your employees that whatever is done by the company, for the company, and on the company computers should remain confidential and within the confines of the company. In addition, let employees know that when they access unapproved sites, they risk infecting the company computer system with viruses that could possibly shut down the entire company network.

Having an Internet use policy in place helps to eliminate any confusion and possible abuse that could prevent a company from functioning productively. A solid Internet use policy help to make the work environment more pleasant and more conducive to getting the necessary work done in order to have a successful business. Creating a safe and productive environment is important for any business, and one way to ensure that is to implement an Internet use policy.

5 Keys to Building a Better Team at Work

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5 Keys to Building a Better Team at Work

One of the biggest challenges for any entrepreneur or business person is what Gino Wickman; author of the book Traction, calls “Letting go of the vine.” This simply means to trust those around you more and put responsibilities on others. There is a very important step before this is prudent, and that is to surround yourself with people who have a love for the “vine” and a clear understanding of how the “vine” operates. Ultimately, a team who is worthy of the “vine“. The challenge of building this team falls squarely on the entrepreneur or business person shoulders.

So how do you get a team of people assembled that are ready to allow you to let go of this precious “vine“? I have learned much over the last 16 years by creating and operating multiple multi-million dollar businesses along the Mississippi, Alabama and Florida Eastern NC. In reality, most of what I have learned is through failure and the relentless pursuit of excellence. It is very strange how the pursuit of excellence and failure go hand-in-hand, but this is one of the immutable laws that God has put in place that mankind cannot seem to thwart.

Although the aforementioned statement is explicitly true we are able to obtain more excellence and suffer less failure through the study of other people’s successes and failures. Below are six items that I believe can help any entrepreneur or business person in putting together a team worthy of caring for your “vine“.

  1. Getting Rid of What Does Not Belong.  One of the toughest challenges is to believe in your gut what is right and then to act upon it swiftly. As it relates to people, this is of utmost importance. What I have found is that A Players want to work with other A Players. B Players want to work with C Players and it goes down from there.  These underperformers are very easy to spot and caustic to the organization. They are the ones that don’t like accountability, they are very inconsistent and don’t like to be responsible for anything. You instinctively know who your weak players are and you know which one are never going to change no matter how much coaching you give them. Once this decision has been made, the only option is to get that player off the team. The faster the better for your sake, your client’s sake and the overall company’s sake.
  2. Setting Great Key Performance Metrics.  Key Performance Metrics is simply looking at your business and determining what are some things that you can measure and can be reported on that will have a great impact in getting you closer to excellence. We all know that anything measured improves and that which is also reported on improves exponentially. Not to beat a dead horse, but the ones on your team that are most resistant to measurement are usually going to be your B and C or below players. The trick here is to really spend some time asking yourself questions about the fewest number of things you could measure and gain the greatest impact. If you ask better questions you will get better answers. Write the questions out! The answers will follow.
  3. Define Clear SMART Goals. After arriving at your companies KPI’s set some specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and time bound goals. The best way to do that is to get buy-in from the team so that everyone has a clear understanding of who is responsible for what. One of the biggest areas of failure comes from a misunderstanding of responsibilities. Without assigning responsibilities it is difficult to determine why things fail to work and goals are not met. It is important to meet regularly and measure the progress and not be afraid to deal with people who are irresponsible with their duties.
  4. Define the Win. I believe that most business owners truly love the work and they can actually forget to define what a win looks like. The thing to remember here is that when you are working a team of people that don’t have the full vision that you might have you have to define the win. It is equally important for the win to be a true win and not something that does not move the organization towards excellence. It is a fallacy to believe that everyone is a winner. The reality is that people who are disciplined and fulfill their responsibilities are the winners and they need to be rewarded. The others need to be reminded and coached to be winners. If this is done consistently, the non-winners will not want to stay on the team.
  5. Celebrating a Win.  A great win deserves a great celebration. If you have put together the right team, set the correct KPI’s, defined SMART goals and defined the win properly you should celebrate largely. Your team deserves it and so do you. It is very important that we refuel ourselves so that we are able to persevere. A great business career is a marathon – not a sprint!

As a leader and entrepreneur it is of utmost importance to realize that in order to grow our companies we have to ultimately grow ourselves and grow those around us.

Contact Info

740 Greenville Blvd. SE., Ste. 400-374
Greenville, NC 27858

Phone: (252) 565-1235