Nobody in small business looks forward to dealing with HR issues; the regulations associated with HR issues seem tedious, dry, and difficult to interpret. Unfortunately, mistakes where personnel are concerned can quickly become costly matters, what with the growing propensity of disgruntled employees to lodge court actions when they believe they have been subjected to an unfair work practice.  To protect your business there are several areas you really must deal with, and there are places you can go for free help and assistance.

Harassment

Harassment takes many forms, from bullying to sexual overtures. Your business should have a strong written policy on harassment and when incidents are reported you must take immediate steps to enforce its provisions.

Discrimination

Discrimination occurs whenever someone is treated differently because of their religion, race, sexual preference or culture. It can take place as part of the recruitment process by influencing who you select to interview and hire; by being used as an excuse to terminate a person; by influencing evaluation for a promotion; or by being brought into consideration when choosing who gets to undertake a training course or represent the business at a trade show. Treat all members of the team impartially and don’t allow others in the business to practice discrimination.

The hiring contract

Every person you appoint should be provided with a written copy of their basic contract conditions. They should sign two copies, one for their personal retention and one for your files. This will ensure that both parties have a clear understanding of the terms of the appointment - pay, duties, leave entitlement and other relevant details, and have agreed to them.

Protecting the firm’s IP

Every business has intellectual property of some kind. It could be patents or copyrights, or just its customer database and pricing schedule. Everybody employed should sign an agreement that states they will not disclose this intellectual property to others, both during and after their employment with you, and that on termination all documents related to IP or owned by the company will be returned.  Put it in as part of the hiring contract.

Contractor relationships

It can’t be assumed that every person who seems to be in the position of ‘contractor’ to a business, is for that reason necessarily excluded from entitlement to all of the benefits that normally accrue to ‘real’ employees. This area of law varies widely from one jurisdiction to another and it’s best to get expert advice before taking on someone in a ‘contractor’ role just to be certain of their legal position in relation to your business and your obligations to them.

Invasion of privacy

If you’re going to monitor team members’ communications, now a common practice in these days of email and the Internet, be sure the way you do it can’t be seen as an invasion of their privacy. State your policy in this regard as part of your hiring agreement and don’t try to get away with anything that could be construed as ‘snooping’. 

Employment history records

You should document every significant element of a team member’s relationship with your business from the time of their appointment until the time they leave. If a person is promoted (or not promoted) the reasons need to be recorded for future reference. This includes recording things like disciplinary problems, customer complaints, minutes of counseling meetings and violations of your employment policy.  It should also include any complaints they make to you. But don’t just dwell on the negatives – you should be recording the customer kudos and their other work related achievements as well.

So, while there's little you can do to prevent the truly bogus lawsuit, you can reduce your risk of a case arising in the first place, and improve your chances of winning a court action, by documenting, distributing and enforcing strong policies around these core issues. This will also keep you in compliance with labor law in many instances also. And, just as important, you need to ensure your employees understand the issues by providing short information courses that explain why they are important and how breaches will be treated. That way nobody can claim ignorance as a defense and it might just work to deter any improper actions in the first place.

It needn’t be too difficult to put together a set of ‘plain English’ polices covering these issues – first stop should be the various government departments charged with aspects of employment law. They often have educational materials like brochures and workplace posters, offer training on important issues and provide standard policy statements you can use in your own policy manual.

In today's business climate employees are much more likely to head for court if they believe that they are being treated unfairly, so it makes good business sense to try to avoid costly HR mistakes from arising in the first place. This is one area where a little prevention is worth a lot of cure.

TQM - Total Quality Management. We don’t hear so much about it these days but that doesn’t mean it’s become irrelevant to business success. Just consider the meaning of the words in the name:

Total: TQM looks at the whole business and how what’s happening in each section - sales, manufacture, accounts, customer service - can integrate to deliver a quality product that matches customer requirements. Total, too, in respect of making it the responsibility of people in all departments no matter what their function. Each has to realize that whatever it is they are doing adds to the quality of the final product. This approach achieves the most competitive cost position and highest level of customer satisfaction.

Quality: refers to the total customer experience. It’s not enough to deliver only a defect free product – it should be delivered on time, to the right place and at the right cost. Those are all parts of ‘quality’ too.

Management: total quality doesn’t just happen. An active management process driven from the top has to ensure the systems and processes are in place to ensure it happens. That means communicating the business vision and values to all employees; ensuring the right business processes are in place; and creating a culture that promotes input by your team members towards continuous improvement of work practices.

Businesses that took to a TQM system quickly found they needed to emphasize the 3Cs – Customers, Culture, and Counting.

Customers: Let the users of products or services define what they want rather than have their needs defined by the design team or sales people. In TQM, customer needs and expectations, not in-house standards, define quality. No matter how good your products and services are by some ‘objective’ standard, they don’t have total quality unless they meet your customer’s needs.

Culture: a number of things go towards creating the sort of culture that encourages TQM among the team. For instance, the traditional management approach is to tolerate a certain level of errors and waste as inevitable. Things got inspected after they were produced and rejected if not up to standard. But TQM focuses on improving the individual processes that go towards creating a product so that the end product turns up error free as part of the process. In fact TQM studies suggest that as much as 85% of error in production is commonly due to systems (the way management sets up work to be done), rather than employee mistakes. TQM actually works on the basis that by improving the culture through increased employee input and responsibility, there will also be a series of small, incremental gains in productivity and quality resulting from daily attention to enhancing how work is done.

Counting: TQM places a lot of importance in knowing just how well each area of the business is performing and encourages the use of measurement tools – not just for financial indicators either, but of all your key performance indicators, as well as check sheets, run charts, and so on that keep processes on track.

TQM takes a ‘whole business’ approach so definition tend to be wordy trying to catch all the ideas: Total Quality Management is a structured system for satisfying internal and external customers and suppliers by integrating the business environment, continuous improvement, and breakthroughs with development, improvement, and maintenance cycles while changing organizational culture.

Phew! But if many of these concepts sound familiar it’s because the ideas still inform current business practice. Try and run a 21st century business without the majority of them in your list of strategies and you’ll fail. Yes, TQM is still with us. It may not be calling itself by its original name, but it can certainly be recognized in the way businesses are operating.

Words and colors

Give all your signage a consistent look by using the same colors and typeface for them. Where possible, link the look of your signs to all your other promotional and communications elements, including advertising.

A sign is there to be read, so make reading it easy. When you’re planning a sign, consider how far away it is from the person who’s going to be looking at it. This will be a critical factor in choosing the size of the lettering you use.  Look at existing signage to help guide your decisions. For a viewer 100 feet away from a sign, the minimum readable letter size is 3 inches.

Remember that words consisting wholly of capital letters are generally harder to read than a mix of upper and lower-case letters. And a simple typeface is much easier to read than a script or other fancy variety. Bold type is easier to read than thinner fonts.

A logo or other symbol can add visual appeal to a sign, but it’s always best to use only one graphic element so the viewer’s eye can be drawn to it and not hop around the sign’s area.

Be careful in your selection of colors for your signage. Black type on a white background (or white type on a black background) offers the maximum contrast and is the most visible. Yellow type on a white background doesn’t provide the same degree of contrast and consequently is harder to read. Keep the number of colors to a minimum and make sure the letters really stand out from the background.

There’s a ‘Seven Word Rule’ about signs that’s often quoted. It says that when people look at a sign they’ll be able to assimilate a maximum of seven words; any more are wasted and can detract from the value of the sign. Keep words to a minimum.

If possible, get your signs done by a professional. Homemade signs usually tend to look like exactly that!

External signs

Be sure any external signage complies with local legislation. Most municipalities have some sort of signage regulations and it could turn out to be an expensive mistake to ignore them. Signage professionals should be aware of the regulations that apply in your area.

The materials used for external signage have changed considerably in recent times. Gone is the old ‘paint and lumber’ approach and in its place is a range of new and sophisticated materials that need to be carefully chosen according to your particular requirements. It’s worth paying a bit more to get a sign that will retain its appearance throughout its serviceable lifetime.

If your signage is meant to be read by people who are passing by in cars or buses, get the message across in as few words as possible. If it’s seen by people who have a lot of time to read it and are standing still you can put more information into it.

Its fine to have your name up in lights but your signs should also tell people what it is that you do. Signage that just offers a business name doesn’t really provide enough information unless you happen to be a household word brand. ‘Brent & Croft Real Estate’ says a lot more than just ‘Brent & Croft’.

For retail businesses

If you get the same question from customers over and over maybe you can put the answer on your sign. For example, if you’re selling a product that comes in a variety of colors and customers keep asking “What colors does it come in?” put up a sign that answers the question.

Another customer-centric approach is to have any signs carrying prices also show the features of each product. If one item costs more than another, similar item, tell customers what the features are that justifies the price differential.

If you advertise a product to bring customers into your business, show them where it is with a sign saying something like ‘As advertised on TV’. The same thing applies to items in catalogs or flyers.

It would be hard to find an occupation that didn’t fit into a trade association somewhere. Whether you are a plumber or a goldfish grower, a furniture manufacturer or bookseller, there is a trade association for you. Whether they call themselves an industry association, an employer association, or one of any number of other titles, essentially they all have a common function – they exist to serve the interests of the member firms.

Associations help resolve problems between their members and consumers, and between their members and government bodies. Most also provide consumer/customer information and educational materials.

Businesses benefit from association membership by keeping abreast of trends, by learning what legislation is in the pipeline and how it could affect them, and by acquiring knowledge about the bigger economic environment in which they operate. Some offer extra benefits ranging from special insurance deals, to discount travel, to group purchasing discounts, and even access to legal advice.

Trade associations are a powerful resource for building and expanding business opportunities. Most trade associations continually research their industries and keep their members informed via their website, their newsletters, their publications and by other means such as conferences and forums.

There are four key benefits offered by professional and trade associations to their members. All members have access to the same benefits, so it’s largely up to the member business to find ways of capitalizing on these opportunities. 

1. Keeping abreast of industry trends. Associations have the responsibility of knowing what’s going on in their industry and that means they can often provide information not available elsewhere, such as surveys on wages and fringe benefits, on operating costs and executive compensation. These help members position themselves sensibly in relation to their competitors.

2. Providing networking opportunities. Meetings arranged by associations become places where networking can be carried out with others who really understand the problems their businesses face in the real world. It’s a place to find out what others who have lived the same experience have done to cope and thrive.

3. Lobbying. Trade associations represent the collective voice of their group to government so as to ensure that legislation related to their specific industry/occupation is fair and acceptable to members. They are able to leverage the collective strength of their members and represent them at the higher levels of government and the community. They are able to run large scale publicity campaigns for legislators and the public explaining the issues and offering reasonable solutions in line with industry preferences.

4. Providing information on technology and process developments. Industry associations accumulate and disseminate information. They keep their members up to date with the latest techniques, products, services and solutions. This is usually done through their website, forums and magazines.

There’s the price of membership of course – but before dismissing the idea, check out your trade association and see what benefits it could offer you. Too often, SME owner/managers are like isolated islands, consumed with daily operations and cut off from their larger industry except for attendance at the occasional trade show. For people in this situation, associations can be an important resource for information, assistance and support.