Decision makers have established a level of success but there’s always room for improvement. By examining your strengths and weaknesses, you can give your best to your business.
Concentrating on your strengths means you can spend time doing what you do best. But identifying weaknesses is equally important - not only so you can delegate tasks - but so you can develop your own skills.
Creating a personal development plan helps identify areas for improvement. The process defines a list of structured, realistic and achievable learning objectives that deliver measurable value to you and your business. Implementing personal development plans for your employees could also help you delegate. A motivated employee who wants a new challenge may welcome the prospect of inheriting some of your responsibility.
Losing control can be difficult but delegation can make your business stronger. Others may do things differently, but their approach might be better. Building a team you can trust, communicating with that team effectively, and giving them your support can bring out the best in your people.
How you manage your development and what you choose to delegate are matters for your own judgement. But once in a while it doesn’t hurt to think about who you are, what you are good at, and what you want to do with your time.
More info:
Skills and training for directors and owners
Interactive tool - Create a personal development plan
Following a highly successful pilot programme, Business Link is running another series of workshops aimed at owner/managers of established small and medium sized enterprises.
The half-day workshops have been designed to provide a range of cost-effective, easy to implement business tools, as well as offering a deeper insight into issues affecting all businesses.
Our workshops are run in small groups to ensure that there is plenty of time for you to discuss individual issues. The workshops are run in the morning and include a buffet lunch. (There are certain restrictions, details of which can be found in the pdf download).
Workshop details:
Marketing Toolbox
Public Relations to promote your business
Understanding Finance
A marketing strategy combines a series of tactics that aim to concentrate resources on the greatest opportunities for your business. Usually the foundation of a marketing plan, a marketing strategy can help achieve competitive advantage and ensure your business achieves its objectives.
Creating a marketing strategy helps you focus on what matters - your customers, and your business.
The process helps you understand your customers and their needs. By defining how your business can fulfil these needs better than the competition, you can build customer loyalty and attract new customers. Also critical to any marketing strategy is an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of your business, its competitors, and a more general awareness of your business environment.
It’s critical that your marketing strategy remains dynamic and interactive because nothing stays the same. Customer needs may change, or the tactics you employ to deliver your strategy may force your competitors to react. An appreciation of a marketing strategy as an interactive dynamic process - and not a static document - is critical for success.
More info:
Create your marketing strategy, Top Tips
Download - Create your marketing strategy, Complete guide
Am I liable for my employees’ in-car mobile phone use?
The Department for Transport website THINK! Road Safety makes the rules clear:
“It is an offence to cause or permit the use of a hand-held mobile phone when driving. It is also an offence to cause or permit a driver not to have proper control of a vehicle.”
Source - www.thinkroadsafety.gov.uk/campaigns/mobilephones.htm
Research by YouGov for communications company Jabra suggests one in three small to medium sized companies do not have a clear policy on mobile phone use. Under the new regulations, this lack of clarity from employers could leave them open to prosecution.
More info: Set up employment policies for your business
What motivates staff?
Recent surveys suggest job satisfaction and a challenge are key motivating factors for employees.
A survey carried out by recruitment specialist Brook Street found 16 per cent of respondents are motivated by a challenge, 37 per cent by job satisfaction. In the IT industry, a major study by ComputerWeekly.com also found it’s “not how much they earn, but how challenging their job is that counts”.
The Business Link guide “Lead and motivate your staff” argues that whilst job satisfaction depends partly on tangible reward, company culture is equally important.
More info: Lead and motivate your staff
What’s the difference between a contract and a written statement of employment?
Contracts of employment are legally binding whether they are written, oral or implied. Written contracts are often prepared following an oral agreement to avoid the potential for subsequent dispute.
A written statement of employment is not a contract, but can be used as evidence of an employee’s terms in the case of dispute or grievance. Employers are usually required to give employees a written statement of employment within 2 months.
More info:
The employment contract
Interactive tool - Create a written statement of employment for your workers
A healthy business isn’t just about profits - that’s like saying a body builder is healthy just because he’s got big muscles.
Even if your business appears healthy from the outside it’s useful to dig a little deeper. Some simple steps can help identify problems before they arise, and may expose weaknesses you can overcome to make your business more robust.
Considerations such as how many staff you employ, your level of overheads or the way you organise your finances could provide clues on the health of your business. Simple analysis of your customer base and sales figures might also expose weaknesses or identify areas where you can improve efficiency.
Assessing the health of your business is about asking questions. If you don’t like the answers, dig deeper to pinpoint problems and develop solutions that measurably strengthen your business.
Taking a proactive stance to tackle every issue head-on builds a truly robust business capable of shrugging off even the most vicious bugs.
More info: Interactive Tool - Assess the health of your business
Intellectual property (IP) protection could help your business copyright printed or digital content, secure visual designs, patent technical aspects of your product or service, and protect trade marks. Even beyond these key areas IP protection exists to protect and nurture innovation and creativity.
Protecting IP can be critical to ensuring success. It’s therefore essential for any business to review what IP assets they own, decide how valuable IP is to their business, and what they need to do to protect it.
Government action
A recent independent review of intellectual property reported to the Government in December 2006, suggesting a number of reforms to ensure the UK’s Intellectual Property system is compatible with the digital age.
The review highlighted the need to tackle IP crime in the creative industries. From April 07, Trading Standards Officers will have the authority to enforce copyright offences. In addition, IP crime has been recognised as an area for Police action in the updated National Community Safety Plan.
The government also wants to help businesses “recognise, protect and maximise the value of their intellectual property”. As part of the Patent Office’s Innovation Support Strategy, a pilot scheme offering IP health checks to small businesses began last month and will report on its progress in 2008.
Further consultations are taking place reviewing areas including:
- options for implementation of the recommendations on UK copyright exceptions,
- Patent Office fees,
- fast-track services for the grant of patents and registration of trade marks,
- civil damages and fast track litigation,
- accelerated examination of a patent application where examination has already taken place in another country.
Source - Budget 2007 - Economic and Fiscal Strategy Report, Chapter 3
More info: Protecting intellectual property
In exchange for cash, equity finance investors will often expect a stake in your business and may also demand further rights, such as a share of future profits or some level of decision making control over business operations.
If your business attracts interest from equity finance investors you might conclude there is already big potential in your business. If so, why give up equity at a time when your business appears primed to succeed? This may be a legitimate concern, but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker. The cash injection could be the boost you desperately need, and equity finance investors may also offer additional skills, experience and resources to help your business. In this respect the finer detail of the agreement may define the true value of an equity finance deal.
Business Link Business Adviser Peter Weeks says “It’s worth talking to equity finance investors to see where they are coming from. Ask questions, find out how the deal will work in practice. But come prepared, you have to sell yourself too. A professional pitch and a firm grasp on your finances will help if want to impress. It’s a two way dialogue”.
Regardless of such judgements, how you approach the decision to consider equity finance may depend on practical considerations such as your alternative finance options. If your growth plan prohibits interest payments on borrowing, or you simply can’t raise the levels of investment you need from friends, family, grants, loans, or elsewhere, equity finance could be your best option.
More info:
Equity finance
Alternatives to equity finance
Last month’s budget saw the introduction of further improvements to research and development (R&D) tax credits:
“As innovation becomes increasingly important in maintaining the UK’s globally competitive position, R&D tax credits play an even greater role in the UK’s response to globalisation. The Government is introducing further improvements to R&D tax credits, increasing the enhanced deduction of the SME R&D tax credit to 175 per cent and the large company R&D tax credit to 130 per cent from April 2008.”
Source: Budget 2007 - Economic and Fiscal Strategy Report, Chapter 3
Research and development has a distinct statutory meaning. DTI guidelines state that:
- R&D for tax purposes takes place when a project seeks to achieve an advance in science or technology.
- The activities that directly contribute to achieving this advance in science or technology through the resolution of scientific or technological uncertainty are R&D.
- Certain qualifying indirect activities related to the project are also R&D. Activities other than qualifying indirect activities which do not directly contribute to the resolution of the project’s scientific or technological uncertainty are not R&D.
Source: R&D tax relief: conditions to be satisfied: DTI guidelines
If your business undertakes R&D that matches this definition, you may be entitled to tax relief and should investigate what credits are available and how to claim.
Whether or not tax credits are available to your business, the principles of innovation, research and development are key drivers of competitive advantage. By identifying customer need and anticipating future change - a research, design and development process can make your business more profitable and productive.
More info:
Tax relief and allowances for research and development
Managing your research, design and development