If you have a group of people working with you - in your office or from home, employed or outsourced - does that mean you have a team? Well that depends how you work together.

Small Businesses need to be build a team, a Small Business Team. A team is defined as a group of people who co-operate in such a manner that it achieves more than the sum total of the individuals achieve each, they are united around a common goal and are accountable to the team for their actions.

Examples of teams are:

• Work Teams
• Sales Teams
• Customer Service Teams
• Virtual Teams

I would suggest that small business owners need to form teams around their small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses, too. This will achieve scalability, higher efficiency, more professionalism, in other words to grow your business with less growing pains, like struggling cash-flow, excessive financial and administrative overheads and much more.

In fact keeping business failure at bay, may very well depend on your ability to form these teams, in your office or virtually.

In a modern business context we also call these teams Small Business Communities or Small Business Networks. Even a small business may have different types of networks - as indicated above - you can have your office team, while your small office team member for sales may also belong to a external sales network (team).

As you can see we live not only technologically in a networked world - we live in a world of teams, communities and people networks. The benefits especially for small business and even more business start-up, can not be over emphasized - teams perform functions so important for small business success:

• achieve better work results than individuals,
• are ultimately more scalable and flexible than larger organisations,
• offer a wider range of services and products than individuals,
• offer the opportunity of “brain-storming”,
• motivate each other,
• develop more skills and confidence
• show more commitment to each other.

Whatever you do, employ new staff, hire a consultant, work with an accountant, think my-team, think my-community and think my-network - because you are building your Small Business Team. Do it even before you open your door for business, during the business start-up phase.

So, back to my question for you: Do you work with a Group of people or do you have your own Small Business Team?

A couple of days ago I mentioned the excellent posting from Kathie ” Virtual Assistant or Virtual Worker” followed by my own post of yesterday “Grow your small business - success or failure will follow“. This all leads us to the next question what to do when you decided you are going to get help for your small or start-up business.

Kathie highlighted two options, the virtual worker - who like her husband works as a contractor or the virtual assistant who takes care of certain work on a timeshare basis for an indefinite amount of time. The only other option is employing staff full time into your business.

Virtual Assistants will enable you to outsource - what I call non core business processes, like bookkeeping, call handling, typing, etc. - to a professional person, well equipped to perform these tasks for you in a cost-effective manner and I do not mean cheap, I mean cost-effective. It is also noteworthy that you will not have to provide office space, work-tools, computer, heating, etc. for virtual assistants, as they usually work from home. look at it this way, you are getting a professional on a timeshare basis, and believe me when I say, having you phone answered in a professional manner makes a lot of difference to your business, or keeping up with your bookkeeping, so you know where you are - this all will make your business much more professional. Businesses and people like to do business with professionals.

Virtual workers can be from a “Temp-Agency” or a from contracting firms. These relationships are for finite projects or to fill a cap, due to permanent staff illness on a temporary basis - they are limited by time or project. So again you can afford to bring in professionals, to perform tasks for you or your clients.

Both of these relationships are good for your cost-planning because they are not fixed, permanent costs, they are variable cost, meaning, when the project is finished the contract for your temp-workers, contractors finishes too. If times are harder for your business and you need save cost it is often easier and faster to terminate a virtual assistant - but remember to explain your decision, so that when your small business is doing better again you can start working with your virtual assistant again.

Employing people full time should only be considered for “essential, ongoing and full-time” work, this way you can provide a more secure workplace for your employee and look forward to a peaceful and unstressed work environment.

Building a support network community for your small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses is essential to your survival. Remember, the contractor you hire today, may hire you tomorrow on a project he or she is working on - networking is the way to go.

A vacation provides much needed time away from work that allows people to relax and re-energize themselves so that when they get back to work they are motivated and energetic. Going by this philosophy it is crucial for the success of any small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses, that its employees get adequate time off from work.

While employees from businesses across the globe enjoy their vacation time U.S. office workers find it rather difficult to move out of their office. According to Hewitt Associates most American firms offer their employees only 10 days of leave every year. A stark contrast to the 30 days mandatory leave in Austria, Finland and France and the 20 day government mandated vacation provide in countries such as U.K, Australia and Brazil.

“The U.S. doesn’t have any kind of federal law that requires employers to offer any vacation at all,” says Carol Sladek, a senior work-life consultant for Hewitt.

An Expedia.com survey has some interesting information to report, even when U.S. employees were offered leave 35% did not take the paid leave. Often the reason for such behavior is that there isnít enough support at work for employees to go on vacation. While this may be a good show of commitment in the long run the businesses actually suffer.

Small-, micro-, home and SOHO businesses need to ensure that they offer employees adequate paid leave and that it is taken. This lowers the chances of burn out and also of stress related illness. Flexible working conditions and good business infrastructure also help achieve the same.

Business fraud is on the rise and has employers and business owners across the U.K wondering whether it is to do with employee dissatisfaction, poor HR management or improper financial management.

BDO Stoy Hayward reported in a recent research that business fraud has gone up by 42% as compared to the same period last year. It also found that one of main reason for this trend is not poor management or dissatisfied employees but because the fear and risk of prosecution is low.

“When it comes to frauds against businesses, if you are discovered there is only a small chance of being prosecuted. When a fraud is discovered, all but the very largest are not a priority for the police given their limited resources, “says Simon Bewan, the national head of BDO Stoy Hayward.

Less than 15% of business frauds are prosecuted simply because companies want to focus on getting back the money and protecting their company image and reputation.

Most often business fraud is committed by employees in a position of trust with access to company funds and crucial financial information. Interestingly the research also showed that the larger the amount that was stolen the lower is the chances of prosecution.

Skipping class may not be a habit that employees left in college but may still be taking leave of absence for bogus reasons. According to a survey by the employment law consultancy, Peninsula, 17% of all company sickness is bogus.

The research covered over 2,000 employees and it was calculated that such leave costs companies billions of dollars, £20.9bn to be precise. And the number of sick days has risen from eight in 2002 to 16 this year.

Employees are most likely to take bogus leave on Fridays and Mondays, thereby enjoying a long weekend away from work. They are frequently found to be absent from work after sporting events.

Small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Personal business owners need to ask themselves and their employees as to why absenteeism is becoming so common and need to take steps to ensure that it does not become an accepted trend. In fact the survey also revealed that when companies accepted such “sickness leave” other workers were often left wondering “Why not me?”

“Bogus leave should not be taken lightly” says Mikle Huss, the employment law director at Peninsula, and work interviews need to be scheduled after the employees get back to work.

Often other employees and the employer find themselves burdened with additional work resulting in stress - employers need to take steps against such as a situation.

Hat-tip to GrowingBusiness.co.uk

A chain is as strong as its weakest link, and this saying holds true for a small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Personal businesses also. It is crucial that employers look into the work-life balance of their employees and motivate them to stay healthy and fit.

With the working day extending to more than the 9 to 5 routine, often employees are sitting in front of the computer for hours at end and this affects their health as well as their energy level.

Peninsula Businesswise conducted a survey to study the health of office workers and 82% respondents said that their working hours and conditions did not allow them time to exercise and this was affecting their health and well being.

Start-up-, personal- and small businesses need to motivate and encourage their employees to exercise and stay fit and could consider offering them discounted membership to local gyms. With global business practices office workers are often working at odd time and work conditions should be such that allows them relax and keep fit.

“Employers simply need to be aware of this growing issue in the modern business environment, whilst also ensuring they carry out the duty of care they must have for their employees,” says Peter Done, the managing director of Peninsula.

Flexible working conditions should be considered and an online office can help keep remote workers to stay in touch with the office.

I guess the start-up-, personal- and small business owner should take the same advice for themselves.

Hat-Tip to GrowingBusiness.co.uk

Not so long ago I wrote about small business being less volatile and that employees see small or personal business as less risky than working for bigger companies.

The NFIB-National Federation of Independent Business in a small business poll reported yesterday:

“…. nearly half of all small businesses, 49 % experienced no employment turnover during the past 12 month….”

The news for small business is getting better and better - let’s hope it will stay that way.

Hat-tip to Jeff Cornwell - Retention of Employees Strong Among Small Businesses.

A Virtual Assistant can provide valuable assistance anywhere@anytime, in certain areas of your business activities where you can’t devote your time and energy.

There are numerous problems faced by small business in expanding their products or services, the hiring, cost and training of extra staff is one of them.

Having the presence of a Virtual Assistant is of advantage to your business as you get support and other services online. The major benefit of being associated with a Virtual Assistant is that you get professional and quality jobs, without having to employ a full time professional. To you it means savings on your HR expenditure, this helps to keep overheads low.

A Virtual Assistant can assist you in the area of his/her specialization, such as market research, credit control, public relations, marketing, payment follow-ups, designing, secretarial services, telephone answering and more.

This all comes back to my belief that small business does need a services infrastructure delivered over the internet, so that they can concentrate on developing the business, and do not have all their time taken up by admin tasks.

Update (04/06): Kathie Thomas introduces Virtual Assistants.

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