Do you know how much your employees really cost? Cacluating your true labor burden can be a time consuming and arduous task for many small businesses. You may be surprised to find a number of hidden costs associated with every employee. Everything from unemployment claims to OSHA compliance is often missed in a business owner's calculations, causing the estimate to off by a significant amount.
Most companies are still adjusting to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As the law continues to be phased in, human resources departments will likely encounter even more challenges.
It's no longer enough for businesses to simply put together an amazing team. The key to success and longevity in today's competitive business environment begins and ends with employee retention. The financial implications of a high turnover rate, where the cost of training and recruitment is lost, are high. A recent CAP study found that on average, employee replacement costs a company one-fifth of that worker's salary. Since those numbers rise according to position and salary (100 percent or more for middle management, and 200 percent or more for upper management) retaining key employees is a critical financial, as well as strategic, consideration for your business.
Employee training and development programs contribute to a company’s success and those of its workers. They allow companies to remain capable and relevant when skills are needed, offering them an effective way of filling roles without looking to job markets. In addition, training can boost employee morale and productivity by allowing opportunities for growth and advancement. Small wonder that companies are spending more on employee training programs than ever before.
For growing small businesses, the job of payroll administration and bookkeeping grows ever more weighty as they add more customers, expand their departments, hire additional employees and create new vendor relationships. Adding to the complexity is the fact that the larger a company gets, the more rules and red tape they will subject to just to keep all of the gears cranking without interruption.
Businesses today are faced with a complex challenge: how to hire the right people while having the confidence that they will be able to adapt and succeed in an ever-evolving workplace. Business requires visionary leaders who can make tough decisions, empower employees and pivot quickly. To secure and develop these leaders, businesses currently invest millions of dollars of time and energy into leadership development, stabilizing their company’s future in an the marketplace.
About 2.7 million Americans quit their jobs in May of 2015 -- nearly two percent of the workforce -- up by about a quarter since 2003. “Quits,” as termed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, held steady at near 2 million month-on-month.
One measure of a great company that is often overlooked in the business world is the ability to create and preserve an environment of work-life balance. Sharply contrasting this ideal, many employees are being paid for 40 hours’ worth of work on a weekly basis, yet a 2014 Gallup Study found that Americans work an average of 47 hours per week—and 40 percent of those polled stated they work 50 hours or more.
For the American workforce, witnessing the United States unemployment rate spike sharply during the recent economic recession was anything but encouraging. The good news? After hitting a peak of ten percent in October of 2009, the national unemployment rate has decreased to 5.3 percent as June 2015.
According to a report by Harvard Business Review (HBR) Analytic Services on The Impact of Employee Engagement on Performance, employee engagement has become a priority for senior managers. These managers report that staff who are highly engaged are usually highly innovative and productive, which increases the the bottom line and reduces the costs associated with sourcing and retaining the best minds in the business.
