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I've always had an open policy. If the company is small, everyone knows if someone is taking advantage, so either they don't (of course) or when they do and you reprimand/fire, everyone else agrees. If you can't trust your employees to break wisely, why do you think they're using time wisely while physically sitting at their desk?

At Blue Fish, I started out with more of a "take what you need" approach to benefits, but over the years, it has changed to a more structured, well-defined benefits program. What I found was that when my company was smaller (less than 10 people) and each employee was young, had no children, and was very committed to the success of the business, the less ...

We just completed the process of selecting a new PEO for Blue Fish. We looked at Administaff, ADP TotalSource, and TriNet. For the past 10 years, we've been with Administaff, one of the originators of the PEO concept. They are considered the "cadillac" PEO provider - they tend to be the most expensive option, but they have a higher quality offering than the ...

In my experience, the norm for 2010 would be: Friday, January 1 - New Year’s Day Monday, January 18 - Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Monday, February 15 - President's Day (this varies among companies) Monday, May 31 - Memorial Day Monday, July 5 - Independence Day Monday, September 6 - Labor Day Thursday, November 25 - Thanksgiving Day Friday, ...

My initial thoughts... are you hiring? My employer uses a Paid Time Off system that covers both sick, vacation and maternity/paternity leave. Due to state law in Delaware, any unused time under 40 hours carries over into the next calendar year. Anything over 40 hours gets paid out at our hourly rate. This system, in a word, sucks. It's great for the ...

Jason, Not sure whether I would use the term 'fair' - it's more about how you want to treat your employees and what you can afford as a company. It sounds like it could be an irritation to your staff to have to worry about the cost of parking, so removing that worry is probably a good thing. Some thoughts though: In the UK, this would be seen as a ...

Health insurance premiums can be a back breaker. Pre existing conditions are tough for the startup relying on individual or very small group policies. I don't have a great answer for those. Early on we put together a pretty compelling package employing (relatively) inexpensive major medical policies and Health Savings Accounts (HSA). The package is cash ...

I've never been a fan of a set amount of vacation time or sick time. Being a startup, your first few employees should be people that work hard, and play hard. Meaning, if it takes you 9 months of 60 hour weeks to get going, they'll be at your side day in and day out. Then when they want to take a couple weeks off to backpack across Iowa, you not only allow ...

Great insights from Steve. Paying for parking should be seen as a fringe benefit (just like an health insurance plan). But you really need to consider the whole employee base, not just the ones that drive to work. So, one thing you could do is create a "transportation shopping list" where employees can choose how they want to get that money (parking ...

In this situation, I don't see helping out with parking as a perk. You've changed the terms of their employment (Unless they all knew ahead of time you were planning the move and they would have to pay for parking.) The bottom line is, some of your employee's take home pay, just got cut. I don't think you should have to eat the entire cost either. There may ...

One major benefit for the merchant/ card issuer is that they get tracking data on what you purchase and can identify it with you personally. This helps them with targeted advertising etc. EXPANDED ETC: As a further example of the targeted advertising, suppose that a chain finds that customers in a particular store buy more than the normal share of ethnic ...

One benefit that may be measurable is time. If your software program saves the teachers time in either set-up or maintenance then that may be a cost savings (time = $). You can spin it by saying you are essentially freeing up the teachers to do higher priority tasks or planning better lessens. You can probably make a safe estimate to what you think a ...

If you don't know one already, I suggest you start looking for a fee-only financial advisor/consultant. They're all over, so make sure to ask for referrals from people you know. Your bank likely has one, and there are plenty of franchises of Ameriprise, Edward Jones, etc., around the country. Not only will an FC help you with your personal/family ...

Remember that in some jurisdictions, there are laws about giving your full-time/part-time employees a certain amount of annual leave/vacation. i.e. In Australia, full-time employees are entitled to 4 weeks paid leave per year. This has to be earned though, so you can enforce that they must work a full 12 months before taking leave.

12+ years in startups with very diverse groups of employees in every one of them and we always figured out how to offer health insurance. We were actually attracting great candidates from big companies with a great benefit package (though lower compensation), since not all large companies have that great of a total package. Providing health insurance is ...

In 15+ years I've never been able to make a health insurance program that pleases everyone and is affordable to everyone. All you can do is your best and do damage control every year when the rates increase. It is the single biggest negative drain on any small business. You'll never match the "benefits" of a big company when looking at the numbers, but I've ...

In my previous companies we had 401Ks. I have set up a few and many of the companies are a major PITA. Sales people will schmooze you to the n-th degree, but once you sign up - you are on your own. Plus, they way they sneak in fees is ridiculous. When I am going to be creating one for my current company, the only one I will I will consider is Vanguard.

One very big question to ask is: "Is this perk I am going to pay for something I may need to take away some day?" If the answer is YES, think long and hard about how crucial it is to have it. I have covered this subject in my article "5 Rules for Avoiding the Need to Cut Costs" Giving something to your employees you can't be sure you can sustainably pay ...

I think if the company rents the spots and assigns them to the employees then it's a business expense and would not be considered a taxable benefit to the employee. This way the company gets the deduction and the employee gets to part. This is not that different from having the parking being part of the rent. If on the other hand you make employees pay ...

Seems you already have most them ironed out. May I suggest a few things (you may already be taking care of them) : Try 'linking' your benefits (i.e., a chain) Start point being "create overseas office" and ask yourself so-what at every stage. You can have multiple 'branches' or move sequentially. Doesn't matter. Keep asking yourself 'so-what' till you ...

I don't know about cali law but what you are talking about is knows as "Fringe Benefits" by the IRS. Their documentation is a bit vague on the whole deal, I.E. they don't set any exact dollar values, but they basically say that if it's an occasional, non-company policy thing you don't need to report it as taxable. If it's a set policy or written perk then ...

If you were talking about something that would be a one-off task (like setting up a company) I would recommend paying a professional. But if a function or task is going to be an ongoing part of your company, it is best to learn those skills yourself or bring in someone with those skills. From what you have said, I'm guessing that SEO is going to continue ...

As John mentioned, there are two ways to think about SEO. The first is a one-time investment during a site redesign, to make sure your site is structured based on SEO best practices. But this only gets you a small part of the way there if you really want your content to rank well. SEO should be a factor in every piece of content that goes up on your site, ...

Although Adrian is right that you want the customer to focus on the benefits, I suspect you are being drawn into a game that all schools have to play, and you probably have to play along. I suggest you spend a little time involving yourself in the ROI dance that goes on many organisations - if you prepared a nice 1-2 pager entitled "How XXXX will save your ...

Although they may raise price as an issue, your best option would be to spend time convincing them of the benefits of using your software. Demonstrate the strong points and key benefits, so that the product sells itself. Software is about people, show them how you can make their life easier or better and they will go from "How much" to "We must have it". You ...

How will you cope with employees that don’t drive thinking it is unfair? Are you going to pay towards the cost of Bikes Bus passes Etc Paying for parking is a hard problem, as it may be cheaper for you to rent a office without “free parking” then pay for the parking costs. If parking is a pain, e.g. hard to find a space, then it is just as bad as not ...

I haven't set up and FSA before, but I used to work at a company that provided medical FSAs so I have a pretty good understanding of what the cost should be. For most good administrators, you'll pay some sort of one-time up front fee for plan documents and employee education (probably between $200-$1,000) and then a small monthly fee per employee (maybe ...

Dharmesh and Hubspot just shared some great advice today on this topic. Their new vacation policy is "If you need time off, take it." 7 words. This is awesome. They'll tell you what days they need off, and they probably are going to deserve a lot more in today's internet world than their fathers and mothers used to get. Since we all seem to work at ...

I am a broker of PEO services. Just to add a couple of points to Andrea's very sensible comment: Every employer's needs are different, and there are many PEO's to address those needs: for example, almost 700 are licensed to do business in Florida alone. This includes the major PEO's mentioned in other comments and many smaller ones. A good broker will ...

I agree with Bob McKenzie's assertion above "There are other options besides continually changing PEO's." There are very specific circumstances when it makes sense to use a PEO. Most small businesses would fare far better, both from a product and cost standpoint, by going with a customized unbundled solution under a single platform. By going this route ...