Remote work started as a trend, but now, it’s pretty clear it’s here to stay. As the world becomes more capable of handling remote work and doing it well, the benefits of hiring remote workers has far outweighed the disadvantages. Here are some ways that hiring remote workers can help your business.

It Helps Operations

Remote workers can improve your business’ overalls operations and effectiveness in several ways.

 

Firstly, you may be struggling to fill a position with local talent. With remote workers, you have no restrictions. When you widen your search, you can cover niches in your business with remote employees and get the benefits of those skills.

 

Also, remote workers are more productive, though that’s often hard to believe. Not only are remote workers less distracted by colleagues, office visitors, and more, they are more likely to work overtime than in-office workers. Their productivity translates into more productivity for you -- and more work done in less time.

 

What’s also surprising is that there’s actually less turnover with remote workers. Though company culture is usually the strongest path to company loyalty, remote workers are often happy with their jobs. The setup is so convenient and preferable to them that they often stay longer in their remote positions.

It Helps Your Budget

Hiring remote workers can also drastically lower your operating costs, leaving your budget more open for other important expenses and growth.

When a percentage or all of your team is remote, you require much less office space. When you add more remote workers to your team, you don’t need to expand your offices either; they can stay exactly the same.

 

Similarly, hiring remote workers means you don’t need to buy additional workstations or computers. This allows you to grow your team without having to continuously spend on them.

 

Because remote workers aren’t physically around, their benefits packages are significantly smaller or nonexistent, saving you money there as well. Your company will also save on retreats, outings, and other company gatherings.

It Helps Your Workers

Finally, remote work is actually great for the workers themselves too. It’s no surprise that remote work has become popular as technology has improved, and more than that, stuck around.

 

One of the biggest benefits of remote work is better work-life balance. Remote workers primarily work from home, allowing them to spend more time with family, keep flexible hours, and take longer vacations than in-office workers.

 

A huge benefit of remote work is the lack of commute. Commutes are a principal stressor for working adults, cutting into their free time and affecting their moods. Working from home minimizes this wasted time and provides relief.

Just like your business spends less, your remote workers spend less: on travel, food, clothes, and more. Working remotely means they can save and spend their salary on more valuable things.

Start Hiring Remote

 

Interested in taking advantage of the benefits of remote workers? S-FX can help you find them. Reach out and we can connect you with qualified remote workers that fit what you’re looking for.

Every business needs comprehensive and integrated productivity tools that make teamwork simpler and faster. Google Suite and Office 365 are productivity tools that exist on the cloud, offering document, spreadsheet, and presentation creation as well as collaboration, storage, email, and more.

What They Offer

Both G Suite and Office 365 offer similar applications and features for businesses. The most significant features that these both offer are:

• File storage: the ability and space to save all your files online in individual Drives, and share them with others. The amount of storage offered differs by plan.
• Collaboration: the ability to collaborate in real-time with other team members, whether in a document, by video, or in a communication platform.
• Web Applications: a word processor, spreadsheet application, conference calling, and more, all online, freeing up your desktop of apps and files.
• Video Calling: the ability to conference call with your team and with others.

quick Price Comparison

Google Suite

• Basic: $6 per user per month
• Business: $12 per user per month
• Enterprise: $25 per user per month

Office 365

Small business / SMEs

• Office 365 Business Essentials — $5 per user per month
• Office 365 Business — $8.25 per user per month
• Office 365 Business Premium — $12.50 per user per month

These are the prices if you pay annually; monthly plans cost more. Enterprise

• Office 365 E1 — $8 per user per month
• Office 365 ProPlus — $12 per user per month
• Office 365 E3 — $20 per user per month
• Office 365 E5 — $35 per user per month

All of Office 365’s Enterprise plans are annual. Overall, the basic Microsoft 365 plan is a better deal, but once you start moving into higher plans, G Suite generally offers more for less.

Web, Desktop, or Both?

All Office 365 plans except the Business Essentials and the E1 plans offer Microsoft Suite for desktop. While this may not be a necessary tool for all businesses, it is probably the largest difference to consider when choosing between G Suite and Office 365. Of course, both offer web applications.

The Big Differences

• G Suite is more minimalist and convenient, where Office 365 is more feature-packed and can handle more robust amounts of data. This generally applies to everything from word processing to their video and collaboration tools.
• G Suite is generally easier to use, while Office 365 is more familiar to most users.
• Office 365 offers desktop applications, while G Suite doesn't.

Based on your business' needs and budget, you can choose between these two distinct but powerful sets of productivity tools and get your team and business on the right track.  

Small businesses don’t often have much of a budget to invest in technology, but some investments will be the key to running your business -- and growing it quickly and easily in the near future. Make sure these five technologies aren’t missing in your business.

Social media scheduling tool

Social media is a must for your small business. However, you don’t want to be posting on each separate social media channel several times a day. A social media scheduling tool allows you to schedule your posts for an entire day, week, or more all at once, and then forget about them. Automation is key for a small business. Helpfully, there are plenty of options to choose from depending on your needs and your budget. Some popular options:

• Hubspot
• Hootsuite
• Zoho Social

CRM

If customer service is what you do (and even if it isn’t), a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool can make your job easier and, more importantly, better. You can use a CRM to keep track of partners, customers, contributors, and/or subscribers, follow up with potential leads, send out newsletters, automate your processes, manage accounts -- the benefits are endless. Investing in a good CRM tool that works for your business and knowing how to use it will change the way you do business. Some options:

• Zoho CRM
• Hubspot
• Salesforce

Cloud service

A cloud service to keep all your files safe and readily accessible is key for any small business. These days, not only do you not want to be using paper and pen, but you also want to have access to your documents anywhere, at all times. Small businesses often work from home or outside office hours, and a cloud service makes it easier for that work to get done. Google Drive, Dropbox, and Amazon all offer a variety of options, though there are many more out there.

Security tool

Keeping your business safe doesn’t just mean locking up your store or office at night. Your information needs to be safe, too. Aside from making sure your passwords are strong enough to secure your accounts and online information, your business needs a security tool to protect your data and personal information from any attacks. One antivirus is enough to accomplish this -- but you need to have it.

Project management and/or team communication software

Communication is key to the success of a small business, and as your business scales, having intimate team meetings and completing projects with little planning won’t cut it anymore. An effective communication platform and project management tool (often one will be both) will help you keep track of where your projects stand, visualize your goals, and encourage better communication among your team.  Some popular options include:

• Slack
• Microsoft Teams
• Teamwork

 

A website should engage your current and potential customers the moment it loads, and for the entire time they stay on it. How can you tell if your website is boring? Look out for these five signs, and then start working with your web designer to fix them.

It takes forever to load.

If an internet user has to wait longer than 2 seconds for your page to load, they’re going to give up and click away. You’ve probably done the same thing. Web users nowadays expect things quickly, almost immediately. Nothing is more boring than waiting. If your site is too slow, talk to your web developer about optimizing your site.  

It isn’t answering any questions.

Your website content is just as important as how it looks. If your website isn’t providing any information or entertainment for your visitors, then they have no reason to be on your site. Make sure your content is, above all, answering their questions. What does your business do? Why do you do it? What hours are you open? What are your social media channels? How can they reach you? What are your products? How can they buy them? If your site doesn’t answer these, write some new copy and do a website redesign.  

It’s an old design.

Users can tell when a website is old. Websites from a decade ago have a very different outdated look to them, and users are all about the new. They will judge your business based on it, and they will definitely get bored of being on it. Refresh your website design with a designer who’s up on the latest trends and can give your site a new, modern feel.  

The colors are off.

Minimalism and simple design are in, but that doesn’t mean that every website should be black and white. The wrong colors will make your website less interesting to a visitor. If the call to actions don’t pop, they won’t do anything on your site. If your brand colors aren’t used, they may even forget it’s your site. Color is powerful, so don’t be afraid to use it to your advantage.  

There are no images or video.

A plain site can be very boring. The right images and/or video can change that. (And they count as good content.) They can inform or entertain as much as copy can, and they are excellent for converting visitors into customers as well. Although they aren’t 100% necessary, if your site has zero of either, consider putting more multimedia on your page. Just get an expert designer’s opinion to make sure you’re using the right kind and amount of them in the right places.   Making a website more engaging can be a simple task, and you’ll be amazed at what fast loading times, good copy, the right colors, and a fresh feel can do for your site -- and for your sales and conversions.

There’s nothing like a really great Ted Talk to give you a new perspective and inspire you. As small business owners, this constant learning helps us grow as professionals and entrepreneurs. Here are five inspiring Ted Talks for small business owners, and what you can learn from each of them:

How great leaders inspire action - Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek’s classic Ted Talk on having a company “Why?” and the Golden Circle is the essential Talk for small business owners looking to grow. Starting your business with why you do what you do, and now what or how you do it, changes your business from just profits to something that stands the test of time. It’s scientific, and it’ll actually help you sell your product. When you sell to emotion and empathy, you’ll get better results than if you sell to logic.

Life crisis? Start a business. - Bailey Richert

If there’s one thing many entrepreneurs know, it’s that often they took the leap to start their business when things were at their worst. Bailey Richer’s Ted Talk discusses taking that leap, when to do it, and how to stop putting it off because we don’t know enough and just do it. It’s a good reminder that when it seems your life is “over,” it’s the best time to start.

Two reasons companies fail -- and how to avoid them. - Kurt Haanaes

Kurt Haanaes discusses that tricky question: how do you run your business well while also constantly reinventing it and innovating? Often we get into a comfortably successful spot with our business, especially a small business that took a lot of effort and years to establish. We are often afraid to rock that boat. But Haanaes encourages listeners to keep innovating -- because if you don’t balance exploration and exploitation, you won’t be in that comfortable spot forever.

How to create a great brand name - Jonathan Bell

Branding is an important task for any small business. You want your business to stand out, and the branding should stand for what your business is. It should reflect what you are and what you could be. Jonathan Bell leads listeners through what makes a great brand name specifically -- did you know there are only seven types of names? He also gives some practical advice, because we know branding isn’t all fun names and colors.

Three ways that good design makes you happy - Don Norman

Although this Ted Talk is from 2003, it shows that some basic principles never change. Don Norman talks about good design, and how designing for people’s emotions works better than designing for “function.” We can apply this to our websites 16 years later, thinking: do we like looking at it? Do we like using it? And do we understand what it means? Because we know that designing pleasing websites -- ones that actually give people a good experience -- will bring in more customers than if we don’t.

The holidays are officially in full swing, and it’s a big time for businesses and their marketing efforts. Small businesses can especially benefit from the holiday season, but this requires some extra marketing efforts to be heard over all the noise. Try these five methods to ramp up your marketing strategies for the holiday season.

Encourage people to shop small.

Small Business Saturday may be over, but you can continue to encourage your customers to shop small. Promote your services or products as thoughtful gifts for friends and family as an alternative to those less personal gifts. Encourage customers to come into your store, if you have one, for some fun and easy holiday shopping instead of going online. Remind them why it’s important to support small businesses, especially in the holiday season.

Remake your social media marketing ads.

If you’re already running Facebook Ads (and if you’re not, you may want to consider it), try refreshing your current ads with some holiday themes. You can make the images holiday-related, offer a special holiday deal, rebrand an old deal as a holiday deal, and change the wording of your posts to target holiday shoppers. It’s pretty simple, and costs nothing -- you’re just changing what you already have.

Offer special holiday discounts and packages.

Speaking of offering a holiday deal, you should have these before you offer them of course. Put together some special holiday discount or package to encourage clients to shop with you. As mentioned above, it doesn’t even have to be a new discount. If you already have discounts or bundles, you can rebrand them in holiday colors and names and use those.

Rebrand your business for the holidays.

A discount is not the only thing you can rebrand. Your entire brand could have a holiday makeover. This doesn’t have to be an expensive rebranding -- adding some holiday images to your social media banners and including your logo will make a difference. If you’re putting out any marketing at this time (ads, stands, banners), it can also be holiday-themed, and probably should be.  

Be inclusive.

The holidays don’t just mean Christmas. Regardless of your personal celebrations, consider all the holidays happening in these months and be inclusive of everyone. This doesn’t mean you have to specifically each and every holiday. You can have more generic messaging and imagery wishing everyone happy holidays, or if you know your client base specifically celebrates a holiday, you can include this holiday in a bigger way than other businesses may be.   Take advantage of these easy and low-cost methods and bring in more followers, customers, and sales this month.

Have you seen a post on your social media promising you’ll receive 6+ gifts from strangers if you take part in a “fun” gift exchange this holiday season? Beware! The “Secret Sister” gift exchange is back and it’s bad news.

What is the “Secret Sister” Gift Exchange?

The “Secret Sister” gift exchange is a post that began circulating around Christmas time since 2015, and was seen mostly on Facebook. People would receive an email or a Facebook post inviting them to be part of a gift exchange -- if they provided their name, address, and personal information, sent a small gift to a stranger on the list, and then forwarded the invitation to several of their friends. They were promised that they would receive not one but several gifts in return. This is what the post looks like:

Is It Real?

The Secret Sister gift exchange is absolutely a scam. This has been confirmed by several outlets which warn of the true nature of the exchange and strongly encourage that no one participates. Not only this, but it’s a pyramid scheme, since the scam requires recruiting other people to keep the chain going. The vast majority of participants will never receive these gifts.

Is It Dangerous?

You should not be giving out your personal information online in this way -- it can be used for identity theft or another scam. Additionally, since pyramid schemes are illegal in the US and considered a form of gambling, if you take part in it, you could face penalties like jail time, fines or a lawsuit for mail fraud.

What Should You Do?

You should definitely ignore the posts or emails. Do not participate in it. You can report the posts on Facebook so they are aware of the situation. Also, share this with others who might be susceptible to the scam as well, and discourage them from sharing their information. The Secret Sister gift exchange is not the only scam or pyramid scheme of its kind, so be on the lookout for similar scams at all times! Protect yourself, your money, and your personal data.

Every business should have a website. More specifically, it should have a website that works for them: one that’s visually appealing and user-friendly, puts out the right message and content for their customers, and turns visitors into leads. If your website isn’t doing some or all of these things, chances are you should get a new website. But how do you decide if you need a completely new website, or if your website just needs a proverbial coat of paint and a maintenance check? Here are some signs you should get a new website--and signs you can just refresh the old one.busine

You Should Get a New Website If:

You’ve gone through a complete rebranding.

Don’t let your old image loiter on the internet. If your business has completely rebranded: new colors, new logo, new message, new slogan, new products, new product categories, etc.-- then your website may need the full treatment also. Often a rebrand means the entire outlook of your business has changed, and too much of the old site just won’t work. If you’re going to start over, then a new site may be just what you need.

The platform isn’t working for you.

If you find it hard or impossible to post, update, and maintain your current site, you should get a new website. If you can’t use your site easily, then it’s doing you no good, and it isn’t letting you communicate with customers and give them valuable content, deals, or updates.

Your digital strategy needs a makeover

Maybe it’s not your brand that has a new face, but your online strategy has changed. In this case, it’s possible that too many elements of your site need to be changed to give you the results and tools that you need. If your digital strategy can benefit from a new website, it may be the best thing you can do to reach your new goals.

You Just Need a Refresh IF:

The site works but the user experience could be better.

So maybe the platforms works, the site isn’t absolutely ugly, and your visitors stay on the site for a decent amount of time. That’s great! But it could offer an even better experience to your customers. Evaluate your site’s weak points and do a refresh if the user experience can be improved. This includes increased speed, better mobile-friendliness, properly placed Calls to Action, etc. Your web designer can probably offer some excellent insights here.

It has out-of-date information.

So you haven’t done an entire rebranding, but your information is just a little old. Maybe your site has an old iteration of a logo, an old phone number, or some past deals and events that could confuse customers. A simple refresh of all that information can make a huge difference to your website. And it’s not a bad idea to sharpen your content while you’re at it.   Whether you just need a refresh or a whole new site, your business’ site should always be at 100% to turn your visitors into paying customers. Evaluate your site now and keep an eye out for these signs to decide which way to go.

Let’s get to it: you need to make your website ADA compliant. Part of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) has been interpreted to also include websites. A website is a “public” space under this law. So, if your website isn’t accessible to those with disabilities, it violates this law. Oh, and there are no defenses or excuses for violating it.

What is “accessible”?

Accessibility on a website encompasses a lot of elements, but it basically means that anyone with a disability can use your website fully: navigate it, access content such as images and videos, click on everything, open everything, etc. Accessibility includes:

• Hearing impairments
• Visual impairments
• Cognitive disabilities
• Motor disabilities

Because of these different categories of disabilities, accessibility includes everything from color, text size, and transcripts for videos, to keyboard navigation and elements that may cause seizures. However, there are no clear definitions of web accessibility. The list of website accessibility standards (WAS) can be accessed online.

Who does it apply to?

Most courts have decided that ADA compliance applies to commercial websites, since these are required to make it just as easy for one customer to use their site as another. Some courts have decided that if the website belongs to a business with a physical location, they must be compliant (e.g. Target, versus Facebook which has no physical “store”). Ultimately, it’s a good idea to make your website ADA compliant, not only to avoid a lawsuit, but to ensure the 20% of the American population that is disabled has full access to your products and services.

How to make your website ADA compliant

Making your website ADA accessible is a project you can begin right away.  While there is no plugin or widget that you can install to instantly make your website ADA compliant, a knowledgeable web developer will be able to begin implementing these standards. You can begin to check your website’s accessibility with tools like WAVE or WebAccesibility.com, but a manual review of your website’s code will be more accurate. Two simple and easy but significant steps towards compliance are alt text for all images and closed captioning of all videos. Many other web development agencies will offer solutions that really only give you an audit. Make sure you get not just an analysis of your site’s gaps in accessibility, but actual steps towards a full solution. It’s important to remember that once you’ve made your site compliant, your work isn’t necessarily done. All new content you put on your site should also be compliant!