An effective boss doesn’t have to be liked. If you’re too close to staff you’ll be regarded as a walkover, but if you go the other way and constantly criticise your employees, then they’ll stop working for you.

CEOs can afford to be slightly remote, detached figures. It’s the middle managers who frequently set the mood and tone of the daily working environment and inspire the most contempt from the rank and file. A survey from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) surveyed 5,000 adults about how they view their managers. Only 10 per cent describe their bosses as accessible, while a paltry 7 per cent say their leaders are empowering.
 
Putting an effective team of middle managers in place is hard work. The first mistake is to assume that it’s best to promote from within. Robert O’Brien, the CEO of compliance specialist Baronscourt Technology, says: ‘It has been the ruination of many a good sales person to be made into a sales manager. That happens quite lot and from my own experience, if there is a path of least resistance and an absolute obvious choice, then resist and reappraise it.’

The other issue is training. This can range from

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The World Cup only comes around once every four years and should be cherished. But consider its impact on your company, urges Clodagh Murphy, director of IT company Eclipse.

It’s less than a month to go to the World Cup and in the office a majority of UK workers have admitted that they will be watching games online, according to a recent survey we carried out. Needless to say, this could create a serious drain on productivity as well as IT systems. 


So at the risk of sounding like a party pooper, it’s time to plan for the impact of employees watching live 90-minute matches on their work desktops – for example, the effect it will have on the time taken to download important files and use business-critical applications such as e-commerce sites, email or online backup.
 


One solution is to take the draconian approach of blocking web access to all known sites that stream the World Cup live, by using basic web filtering systems. However, this could lower employee morale and lead to time being wasted in attempts to circumvent the blocking. 


Accepting that some work time will be lost and planning around this eventuality may be a more realistic strategy. Start by maki

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 No, that’s not my high school graduation picture. It’s a Microsoft staff photo from December 7, 1978 from the StateMaster website.

Yes, that’s Bill Gates on the bottom row left, and co-founder Paul Allen on the bottom row right. The company was just three years old and still located in Albuquerque before it moved to its new home  in Bellevue, Washington the next year.

A lot’s changed for Microsoft since then. The same 1978 “that was then, this is now” reference point can be used for 401(k) plans. 1978 was the year in which Congress amended the Internal Revenue Code by adding section 401(k).

The differences are many, e.g., economic, demographic, cultural, political. Whatever, and now may be an appropriate time for plan sponsors to consider the extent to which their 401(k) plans are doing what they are supposed to do.

It’s a topic I write about in my column, 401(k) Plans Must Adapt To New Economic Realities, in the May, 2010 online issue of Employee Benefit News.

Times change. Maybe retirement plans should too.

Small businesses want a new government to get banks to lend on less onerous terms and for taxes to be reduced. Not even the combined talents of David Blaine and Derren Brown could pull off such an act of magic.

It’s one of the reasons why the party leaders are keen to make promises about change but remain sketchy on how it can be enforced. No wonder the three leaders were eager to go on TV for those televised debates, a format which is ideal for soundbites and headline-grabbing quotes and poor on reasoned argument.  

Inevitably, banks will come in for a rougher regulatory ride, which is only right after the years of excess. But any party that tries to cut taxes will be slammed over failing to address the public debt. It’s a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Where a new government can make a difference is in addressing the support network for start-ups and companies in the early stage of development. The regional divisions in the UK are too complex and staggeringly inefficient.

Why not rearrange these organisations on a sector basis as opposed to regional? Let’s

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Defined benefit plans and defined contribution plans – “apples and oranges” , right? Conceptually, yes. In a defined benefit plan, it’s the employer who has to fund the promised benefit, but it’s the employee who contributes and generally invests his or her account in a defined contribution plan, e.g., 401(k).

But in the real world in which most employees who are, in fact, covered by a retirement plan, it’s 401(k) or nothing. And so the key result of a recent study, Defined Benefit vs. 401(k) Investment Returns: The 2006-2008 Update, by the consulting firm Towers Watson, has some serious implications.

The study indicates that defined benefit plans have outperformed defined contribution plans by approximately 1% a year which is consistent with their last analysis for the period 1995 and 2006.

Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But that 1% per year really matters. It can add up in terms of more lifetime retirement income. In my December 2007 blog post, What’s 1% Worth, I cited research by the investment management firm AllianceBernstein that 1% translates into about $220,000 extra at retirement—and an extra 10 years of spending as shown below:

So why the difference in defined benefit and defined contribution investment returns?

Towers Watson cites possible reasons why defined benefit plans have had better investment returns. It c

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Small businesses have a lot to gain by having a diverse workforce, writes Les Venus, board member at the UK Council for Access and Equality.

The Equality Act will come into force in October, which will make it unlawful to ask candidates questions on their health before they have been offered a job and will force larger companies to report on pay according to gender.

As a manager of a small business you may be thinking: so what?  Equality is an issue that only impacts big companies. All I need to do is make sure that we comply with the law and get on with running the business.

But by taking this attitude you’ll be missing out on the commercial benefits associated with putting an equality policy into practice.

Move with the times

The UK’s workforce is changing. Only a fifth of the working population is white, able bodied, male and below the age of 45. One in five has some form of disability or impairment, and three million workers of retirement age expect to work beyond 65. And out of the next two million jobs to be created, 80 per cent will be taken by women.

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The home for most families is almost always the largest value for an American family. As young kids grow up they begin to speak of some day having a home of their own. Often by the time they are married they have rather firmly fixed ideas of what that home should be like. Early in marriage, young couples dream and plan of having a home. “Having a home” need not necessarily mean owning the building in which that home is located. Home is a compound of physical surroundings and the love, understanding and aspirations which give life to the surroundings.

A rented apartment may glow with the essence of the home spirit, and a luxurious dwelling, owned by the family which lives there, may be a mere shell, housing emptiness and frustration.

Yet owning one’s own home seems to be part of the American dream. To some, home ownership is a symbol of security and status. Economists agree, however, that not every family ought to own its own home.

Each family should make its buy-or-rent decision in terms of its own values, and those who decide to rent may prefer to exchange the emotional satisfactions of home-ownership, for other satisfactions the family can enjoy by not owning a home. Of co

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Happy Valentine’s Day! With thoughts on romance it’s also a chance to spread some kindness. According to The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, a small business can follow a few suggestions including:

• Donate a percentage of revenue for the day to a group in need.

• Buy a big box of donuts and give them to the business next door.

• Take up a collection to buy needed items for a non-profit.

Act of kindness don’t have to be a one time a year event. Your small business has a chance to become involved in a worthy cause. Add some meaning and mission to your business life. Explore how to “Show Your Business Heart With Cause-Related Marketing.”

Optimism is a default setting for most bosses. How do you win new business and drive a company forward if you’re glum faced, taciturn and obsessing about ‘tough times’?

The focus for bosses is on sales and capitalising on market opportunities. Cynicism just isn’t part of an entrepreneur’s lexicon. In the middle of last year, celebrity entrepreneurs were proclaiming the recession was over when it clearly had a long way to go. Likewise, numerous surveys are being published which state that businesses are growing in confidence about the economy. One such survey suggests that business owners are more confident now than they have been in four years. Another says that companies have greater confidence about their ability to grow than they did twelve months ago.

This is good to hear, but how much stock is placed on these findings is another matter. If you ask a person whether they’re feeling confident, let alone someone who owns a business, the chances are they are going to say ‘yes’.

Go to any business event in the UK and you’ll see that the mood is markedly better than it was three or four months ago. The talk is about growth, profitability and expansion. Amid the upbeat c

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