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The Resource Center has all the info you'll need From content to user feedback, the resource center has the information you need for every level of the entrepreneurial process.
Most people are motivated more by the work they do and the environment in which they work than by the money they earn. Therefore, the compensation and reward systems you offer to employees should include both monetary and non-monetary ideas.
A growing economy constantly creates new job opportunities in new sectors, but also displaces and even destroys existing jobs. The workforce in an entrepreneurial economy must always evolve as well. Government efforts to protect jobs are often misguided, hindering growth and new job creation. Pro-growth workforce rules should instead focus on developing worker skills, allowing maximum hiring and layoff flexibility, and focus adjustment efforts on getting displaced workers into new jobs as soon as possible. Small firms employ half of all private sector employees and create 60-80 percent of net new jobs in the U.S., according to the SBA. Labor rules are one of the largest barriers to entrepreneurial ventures. The World Bank’s cross-country comparison of labor regulations shows lower job creation where workplace rules are more rigid. Labor rules must move beyond the early 20th century framework of management versus labor and encourage new firm formation as well as a dynamic, not static, worker.
Founder Bob Beyster describes his highly successful approach to recruiting, retaining, and rewarding top performers--a culture of employee ownership. This is a core strategy for growing SAIC, an entrepreneurial, employee-owned, high-technology corporation.
Entrepreneurs will find a host of business-building resources at nearby colleges and universities, among them books, brains and bodies, writes the author. Scour the libraries for printed materials, tap faculty for consulting jobs, and marshall students for research and staffing needs, he advises. In summing up, he offers valuable tips for getting acquainted and making the best use of campus resources.
If you think hiring is tough in today's tight labor market, you should figure that retaining people is even tougher. To keep employees, small-company owners must provide more than just competitive compensation packages, the author writes. What really makes the difference is a CEO's ability to communicate an organizational vision and to recognize the people who translate that vision into revenue and profit.
In today's extremely tight labor market, small-company employers must approach hiring just as they approach selling. To lure able and enthusiastic candidates, the author writes, a CEO should consider such steps as contacting reluctant candidates personally, offering equity compensation to augment salaries, and sending welcoming gifts like fruit baskets. Of particular note is a discussion of factors the author says "count" in the sales-whoops!-the hiring process.
Age is an issue for today's entrepreneurs, especially those in technology-based businesses, writes the author, who founded an Internet company right out of college. Younger entrepreneurs, he argues, are more likely than their elders to be technologically astute and to be creative and flexible, attributes that are integral to their companies and enable those enterprises to succeed. The author includes tips for using youth as an advantage in business.
Entrepreneurs of a certain age need to accommodate the changes in attitude on the part of the younger generation or risk becoming dinosaurs, writes the author, who turned to entrepreneurship after a career in the U.S. Army and at a major corporation. Today's young people are technologically savvy, casual about dress and deportment, and forward about expecting to advance at a younger age, he says. He includes tips for adjusting one's management style to help -- rather than change -- the new generation.
Entrepreneurs, in particular, are having troubles with today's widespread age-disconnect between managers and employees. The many twentysomethings who are launching companies these days hire workers who are both younger and older than they are, writes the author, a frequent EntreWorld contributor. She maintains that to manage this so-called "generation gap," you'll need to build a common understanding based on your company's values.
When Michele McGeoy sold her first software start-up, she thought she was doing the best thing for her stakeholders. But, a few years later the new owners resold the company out of state, leaving her and her employees out of work. Having lost control by giving up ownership, McGeoy found a better solution for her next venture: She empowered employees by making them stakeholders and created a culture that promotes healthy growth.
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