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Does your business need a Wellness Checkup? Explore these three simple areas for better business health. By Loretta Bradshaw - Have you ever really thought about giving your business a wellness checkup? It is a common practice by most of us to spend time and money investing in our own personal health. We all have a desire to live long healthy lives, and why should our businesses be any different? Our businesses need regular checkups to stay in shape and sustain profits well into the future. In these challenging economic times you have to get serious and give your business a through exam and apply some practical and good preventative maintenance. Here are three areas that you may be experiencing pain related signs and symptoms with some tips on how to gain control and get your business back on the right track to a healthy and wealthy focused 2009. 1. Health Promotion and Employee Wellness Worksite Programs Every business with employees is experiencing health risks. Obesity, tobacco use and stress are the most common hazards to health in the American workforce. Education is necessary to teach employees the relationship between activity, diet and health and to demonstrate how this can be changed to encourage physical wellness. Just a simple health preventive program about eating healthy may make a big difference in your company's growth roadmap. Create a healthy employee newsletter and fill it with preventative health measures. Encourage your employees to find wellness issues that will improve the overall productivity of the business. A good example is the American Dietetic Association's website, www.eatright.org where you will find hundreds of new ideas to eat right and stay fit. Communicate the importance of taking care of your health to your employees. Find free fitness handouts and fitness posters at www.wellnessproposals.com along with a tool chest of great ways to ensure employee wellness. 2. Human Services - Risk Prevention Waiting for a cure to protect your business risks is like walking on thin ice on a frozen lake. Business owners have to be prepared for any unexpected risks and effectively manage these surprising and sudden attacks. Let's explore your human services. Many small business owners with 1-10 employees manage their human services on their own, generally partnering with many different solution providers to find all the right answers to solve the greatest risks. This is not a bad idea; however the time and operating expense involved in that process may be costing you more than you think. A great outsourced solution is to partner with a PEO, Preferred Employer Organization. PEO's reduce risks in many human service areas such as payroll, benefits, retirement, government compliance, workers compensation. PEO's also help business owners make the right employee selections and increase your employee's overall performance and productivity with big company training and incentive solutions. It was Ben Franklin who said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". Well, the pound of cure in this case is in partnering with a PEO dedicated to managing the risks of small to medium size business owners. There are many great PEO's out there that might be a good fit for your human services prevention. Check out the NAPEO website, www.napeo.org for a list of these companies. 3. Cash Flow Wellness Alright, we have covered the health and wellness of your employees, the building blocks of your business. Now let's talk about the health of your cash flow. Cash Flow is the lifeblood of your business. Generally speaking, business owners don't divulge a lot of information about their cash flow, unless, of course, your business is seeing record growth. A positive cash flow is always fun and exciting to talk about but what about those lurking and unfriendly challenges like "past due" accounts receivables. The words, "past due" or "debt" are unfriendly and full of fear. These are symptoms which we all hope will just go away or resolve themselves easily. In order to take the right path to cash flow wellness you must first take a financial snapshot of your business, kind of like getting an x-ray. It is important for business owners to have a complete understanding of their income, profits, expenses, debt and liabilities. In most cases, the health of your cash flow depends on the health of your customers financial snapshot. It is not easy to really know how your customer's financials look or to be certain of your customer's ability to pay you on time. In today's turbulent and unknown economic climate it is possible that some of your customers have decided to pay you sometime in the future or possibly not pay you at all. This means you have to take on the role of Chief Collection Officer (the bad guy) and figure out a way to collect on your lost profits. The common procedures applied by most businesses are to employ an in-house strategy to get the cash healthy or reduce some of your pain. These in-house strategies may work for some of your customers but not the difficult cases and every in-house procedure you apply adds to your operation expense. It is a good practice to provide your customers with payment terms, if you don't your competitor will! It is also a good practice to protect your payment terms, protection ensures strength of your cash flow and early collection results. Aging receivables (60 days or older), or past due customer payments, are silent invasions of your cash flow health. These are the surprises that might destroy your business. The US Department of Commerce has studied the value of past due receivables and the results are not a good diagnosis. In fact, your profits that have aged to six months past due are only worth 30% of their original value. Early profit recovery is the cure! Don't let your customer decide when it is ok to pay you for your services or products, you decide. If you start protecting your cash flow early, you will collect more of your profits on time and continue to develop strong relationships with your customers. Partner with a collection agency who wants to help you strengthen your customer relationships, not alienate your customers. Be sure you also partner with a collection agency that abides by the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA). Collection agencies that offer early intervention and prevention not only reduce your bad debt but also reduce your operating costs and become a healthy member of your organization. Make an investment in your cash flow to enhance your in-house strategies, lower your operating costs, collect all of your profits sooner, and free your time to focus on the total health and wellness of your business for 2009 and into the future! About the Author: Loretta has founded and managed several successful small businesses over the past 18 years. Currently, she owns her own small business solutions business which provides accounts receivables management solutions. Loretta also provides a variety of community events for small to medium size businesses along with her free-lance writing. She can be reached at [email protected]. |
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