Work at Home Mom? Why a Virtual Phone System is a Must!

Labels: small business, virtual phone system, work from home

5 Ways to Locate Big Talent in a Small Town

Being a small business in a small town can certainly have its charm and benefits, however it also often means having a much smaller pool of candidates to choose from when it comes to hiring staff. While this may be challenging, it’s not impossible to locate some big talent – as long as you know where to look and how to go about it. Here are five simple ways to attract quality, top-notch candidates to join your team.

Tap into your existing employees – If you’ve already got a few key employees that you trust, why not ask them if they know of someone else who might want to come on board? Offer a referral bonus to sweeten the pot and you might be surprised at the quality candidates you end up with.

Use social media – Aside from marketing your business, using social media can benefit you in other ways including getting the word out about a job opening you have. Post a link to your job listing on your company’s Facebook page and tweet about it on Twitter, asking other local fans and followers to share. The more word about your job spreads, the better your chances of finding the right person to fill it.

Attend or sponsor a local event – Check to see if there are any local events coming up in your community that might be good grounds to network and get the word out about your employment needs. Join a local job fair or sponsor a technical event to gain access to a wealth of eligible candidates.

Offer good benefits – Aside from salary, one thing prospective employees will be looking for is the benefits they’ll receive if they take a new job. In addition to health coverage, consider other things like discounted gym memberships, extra vacation time or even free lunch once a week. The more attractive the package, the better talent you’ll attract and the more likely you’ll be to retain that talent once you hire them.

Allow telecommuting – More and more businesses are shifting to a telecommuting or remote workforce for a number of reasons, particularly the cost savings. And with today’s mobile tools, like virtual phone systems, it’s becoming easier and more convenient to do so. Most employees would love the opportunity to work from home, which means they’ll find your job listing more attractive.

When your business is located in a small town, recruiting the right talent to help your company succeed can seem impossible. But if you use all the resources available to you and do a little thinking outside the box like with the tips provided here, it doesn’t have to be.

Labels: mobility, small business tips, work from home

Beat the Traffic—Forever: A Virtual PBX Phone System Can Help You Migrate Your Office to the Cloud

The alarm clock wakes you up in mid-dream, and you feel more tired than you did when you first went to bed. Breakfast is a mess: you burn your toast, dry your eggs, and spill your coffee—but there's no time to bother. 06:30, you’re out the door.

“It’s looking good” you keep chanting to yourself—until you hit the highway; an accident a few exists down has caused two lane closures, and you might as well be driving down a parking lot.

By the time you inch towards the nearest off-ramp, it’s already 07:00. You figure you’ll just cut through the side-streets, but no joy—orange signs indicate you’ve just entered construction hell.

A last minute turn—there’s a broken down city bus blocking your way.

A U-turn—the rear of a garbage truck has you stopping every quarter block.

It’s 09:15 when you finally reach the office, and all you can think is: “how can I possibly reproach my employees when even I can’t make it here on time?!”

Sounds like the sob-story of a typical morning commute?

It doesn’t have to be.

A virtual PBX phone system can be your first step in migrating your office to the cloud. You may have heard the saying ‘Home is wherever YOU are’? Well, as of now, your office can be, too!

Professional Image

Employees were traditionally required to work from an office because there was simply no other way for them to function as, and maintain the image of, a single company. You didn’t want your staff taking calls on their personal phones, for instance, because a mosaic of numbers on an ad could give customers the impression of a disjointed operation.

But a virtual PBX phone system lets you choose a single toll-free number as your store-front, meanwhile routing all incoming calls to the appropriate person as set out in your phone tree. This person can be in the next room, or half-way across the ocean—your customers will experience the same service they would calling a physical office.

Save time

According to the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2005-2009 (the latest data available), the average American spent 25.2 minutes traveling to work. That’s 50.4 minutes daily assuming the same duration for his return trip—or almost an hour in practical terms. A quick calculation spits out 218.4 hours yearly (assuming a work-year of 260 days), or just over 9 days.

Of those surveyed, 13.3% traveled at least 30 minutes, and 8% suffered through a whopping 60 minutes or more.

Now imagine that instead of wasting all this time and energy on the road, you and your employees could invest them in work or in your personal lives. Those precious hours evaporated along the highway serve no one but oil sheiks, cut-men, and the IRS. But an extra hour each day to spend with loved-ones, go to the gym, or catch up on sleep can significantly improve your quality of life.

That’s without getting into the possible ill effects of long commutes on health and marital life...

Better quality of life = better state of mind = improved performance = better business.

That’s just simple math.

Save Money

Time is money. But there are other aspects to commuting that are more readily tangible. Transportation takes vehicles—company-owned, individually-owned, or city-owned. That’s more than just a capital investment: vehicles require insurance, annual inspections, maintenance, and, of course, gas—an increasingly expensive commodity.

Public Transportation calls for a fare, which also factors in the aforementioned costs, and even if you’re lucky enough to live nearby and ride your bike to work, that trusty old steed of yours still runs up a lump of expanses.

So whether transportation is covered by the company or by individual employees, it will still invariably find it's way to bite you in the bottom-line.

On the other hand, you might find many of your staff members willing to accept a modest pay-cut in exchange for the convenience and benefits of working from home.

Conclusion

That was just transportation. Factor in the costs of rent, infrastructure, insurance, and other overhead, and you’ll soon realize that any way you slice it—unless your business calls for frequent face-time with your clients (the in-person kind, not the iPhone kind)—downsizing or even completely eliminating your physical office would be a far more sustainable solution. For you, for your business, for your employees, and for the environment.

Whoever thought that helping the world could be as simple as helping yourself!

Let Synclio help you mobilize your office. Our motto is ‘Your Business, Anywhere’, and not without good reason.

Related articles:

1. 5 Reasons Virtual Systems are taking over the Physical World

2. 4 Ways a Virtual Phone System Can Improve Customer Experience in Your Business

3. Anatomy of a Virtual Phone System: What’s in it, and why you need it?

4. Weatherproof Your Business: Take Shelter from the Storm in the Cloud

Labels: cloud computing, home business, home office, hosted pbx, virtual PBX, virtual phone system, work from home