Tag Archives: Business Management
Benefits of contracting through a Ltd. company
According to Companies House, limited companies are the most popular type of incorporated structure in the UK and the preferred option for many contractors, as opposed to an umbrella alternative. In the UK, a significant percentage of contractors work via their own limited company as it offers many benefits that are both financially and emotionally rewarding.
If you are a UK contractor, here are just 6 reasons why you should consider setting up a limited company today and, if you are not using one, why you should contact us here at Associate Services:
1. Simple to set up
Setting up a limited company is quick and easy to do. You can apply directly via Companies House, or through an intermediary like Associate Services, where set up is free of charge and can be completed on the same day. If you are new to contracting, or you would prefer professional help with the incorporation process, we can do all the leg work whilst you concentrate on your contractor workload.
2. Higher take home pay
One of the main advantages to contracting through a limited company is that you can take home a higher percentage of your income or turnover, typically around 70 – 80 % and some cases more like 83%. When you work so hard, it’s nice to know there are ways you can maximise the rewards. Operating under a limited company gives you the opportunity to keep that extra monthly income without being aggressive in your planning.
3. Claim on a wider range of expenses
Another benefit of setting up a limited company is that you can claim on a wider range of expenses. Again, this helps you to retain more of your income which you can use to treat yourself to a well-earned break. We can help you to determine the business expenses you’re allowed to claim so that you’re not paying more tax than necessary.
4. Control of your Business
Setting up a limited company means that you retain control over your financial affairs and also the day-to-day running of your business, which appeals to many contractors or self-employed individuals. As the Director, you will have responsibility for running the company and this allows you to have complete oversight on your income and expenditure whilst considering all tax planning opportunities that are based on expanding on standard accounting principles.
5. Gives you more credibility
Some companies prefer not to deal with non-limited business and so they avoid sole-traders or umbrella company formations. Often operating as a limited company will give suppliers and customer more confidence in your personal and professional ability to carry out the work efficiently and with the likes of engaging with various recruitment agencies means you don’t have to be concerned over ‘Preferred Suppliers Lists’
6. Opportunity for tax planning
Setting up a limited company provides many more opportunities for tax planning, allowing you to be proactive when it comes to how much tax to pay. We all want to reduce the amount of tax we pay on our hard-earned cash and the ability to manage our tax affairs remains a key reason for contracting through a limited company.
Setting up a limited company is much more financially rewarding compared with working through an umbrella company. However, it requires a great deal of administration to meet regulatory requirements and a thorough understanding of how to attain all the financial advantages available.
Change Your Work From Home Policy – Why not reinvent work?
I (Pam Ross) was recently asked by an HR manager if I had a sample of a policy about working from home. My answer was:
Do you want something more than “Get your work done. Meet your objectives. Do that from wherever you want.“
Perhaps I was slightly joking. But really, not so much. I think we often go wrong trying to formalize policies around things that aren’t the important things. Really, does it matter where your employees do their work, as long as they get it done?
Work is not a place you go, but something you do.
If I work in retail and need to serve customers, I obviously can’t work from home. If my work is done on a certain machine in a factory, then I need to be in the factory to get my work done. But if my work is done on a computer, in the age of the “cloud”, then what difference does it make if I work from home, from a Starbucks, or from the office? What if we just said “get your work done” and let people figure out where and when they can do it best? It takes a reinvention of what we think of as work.
The productivity lie
For years, we have been wrongly focused on time spent at work as a measure of productivity. The thing is, that measure of productivity simply makes no sense. For some reason, managers have a tendency to think others aren’t working unless they can see them… but guess what? Just because your employee is sitting in their seat at their computer does not mean they are being productive.
George Costanza famously demonstrated this on Seinfeld when he locked his keys in his car in the Yankee’s parking lot, making it look like he was the first one in and last one out every day. Check out what he had to say on Seinfeld:
Steinbrenner is like the first guy in, at the crack of dawn. He sees my car, he figures I’m the first guy in. Then, the last person to leave is Wilhelm. He sees my car, he figures I’m burning the midnight oil. Between the two of them, they think I’m working an 18 hour day!
When we focus on time in our seats at work as a measure of productivity, not only are we measuring the wrong thing, we actually spend more time being unproductive ourselves. I recently had a conversation with an HR Manager who was dealing with several issues of bosses disciplining employees because of coming to work late, taking extensive breaks, or leaving early. The amount of energy and time spent on these issues is crippling. And it doesn’t matter!!! I asked my friend “does this person get their work done, even though she takes these breaks?” The answer was yes. So my next question is why are we wasting so much time worrying about her time spent at work, if she’s getting things done?
Most of us are not fabricating widgets or manning a machine on a line. Most of us are knowledge workers, and in today’s world, that means a lot of our work can be done from anywhere. It also often means that we are working or connected to work via smartphones, tablets and laptops for an average of 72 hours a week!
Where do you get your best work done?
Ask yourself this:
Where do I have my most creative thoughts? Where am I when I get my best ideas?
I’m willing to bet that you probably didn’t say “sitting in my cubicle”. I think there are times when it is helpful to be in an office, collaborating in person with team members. I also know that I often get more work done in an hour at home than I could in a full afternoon in an office environment at times. There are other times that I find the music and atmosphere of a coffee shop helpful for some types of work. And I know I get my best ideas when I’m outside in nature or going for a run with my dog. So why do we force people to come to work from 9-5, when they may get more and better work done from elsewhere?
The hard part
OK, so here’s where it gets difficult. Because just saying “work from anywhere” won’t work unless you know what you’re working towards. In an autonomous working world, clear purpose, mission, and goals and objectives are important. We need to get clear on the results we are responsible for, and measure those – not the time spent attempting to achieve them. This is the entire basis of the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), developed by Jody Thompson and Cali Ressler several years ago.
In a ROWE, people manage their own time as well as where and how they work, as long as they get results. This type of work environment shuts down non-productive gossip (which Jody and Cali call “Sludge”) about people leaving early, taking breaks or getting time off because of their family status. In a ROWE, there’s no need for a “work from home” policy, because it doesn’t matter where you work. Managers spend their time as a coach, developing their people, rather than managing the time people spend in their seats at work.
The more I speak with managers about the problems they have with their team members, the more I hear about so much time wasted managing the things that don’t matter – number of sick days, people leaving work early on Fridays, long lunches, too many breaks, and more. Think about it – how much time have you spent in the past month either talking to colleagues about these things, stressing about them as an employee, or managing them as a leader? How much better could this time have been spent if you were simply worried about the outcome of the work – the results people were achieving?
I believe it’s time to stop worrying about where and when people work. It’s time to start thinking about what they accomplish. Who decided that 9-5 was the correct time for work, anyway? Let’s start to question the basic assumptions of work and just focus on being successful for our organizations and our customers. The work world and our lives could be much happier and engaging!
What do you think? Are we wasting too much time worrying about the wrong things? Is it time to reinvent work?
Article from:
Pam Ross
Speaker | Connector | Facilitator | Innovative HR Pro | Culture Catalyst | Curing Mediocrity
Six Foundational Must Have’s if you are an Entrepreneur in Business
Of all all the start-up mantras and business management best practices I´ve read so far, this small piece of advice resonates success.
All too often Entrepreneurs go to market with strategies and marketing plans that are created separately and do not align with each other. Mostly because of the scattered thinking that is all too often the norm for an entrepreneur – a product of thinking that is created in a vacuum from the rest of the customers they are trying to serve, promotional activity that utilizes un-scientific “spray and pray” approaches, pricing strategies that do not align with the business’ distinctive excellence and distribution strategies that try to be all things to all people. The customer experience is often an afterthought.
Fear not! With the right foundation laid up front, all other efforts in the business, from the people you hire, the partners you work with, promtions, products, etc., all become built on a foundation that aligns everything in one direction. It is an approach very similar to building a temple with walls and a roof but without foundation that steadfastly supports the entire structure. Without this foundation in place, the results vary from complete failure of the product or service to weak results, wasted time, money and effort, and lack of motivation and ownership from the team.
The must haves in your foundation are…
1. Vision. Nothing happens without first defining a vision of what success looks like for your business. The Vision sets the course for the team to steer the ship. From the vision, your team can develop delivery strategies on whether your company’s existing mix of products, services, markets and capabilities form a winning combination for the future or what changes have to be implemented to deliver on that winning future. When developing this first foundational must have, you need to answer the following question honestly; “What does good look like?” It may be a revenue based goal, a market position, customer related, etc. Your vision needs to be a clear and compelling goal that you want to achieve. Now massage that into a short, simple, easy to remember mantra that everyone associated with your business will understand.
2. Why? This is critical. If you do not know why you are chasing what you are chasing, no one else will go on the journey with you. Starting right at home, you will not get the all important support from your partner, your family and your friends if you cannot explain to them why your idea should be believed in. Next, you will not get employees, vendors or other partners to willingly go on the journey with you unless you can explain a compelling ‘Why’ to your vision. Everybody on the planet wants to know “What’s in it for me” and if you can articulate that in terms they can relate to, they will follow you anywhere willingly.
3. Be Remarkable. Before you even launch a product to a market, you need to determine what your business does that is hands-down better than anyone else. Apple is great at innovation – no contest. Zappo’s is clearly better at serving customers. FedEx built their market advantage by being operationally excellent. What is it that your business does that is remarkable? Remember that there are literally thousands of ways your potential customers can spend their money. What is going to convince them to spend their hard-earned money with you? If you are not remarkable, then you will have to compete on price and that is not fun at all!
4. Customers. Nothing happens in business without a sale. The most successful entrepreneurial businesses in the world know exactly who their customers are and they find products that their customers want – NOT finding customers for their products. Get inside the heads of your customers. Build a profile on your customers that is so complete you know every possible thing about them. When you have intimate knowledge of the pain your customer goes through on a daily basis, all your decisions around products, promotions, pricing and distribution become super easy!
5. Become Replicable. Make sure everything else in your business aligns with the four foundational concepts above and then build a replicable approach or processes to make sure that it can be done flawlessly every time. Include processes for the people you hire – they need to be passionate advocates and believers in your vision, purpose, your remarkable greatness and your customers. Do not hire someone because of his or her resume. Hire for passion and attitude first. The same goes with the partners you work with. If your greatness is that you serve customers better than anyone else, why would you partner with a company that is focused on the cheapest price in town?
6. Proof. Everything you want to do and will do in your business needs to be measured in order to get the results you expect. If you do not have key measures factored into your business, you will wake up to a crisis that could have been averted. I always do a balance check to make sure everything aligns and that we are selling significant value by “Stapling Myself to an Order” where I follow a customer order all the way through the sales and delivery process. Anywhere that the process does not align with our vision, purpose or greatness, we change it on the spot, document it, train for it and move on to the next thing and make sure that it works as envisioned too (and so on).
As an entrepreneur, I know that you lie awake at night envisioning the cool parts of your business like the product or the idea. I love that passion! Remember though, without a structured approached to having a rock solid foundation, your business will run into seemingly impossible challenges and will not be able to stand the tests of the storms you will face.
Robert Murray is a Key Note Speaker, Serial Entrepreneur, Executive Turn Around Mercenary and the author of the critically acclaimed book; “It’s Already Inside: Nurturing your innate leadership for business and life success.”
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Keith Williams - eProfile & Life Blog 