RESOURCE CENTRE

Your EnterQuest Bulletin - 27 July 2005

In this week's issue:

• tips for recruiting your first (or any) new employee
  
• etiquette for marketing on the web
  
• the minimum wage - how it's going to change in October
  
• opening up the murky world of domain name hijacking
  
• the Environment Agency website reviewed
  

Small business answers

If you have any questions about your business idea or target market, or need help tracking down a grant, subsidy or business support in your local area, then send an e-mail with your query to the EnterQuest information team and we'll do our best to help.

Send your question to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.

To access over 800 factsheets, guides and small business reports, go to www.scavenger.net.

Weekly stir

Tips for recruiting your first (or any) new employee

So, you've started your own business or have been running one single-handedly for several months or maybe longer. You might even consider yourself quite a success by your own modest little standards.

But when was the last time you didn't work a weekend, or took a proper holiday, or had some dedicated time in the evening with your family or friends? Or when did you ever find the time to step back and look at your little venture and plan its next stage, or get on that advanced bookkeeping course, or read that small business guerrilla marketing manual you bought weeks ago?

Does any of this sound familiar?

So what are your options? More of the same, as this has been working for you so far? Outsourcing the stuff you don't like, can't handle, won't lower yourself to do? Neither of these options are ideal if you've reached the point where there's just that little bit too much on your plate every day, and paying a subbie isn't quite going to give you the dedicated support you really need.

Which means you've reached one of those memorable points in running a small business, when you realise you need to recruit your very first employee.

But that's when you also realise what a minefield this can be, with the ridiculous amount of confusing, rapidly changing employment rules and regulations that are just waiting to trap the unwary, unwitting and unsuspecting new employer you're about to become.

To give you a bit of help, this week we've produced a few tips to help you recruit your very first member of staff.

And you might also want to check out one of our factsheets, 'A Guide for First-Time Employers' on our Scavenger research website, which explains the legal side of employing someone in layman's terms.

Here are six very quick tips to get you started.

1) Be absolutely clear about what you expect from your new employee

A lot of people will advise you to do this with a job description or job specification, but the best way to look at it is not just in technical terms (ie if it's to do with finance or selling) but also what you want from your employee in terms of them supporting and understanding your needs and the requirements of your business. You might want to express this in terms of things like 'getting things done on time' or 'dealing with the detail' or 'getting things organised'.

2) Don't look for a clone of yourself, but do look for someone on your wavelength

You will not find another you and you shouldn't specifically look for one. But you should be seeking someone you can get on with and who will have the same general attitude and approach to work, to dealing with customers, and to small business issues and problems. If you're the formal, stuffy type (go on, admit it) then you need to recognise that you should recruit someone who'll be comfortable with that style of management. But if you're more laid back and informal (and probably need help getting organised) then you'll be better off finding someone who will thrive working with a scatterbrained boss like you.

3) Write down the list of interview questions you will ask

And even more importantly, write down the answers that each interviewee gives you. To ensure you're conducting a fair selection process, you need, where possible, to have a written list of questions that you are going to ask each person you interview. Writing down the answers will not only help you remember who you interviewed and what they said, but it will also help you in the future if someone claims they weren't interviewed fairly and decides to take you to a tribunal. Now listen carefully to this point, because this does happen, and this record of the interview questions will help you immensely if you need to prove you went through a fair process, by showing that you asked everyone the same questions.

4) Don't recruit the best of a bad bunch

This is absolutely vital. If you aren't convinced about any of the four, five, six or however many people you interviewed, then don't, please don't, recruit the best of the bunch. This is guaranteed to come back and haunt you. Better to start the whole process over again, as frustrating as it might seem at the time.

5) Give them a job title that they will be proud of

This one can be tricky. But it's worth pointing out that most people put a higher value on their job title than you would ever realise. People want to feel proud of their work and their job and how they describe it to their family and friends, and their job title can be as valuable to them as the money they earn.

This is also important for your business, as your employee's job title creates an impression and an expectation to everyone that they deal with in the course of their work for you. One approach is to discuss this with your employee and agree the title between you, within reason of course. But think about this carefully and the rewards will be two-way.

6) Don't discriminate against gender, age, race or anything else 'personal'

Employment law is an absolute pig for the small business employer to deal with, and a lot of the regulations recently introduced in the UK have been created by civil servants and policymakers with boiled mince for brains. But they are cast in stone laws nonetheless, and you simply cannot afford to ignore them.

Discrimination rules are probably the most complicated and difficult to deal with when recruiting a new employee.

Put in simple terms, you cannot refuse to interview or recruit anyone, or let your decisions be influenced by anything to do with whether a person is female, male, in-between, married, fat, thin, of a specific race, religion or sexual orientation, pregnant, has an accent you don't like, has strange hobbies, or anything else about them that you personally object to. And from next year you won't be able to discriminate against anyone because of their age, either. Get the message?

Take this on board and look at tip 3) again to ensure you only ask non-discriminatory questions to everyone you interview and have a record to demonstrate the fact that you did.

Marketing tip

Etiquette for marketing on the web

Making sure you know the basic dos and don'ts of Internet marketing etiquette is essential both to make your online promotional campaigns a success, and to protect and promote the good reputation of your business.

Here are four practical hints and tips for making sure your Internet marketing campaigns don't fall foul of unwritten etiquette rules.

• When requesting reciprocal links, make sure your 'approach' e-mail is personalised to the webmaster, polite, and tailored to that site (not an impersonal pro forma e-mail). If your first attempt is ignored, don't give up - leave it for a couple of weeks then try again, or ring them up instead.
• Similarly, you should explain what's in it for the site that links to you before requesting a reciprocal link. A reciprocal link is always welcome, but if your site sends three visitors a day to a site which sends you a thousand, the imbalance will be noticed, and the link may be removed.
• Get a feel for the atmosphere of online message boards, blogs and discussion forums before posting. By simply revisiting the board or forum you plan to join regularly and monitoring other posts, you can get a sense of what is controversial and find out what the written and unwritten rules are.
• Be polite. Always use an opening salutation in e-mail messages rather than launching straight into your marketing spiel, and address people like you would in formally business correspondence if you are contacting them for the first time - for example, use 'yours faithfully' rather than 'cheers' to sign off.

Read more about Internet marketing dos and don'ts for small businesses in Chapter 30 of the UK Small Business Marketing Bible, where you can also find hundreds of ideas, tips and techniques for increasing sales no matter what sector you're in.

Legal tip

The minimum wage - how it's going to change in October

This week's tip is a quick reminder that the National Minimum Wage is going up at the beginning of October. This is the legal minimum amount you have to pay all your employees.

• The new rate comes into force on 1 October.
• The minimum hourly wage for employees aged 22 and over rises from £4.85 to £5.05.
• The 'development rate' for workers aged between 18 and 21 will rise from £4.10 to £4.25.
• The minimum wage for 16 and 17 year olds has been held at £3 per hour.
  

October 2006 is likely to see the minimum wage rise again, and we'll keep you updated with any future Government plans nearer the time.

If you happen to pay your employees for piecework - for example, if they carry out work for you at home and may work irregular hours - the rate is 120% of the minimum wage. Note that this may change in coming months as the Government has been carrying out a study of fair piecework rates.

Rather surprisingly, there's a useful and detailed guide to the National Minimum Wage at the Department of Trade and Industry's site, of all places. We've provided you with a direct link as it's darned difficult to find it navigating from the homepage.

And our UK Red Tape Buster offers hundreds more scenarios, frequently asked questions and factsheets covering every small business legal situation.

IT tip

Opening up the murky world of domain name hijacking

Do you own an Internet domain name? Can you remember when it's up for renewal, and are you aware of the awful consequences if you forget? Let us take you briefly to the seamy side of the Internet…

In fact it would be wrong to exaggerate - the consequences of forgetting are most likely to be inconvenience rather than disaster for your business, but we have heard of organisations which have suffered badly for their forgetfulness. Take, for example, the rugby team not far from us which one morning discovered that their website was no longer about rugby but had been changed to something far more physical and very adult in nature…

In fact, they had forgotten to renew their domain name, and it had been hijacked by a scumbag webmaster elsewhere. Here's how this problem, known as cybersquatting, can happen and how to avoid it:

• Under the current system of domain name allocation, you don't really own a name, you reserve it for your own use. This is often only for one or two years, so it's easy to forget when the time comes to renew. Many Internet Service Providers send reminder e-mails and notices, but some unfortunately don't.
  
• You can check when your domain name is up for renewal by searching the database at whois.net. The information there will tell you your renewal date, your current host, and your registration service provider.
  
• There are unscrupulous businesses out there that keep an eye on renewal dates, particularly for popular websites that have lots of visitors and good rankings in the search engines. When they fall due, these wretched toe-rags snap them up and replace the existing website with their own (usually unsavoury) pages. All the hard work you've put in to developing your site goes to waste, and your business reputation can be ruined in the process.
  
• Fortunately, you can renew your domain name during the days and weeks before it expires. Either contact the registration service provider you used to get the name in the first place, or do some shopping around and see if you can find a provider who offers cheaper domain names.
  

New business idea

Each week we provide you with summaries of some popular or emerging business ideas in the UK.

Here is this week's idea:

• Handmade Paper

Just one word

Regularly improving your vocabulary is not just about learning a new word and its meaning. It will improve your general knowledge and make you feel and act smarter in all sorts of personal and business situations.

Do you know what 'accede' means?

a) allow access
b) emphasise
c) agree
d) speed up

Answer at the end of the Bulletin.

Website review

The Environment Agency (www.environment-agency.gov.uk)

This website is the place where businesses can find out about their obligations under UK and European environmental regulations - but how user-friendly is the site itself?

• Navigation - most space on the homepage is given up to topical issues, such as the new hazardous waste regulations for businesses, and key summer issues such as the effect of hot weather on water supplies. This both makes it appear fresh and engaging, and shows that the people behind the website are clued up as to the most likely topics that visitors will want to look at.
  
  
  

• Accessibility - you can get the site in text only and in Welsh as well as English, and there are options for adjusting font, letter size and colour in the text only version. However, a few more minority language options, plus better signposting to accessibility options, would have raised the score here, as is typical of most Government websites we've reviewed.
  
  
  
  
• Content - there's an impressive array of location-specific information, and the alerting services about problems such as floods are a useful resource. Practical information and resources for businesses are also plentiful, especially over key current issues such as hazardous waste.

  
  

• Relevance - the site has an extensive news section, although not much of this is especially interesting, and the legal information on the site is bang up to date.

  

A solid 13 for the Environment Agency - it's generally a useful and well-presented site which could be improved by livening up the news releases and working on accessibility options.

Our rating - 13/20

Did you know?

CIC Regulator is open for business

We explained earlier in the year that a new type of legal framework for companies has been introduced. Community Interest Companies (CIC) are the new legal status option for social enterprises and businesses with a community focus, and came into force on 1 July. The CIC Regulator's office and website are now open for business, and applications are being accepted. When we spoke to the Regulator's office, they told us that over 350 organisations have already expressed an interest in converting to CIC status or forming new CICs.

Worth a visit

The Business Experiment

The Business Experiment is an fascinating new idea that aims to allow its registered users to collectively start up and run a real business. It was set up by an individual US entrepreneur who was keen to test the concept of 'the wisdom of the crowd' in a unique and engaging way. Everything from writing a business plan and securing finance to hiring employees takes place, and users vote together on all major strategic decisions (which the employees of the business must then implement). It offers a valuable practice opportunity for aspiring - and existing - entrepreneurs everywhere.

Top spam words of the month

Technology Weekly has published a list of the words most commonly found in spam e-mail messages for the month of June. It's a useful resource for businesses that distribute marketing materials or newsletters via e-mail to keep track of. You might be surprised at some of the words that are included.

Random password generator

This tutorial from Learn the Net provides useful tips on making sure your passwords stay secure online. It claims that too many people use the same password for all their online memberships and transactions, and also tend to choose something fairly obvious and easy to decipher, such as a partner's name. There's even a tool to generate a password for you made up of random letters and numbers.

Worth a read

This fascinating book provides a startling insight into how many designers and manufacturers ignore the needs and wants of their potential customers when creating new products. It looks into the psychology of how we use everyday items, from computers to kettles, and outlines the basic rules of clear, effective design to help designers make their inventions easier to use and understand. Check out:

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Good luck

The EnterQuest Team

This information is meant as a starting point only. Whilst all reasonable efforts have been made, the publisher makes no warranties that the information is accurate and up-to-date and will not be responsible for any errors or omissions in the information nor any consequences of any errors or omissions. Professional advice should be sought where appropriate.