SMB

Small Businesses Getting Ready to Hire

The nation’s unemployment rate may have hit a 26-year high in September but many small businessowners are getting ready to hire.  The latest Intuit Payroll survey found that nearly half of the small business owners surveyed, 44 percent, are planning to hire new employees within the next 12 months. At the same time, many small business owners believe that benefits are key to attracting new hires but are finding them difficult to afford.

“Economists may have declared the recession over, but on Main Street, unemployment figures are what really matter,” said Nora Denzel, senior vice president of Intuit’s Employee Management Solutions Division, which helps more than 1 million small businesses easily and affordably manage their payroll. “There are struggles ahead, nobody is uncorking the champagne bottle quite yet, but we are starting to see small signs of optimism.”

These 12-month hiring plans coincide with a somewhat optimistic view of their own prospects for growth. Sixty percent expect their business to grow in the next year. Newer businesses are the most bullish: 80 percent of companies founded less than three years ago expect to grow over the next year, compared to roughly half that have been in operation for 10 years or more.

When it comes to hiring, small business owners are looking for candidates with a broader skill set. Fifty percent of the small business respondents said they were looking for a “people person” or “jack of all trades,” over a “creative genius” (11 percent) or “mathematical wizard” (4 percent).

Benefits Key to Attracting Talent

While small business owners get ready to hire, many of them are in a quandary when it comes to attracting talent. Nearly 90 percent of survey participants said that health insurance benefits are important to attracting and retaining good employees. Yet 58 percent don’t offer healthcare insurance, with nearly 50 percent stating that they can’t afford it.

Employer-provided retirement plans are even scarcer. Among the businesses surveyed just one-fourth offer retirement benefits. Of those who don’t, nearly two-thirds said they don’t have a responsibility to do so while the remainder said that they can’t find an affordable plan.

“There’s a widening gap of expectations,” said Denzel. “On one hand, we as a society assume that health and retirement benefits are part of every employee’s compensation package. And yet even as these small businesses gear up to hire, according to our results, small businesses are leery about what those benefits will cost.”

Additional Findings

The survey also found that:

• Friends and family matter. Seventy-nine percent of small business owners surveyed have hired a friend or family member and only 22 percent said that this was a bad decision. The reason may have to do with trust, which was cited as one of the two biggest hiring challenges, along with finding employees with the right experience.
• Long-term relationships are important. Forty-four percent of the small business owner respondents reported that their first employee still works for them.
• Stimulus funds not a factor. Consistent with the previous Intuit Payroll Survey conducted three months ago, only 1 percent of respondents reported receiving federal stimulus money. Yet 74 percent admit that they are probably not taking advantage of all the benefits available to their business under the federal economic stimulus plan.

SMB

Managed Services Industry Finds a Friend in the Recession

Almost 20 percent of IT professionals are purchasing more managed services as a result of current economic conditions, according to the latest Enterprise And SMB Networks And Telecommunications Survey by Forrester.  “While the down environment is making most technology areas suffer, managed services is getting a boost as firms look for more flexible payment models that limit capital expenditure but also can keep them current with technology changes that help their firm,” said Ellen Daley, vice president and research director at Forrester. “This further accelerates an industry move to a more flexible services model for fulfillment of telecom, network, and IT technology changes.”

Forty-seven percent of enterprise respondents and 37 percent of SMB respondents say that they have already purchased managed or outsourced telecommunication services. Unlike in past years, the top reason isn’t cost savings — both enterprises and SMB respondents say they are motivated to use managed services in order to focus on their core business competencies and not just keeping the network running.

Other key highlights of the survey include:

• Unified communication (UC) adoption continues to see traction. Twenty-two percent of enterprise respondents and 24 percent of SMB respondents report that they are already, or are currently implementing, a UC solution. Just 12 percent of enterprises and 20 percent of SMBs report no interest in doing so. The main motivations for adopting UC are cost savings and increasing communication flow between employees.
• Enterprises use a plethora of wireless networks. Almost 65 percent of enterprise respondents report that their firm has already implemented, is implementing, or is upgrading their wireless local area network (WLAN). Close to half of SMBs have already implemented or are implementing an in-house WLAN solution. While there’s high enterprise interest in both fixed and mobile WiMAX, SMBs are more resistant to public cellular data with 45 percent of them indicating no interest in using it.
• Gradual growth in desktop voice over IP (VoIP) continues. Thirty-four percent of enterprise respondents say they have already implemented or are implementing desktop VoIP, and an additional 14 percent of enterprise respondents are expanding or upgrading their VoIP environment. Thirty-four percent of SMB respondents say that they’ve already implemented a desktop VoIP solution, and another 9 percent of SMB respondents are upgrading or expanding their current one.