facebookpixel

Give Workers Something to Be Loyal To

CMMA Blog

Companies that inspire loyalty are those that cultivate creative expression, communication, and a feeling of purpose among workers.

In a podcast episode called “Why Workers Can’t Get Enough Hours, Even in a Jobs Boom ,” The Wall Street Journal examined the challenges of the current job market. The dominant narrative is that companies have plenty of openings and not enough workers or that workers are too picky or fickle. While the latter is debatable, the former is explainable. The job market is in a cycle and the simplified version of that cycle is that some companies over-hire to combat high turnover rates and then workers can’t get enough hours to make ends meet and quit. While there are financial benefits to companies that keep worker hours low, it does encourage turnover. That business model may work for some environments, but if you want to have a culture that workers will sacrifice pay increases to stay in, you’ll need to take a different approach.



You don’t need something like Pixar’s cereal bar, but that feeling? That’s worth emulating. After all, the experience your workers have working with and for your company affects not just their quality of lives but your business overall, too. It’s worth noting that good people practices make for good business, too.

Don’t misunderstand: A positive company culture is more than ping pong in the break room or free bagel Fridays. In fact, you don’t need a break room, or even a central workspace at all, to have a constructive company culture. Fostering culture within a physical space is one thing, but more and more, we need to be able to nurture culture for a remote workforce.

Here Are Some Ways to Establish And Nurture a Culture That Inspires Loyalty

Integrate Culture Into Interviews And On-boarding

One way to maintain and strengthen your company’s culture is to start from day one. Provide a culture orientation that introduces new team members to what they can expect from their experience. Whatever form the message takes, it should include your mission statement and core values and examples of the culture in action.

Share this information with prospective hires and new team members as part of the on-boarding process. Put your values in writing and train your hiring managers and staffing or crewing agency to make sure potential workers are a good fit for both the role and the culture. Just like an older sibling can sometimes be more effective than a parent, peer mentoring can be more effective than relying on the manager. Consider instituting a program where teammates on-board each other and train new members on the brand. By integrating your culture from the very first touchpoint, you can set it up for success — no matter how many miles separate teammates.

Foster Communication

In co-located offices, important information often gets exchanged in break rooms, hallways, impromptu meetings, and during after-work drinks. With a remote team, you have to go out of your way to overcome the “water cooler gap.” Digital spaces such as Slack encourage teammates to connect and collaborate. There’s no doubt it’s a completely different environment than an email chain.

Tools such as video conferencing, instant messaging, and online collaboration methods like Zoom and Google Hangouts can help shrink the miles. Detailed meeting notes and recorded discussions can help make sure the right people are in the loop, even if they’re in different time zones. On the flip side, eliminate unnecessary meetings which can cause disengagement and drain people’s energy.

Use Tools That Reflect And Support Your Culture

Just like connections, the personality and culture of co-located offices develop through the interactions in any environment. It evolves through the proverbial water cooler talks, whiteboard sessions, inside jokes, and shared experiences. Your remote team (or team of short-term contractors) can develop something similar through the tools you use every day. Adopt tools and processes that will foster communication and serve as an extension and vehicle of the culture.

Engage Workers

Another way you can help maintain company culture across your remote workforce is by creating opportunities for social interaction and employee engagement. While a weekly happy hour wouldn’t be realistic, something like a virtual book club could be. Or if you’re aiming to build camaraderie or foster teamwork, you could host a monthly game night where workers team up for an online video game tournament.

It doesn’t have to be all fun and games. You could host monthly lunch-and-learns over Zoom or Google Hangouts, or you could create a Slack channel for workers to celebrate each other’s accomplishments. You might also consider implementing weekly video updates where you share company-wide news, birthday announcements, or whatever’s culturally relevant to your organization. There are countless ways you can engage remote workers. Find what works for your team and make it a habit.

The Bottom Line

It’s worth investing your remote workforce’s culture. Companies with strong cultures tend to see higher rates of productivity, be more profitable, and retain top talent. Thankfully, you don’t need a headquarters to reap the benefits of positive company culture. Learn how partnering with PayReel to manage your contingent workforce can free up your resources to focus on strengthening your culture and bottom line.

The post Give Workers Something to Be Loyal To appeared first on PayReel .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Here’s How to Keep Your Payroll Compliant When Laws Change

CMMA Blog

Keeping on top of the ins and outs of compliance is hard, time-consuming, high-stakes work. It’s worth it to make sure you have an in-house team or a partner dedicated to keeping your payroll services running smoothly and accurately.

Legal Considerations

It’s hard to think of a higher-stakes aspect of business than where the money goes and how it gets there. Your in-house team or partner needs to do the following:

  • Mitigate compliance risks
  • Be aware of practices that could compromise compliance
  • Track benefits eligibility
  • Track changes in minimum wage, overtime, and sick leave policies in each state

Quick And Accurate Payment

Payroll operates at its smoothies when all of the following are in place and functioning well: 

  • Online management: Employees can log hours and supervisors approve them—all online—without the need for actual paper.
  • Payment is fast and accurate: A smoothly-functioning system to track overtime, submit time cards, and obtain supervisors’ approval.
  • Benefits eligibility: There is a process in place to know when employees become eligible for benefits.

The Bottom Line

Everyone is trying to figure out labor laws and fair pay. The gig economy and the worker classification challenges it brings to the forefront are top-of-mind topics for the government, employers, and employees alike.

PayReel knows the biz and the people in the biz. We are ahead of the game with every possible change and are ready to research and take the necessary steps. We stay up to date on payroll regulations and assist clients in navigating the increasingly complicated waters of payroll services.

If you think you might need a partner, rest assured the PayReel team is on top of following all regulations, rules, and federal and state laws. In a nutshell: We stay ahead of the curve so our clients never even have to think about payroll services and compliance.

 

The post Here’s How to Keep Your Payroll Compliant When Laws Change appeared first on PayReel .

To view our Partner blog, click here

The Fundamentals for a Solid Team in a Changing Workplace

CMMA Blog

In the movie Miraclea ragtag group of individuals from rival schools transforms into a well-functioning team and the unlikely winners of the Olympic gold. During tryouts, many of the United States’ top hockey players made a show of their fancy skating skills. Still, Coach Herb Brooks had something more basic in mind. He knew this team wasn’t the most skilled or the most experienced, but he was determined they would be the most well-conditioned.

As our work teams continue to disperse to their home offices and fancy devices, it’s easy to lose focus. Still, the fundamental principles remain solid. While the methods will continue to change, an effective team is always built on effective communication. Another foundation of a team that feels cohesive–no matter how it’s structured–is taking care of people. 

Whenever we get a little sideways or start to feel the distance growing between team members, divisions, and workers with various statuses, we can always come back to the tried and true basics and work on our communication as well as the human side of our business. 

We’ve collected some resources for cohesively knitting teams with different structures. 

Communication

Three Elements of Great Communication, According to Aristotle  

Good Communication Goes Beyond Open Door Policies

New Study: How Communication Drives Performance

The Next Generation of Office Communication Tech  

Taking Care of People/Teambuilding 

The New Science of Building Great Teams  

How to Respectfully Discuss Contentious Issues at Work

In a Hybrid World, Your Tech Defines Employee Experience

What is the Purpose of Your Purpose?

Managing a Polarized Workplace

Empathy Rules

Bottom Line 

There’s no way to build an effective team without communicating well and taking care of your people. What are your tried and true principles/tactics you always come back to?

 

The post The Fundamentals for a Solid Team in a Changing Workplace appeared first on PayReel .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Strategies to Help You Through The Changing Workplace

CMMA Blog

Like a lot of you, we’ve been reading about how to adjust to the changing workplace. We hope you find this curated list of the Harvard Business Review’s resources to help you through the changing workplace.

The Great Resignation

  1. 6 Strategies to Boost Retention Through the Great Resignation  (Harvard Business Review)
  2. How to Hang On to Your High Potentials  (Harvard Business Review)
  3. One Way to Fight the Great Resignation: Re-recruit Your Current Employees

Communication

  1. How to Interrupt Someone’s Workday–Without Annoying Them
  2. Communicating Authentically in a Digital World
  3. Five Ways to Improve Communication in Virtual Teams

Leadership

  1. How to Get Your Team to Stop Asking You Every Little Question
  2. Use Purpose to Transform Your Workplace
  3. What Courageous Leaders Do Differently

What patterns are you seeing out there? What’s helping you through?

The post Strategies to Help You Through The Changing Workplace appeared first on PayReel .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Hiring Independent Contractors The Right Way

CMMA Blog

Hiring independent contractors has many benefits. Companies appreciate the ability to engage only when needed and end engagement whenever it makes sense, outsourcing tasks not related to your core business, have less onboarding hassle, and not having to pay for benefits. It makes sense why engaging independent contractors is often to a company’s advantage, but only when it’s done in accordance with IRS guidelines. Here’s what you need to know to stay out of trouble. 

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

The very best place to start whenever you’re engaging a worker is to classify correctly from the outset. Whether a worker is classified as an employee or an independent contractor guides what benefits they’re entitled to by law. Legal disputes over worker classification have plagued everyone from Uber to FedEx. Following the rules and classifying correctly from the beginning saves time and the potential for legal troubles. 

Be Ready to Adapt

From workers to legislators, people are thinking about how to manage the evolving employment landscape. Some envision an entirely new system with changing guidelines that suit changing times. Such a system might include “portable benefits” that travel with workers from company to company. 

We can only guess how things will change, but we do expect them to change. Businesses that stay in tune with these kinds of conversations and legal considerations are in position to adapt as those changes come. When that’s not something a company can accommodate, engaging a third party to handle those details makes sense. 

Protect Yourself

There are some basic ways to protect yourself should the IRS ever come knocking. It’s always good business to create a contract with an independent contractor. This is beneficial for the business as well as for the worker as it makes sure everyone knows the expectations. From there, you must keep track of your payments to independent contractors and report them. Finally, while it’s usually unnecessary to withhold income taxes, you may receive a backup withholding notice from the IRS. In that case, you must withhold income taxes as indicated by the notice.

The Bottom Line

The world of independent contractors offers benefits to workers and companies alike. While those benefits do include flexibility for workers and lower costs to employers, they don’t cover things we’ve grown used to such as built-in 401K plans, health insurance options, and worker’s compensation. For many independent contractors, that’s a problem.

Currently, there is no roadmap telling you how to pay contractors fairly while keeping costs down. The good news is that we at PayReel have been on this road long enough to navigate it legally and ethically. If you can’t (or just don’t want to) keep up with the rules and developments, PayReel can keep up for you. Check out this handy guide to see if you might benefit from having a third party handle these details for you. Our team manages worker classification , payroll, and payroll taxes. In addition, as the employer of record, we even take on all risks associated with a variable workforce.

Going above and beyond in the ethics department isn’t just a warm and fuzzy notion. It’s a sound business decision, too. 

 

The post Hiring Independent Contractors The Right Way appeared first on PayReel .

To view our Partner blog, click here

DigitalGlue Expands 2022 Vendor Line Card with RED Digital Cinemas Partnership

CMMA Blog

Murrieta, CA – January 12, 2022 – DigitalGlue is excited to announce its partnership with RED Digital Cinema as an official systems integrator. DigitalGlue has been trusted by the world’s top content creators and distributors for 20 years as a technology partner and provider of video solutions. Beyond the addition of RED’s array of professional digital cinematography cameras and accessories, DigitalGlue will provide customers with curated workflow solutions that bring cinematic imagery to live productions. DigitalGlue’s innovative storage solution, creative.space, has the performance needed to handle the demanding 4K, 6K, and 8K video formats RED cameras require making the dynamic duo partnership the ideal workflow the industry has been waiting for.

With
the RED Digital Sensor’s cinematic look, 6K and 8K options, R3D RAW workflow,
and over 16 stops of dynamic range, creatives can immerse their audiences
deeper into their storytelling. The introduction of the RED KOMODO 6K digital
cinema camera makes filmic quality digital video capture affordable to a wider
range of organizations and use cases. The KOMODO provides expanded capture
options with the addition of a live 4K SDI video output. With both RAW and
ProRes internal capture, high-quality files can be captured in camera while the
4K output feed can be used for live production. After the event is over, the
high quality files can be used to remaster the event for long-term viewing.
With a new simplified RAW compression model, organizations can strategically
balance image quality and data rate. The KOMODO cinema camera is a unique
creative tool that can adapt to any kind of content.

Of
course with this increased capability comes an increased demand on storage and
creative.space is the best solution for the job. The entire server line-up,
from the portable //ROGUE PRO to the all-flash //BREATHLESS, is optimized for
real-time streaming of high-bandwidth video files associated with RED digital
cinema cameras.. DigitalGlue President, Sean Busby, states “the ability to
offer a very attractive discount on RED and creative.space packages will enable
teams of all sizes and budgets to optimize their workflow.” The creative.space
hardware and software platform allows teams to collaborate by connecting to the
same files locally or over the internet. RED media can be ingested directly
into the server using the on-board USB ports and the creative.space web app.
Each server also features built-in access control, an FTP server, and VPN
integration that enable both remote mounting for proxy-based video editing and
accelerated file transfers. The creative.space platform is the turnkey storage
solution for RED workflows and can save production teams time and money.

New
to RED? DigitalGlue team members Nick Anderson and Philip Grossman are
REDucation certified and ready to answer any and all questions on how to
optimize your workflow with RED and the creative.space platform.

To view our Partner blog, click here