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Best In-Class Business Insurance for Technology Firms & IT Consultants
When you think about ways to grow your business and make it more profitable, sleep probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. In fact, sleeping probably sounds like the very opposite of what you need.
However, there’s increasing evidence that sleep deprivation has many harmful physical and mental effects. Small business owners—who often work long hours—are especially susceptible to this problem.
Let’s look at why small business owners need more sleep.
Here are some sleep benefits that are especially relevant to someone who runs a small business:
Just as there are significant benefits to getting enough sleep, there are serious drawbacks to losing sleep. Everyone has an occasional bout of insomnia or a late night every so often. Long-term sleep deprivation, however, has consequences worth noting:
Don’t make the mistake of thinking of sleep as a waste of time. This is a shortsighted point of view. An additional hour or two of sleep every night makes you healthier, happier, safer, and more productive. Think of sleep as an investment in your health and well-being. Here are a few tips to help you get more sleep:
However you manage it, do whatever it takes to improve your sleeping habits. It’s essential for your business, as well as every area of your life and health!
As a business owner, your top priority is making money. The quest to increase profits for your small business is never-ending.
One way to increase profits is to cut costs. Luckily for those whose business involves owning and operating company vehicles, finding ways to save money on commercial auto insurance is one way you can help your bottom line.
If you own a business and own vehicles that are titled in the company’s name, your commercial vehicles need insurance with complete coverage. If you own a business, but don’t have any employees and use your vehicle to drive to and from work, a personal auto policy might be sufficient.
If you do have employees and they use their own vehicles for business purposes, it’s important to ensure that they have sufficient liability with their own insurance policy. If the employee is involved in an accident, their policy will pay up to its limits, but if the driver of the other vehicle sues the company, it’s important that the company at least considers adding a “non-owned vehicle” clause to their commercial insurance coverage.
Commercial and personal auto policies have many things in common, but a key difference is that commercial auto provides coverage that protects your business from uncovered liabilities that result from a serious accident. If your vehicle is regularly being used for business purposes, it should be covered under a commercial auto policy.
This type of policy can bundle various forms of protection insurance together such as property insurance, business interruption, and some liability into a single plan and save some money. Do your research, however, because many bundles don’t include auto.
Some commercial insurance providers also offer home and auto. Combining these could save money without touching anything in your policy.
Review your policy carefully to see if there are any elements you don’t need. You don’t want to put your company at risk, but a periodic review of your policy can reveal places you might be able to save money.
In general, the higher the deductible, the lower your premium and vice versa. Many don’t understand the correlation of this simple way to save money. Just be sure to not set your deductible to an unreasonable amount that you could not easily come up with if a claim needs to be filed.
If your business has not filed a claim in a while, there may be a discount available.
There are oftentimes discounts available if you pay your full premium upfront instead of monthly. Many companies also offer discounts if you pay by EBT (electronic bank transfer).
The DMV recommends checking the driving records of all those who will be included on your policy. This affects your rates significantly.
When reviewing any potential changes that could save your business some money on your commercial auto policy, be sure to have enough coverage to protect your business assets and liabilities. We have been helping small business owners improve their business since 2001. We offer a quick and easy quote process that outlines all options available to you.
Starting a home business is an exciting and rewarding venture. The most important part of owning your own business is keeping it safe. Unfortunately, small and home businesses have become the targets for criminals seeking to steal sensitive information. This is largely due to their lack of trained IT personnel on staff.
For this reason, we have complied this list of 6 cyber security tips to protect your home business.
As a business owner, it is your responsibility to have a working knowledge of the type of threats that your business faces. There are three common types of attacks including phishing, APTs, and inside jobs.
Phishing attacks are the most common type of cyber attack, and they are easily preventable. Phishers are the ones who send out fraudulent emails that can release malware or even steal secure information with a simple click.
APTs, or Advanced Persistent Threats, occur when hackers use several small attacks over time. These are hard to detect, but once they accumulate, they can lead to a huge threat.
Inside jobs occur when current or past employees use their knowledge of your business to penetrate your system.
The next most important tip about protecting your home business is installing antivirus and antispyware software on every computer that you use for business. There are many online vendors to choose from for this kind of software.
You also need to ensure that you regularly update the software. In fact, we recommend changing your settings so that it updates automatically. Updates allow for the software to handle new security threats and function properly.
Social media is a great way to advertise your business, generate new leads, and build brand awareness. It is important, however, to use social media in a way that does broadcast any trade secrets about your business. While you want to provide valuable content to your audience, there are many aspects of your business that the public and your competitors don’t need to know. Using social media responsibly will help protect your business from unnecessary risks.
Speaking of risks, another important cyber security tip to keep in mind is managing and assessing potential risks. You must ask yourself “What do I have to protect?” and “What do I not want to lose?”
This is especially true if your home business has a relationship with a larger firm. Hackers often target small, lesser-protected businesses to gain access to the wealth of information that bigger companies have. An attack on your business could ultimately result in losing trust with the bigger companies you seek to work with.
If your home business should go under attack, you need to be sure that you won’t lose important documents, data, and information forever. You should manually, but preferably automatically, back up all the information on any computer used for your business on a weekly basis.
Chances are you have a WiFi network that you use for your home business. It is important to secure this network and ensure that it is hidden. You can configure your wireless router so that the network name (SSID) is not being broadcast. It is also critical that you require a password to access your wireless network. This password should be changed from the one assigned to your router, to something only you would know.
Your home business is your dream. Protect it from malicious threats by following these important cyber security tips. To learn more about protecting your home business, contact us today!
As an IT consultant, it’s hard to predict the myriad things that could go wrong in your line of work. Whether it’s a mistake on an employee’s part or a client who is simply unhappy or unwilling to pay for contracted work, without insurance, you could be sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even $1 million or more—even if you’ve done nothing wrong.
Naturally, you’ll want to get the most cost-effective insurance coverage possible while making sure that there aren’t any gaps that could put your business in jeopardy.
Here are just a few ways IT consultants like you can save money on business insurance.
You can save money by purchasing a Business Owner’s Policy (BOP). This will allow you to have both general liability insurance, which can pay for property damage and injuries to third parties, and property insurance, which will provide money to repair or replace your equipment and office equipment.
Both policies are necessary for your financial protection, so doesn’t it make sense to save money by bundling them together?
When you do this, although the money you pay out-of-pocket if you have a claim will be more, your premium will be lower. This may seem logical, but consider what your higher financial responsibility might be in case of litigation. Regardless, liability claims likely don’t happen that often in your profession.
This might be one money-saving feature you may not think of. Some improvements could include installing shatter-resistant windows, security cameras, and an alarm system.
This could save money by deterring theft, which could greatly reduce your property insurance claims. Before doing this, however, tell your insurance agent what your plans are first. He or she can tell you if the improvements qualify you for a discount.
In most cases, a few policies are a necessity:
You may already know you need worker’s compensation for your employees. Having them properly classified, however, can save you money.
Your insurer needs to use the proper classification codes for all your employees. Using incorrect codes can cause you to pay too much or too little for the coverage.
It can cost you a lot of money to not be insured or have inadequate coverage. Could you afford to write a check to a client for $500,000 or even $1 million if a database you designed doesn’t work for three days and you get sued for lost revenue? Could you pay tens of thousands of dollars if sued for damages or if a virus is introduced into a client’s computer system?
Your legal fees could be huge if you are sued, even if you did nothing wrong. A client may sue you because he doesn’t like the quality of your work, simply because he wrongly believes something you provided didn’t function properly, or you didn’t deliver something you promised—even if the whole issue is just a matter of miscommunication.
By keeping the above tips in mind, you can ensure that your company has the proper coverage without breaking the bank. And it never hurts to consult an insurance agent who can help you assess your risks and find the best coverage for your unique needs.
A common approach to retirement for small business owners today is that their business is their retirement. The plan is that they will either sell the business for cash when they are ready to retire or pass it along to a family member for a share of wealth in the future or a buyout. Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange editor-in-chief David Deeds talks about the risk involved with this approach, “If your business fails, your wealth goes away”.
For today’s small business owner, it’s not that they don’t want to save for retirement, but they often take the earnings and invest right back into the business to help it continue to grow.
In order to be able to think about future retirement, business owners need to be able to step away and work “on the business” instead of “in the business”. The following tips will demonstrate how small business owners can start preparing for retirement:
Know what amount will be needed for you to live when you retire. Understand what your cost of living will be; financial advisors like T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, and more offer free worksheets online that can help you get a grasp on what future expenses may be. It also helps to consider hiring a financial advisor to get you going and help you focus.
Consider a diversified retirement plan. It is not necessary to pour large amounts of money into it to get started, but it can help with your current tax bill and grow tax-deferred until used for retirement. A free directory of firms that offer retirement plans to small business owners can be found at 401khelpcenter.com.
Consider a target-date fund that automatically adjusts the balance of your fixed-income (bond) investments and stocks based on your age.
Many small business owners believe that they can’t offer a 401k plan because of their size. In actuality, any business can offer this no matter how small they are.
This may seem obvious, but this step is often overlooked. In fact, one-quarter of small business owners feel as if they won’t have enough to retire comfortably. Along with business plans, be sure to outline a retirement plan and set goals for how you will achieve it.
While small business owners enjoy many benefits of running their own company such as autonomy and flexibility, many fail to employ successful strategies to set themselves up for success at retirement.
Consider the following strategies that have proven successful for many small business owners:
While retirement may seem a ways off, it’s important not to neglect properly planning for the future today. We understand the challenges that small business owners face and offer a full line of insurance options. We’d love to discuss how we can help your business today!
Workers’ compensation is something that everyone vaguely knows exists, but until they need it, they might not understand the program as a whole. In fact, there are several common misconceptions about workers’ compensation that persist across many different industries.
Whether you’re an employee who is struggling to figure out how workers’ compensation will help you following an injury at work or an employer wondering how to make workers’ compensation work for your business, untangling these misconceptions will help you sleep better at night.
Many employees assume that if they were hurt on the job, but it was their own fault or a freak accident, they can’t receive workers’ compensation—and employers may feel that as long as they take the necessary steps to ensure that the workplace is safe, they aren’t at risk.
In reality, however, workers’ compensation applies to anyone who is injured on the job, regardless of how safe the work environment may be.
In many cases, a workers’ compensation claim will mean that an employee is off work for a long period of time. During that time, it’s up to the employer to stay in contact with the employee and work with them through a program that is designed to help them return to work.
Ideally, employers should have a program in place to make returning to work after an injury easy on both the employee who was injured and those who will be working with them. This might include:
An employee has several rights in the independent medical examination process. They have the right to request a physician that is the same gender they are, to request that their personal physical be present for the exam, and to expect it to be at a reasonable location within the state.
The employer, however, also has a number of rights:
Workers’ compensation claims typically need to be dealt with as quickly and efficiently as possible. The longer an employee is out of work, the greater the likelihood that they, for whatever reason, won’t be able to return. Not only that, if delaying benefits results in delayed treatment, the employee can have grounds for further legal action against the company.
Navigating workers’ compensation claims is difficult for both employees and employers. If you want to be sure that you have a solid workers’ compensation policy in place that will protect your employees and your business if there’s an accident at work, contact us. We’ll work with you to ensure that you have the coverage you and your employees need.
As cold and flu season sweeps through the nation, you start hunkering down behind your desk, worried that your company will feel the effects. One employee out sick is bad enough; it disrupts workflow, makes it harder to handle daily tasks, and ensures that any clients who prefer to speak to them are going to be disgruntled.
Worse, however, is that one sick employee who comes in to work despite their illness, spewing their germs across the entire office and sharing it with everyone in the building. Suddenly, everyone from the receptionist to the CEO is sick—and that means even greater disruption.
If you want to keep your office healthy during flu season, these five tips will help.
All too often, illness comes on without warning. What started as a tickle in your throat the day before, when you were freely handling everything in the office, turns into a full-blown case of the flu overnight. To help prevent the spread of germs before employees know that they’re sick, make sure that you sanitize common surfaces and clean the office at the end of the day.
Your company insurance plan will determine if a large percentage of your employees will go to the doctor when they’re sick. Doctor visits can lead to shorter periods of illness, especially for employees who need specific medications or who need to be told to take a sick day for the flu instead of coming in with “just a cold” and affecting the whole office.
Make sure you check your company insurance plan to see how high deductibles are, how much a sick visit is going to cost employees, and what medication copays look like. If it’s not reasonable for their budgets to stretch to accommodate the amount, employees will be more likely to try to tough it out.
No, you don’t have control over what everyone in the company eats and drinks, but you can control what’s in the vending machines or sitting out on the counter. Offering hot tea in the break room, providing orange juice and water instead of soda, and updating the vending machines to include items like yogurt, granola bars, and apple slices instead of just chips and candy bars. Employees who eat healthy are better able to stay healthy throughout cold and flu season.
You know how it works. One employee comes down with a minor case of the flu but drags himself into work anyway. After all, he doesn’t feel any worse at work than he does at home, right?
Then, suddenly, everyone has it.
Remind employees that if they’re sick, the best place for them is at home. Offering work from home options that won’t force employees to use sick days is a great way to help encourage sick individuals to keep their germs away.
Many employees won’t think to go to the bathroom to wash their hands every time they cough or sneeze—and it would be a huge time-waster if they did. If hand sanitizer is readily available, however, employees will be more likely to use it. Keep it in plain sight in high-traffic areas throughout the building. If you’re specifically worried about getting sick yourself, keep it on your desk and pass it to people when they start coughing!
There’s nothing worse than an office full of sick people. Even the ones who come in to the office will be slower, fuzzy-headed, and less competent than usual. While you can’t guarantee that your employees will stay healthy this cold and flu season, you can give them the coverage they need to ensure that when they are sick, they’ll take their symptoms to the doctor’s office instead of to yours.
One of the best ways to build loyalty among your employees and boost your retention rates, as you may well know, is to offer a great benefits package. There are many different perks that you can offer to show your employees that you appreciate their hard work.
But these benefits can extend beyond free coffee in the break room and even group health insurance. When thinking about the long term and how your company factors into their future, many employees consider life insurance a must-have employee benefit.
So, should you consider offering this coverage?
To answer this question, let’s explore the many reasons why employers and employees mutually benefit from employer-sponsored life insurance.
Offering life insurance as an employee benefit can give your staff peace of mind knowing that their loved ones will receive the benefits of their policy should something happen to them. This can boost employee morale and their sense of well-being, especially if they are otherwise unable to afford life insurance on their own.
As a business owner, you can rest assured investing in life insurance for your employees because it is affordable and most insurance companies offer a group rate. This makes it a low-cost benefit for employers should you choose to pay the full premium.
Even if you choose to simply sponsor the coverage, employees will still pay a smaller premium than they would for a policy on their own. The cost per employee can also decrease dramatically depending on the size of your staff.
As a business owner, you always want to offer benefits and incentives to attract top talent to your organization. By offering life insurance as part of your benefits package, you ensure that employees feel valued and are thus willing and eager to stay with your company for the long haul, and you will attract more quality candidates when hiring.
Unlike health insurance, group life insurance policies don’t require employees to have physical exams before starting their coverage. Generally, all that is required is a health questionnaire. Even then, this is sometimes waived depending on how much coverage you have requested on the policy and how many employees you have.
Another great aspect of offering life insurance to your employees is that the first $50,000 of coverage is not subject to income tax. This applies even when the cost is covered by the employer on the employee’s behalf.
If you are contemplating adding life insurance to your employee benefits package, you should consider the following questions first.
While it is not legally required for employers to offer life insurance to their staff, it is a nice incentive to give your employees security and peace of mind. To learn more about group rates on life insurance for your employee benefits package, contact us today!
Social media is a very powerful tool that can take your small business to the top—or break it with a string of bad experiences. With everyone being so plugged in and dependent on the Internet these days, it’s easy to get wrapped up in online drama and bad reviews if you’re not prepared to deal with them.
While there may not be an insurance policy that you can buy to tackle social media flubs pertaining to your small business, you can insure against social media problems by creating policies for your company and employees.
Avoid trouble with these 7 guidelines to rule your company’s social media presence.
The last thing your company needs is for a disgruntled employee or former employee to blast the business on social media. That could kill your credibility, so don’t take chances!
When hiring new employees, add a clause to their contract that states that they are not allowed to post negative views of the company on social media. If they have an issue, they are to come to the owners, managers, or another business representative to discuss and work it out—not air dirty laundry out on Facebook!
Let’s be honest, not everyone gets along or likes each other. Just because those are the facts of life, though, does not mean that employees should be allowed to attack their peers online. Make it very clear that work drama and attacks on others within the company are off-limits. Not only does the company deserve respect, but so do the people who work for it!
The only person speaking to the media on behalf of the company should be the public affairs department or social media manager that is authorized by the company to do so. Make this clear to all staff to avoid a potential PR nightmare! You can even ask that authorized personnel run important media statements through an owner or manager first before they’re released.
Employees are not the only ones that need guidelines—your business does too! If a customer is so unhappy or satisfied and is posting the story on social media, you need to act! If the feedback is negative, reach out publicly first to show others you are stepping in to make the experience better. This doesn’t mean that you need to discuss the details, it just means you need acknowledge and post a way to rectify the problem. On the other hand, if the post is positive, you’ll want to share that experience by re-posting and let your company shine!
Many businesses have proprietary or confidential information. This could be leaked through photos, videos, or comments. Make sure your social media policy limits this sort of sharing by employees.
On the other hand, you can put a policy in place that states that employees authorized to post for the company must obtain permission for images and work done by others. This will help prevent potential lawsuits.
Most people know that they are not supposed to be surfing personal social media at work, but many employees often do. You may not be able to stop this behavior entirely, but you can make it a policy to not be on social media sites while at work. This could protect your company later when your employee decides to Facebook live stream their entire workday.
In today’s climate, adding a clause for discrimination is essential. This should include slurs related to sex, sexual orientation, racial, religious, and physical disability. Make it clear that your business will not tolerate any discrimination!
This is a great place to start to make sure your company is protected against any unwanted social media occurrences. For more ways to insure your company, contact us here.
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