I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential.
Read, subscribe to my newsletter, enjoy!Tash
Brilliance in contingency planning!
Unfortunately, we have seen many instances supporting contingency planning this year – earthquakes, floods, fires, tsunamis.
Wendy Davie has shared a tip from a Christchurch client which I think is great. Having a disaster kit somewhere accessible but protected could be highly valuable in a natural disaster or other catastrophe, and Mary’s idea of using a wheelie bin is blindingly simple.
I wanted to say I love how we all respond to someone grabbing the obvious as a solution to something. A wheelie bin has obvious advantages for a disaster kits (waterproof, portable, easy to get, affordable) but how many people actually thought to use one like that? I see it as a good reminder to stop over thinking things, maybe step away completely and be a little creative – you never know what you’ll come up with!
While Mary’s idea was about life-saving disaster supplies (water, blankets, first aid, and so on), a similar concept could apply to business, especially businesses in disaster prone areas or at least in areas on high alert. If a disaster occurs during business hours, the same materials will be important (water, first aid kits, batteries, pen & paper) for the safety and comfort of you and your team. But, as a business, you may include a few extras such as a list of contacts (including contacts for all employees and their families), a copy of your contingency plan and checklists and weekly back up discs (if your kit is secure enough).
What’s your ‘wheelie bin’ idea for contingency planning?
Remember the flood levy…
For the coming financial year (and only that year we are told), a flood levy will apply to many Australians. The levy is to help rebuild the infrastructure for the communities hurt in the floods, fires and Yassi earlier this year.
Everyone with a taxable income over $50,000 will pay the levy – unless you are exempt because you are receiving a Government Disaster Recovery Payment for a 2010-11 natural disaster. You can find out how much the levy will be for you on the Treasury’s flood rebuilding site.
If you are self-employed, you probably pay tax via the PAYG system rather than regular deductions from your pay. Your annual letter outlining your PAYG instalments for the year will include the levy in those calculations. If you are an employee then your employer will deduct the levy along with your normal tax. You need to inform your employer or the ATO if you are exempt but earning over the threshold.
If you also employ people, you will need to add the levy to your usual deduction schedule. That is, for employees earning over $50,000, you will need to deduct an extra 0.5% or 1.0% with their tax – starting with the first pay after 1 July 2011. Businesses do not pay the levy, it is only for individuals.
So are you prepared for this levy? CE2DTMFHHKHT
What uses up bandwidth?
If you’ve tried reaching my blog or website in the last day or so you may have experienced some trouble unfortunately. I know I wasn’t happy to see a ‘exceeded bandwidth’ message when I tried to log in to post yesterday and again today.
Knowing I was well under my host limits a few hours earlier, I was surprised by the message and have contacted my host. Especially as the second time showed about 12,000MB of bandwidth used in less than 24 hours!
Figuring out the bandwidth issue
Securing computers is important but not always easy…
No one has accessed the back end of my site or ftp (but I have changed passwords anyway!) but my host found that someone (and let me add that it is very restrained of me to just write ‘someone’!) in Washington has been using my bandwidth. I should say ‘had been’ as that ip is now blocked.
My host has been great at trying to help me and extending my bandwidth to keep the site live while the issue was researched, so thanks Lucie at Multimediart.
My question however, is how is someone using up so much bandwidth on my site? No unexpected files have appeared on the site and apparently no one unauthorised has logged in so I’m confused. Do you have any idea what this person was doing?
Does anyone have any suggestions to share so we can all avoid this sort of distraction and time-wasting in the future? I’d really appreciate any help I can get!
* Image courtesy of 123rf
Recycling is good for business
What does your business do with the waste materials it produces? Have you even thought about it?
There are a surprising number of recycling options available – and many are listed by the business recycling website. This includes means of using those wastes to produce new products (the obvious recycling aspect) and ideas such as giving unused food to charity groups for direct reuse.
Personally, I believe in recycling as I hate seeing waste and hate perfectly good things filling up our tips. On top of that, there is the environmental aspect and a feel-good factor. However, for those who need a commercial justification for recycling business waste, here are a couple of points to consider:
- if your local council restricts your bin size, you have to pay to remove your waste materials so recycling may save you money directly
- more and more people care about the environment and ‘green’ practices so start recycling and tell people (potential customers) about it – it won’t generate sales in itself but may be the deciding factor between you and a competitor one day
- your team will appreciate being able to ‘do their bit’ for the environment so they’ll be happier and have one less reason to leave
- you may find recycling materials in-house gives you new product leads or saves you money, too. For example, making notepads for staff from old letterheads saves paper and the expense of buying notepads
- it can give you a conversation starter or topics for blogging about – and sometimes new ideas are hard to come by!
Can you think of things to recycle? I’d love to hear of your ideas and successes – I may even copy some if applicable!
Refining your Google searches
If you’re like me, you use Google and similar search engines frequently and know a few tricks to make your searches as useful as possible.
Here are a few tips you may or may not use – and if you have some others, please add them to the comments so I can learn them, too!
- restrict a search to one site by using site:wordconstructions.com.au
- search for something specific on only one site by using the word and the site only command report writing site:wordconstructions.com.au
- find the definition of a word with define:gerund
- exclude a term from your search using a minus sign, so writer -fiction will bring results for writers without mention of fiction writing
- include all similar uses of a word or term by adding the tilde sign; for example, ~ article
- maintain certain spelling of a word or term with a plus sign so + Sidney will not bring up all the Sydney sites in a Sidney search
- use * to replace any word, such as in professional * writer
- find related sites usingrelated:wordconstructions.com.au
- find a specific file type in a search – if you want to find only word docs about spelling, for example, you enter spelling filetype:doc
- find all sits linking to a site or page usinglink:www.wordconstructions.com.au
- do a general search without risk of finding inappropriate (ie adult) content using safesearch:breast cancer
- find out about a specific page usinginfo:www.wordconstructions.com.au/ebook.php
- use quotation marks to refine the search to your exact term; that is, “business writer” will give results about business writers only rather than results for all references to writer and/or business
Hope they help!
Product Disclosure Statements – what are they?
Do you know what a product disclosure statement (PDS) is?
Many people now use them, and various companies refer to them in their advertising, but from personal conversations about things I write, I know many people don’t know what the term means.
A PDS is simply a document listing the key features of financial products are described; it is the little booklet you got about your savings account, insurance policy, super account and so on. Basic topics covered by a PDS include fees, options, inclusions and joining/buying the product.
There are variations between industrires and companies but generally the company has to make a PDS available before you buy their product – they can’t make you read it obviously but they must have allowed you that opporutnity.
A PDS is a point of reference when deciding between products and when you need to know something later (eg does my house insurance cover rising water or just floods?) Many PDSs are long and may not be visually appealing, but they are worth holding onto.
Lest We Forget
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
I attended an Anzac Day service last weekend and it was very moving. It was also very interesting to learn more about the Lone Pine story and how it became such an important part of Australian folklore. The service was held beneath a Pine Tree seeded from the original Lone Pine (which was destroyed in thebattles in 1915); a seedling from the Melbourne tree was also planted so that the Lone Pine can always be represented in that park as part of our gratitude to those young men and women who fought for our way of life.
Doyou have a place near you that signifies history and remembrance?
Lest we forget.
Superannuation increases?
There is a move to increase the basic super contribution rate for employers on behalf of their employees, taking it from 9% to 12% (in a few increments).
The Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees, AIST, (and others I believe) have an online petition to show the Government the concept has the support of the general population.
Do you support it?
Maybe you haven’t even thought about it so here are a couple of my ideas on the topic:
- an extra 3% of your salary each year has to give you a better chance of financial security in retirement so who would argue with getting it?
- we’re often told we have an aging population so I have long thought I will need my own money (super or otherwise) as there may not be much of an age pension when I retire – again, more super from an employer has to help that!
- an extra 3% on top of employee’s salaries could easily add up for any business owner so businesses may find the concept stressful, but
- it isn’t immediate so businesses can prepare
- if businesses have to increase prices to meet the 3%, living expenses will have another increase
- base salaries (for new employees) may get reduced slightly so that packages aren’t significantly higher and that again may leave people financially tight in the present
From a purely super point of view, I totally agree with moving the minimum to 12%; from an overall perspective, I’m not so sure what is best and will need to read up on the potential impact – and I’d love to hear some different opinions from business owners, too.
Fowarding emails
Emails are so convenient – how did we ever do business without them? So quick to send a message to someone, or a group, and respond to things, emails are a great aid to communication.
However, we need to be careful with emails that we forward to others.
Before forwarding, check the entire email – there may be part of it you want to transfer to Mary but there may be parts Mary shouldn’t see. For example, there could be confidential information about someone else, unpleasant comments about Mary herself or out of date information that could cause confusion. This is a particular risk in very long email trails (i.e. if a number of replies are included in the one email) where subjects may even have changed along the way.
The other issue with forwarding emails is email addresses – if emailing a group of people, ensure that they can’t see email addresses they shouldn’t. The main exmaple of this is when you get jokes and stories that are passed from gorup to gorup – some emails I’ve got have given me access to at least 100 email addresses of strangers. Lucky for them I detest spam so will not abuse their email addresses, but not everyone will respect their privacy so it’s best to delete email addresses before forwarding.
Have you ever forwarded something you now regret? Did you find a way to remedy the situation?
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