April 2024 Newsletter
Warren Cook
Creating small businesses success through effective Strategic HR & Business Advisory Solutions.
Tax Update and Insight
Extensions delay filing, not paying by April 15, 2024
When filing a request for an extension to the tax filing deadline, please keep in mind your obligations as a taxpayer to make an estimated tax payment based on your actual financial records and expected liability.
Filing an extension request is just that, a request to extend the deadline for “filing” the return.? It is not a request to delay making a payment.
Failure to make an appropriate payment could result in penalties and interest once you file your tax return.? Work with your tax professional to make sure you have a clear understanding of the impact of filing an extension for your business or personal tax return, and your obligations to make an estimated payment for the tax year liabilities.
Insight: Determining the appropriate estimated amount to pay when filing for an extension is critical to avoid unnecessary penalties or interest that you would otherwise not be liable for.? Leverage the expertise of your tax professional for guidance on the appropriate estimated tax to pay on or before April 15, 2024.
Human Resources Updates and TAHR Insights
How Workplace Communication Can Mitigate Harassment Risk
Risk and liability related to workplace harassment claims generally are the result of poor workplace communication practices.? Failure to adopt an effective culture with modeled behaviors from leadership in how to communicate respectively and professionally can expose your business to liability.? Not to mention negative morale, lack of trust, and much more.
Three major triggers for harassment include (1) Poor Communication; (2) Lack of Respect and trust; and (3) Lack of Accountability.
There is a strategy you as a business leader or owner can implement to mitigate and prevent these types of situations in the workplace.? While it is true an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, in my opinion only consistent, sustainable actions and behaviors modeled appropriately and demonstrated across an entire organization can be an effective preventative strategy.
Here are ten points to consider when creating a workplace communication strategy to align with your culture and performance expectations to achieve the desired goal or risk mitigation.
1.??? Effective Communication – Define what this is for the workplace.? Model and demonstrate it in all meetings and interactions with peers and staff.
2.??? Two Way Communication – Ensure you create an open and transparent environment where employees are both comfortable sharing information with management / leadership and they trust they will not be retaliated against for doing so.
3.??? Leadership Involvement – Any initiative where leadership does not take an active part on presenting expectations, modeling the behavior, and ensure they live up to what the dictate to others is critical for success.
4.??? Empower Communication – Provide your workforce with the necessary tools, resources, and support to share their concerns, their ideas, and their feedback with their peers and management in a safe and inclusive environment.
5.??? Building of Trust – This takes time, is done through engagement, performance management, training, and respectful communication.? When efforts by people leaders are not seen as genuine, this often fails.
6.??? Trust enhances professional respect – When successful at genuine communication that promulgates trust both in people leaders and in staff, professional respect is enhanced and a more productive, innovative and creative workforce is often the result.
7.??? Respect and Dignity in the workplace improves inclusion – Inclusion is not about protected characteristics and metrics and social equity.? Inclusion is about diversity of thought and ensuring every member of your organization is provided the tools, resources, and support to share their voice, to present ideas, to be heard, and more.? Modeling communication behaviors where employees truly feel every one of them is given the same respect and dignity as every other employee goes a long way.
8.??? Engagement and inclusion reduce harassing behavior – When these goals are achieved it is much more difficult for assumptions of ill intent to be made and a belief that others in the workplace care about you nullifies a perspective that you are being mistreated or harassed.
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9.??? Training is Key – The topic of effective workplace communication is not something shared in a video or a one and done event.? The expectations of respectful communication should be embedded in all training and should be revisited on a quarterly basis to ensure both consistency and sustainability.
10. Walk the Walk – Lead by example.? We all have experience hearing people leaders tell their staff to do something however they themselves fail to model the behavior, and clearly the practices will not be adopted.? Therefore, leadership should find opportunities to model appropriate communication and hold each other accountable when they observe deficiencies.
Insight: One root cause of workplace harassment is a failure in effective and respectful communication.? These ten points shared can be leveraged to move the needle to a better culture and a more effective style of communication in your organization.
Not all business leaders and owners have the requisite skills, knowledge, or experience in these types of communication strategies.? That is where you can establish a relationship with an HR Advisor of TAHR Services to develop, implement, and manage effective communication practices and strategies to mitigate these risks. ?To learn more and have a discussion about your communication practices contact Warren Cook at TAHR Services by scheduling a free discovery call today .
Guest Article: Mastering the Concept of the Persona
Do you know exactly who you are talking to in your business’ marketing efforts? And I’m going beyond simple target audience. Demographics are amazing, but a persona takes this further.
Personas are hypothetical, fictionalized characters created to represent your ideal customers or client. A persona goes beyond basic demographics to provide a holistic character profile that includes everything from name, age, and race to the person’s fears, motivations, and concerns. It’s all about humanizing data from brand research to create an archetype that can be used to drive decision making in your marketing.
Strong personas combine qualitative and quantitative research to provide an accurate picture of your customers/donors that can be used organization-wide. From sales techniques to website design, personas allow you to focus your efforts and identify what the person you want to reach actually wants.
Why do businesses and organizations need a persona? In my experience, the number one reason for personas is: decision-making.
Here’s an example: You are trying to create a social media strategy for 2024. How do you determine what platforms you should be on? Reviewing your personas will tell you:
? How old your key audience is
? What platforms they frequent
? How they utilize those platforms
? What is likely to catch their attention, and more.
So, if your persona is over 35, quick research will show you that 77% of those aged 30-39 use Facebook compared to 6% on TikTok. Personas ensure that you don’t waste time or money prioritizing TikTok when your primary audience is on Facebook.
The ultimate goal of your user persona is to represent the audience you're addressing and help you focus on their pain points and how to solve them. To develop a persona, start with qualitative (1:1 interviews, focus groups) and quantitative (surveys or data available on the internet) research as your baseline. From there, analysis will help you fill in the full picture of your persona.
Insight: User personas are one of the most important building blocks in marketing strategy. Without it, your efforts can be flawed, generic, biased or simply miss the mark.
Fire & Bliss Creative help businesses develop marketing strategies so you can sleep well tonight and continue to grow tomorrow. To get free marketing consulting delivered to your inbox, sign up for their “Marketing Shorts” emails .
Contributed by: Jennifer Stapleton , Founding Partner of Fire & Bliss Creative, Certified LGBT Business Enterprise, Certified Woman-Owned Business.