“Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” (Stephen R. Covey)

Gallup describes “engaged employees” as those who are involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace. Numerous studies over many decades have confirmed the benefits of engaged employees especially to smaller companies, where they are often required to take on many diverse responsibilities.

Many studies have also identified employee engagement strategies that have proven most meaningful to employees and are therefore most effective. In these difficult economic times, business owners and managers will be pleased to find that some of the most effective employee engagement strategies do not require a substantial cost.

The many benefits of engaged employees

This isn’t just hype. Studies have confirmed that -

• Engaged employees often go beyond the call of duty.
  
  
• Employee engagement is positively correlated to company growth rates.
  
  
• Improved employee retention and loyalty.
  
  
• Lower absenteeism rates.
  
  
• Higher productivity – some studies have found engaged workers to be up to 21% more productive.
  
  
• Improved customer satisfaction.
  
  
• Improved company reputation and overall stakeholder value.
  
  
• Reduced incidence of internal theft and fraud.
  
  
• Reduced safety incidents.

Some effective employee engagement strategies

• Employees have a good understanding of the business's values and mission, and clear expectations about their role in achieving these.

• Employees have the necessary equipment, resources and authority to do their jobs well.

• Regular employee performance and progress catch-ups with good quality, authentic and genuine feedback.

• Good relationships with superiors who are truly concerned for employees’ wellbeing and willing to provide support.

• Opportunities for employees to voice opinions and contribute ideas.

• Genuine and meaningful recognition, given publicly and timeously in front of superiors and peers.

• Peer-to-peer recognition has been found to have twice the impact of recognition from managers.

• Flexible work schedules and remote working options that allow employees to meet family obligations.

• Onsite employee programmes addressing, for example, health and wellness, or personal finances.

• Onsite family day care facilities and/or onsite food services.

• Having friends at work significantly improves employee commitment and satisfaction, by as much as 50% according to some studies.

• Volunteering unites employees towards a common greater good.

Implementing employee engagement strategies on a budget

When looking at the employee engagement strategies listed above, it is encouraging that most don’t involve high costs. What is crucial is to ensure that any strategies implemented add real value to your employees and impact their work and personal lives in a meaningful way. The best way to do so would be to ask your employees directly, perhaps at a team meeting or via an anonymous online survey.

Perhaps an employee-of-the-month program with rewards such as breakfast with the Boss or gift cards could yield great results. It may be that a Friday afternoon off once a month or paid leave on an employee’s birthday are top choices. Celebrating national holidays or sporting events as a company, or providing paid time off for volunteering together, will create opportunities to build friendships and create a sense of belonging.

Especially in small businesses, such employee engagement strategies can create a happier, more productive and faster-growing company.

While most of the employee engagement strategies discussed are not part of formal compensation packages, employee relations are always subject to intricate labour and tax laws as well as a host of practical business considerations. Be sure to run any employee perks you are planning to offer by your accountant to check there are no unintended outcomes.

“A house built on granite and strong foundations, not even the onslaught of pouring rain, gushing torrents and strong winds will be able to pull down.” (Haile Selassie, Former Emperor of Ethiopia)

When starting a new business, few things are as important as establishing your finances and making sure they are right. Building the foundation for stable, accurate financial reports and tax filing will see you in good stead in the future and establish the practices that will lead your company to success. Here are the top seven tips.

1. Set up a deadline calendar
   
   Whether you use a large whiteboard in your office, or a digital reminder service like Google Calendar, it is vital that you track which payments are due and when. Whether it’s your staff salaries, business loan payments or accounts payable, you need to know exactly when each amount is due in order to plan your cash flow accurately. Not having the cash on hand when a payment is due not only hurts your business credit rating but can also cost you more in fines or late-payment fees.

2. Monitor your accounts receivable
   
   Just because you have invoiced a client doesn’t mean that money is immediately coming in. Check the terms of each client’s contract to understand exactly when they are likely to pay. If a client pays on a 60-day cycle it is unreasonable to expect the money will come in before that and you therefore need to plan other ways to have cash on hand to meet payments. For each invoice make a note on when it is likely to be paid.

3. Track your inventory
   
   Inventory on hand is as much a part of your finances as the actual cash in your bank. Are you ordering too much and letting things rot on the shelves, or are you ordering too little and being forced to pay for rush deliveries to meet your orders? Tracking inventory will allow you to make better purchase decisions and streamline the operations of your business thereby reducing costs and stress.

4. Consider opening two business bank accounts
   
   Account 1: It is vital that you be able to track all expenses you are incurring in order to make accurate business decisions and monitor your business spending. To do this you will need one bank account in the name of the business dedicated to the daily running and expenses of the business. This will allow you to accurately reconcile the account at the end of the month and see whether more money is coming in than going out. Don’t have more than one daily operations account, and don’t use your personal accounts to pay business expenses – if you do, monitoring your cash flow, income and expenses becomes that much harder.
   
   Account 2: The second account you should think of opening is a savings account, into which you will deposit a percentage of each month’s income to cover the taxes at the end of the year. The last thing you want to do is arrive at year-end unable to afford what you owe to SARS. Ideally, you should pay more than you owe on taxes alone into this account to also build a cash reserve. This cash reserve will see you through difficult times or cover unexpected expenses.

5. Get a bookkeeper
   
   Whether you get a bookkeeper or download bookkeeping software, it is vital that you keep track of all your incomings and outgoings. QuickBooks, Wave, Zoho Books, Xero, and FreshBooks are a few examples of the best apps for small business owners. Apart from making the issuing and tracking of invoices easier, knowing exactly which jobs have been invoiced, which have been paid and which are still owing as well as to whom, and how much you owe, will help you to plot payments, make cash flow decisions and price your product more accurately. Moreover, come tax time, you will have all of the paperwork necessary to give to your accountant to ensure as favourable a tax season as possible.

6. Download a receipt scanning app
   
   Now that your bookkeeper or bookkeeping software is tracking your invoices and accounts, you need to also track and accurately record your expenses that are made independent of your monthly suppliers. Fortunately, there are many receipt scanning apps that will help you to quickly and accurately record each business lunch receipt and stationary purchase, and then add them to an online database. Exactly which one you download will depend on your exact needs, but here are a few to get you started: Zoho Expense, Expensify, Wave, QuickBooks Online and Evernote Scannable.

7. Download an app to record business travel
   
   While you can get digital logbooks that you plug into your computer, it is far easier these days to simply download an app that will record each of your journeys automatically in the background on your phone. MileIQ, for instance, is great, because with a simple swipe after each journey you can record whether it was for personal or business reasons, and at the end of the year can print out a full record of all your travels and the related expenses.
   
   Setting up your business foundation is essential for the health of your business. Once you have done all of the above, and accurately tracked your expenses and income for the year your accountant will have an easy time saving you money, ensuring you only pay the taxes you owe and not a cent more.

“In 2022 South Africa had the 12^th highest income tax burden, the 9^th highest company income tax burden, and the 14^th highest non-resource tax burden worldwide.” (Garth Zietsman, South Africa's Tax Freedom Day statistician)

Tax Freedom Day marks the day in the year when South Africans stop giving all their money to their government for the year and finally start working for themselves. In 2023, Free Market Foundation statistician Garth Zietsman has worked out that this day will be the 14^th of May, two days later than in 2022, which in turn fell 10 days later than predicted in 2021.

In 2023, the average South African taxpayer has had to work for a predicted 133 days to pay their taxes. Back in 1994, South Africans took 101 days. The usefulness of the metric is now clear – South Africans are now spending a full month longer every single year working for their government.

According to Zietsman, the actual date may be far worse: “The prediction is based on the intended level of tax collection for central government mentioned in the Budget Speech. Typically, the actual figure, which is the general government revenue as a percentage of GDP from the Reserve Bank Quarterly, turns out to be 30% more than the intended figure for central government”.

The Freemarket Foundation is a Johannesburg based, classical liberal think tank, who have adapted the concept of Tax Freedom Day from Florida businessman Dallas Hostetler who developed and trademarked the idea in America in 1948.

• 5 May - Monthly Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) submissions and payments
  
  
• 30 May - Excise Duty payments
  
  
• 31 May - Value-Added Tax (VAT) electronic submissions and payments & CIT Provisional payments where applicable.