Be the Best Boss and Save Your Business

I have one bit of advice that will make you the best boss ever, and at the same time, I could save your business. What is that magical advice you may ask? Mandatory vacation. No, that is not a typo.

Wouldn’t it be great if your employer came in and told you that you were required to take five consecutive days of vacation? I can just imagine him saying, “Andy, you’ve been working too hard. As a condition of your employment here, I am requiring you to take a five day vacation. Forget about those financial reports and the payroll you planned on doing. It’s non-negotiable. I don’t want to see or hear you at all next week.”

As an employee, I’m thrilled that I’m “required” to take five days off because let’s face it, I doubt I’d do it on my own. I hate doing payroll at the end of the month. Not to mention that balancing the books often means late days at the office.

As an employer, my boss is very shrewd. He probably isn’t real concerned that I never take a day off. In fact, he loves it. And he also doesn’t have some sick desire to do payroll and balance the books. What he does want is to make sure that the numbers are the numbers are the numbers.

We typically put individuals in charge of our finances that we have a great deal of trust in. Whether it’s a family member or employee, if we were concerned about them embezzling money, fudging numbers, etc, we wouldn’t put them in that position in the first place, right?

Because of this trust, it can be easy to ignore the possibility of malfeasance. Make no mistake. Payroll fraud is real.  According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, it’s the number one source of accounting fraud and employee theft.  According to an article in Forbes:

• Payroll Fraud happens in 27 percent of all businesses
• Payroll fraud occurs nearly twice as often (14.2 percent) in small organizations with less than 100 employees than in large ones (7.6 percent).
• The average instance of payroll fraud lasts about 36 months. That’s three years of paying ghost employees or overpaying existing ones.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewgarrett/2013/09/10/payroll-fraud-a-big-threat-and-how-to-avoid-it/

Trust is an important aspect of every successful business. You need to be able to delegate to thrive in your career, and you need to be able to provide your employees the flexibility to do their jobs well. Great things can happen if you let them. Trust, but verify.

So go ahead, be the best boss around. Let your trusted employees know they deserve a vacation. It may just save your business.

 

Andy Bertram CPCU, ARM-E

Risk Advisor

C.O. Brown

651-800-6173

abertram@cobrown.com