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Talent wins the day. And when small business owners invest in talent through top-tier benefits, they lay the groundwork for consistent, scalable growth and stronger financial performance over the long haul. When you get past the 401k, employer-sponsored healthcare and PTO, does your benefits package actually pass the smell test with todays workforce? According to a recent study by Prudential Financial, theres a wide gulf between what employees say they want from the workplace and what employers are actually providing. While 86% of employers believe they are offering modern benefits, only 59% of employees agree. And the gap is even wider with younger workers. Another survey from MetLife finds 89% of employees believe their organization could strengthen trust by improving their benefits packages. That all sounds great, but the biggest challenge small business owners face is figuring out how to provide a robust and industry-leading set of benefits without going out of business. When I launched Cyber Guardian Consulting Group, a managed service provider that provides a full range of cybersecurity services, I made employee benefits the cornerstone of everything we were going to do. Our current menu at Cyber Guardian includes: 100% employer-paid healthcare, vision, dental, plus copay reimbursements Mortgage rate buydowns of 23%, helping employees overcome barriers to homeownership Lifestyle perks that include 50% off Apple gear, weekend Uber Eats credits, unlimited snacks and drinks Instead of Employee of the Month awards designated by a piece of paper or temporary parking spot, we provide PAMP Suisse 10 gram gold bars to high-performing employees on a quarterly basis. Cryotherapy services through an ongoing partnership with local spas. Whether a dip in the ice bath or a trip to the cryo-chamber, our employees value this emerging wellness initiative that relieves pain, reduces inflammation and boosts overall healing. Here are four principles that we used to design a benefits package that consistently beats market expectations without breaking the bank: 1. Budget with boldness Industry wisdom suggests allocating 2528% of payroll toward benefits. Thats fine if you want to compete on average. But if you want to win, you need to invest like it. At Cyber Guardian, weve budgeted up to 45% of payroll toward benefits. Its a strategic investment in performance, retention, and culture. We scrutinized every dollar and connected it to a measurable impact. While it was difficult to sustain these benefits in our early stages, we felt making a substantial investment upfront would pay off in the long term. We had to stretch and get creative in our budget, but the return we received in overall team talent, stability, morale, and productivity made it well worth it in the long run. 2. Ask your people. Study your competitors. We didnt guess what mattered. We asked. From early on, we surveyed our team to find out what they truly value in their benefits. It was clear the rising costs of homeownership were on the minds of many. As one of our New Yorkbased employees, Francisco Rosa IV, noted, In a city where affordability feels out of reach for so many, reducing the burden of a mortgage resonates deeply. We also studied our competitorsboth current and aspirational. It wasnt enough to keep pace with others in cybersecurity. We looked at what companies like Google and Meta were offering, then asked ourselves how we could adapt those ideas to fit our size and budget. Its amazing how far creativity and listening can take you. 3. Build the essentials first, then layer in high-impact extras You dont need to go from zero to gold bars overnight. We started by covering the core needs: healthcare, time off, flexibility. Then, we layered in unique benefits over time as we grew and gained confidence in what worked. Mortgage rate buydowns, Uber Eats credits, and lifestyle perks came later as they only made sense after we had a solid foundation. If youre just getting started, focus on one or two high-impact extras that align with your culture, then build from there. 4. Constantly test, refine, and improve Weve gone through more than 30 versions of our perks package over the last few years. Some ideas didnt take off right away and required some fine-tuning, such as a pilot project where we provided weekend credits for food delivery but needed to swap out vendors due to technical difficulties and user feedback. But we treated the whole system like a product: constantly refined, based on real user (employee) feedback. Benefits should always be evolving. And if you create an open loop of listening and tweaking, theyll only get stronger. Of course, you have to be excelling in your core business activities to drive benefits growth. But assuming you check that box, prioritizing people through meaningful, evolving benefits is one of the smartest investments you can make. That philosophy has helped us achieve a near 100% retention rate over the last five years. You dont need a mega-budget or corporate backing to pull this off. You just need intentionality, creativity, and a genuine commitment to improving your teams day-to-day lives. Build around your peopleand theyll build everything else.
Category:
E-Commerce
You sit down to tackle a big project, and within minutes, your inbox pings. A Slack message follows. By the time youve responded to those, another four have hit your inbox. Before you know it, your mornings derailed, and your deep work window is gone. Email alone consumes over a quarter of the average professionals workweek. But its not just the volume that hurts. Its how email fragments your attention, blocks deep work, and subtly sabotages your success. The average knowledge worker gets hit with 117 emails and 153 chat messages a day. And they check email on average 15 times daily, often reacting instead of prioritizing. At Lifehack Method, we coach busy professionals on how to reclaim their time and do meaningful, fulfilling work. Ive interviewed hundreds of managers and executives about how they manage email. Some are still drowning. But others have found simple, powerful systems that have changed the game (and no, its not necessary to aspire to Inbox Zero). With just a few key shifts, you can, too. Here are five proven strategies to stop letting email run your day. 1. Force yourself to close your email inbox Most professionals work with their email inbox open, just in case an urgent request comes through. But that hypervigilance crushes your focus and can cause you to be less effective as a manager. The fix is batching. Check all your communication channelsemail, Slack, Teamsin short, focused windows. Outside those windows, you close your inbox and turn off notifications. If the idea makes you nervous, start small. Try five mini batch sessions spaced throughout the day. Eventually, youll find that three 30-minute sessions are plenty, even for high-volume inboxes. What do you do during these batching sessions? Enter strategy #2: 2. Replace your folders with the Stack Method The Stack Method is a popular email folder system that professionals use to categorize each email that comes into their inbox. Instead of creating dozens of folders based on your unique workflow, every email goes to one of five folders based on the action it needs. These are the five folders: Reply: Needs a thoughtful response, but will take you more than two minutes Do: Small tasks to complete (under 15 minutes) Meetings: Scheduling or prep-related items Waiting On: Youve responded, but need follow-up Review: FYIs, CCs, or anything to skim later During your email batch sessions, your job is to clear your main inbox by sorting everything into these folders. Once sorted, take action on each folder during dedicated time blocks. This is how overwhelmed professionals regain control over their email inbox quickly, without worrying that something is falling through the cracks. 3. Use AI to prioritize, conserve mental energy, and go faster Ever left responding to an email for later only to spend more time remembering, flagging, or reopening it? Its often because we dont have the mental bandwidth to carefully type out a reply right then and there. But with voice dictation, which is three times faster than typing, layered with AI, youll find that email responses that used to take 510 minutes can now be done in under two. You can even use an AI writer (such as Chat GPT Writer, which plugs directly into Gmail) to draft a first pass, which you then review and edit. Heres a voice-dictation prompt to use on the go: Draft an email response from me [Your Name]. Tell them: [ramble your message here]. Keep it [short, informal, professional, etc.]. The AI turns your verbal mess into a polished email draft thats 80% ready to go. Executives are also using AI Agent tools like Fyxer.ai for AI-generated replies and inbox prioritization. Kara Brown is the CEO of LeadCoverage, the largest go-to-market agency that focuses on supply chain. She shares, Im sort of obsessed with [Fyxer], mostly because of the prioritization. It tells me when I get a one-to-one email versus when Im on a list serve . . . which is very handy in my very full inbox. It [also] drafts a response for me based on all the other emails that Ive written. Frankly, Fyxer is much nicer than I am! While I might write a three-word reply, like OK, thank you, it will write four or five sentences and make me sound so much nicer and polite. Its making it a lot easier to be more personal in my insanely overwhelming inbox. Jeff Smith, PhD, is the founder of QuantumIOT and a serial technology entrepreneur. He is quick to note that the best AI agent features currently offered by third parties will likely become native to your email platform of choice very soon. So, if youre not an early adopter of new tech, you have nothing to worry about. The real win really isnt inbox zero, its more like finally having the kind of assistant that weve only really ever seen on TV, he says. This isnt about outsourcing your voice. Its about expressing what you already know, but faster, cleaner, and more professionally. 4. Buy time with placeholder replies When someone emails you, theyre not usually expecting an immediate answer. What they really want is certainty that you saw it, and a clear timeline for your reply. Send a placeholder reply like this: Thanksthis is on my radar. Ill get back to you by tomorrow afternoon. Let me know if its more urgent. That one line calms the sender and gives you breathing room to craft a well-thought out response later. Another variation: If someones message is vague, dont try to decode it yourself. Reply with a quick clarifying question: Quick qare you looking for input on X, or a final decision on Y? This avoids the dread that you might erroneously interpret what they need from you, and end up needing to re-do the work anyway. 5. Replace long collaborative threads entirely When collaboration happens inside email threads, workers feel pressured to constantly check their inbox, just in case someones waiting on them. Even the best batching system can break down when your colleagues are unknowingly using your inbox as a live chat tool. Cal Newport, computer science professor and author of A World Without Email, calls this constant back-and-forth the hyperactive hive minda work style where problems are solved through an endless string of ad hoc, unscheduled messages. He calls this workflow a misery-making machine. With AI, this problem will accelerate. If youre sending more emails, faster, youd better believe that everyone else wil, too. The hive mind will become even more hyperactive. The fix is to move collaborative work to shared hubs like Google Docs (for coauthoring and commenting) and Asana or ClickUp (for task-based back-and-forth). This shift creates two clear benefits. First, it protects your inbox for what it’s meant forannouncements, logistics, and brief 1:1 communications. Second, it protects your time by shifting multi-person conversations into tools designed for asynchronous collaboration (such as Asana, which is what we use at Lifehack Method). If youre leading a team, make this an explicit policy. If youre an individual contributor, start by modeling the behaviorcommenting in docs, tagging teammates in project tools, and replying to email threads with Lets move this over to Asana. The more collaborative conversations you remove from email, the easier it becomes to manage your inbox and maintain your focus. Email doesnt have to be your biggest productivity leak These strategies arent about zeroing out your inbox for bragging rights. Theyre about protecting your focus and getting your time back. With a few small shifts, you can take back hours of time and massive amounts of cognitive energy from processing email, and reinvest it in the work that really drives you forward. Thats the kind of ROI your week needs.
Category:
E-Commerce
Just checking in on everyones New Years resolution to get fit. Are we still doing this, or what? Whatever your answer, a good fitness tracker can be super helpful but some of them out thereincluding smartwatchescost more than my first car. Granted, it was a truly terrible car. The good news is that wearable fitness trackers dont have to cost a fortune. Here are four fantastic and affordable options thatll help you track your steps, monitor your sleep, and more. Amazfit Band 7: $50 Amazfit has been making serious waves in the budget space. Their current “Band” model, the Band 7, sports battery life up to a whopping 28 days, a vibrant display, and all the essential health tracking you’d expectheart rate, sleep, blood oxygen, stress, and several other metricsall for a very reasonable price. This is a solid pick if you want a reliable tracker that simply works. Xiaomi Smart Band 10: $70 Xiaomi consistently delivers incredible value, and its latest tracker, the Smart Band 10, is tough to beat when it comes to features versus price. It gives you all the essentials, and more: step counting, heart rate, sleep tracking, smart notifications, heart rate, pulse oximeter, ambient light sensor, sleep tracking, swimming mode, up to three weeks of battery, and a ton of styles and colors to choose from. Fitbit Inspire 3: $100 If you’re a fan of the Fitbit ecosystem (now owned by Google), the Inspire 3 is your best bet for a budget-friendly option. It packs all the core features: steps, distance, calories burned, sleep stages, stress relief, blood oxygen, heart rate tracking, up to 10 days of battery, and more, all in a no-fuss design. Plus, you get access to Fitbit’s excellent app for data analysis and community features, including six months of premium features. Think of it as the reliable, slightly less flashy cousin of the more expensive Fitbits. Garmin Vivosmart 5: $150 Okay, let’s bring in a name known for serious fitness tracking, but on a smaller scale. The Garmin Vivosmart 5 is an excellent choice if you want the reliability and accuracy of Garmin without the price of a full-blown running watch. It’s a simple, minimalist band that tracks your steps, sleep, heart rate, hydration, respiration, blood oxygen, energy levels, and features up to seven days of battery. This is a solid, get-it-done option for people who want accurate data from a trusted fitness brand.
Category:
E-Commerce
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