Word: firm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...doing--and cannot do--business as usual. Start with the search for workers. Unemployment has dropped nationally from 7.8% in June 1992 to its current 4.2%. Add to that the challenges of meeting tough demands from Big Business customers, avoiding the pitfalls of e-commerce and financing a fledgling firm without losing control, and you've got a climate for small businesses that is at least as challenging, and sometimes as fatal, as a sharp business downturn...
...finding money to start a business isn't as simple anymore as just going to the bank. Venture capitalists have a greater role to play, and their demands are different. Michael Heller, chairman of the emerging-business and venture-capital group at Cozen and O'Connor, a Philadelphia law firm, says he gets 10 to 12 calls a month from start-up companies. According to Heller, venture capitalists also bring sophisticated knowledge and business contacts to help young entrepreneurs who may not have much business experience. But the price might include more restrictions on the emerging company...
...daytime mom to her two children. William Cockshoot, a Chicago commodities trader, finds he is better able to catch a price spread at night that would be snapped up faster by competitors during the day. The corporate investigators who work for International Business Research of Princeton, N.J., a firm that guards against computer hackers, can work at home because their beepers and e-mails alert them when their suspects go online. For some people, nightwork plays better to their adventurous nature: Richard Tapp, a deputy sheriff in Orange County, N.C., is charged by the adrenaline rush he feels at night...
Often, though, an administrator cannot be flexible enough. In those cases, Coleman suggests that a company make a rigid schedule more appealing by offering an attractive trade-off. For companies such as Corning and Goodyear, his consulting firm has created schedules that include 10 to 20 weeks of time off each year or that offer a seven- or eight-day break a month. Another way to make dismal shifts more appealing is to pay better. Coleman has found that many nightworkers will accept a difficult schedule if they can also work predictable overtime hours. "They could have a schedule," says...
Even more than aiming to attract talent, executives say they're focused on the bottom line. "Our investment is in keeping health-care costs down," says D'Ann Whitehead, preventive-health-services manager at Chevron. A study by the MEDSTAT Group consulting firm found that over the past eight years, Chevron had held medical expenses flat and slashed worker sick days by using everything from massage to smoking restrictions...