Business

Northern VA HR Consultants Discuss Cultural Diversity Counseling Benefits

Alexandria, VA (release-news ) August 6, 2020 - The Northern Virginia HR Consultants at Smart HR has recently released a new educational article regarding HR consulting and cultural diversity counseling. The article reviews the top benefits that cultural diversity counseling can provide business owners and HR professionals. The blog can be found on the company's website. The HR solutions company draws from their years of experience helping to educate HR teams and business owners on these topics while also helping to improve profits, productivity, and employee satisfaction in the process.

Smart HR has designed this new blog to be used by business owners and HR teams in order to help them become properly educated on cultural diversity in the workplace and how it can help reshape your company culture. The firm has nearly 20 years of experience providing organizations with high-end HR management and expertise that, on average, costs 50% less than maintaining an in-house HR department. Their dedicated team of HR professionals takes pride in offering innovative, world-class human resource services to their clients.

The team at SmartHR hopes that this new article will help business owners and HR teams understand the effects that proper workplace diversity measures can have on their business. While this article focuses on cultural diversity, the SmartHR website also provides information on their team, experience, and other services that they offer such as HR audits, outsourcing, and management training programs. Their professionally trained and experienced team believes in helping to create cohesive and effective workplace environments for their clients. According to one client from the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, "Commitment and professionalism set SmartHR apart from others in the industry."

Speak to the experienced outsourced HR solutions firm today and help make your workplace run more smoothly than ever! Call Smart HR at 703-972-3177 or visit their website at https://www.smarthrinc.com. Their offices are located at 917 Prince Street Alexandria, VA 22314.

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Ecuador Issues Revised Draft Technical Regulation on Food Contact Ceramics

Ecuador has announced a revised proposal that, if accepted, will update its technical regulation for food contact ceramics.

The latest proposal, designated Ecuadorian Technical Regulation RTE UNEN 010 (2R) – ‘Ceramic Tableware Intended to Come into Contact with Food’, was circulated attached to World Trade Organization (WTO) document no. 20-4675 on July 8, 2020. It has a new structure and contains several important changes, including:

Revision to existing definitions and addition of new definitions
Addition of a table detailing the migration requirements for lead and cadmium (see below)
Mandating the list of information that must be included for labeling requirements.
Requirements for conformity evaluation procedure (Procedimiento de Evaluación de la Conformidad (PEC)), including:
- Inspection and sampling
- Requiring four identical units/samples for testing
- Product certificate of conformity (CoC)
- Supplier declaration of conformity (DoC)
- Test reports recognized by the Ecuadorian Accreditation Service (Servicio de Acreditación Ecuatoriano, SAE)

The table detailing the migration requirements (criteria for 4 units) for lead and cadmium covers:

Lead

Flatware ≤ 0.8 mg/dm² (average)
Small Hollowware ≤ 2 mg/l
Large Hollowware ≤ 1 mg/l
Storage Hollowware ≤ 0.5 mg/l
Cups and Mugs ≤ 0.5 mg/l
Cooking Ware≤ 0.5 mg/l

Cadmium

Flatware ≤ 0.07 mg/dm² (average)
Small Hollowware ≤ 0.5 mg/l
Large Hollowware ≤ 0.25 mg/l
Storage Hollowware ≤ 0.25 mg/l
Cups and Mugs ≤ 0.25 mg/l
Cooking Ware ≤ 0.25 mg/l

The table lists ISO 6486-2 as the standard and ISO 6486-1 or NTE INEN ISO 6486-1 as the test standard.

Ecuador is currently holding a consultation on the proposal. Once approved, Ecuadorian Technical Regulation RTE UNEN 010 (2R) will enter into force six months after it is published in the Official Register, according to the WTO document in Q1 of 2021. It will replace RTE INEN 010:2013 (IR) and Amendments 1, 2 and 3:2014 on food contact ceramics.

SGS Food Contact Material Services

SGS’s technical experts have extensive experience of testing materials and articles in contact with food. They can ensure that your products meet the appropriate regulations for food contact materials and pave the way for compliance. SGS offers the full range of testing, including migration tests, along with expert advice on emerging regulations, compliance issues and documentation review. Learn more about SGS’s Food Contact Material Services.

SGS SafeGuardS keep you up to date with the latest news and developments in the consumer goods industry. Read the Ecuador Consults Over Revised Draft Technical Regulation on Food Contact Ceramics SafeGuardS.

Subscribe here to receive SGS SafeGuardS direct to your inbox.

For further information contact:

Hingwo Tsang

Global Information and Innovation Manager

Tel:(+852) 2774 7420

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Website: www.sgs.com/hardlines

LinkedIn: sgs-consumer-goods-&-retail

About SGS

SGS is the world’s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. SGS is recognized as the global benchmark for quality and integrity. With more than 89,000 employees, SGS operates a network of over 2,600 offices and laboratories around the world.

Trade Glaze Offers Amazing Deals On Double Glazing Herne Bay

Trade Glaze is your ultimate partner in keeping your home insulated and secured while helping you save on money. Proudly carrying 25 years of excellent double glazing Herne Bay tradition, the family-owned business offers its services at competitive rates — allowing their clients to enjoy the benefits of double glazing technology without breaking the bank.

Boost Your Insulation Minus The High Cost

double glazing in Herne Bay continues to gain attention from many homeowners because of its highly reliable thermal ability.

Thanks to its design — the use of two panes of glasses that create a tight air pocket in the middle — double glazed windows and doors can minimise heat transfer as needed. It can prevent heat from escaping your home during the winter season and from entering into your residential space during the warmer months. This, in effect, leads to lower energy bills.

Trade Glaze, a member of the Home Improvement Protection and is fully accredited by Assure Windows and Doors, guarantees that their double glazed products are durable and of the highest quality. This makes the already cost-effective offering an even more economical way of keeping your home warm — the company offers their products at the most competitive rates in the industry.

Their amazing deals come with the expertise of their reputable fitting and installation teams. These double glazing Herne Bay experts ensure that all their windows and doors are internally glazed for safety, fully welded, reinforced, and equipped with appropriate security measures for maximum protection.

What Trade Glaze Offers

A master of their craft, the folks at Trade Glaze use their adeptness in double glazing to offer a variety of products to their clients.

Windows. The company offers both double glazing and triple glazing options for their window offerings. The design can also range from contemporary casement to vertical sliding sash to bow or bay — the last two are known for their ability to add space to the room where they will be located. Colour options include white, wood grain, and rosewood.

Doors. Trade Glaze’s experts in double glazing in Herne Bay also offer insulated composite doors, French doors, bi-fold doors, and patio doors that are well-suited for porch and garden applications.

Conservatories. Conservatories let you enjoy the views of nature while you stay at the confines of your home. Trade Glaze creates energy-efficient conservatories that can be designed as Victoriana (classic conservatory design), Kent Extension (a more modern interpretation), or Lean To (suitable for low-level extensions and bungalows).

Firestone RubberCover. Apart from the abovementioned, the company also supplies and fits the in-demand Firestone rubberised roofs. This roofing solution — which features a 25-year guarantee — is durable, flexible, and easy to install. This low-cost roofing system is also environment-friendly.

Whether you’re building your home or doing a renovation, equipping it with double glazing Herne Bay products is a wide investment. Get help from the best names in the field and call Trade Glaze at 01227 365 333 or visit them at http://www.trade-glaze.com.

The Reimagined Role of Technology in the Time of COVID

We are now into month five of being a ‘work from home’ world, something that managers and HR departments alike probably never thought possible before COVID-19. Business teams have adapted, ensuring connectivity to drive performance and re-building office culture via happy hours and virtual meet-ups. As business leaders, we are in varying stages of readiness and response but what is for certain is that we’re all moving at one speed – fast(er).

This catapult into virtual working has laid bare for businesses just how effective their technology landscape is – or isn’t. Instead of systems planning being one of many business needs leaders are weighing, the need to upgrade technology is now more clearly an existential imperative. It is a seismic shift, and hopefully it also now serves as a catalyst to put technology at the forefront of business strategy.

Transformation by COVID

For asset finance companies that still maintain high-touch, manual processes, this experience has likely been more difficult to navigate. They have no doubt been reinventing processes to be able to work as distributed teams but may not have the ability to leverage technology to accelerate or bring efficiency to these changes. What if they still require paper documents to be executed for origination? Will they now be amenable to e-signature to accelerate time to funding? As a more complete solution, they may now be considering a customer-facing portal to more fully automate the management of not only the initial sale, but the entire customer lifecycle.

In today’s market, the first instinct may be to throttle capital expenditures - but now is an optimal time to reevaluate your systems and migrate off legacy products that are holding you back.

Investing in a core technology platform will allow you to consolidate all your disparate systems and be better positioned for business agility. Are you still maintaining separate front and back end systems? Do you have a high vendor dependency to get changes made? That’s legacy thinking. You can bring efficiency to your operations and reduce cost by implementing a more modern solution, and you can also be better positioned to adapt to the changing landscape of business – newer models like pay-per-use.

At Odessa, we have invested in transforming the Odessa Platform to adapt ahead of the industry, enabling us to now be the preferred technology solution for managing pay-per-use models. It’s certainly even more attractive now with COVID-19 impacting business confidence, but it’s also the natural economic evolution we’re seeing anyway. Partnering to onboard this functionality now is a strategic decision to be a disruptor, not the disrupted.

The one constant as we navigate the impact of COVID-19 – is change. There is real, material economic impact that necessitates swift action to be able to navigate these unprecedented circumstances successfully. We are in regular conversation with our customers, lessors who are impacted, about how they need to evolve quickly to better serve their customers through crisis. This means adapting to handle negative interest rates, facilitating the suspension of late fees, and managing restructures as a response to deferred payments. As their technology partner with the Odessa Platform, we enable our customers with the agility to adapt their processes and workflow to meet the needs of this ‘new normal’ so they can deliver value.

While none of us are Nostradamus, there does seem to be a collective understanding that the face of work will look different tomorrow than it did yesterday. As a business leader, that’s a difficult thing to grapple with – but it’s also an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to reimagine how we work and what role technology plays in our brand story and value proposition.

Texas Benefits Consultant Discusses Benefits Of Outsourcing HR Functions

Dallas, Texas (release-news) August 5, 2020 - A Texas benefits consultant at BenefitCorp recently created a blog educating companies on why they should consider outsourcing HR functions. Human Resources involves complex processes and can consume a lot of time for companies. Modern businesses, especially smaller businesses, are choosing to save time and money by outsourcing functions.

The blog begins by listing which tasks are best for companies to keep internal. These usually include talent development and recruitment, employee relations, succession planning, capital strategy planning and compensation design and delivery. Recruitment handled in-house works for targeting specific candidates for specific roles, however for larger companies hiring large amounts of new personnel to scale quickly, outside benefits consultants can help.

The best HR functions to outsource are those that require dedicated staff, time and resources to fill. These most often include temporary staffing, relocation, drug screening and background checks. Any task that does not affect the day to day operations is best outsourced. There are some regular tasks that can also be outsourced to reduce the workload for small businesses, such as payroll, coaching and updating policy manuals to be compliant with harassment policies.

Professional Employer Organizations, or PEOs, are popular and smart fits for small businesses. PEOs can handle benefits, payroll, compliance, workers' compensation and much more. Hiring a PEO consultant allows business leaders to focus on growing their business and managing the day to day activities. Additionally, good PEO consultants are able to negotiate competitive benefits and health insurance and provide access to licensed HR attorneys.

Hiring PEO consultants and benefits consultants has become a growing trend for small businesses. Managing the minutiae of HR policies can distract business leaders from growing their businesses and having professional help allows them to scale quickly. For more information about the benefits of outsourcing HR functions, or to speak with an experienced PEO consultant, reach out to the HR professionals at BenefitCorp. Contact BenefitCorp at (972) 737-7875 or visit their website at https://benefitcorp.com.

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