Hi,

Welcome to our first newsletter of 2023, covering all the latest from Farillio:

- New Features:

Farillio folders will be shareable – so whatever you’re creating and collaborating on, add your colleagues’ names so they can contribute or simply ‘be in the know’ too.

This is an ideal feature for supporting sharing, updating and improving accessibility of staff handbooks, and it’s highly useful for managers, employees and HR folks to securely and confidentially share access to employee-related matters.

See how easy it is to share a folder – coming imminently!

- Updated content:

• 2023 is due to usher in a number of legislative changes affecting small businesses. As always, we’ll be updating our materials to help you stay on top of them and manage their impact on your business. In the meantime, our quick reference update blog will give you this year’s highlights to look out for.

• Making flexible working a default right to request: Farillio’s guides to family-friendly working and to flexible working now contain more detail on the government’s intention to make it law that employees can request flexible working from the outset of their contract (which will scrap the previous requirement for a minimum amount of time having to be worked before this request can be made).

- New content:

This month, you’ll find more new resources in your Farillio account, covering:

• How to support your employees during the cost of living crisis: as household budgets continue to feel an immense squeeze, the clamour from employees for pay rises and the often reluctant compulsion to find higher paid jobs elsewhere intensify (e.g. skilled workers turning to delivery driver contracts), we look at the helpful tips and advice shared by a number of authoritative sources, including those among our own expert community. (And if you’re giving your staff pay rises, use the template letter in your Farillio account – where you’ll find templates for confirming or rejecting promotions and bonuses too.)

• What to do when you suspect an employee is stealing from you: members of our retail community expressly requested guidance on this, so this month you’ll find a guide on what to do as well as, separately, some great tips and advice from the community: 12 ways to prevent employee theft in your business.

• How to dismiss an employee when sickness affects their capacity to carry on working for you: a hugely emotive and challenging situation for all parties, every time it arises, it is sadly one that occurs only too frequently. If you’re grappling with this right now, we can support you with this newly released guide, and related materials, on Farillio.

• Handling consumer complaints about you: say the right things and give yourself the best chance of diffusing a situation with our new suite of template reply letters for businesses to send when consumers complain about goods, services and other matters. Log in to your Farillio account and use our tailored template selector to instantly get the right one for your circumstances.

• Settlement agreements – for senior and other staff: by popular request, two new employee settlement agreement templates now complement our settlement-related suite of resources. If you’re exiting a member of staff, there may be a variety of circumstances in which these templates will be very useful to your business (taking legal advice is still highly recommended in relation to these circumstances).

• How to choose a co-founder: thinking of turning that side hustle or early-stage business into something more substantial? Know someone who is? If you’re looking for a co-founder, check out this new, beautifully illustrated and expertly narrated guide on how to choose the right one for you. Alex Strang shares some excellent insights and tips, including on ensuring you make the right choices for your own personal wellbeing – something that most early-stage founders forget to (or feel they cannot) prioritise.

• Essential tax calculators for SMEs: it turns out that even though tax is often front of mind for us each January, a lot of us still don’t feel on top of what tax reliefs we can get, how tax affects truly our business takings and/or how we can calculate what this means, with confidence. This new playbook brings together all the essential tax calculators you and your business should know about – making it much easier to get a sense of what really matters and how much you should be paying (or claiming back!).

• 8 things you need to know about marketing: No-nonsense marketing expert Louis Grenier’s take on the most effective ways to get your business seen is a thought-provoking, action-packed addition to our marketing suite and his quick, FAQ-style videos get to the point fast. We find he talks a lot of good sense. In this mini video series, he answers our users’ burning questions with great advice, from his views on branding and marketing basics to sharing his usual insider tips.

• Promissory notes: often not getting the same amount of focus as other forms of loan/debt financing, by popular request, we’ve released two different types of promissory note template: (simple and more sophisticated – both suitable for businesses and/or individuals), together with an accompanying guide on how and when to consider using these facilities.

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