Senate Republicans have blocked a bill to increase small business lending, dealing a setback to President Barack Obama's jobs agenda.

President Barack Obama is making his case for more small-business aid from a sub shop in central New Jersey.

Olympic gold medalist Shaun White and his brother Jesse are in the third year of an apparel deal with Target Corp. that now covers boys, young men and shoes.

The default retirement age (DRA) is to be abolished by October next year under new proposals put forward by the government.

Currently employers can make staff retire at 65 regardless of their circumstances. The new plans allow for a six-month transition from the existing regulations, following the announcement in the Budget that the DRA would be phased out from April 2011.

These measures, says the government, will help and encourage people to work for longer against ‘the backdrop of demographic change’. Others include reviewing when the state pension age should increase to 66 and re-establishing the link between earnings and the basic state pension. The consultation also proposes to help employers by removing the administrative burden of statutory retirement procedures, such as employees having the ‘right to request’ working beyond retirement or for employers to give them a minimum of six months notice of retirement.

The short timescale of the changes raises serious questions for employers. John Cridland, CBI deputy director-general, states: ‘Scrapping the DRA will leave a vacuum, and raise a large number of complex legal and employment questions, which the government has not yet addressed. This will create uncertainty among employers and staff, who do not know where they stand. There will need to be more than a code of practice to address these practical issues; we will need changes in the law to deal more effectively with difficult employment situations.’

Employment relations minister Edward Davey argues that the reforms provide individuals with extra freedom and control. ‘With more and more people wanting to extend their working lives, we should not stop them just because they have reached a particular age. We want to give individuals greater choice and are moving swiftly to end discrimination of this kind.’

Steve Webb, pensions minister, suggests that many older people want to work beyond the age of 65 and have a wealth of skills and experience that are not being used.  ‘We want to get rid of the default retirement age so that if they want to work they can do so.  By spending longer in the workforce they can also have a better pension in retirement,’ he says.

The government states that it will still be possible for individual employers to operate a compulsory retirement age, provided that they can objectively justify it, like air traffic controllers and police officers. The consultation asks whether the government could provide additional support for individuals and employers in managing without the DRA or a statutory retirement procedure, and includes the possibility of future guidance or a more formal code of practice on handling retirement discussions.

For Cridland, it’s essential that all the consequences of abolishing the retirement age are given full consideration: ‘For employers, these proposals could make workforce planning and providing some employment benefits, such as critical illness cover, next to impossible.

‘A default retirement age helps staff think about when it is right to retire, and also enables employers to plan more confidently for the future. In certain jobs, especially physically demanding ones, working beyond 65 is not going to be possible for everyone.’

Click here to take part in our poll, Should the retirement age be scrapped?

The bulk of British businesses are yet to return to pre-credit crunch levels of profitability.

RSM Tenon’s Business Barometer found that 70 per cent  of entrepreneurs are still waiting for their business to return to the levels seen before the financial crisis erupted in 2007.
 
Three years on and one in ten entrepreneurs (9 per cent) believe it will take at least another three years for their businesses to return to normal levels. Twenty-seven per cent predict it will take one to two years and one-fifth think two to three years is a more realistic timeframe for business levels to be restored.
 
Business-owners will be cheered to hear that RSM Tenon expects another 20,000 business failures this year. The professional services firm questioned more than 300 entrepreneurs throughout the UK, finding that the risk of a double dip recession has sparked 43 per cent of entrepreneurs to review their business.
 
Entrepreneurs are still suffering despite the recession officially coming to an end – 22 per cent see a lack of cashflow as a serious threat to their business over the next 12 months.
 
Carl Jackson, head of recovery of RSM Tenon, says: ‘Margins remain tight for businesses, with many owners still unable to secure the additional funding they need.  Further failures are inevitable in this climate and we can expect to see 2010 corporate insolvency levels match the record totals that we have seen in the last two years.’
 

One in three students graduating this year or next has a business idea and plans to become an entrepreneur in the near future, according to a survey.

Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of the 1,000 students surveyed by insurer Hiscox are already running money-making enterprises, or are in the process of setting them up now.

John Heaney, small and medium-sized business specialist at Hiscox, comments, 'It’s extremely encouraging that despite the knock-on effects of the recession on the job market, the best of British entrepreneurial spirit is alive and kicking amongst the next generation.'

Over a quarter of the would-be entrepreneurs among the survey's respondents plan to be running their own business by the age of 25, while a third are aiming to be their own boss before they reach 30.

Among the British entrepreneurs who started out in business before the age of 25 are Richard Branson, James Dyson and Alan Sugar.

Business secretary Vince Cable and chancellor George Osborne have launched an ‘intense discussion’ on the issue of access to finance for small businesses.

Cable and Osborne outlined the terms of discourse in Financing a Private Sector Recovery, a paper which sets out the range of finance options for different sized businesses and explores where the market is failing to provide support and if there is a role for government intervention.

Cable says: ‘I’ve heard the problems businesses are facing in getting bank loans up and down the country. They need innovative ways to access finance from other sources to grow our firms and economy. That’s why this green paper* is so important as we look to help viable firms get the money they need.’

The paper explores every major finance option, including more use of equity and encouraging venture capital and business angels to invest in a wider range of businesses. In addition to this, the paper sets out options for the finance sector, such as an insolvency moratorium on companies restructuring their debt, increasing transparency in bank loan applications and fostering competition between banks and finance institutions.

Osborne says: ‘As the economy recovers, it is crucial to ensure that the supply of finance supports rather than constrains demand and business confidence. If businesses are to play their part in promoting economic recovery it is important that they are able to access a diverse range of finance choices in a stable macroeconomic environment.’

The paper also addresses existing government schemes, such as the much maligned Enterprise Finance Guarantee programme.

A survey by the British Bankers Association recently showed that banks lent just £900 million to small businesses in 2009, which represents less than a quarter of the average lending over the past five years.

For more information about the consultation, click here

*According to Wikipedia, a Green Paper – in the lexicon of politics – means: 'A tentative government report of a proposal without any commitment to action'

The government has set up another consultation with employers to find out how to create a more effective and skilled workforce.

John Hayes, the skills minister, launched the consultation document, Skills for Sustainable Growth, which outlines the Department for Business Innovation and Skills’ (BIS) plan to better prepare those who are 19 and over for paid employment.

Following the consultation paper, a full strategy will be published after the Spending Review in October.

Susan Anderson, CBI director for public services and skills, says: ‘We need a more simplified and effective skills system and funding support that is better focused on supporting economic growth and helping individuals develop the skills they need to enter or progress in the labour market.’

The consultation paper states that the UK urgently needs to ‘take action to meet recent concerns that the recovery in the jobs market is slowing and that so-called skills gaps in the workforce could restrict the ability of companies to take advantage of the upturn’.

Back in 2006, Lord Leitch was asked to assess the nation’s skills to see how well placed the UK is to compete in the global economy. Leitch found that ‘more than one third of adults do not hold the equivalent of a basic school-leaving qualification’ and ‘almost one half of adults (17 million) have difficulty with numbers and one seventh (five million) are not functionally literate’.

If you want to share your views with BIS on the consultation paper, click here

Commerce speech recognition software has been around for many years. Dragon Naturally Speaking one of the leaders in this space and has been around for 13 years.

I have not fully test dictation software but I know that for many professionals, certain industries and for certain tasks it can work better than typing, especially for those who might not be able to type so fast.

With its latest version, version 11, Nuance has included more time-saving voice commands and shortcuts in Dragon Naturally Speaking.

The software collapses common multi-step tasks on the PC into direct voice commands.

You can send emails and schedule meetings, search the Web for information, search your desktop, or even navigate between Windows, simply by saying what you want. Dragon 11 includes even more commands to consolidate multiple mouse clicks and keystrokes into a direct voice command that can be spoken anytime, such as:

“Search Amazon for Bluetooth headset”
“Search Twitter for haiku”
“Search maps for 11 West 53rd St., New York, NY”
“Search Dragon Help for working with GMail”
“Send an email to Mike Smith”
“Open My Pictures”
“List Programs”

Speech recognition is not for everyone, but if you do a lot of typing and clicking it might be something for you to try out. Check out the new Dragon software here.

All growing businesses might not be able to have their data in ONE place. Between a contact management application, CRM service, email marketing provider and more, your data is often spread between two or more applications.

Fortunately, many of you are using online applications, which makes it easier to share the data than it would be using software installed on a server.

Unfortunately, many of you are not taking advantage of the ability to integrate your data between these applications. Furthermore, not all of the applications you use make it easy to share data.

The Small Business Web is a confederation of online services who agree to make it easy to share their data with other applications.

I've written about it before, here, but Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends Radio, has recently interviewed the founders and I suggest that you listen to the podcast and HEAR how to leverage The Small Business Web for your business!

Guest Post by Chris Mark, ProPay

Chris Mark is the EVP of Data Security and Compliance for the ETA 2010 ISO of the Year, ProPay. Chris is a former MasterCard employee, founding member of the PCI SSC, former QSA and QSA Trainer. As a Visa trainer he trained over 15,000 people on PCI related topics. Chris has spoken at scores of events and published numerous articles on payment card security and the PCI DSS.

For companies that store, transmit, or process payment card data (credit or debit cards),
compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is mandatory.

Some of those companies must also validate compliance to meet the requirements of the card brands and banks. The PCI DSS is a set of 12 high-level requirements and approximately 220 sub-requirements. Most that have had to comply with the standard would likely agree that using the word ‘difficult’ to describe achieving compliance is an understatement. Quite frankly, achieving and maintaining compliance with the PCI DSS is an extremely challenging and expensive undertaking. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce the headache and associated cost of PCI DSS compliance.

Don’t store, transmit or process Cardholder Data.

While this may not sound feasible, many if not most, small businesses can leverage technologies that reduce or completely remove the data that is stored. As the PCI DSS only applies to the companies that store, transmit or process Cardholder Data removing such data can remove the need to comply with the requirements. Technologies such as hosted payment pages, secure payment redirects, and other technologies allow data to bypass merchant eCommerce systems. Since the transaction data never traverses the company’s own systems, the PCI DSS requirements are reduced significantly. Rather than having to comply with all 12 requirements and their sub-requirements, the company would only need to comply with requirement 12.8 (Contracts) and requirement 9 (physical security).

I spend just about every waking hour trying to educate growing businesses how to use technology as a tool to grow their business. I do this through writing, speaking or educating journalists.

However, one of the constant frustrations is that business owners and entrepreneurs still find technology way too hard to use.

I know there are many companies such as Intuit, Microsoft, Dell and HP who are doing their best to make technology simpler, but it's still a challenge. Even groups such as the The Small Business Web have come together to support easier information sharing of business data.

SMB Group conducted a study which found that "small-medium sized businesses are often unable to get the metrics they need to better manage their businesses--and have a hard time sorting through a plethora of technology jargon and fuzzy, indistinct solution value propositions to figure out what solutions will help them", said, Laurie McCabe, Partner, SMB Group.

Read the press release here.

The survey results show the following:

Many business owners struggle with just having a professional email address so that their email is joanna@joannasbakery.com instead of joannasbakery@aol.com.

Of course many of these businesses are very small and have many other marketing and technology challenges as well.

For growing businesses who are looking to maximize their use of technology, another tip for you is domain names. I have almost 50 domain names related to various things I speak about such as 10 Web Site Musts.

I know another business owner who has 70 domain names and I'm sure some of you have many as well - this is good.

For those of you who don't have your name as a domain name, and at least 20 more domain names, I suggest you take a few minutes to register domain names that could be beneficial for your business.

Will small business lift the economy out of recession? Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne hopes so, and he’s trying to help. Recently the online discount retailer announced the launch of its “Main Street Revolution Initiative,” an effort intended to increase the visibility of small, local businesses by giving them an avenue for exposure to national markets.

“This represents a grand opportunity for producers and consumers nationwide to participate and contribute to the national recovery effort,” Byrne said in a

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