With just 100 days to go until the 2012 Olympic Games, are UK businesses ready for the effect the games will have? Staff clearly are not in the know with almost 9 out of 10 UK workers feeling in the dark about their company’s Olympic working policies. It seems business owners, on the other hand, are more prepared with 8 out of 10 believing they have prepared themselves for any potential working disruption and, in contrast to the feelings of employees, just over half say they have shared these plans with their staff.

There is no way of knowing the impact the Olympics will have - both in terms of lower workforces and supply disruptions - but it's clear that businesses beyond London will feel the effects too. The advice is that if you don't yet have a plan in place, even if you don't feel you need one, it's a good idea to think about the possible consequences for your business and set up an action plan and preventative measures.

Although you know that you're running a successful company do you sometimes feel that the size of your business is holding you back? The truth is that some customers will have less confidence in your ability than your larger competitors, but the good news is that there are lots of simple and cost effective ways you can create the impression that you are a much bigger business than you really are.

Do you have staff?

Obviously businesses with staff give the impression of being larger, but you can make customers believe you have employees simply by setting up email addresses for, say, sales and marketing. All these emails can be directed to your inbox, but your customers will have no idea.

Do you really know what your employees are doing when they should be working? Surfing the net, up-dating their social networking status or perhaps, worst of all, looking for another job - while you are paying them to do their current job! Job recruitment site, Monster, reports that over 25% of employees spend three hours of their working week actually looking for a new job. Worse still, 50% of those surveyed said they had up-dated their CV and applied for jobs during work time. Spread across the entire UK workforce this means over 14 million lost hours equalling over £250 million a week. So, a contented workforce means saving money, and you can't argue with the business sense of that.

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