It's hard enough to find people with the right qualifications for the job—but making sure they'll fit in is almost as important, especially at smaller companies where productivity and professionalism depend on a tight-knit team. You want to hire a team player, someone who's ready to contribute in ways that go beyond the job description. Someone who pitches in to handle production surges, equipment failures and other stressful situations. Someone ready to solve problems and go the extra mile.

If you've noticed that skilled manufacturing positions are getting harder to fill—it's not just you. Economists have also noted a widening gap in skills, especially as highly trained and established workers retire and must be replaced with new employees. For small businesses, this is an especially pressing problem. In small and efficient operations, workers tend to build deep expertise about their particular duties, but this expertise is hard to pass on and hard to replace as retirement looms.

Running a company is hectic enough—it's hard to muster the time, energy and patience necessary to help your employees resolve their personal disagreements. But even though conflict management may look like a distraction from more important business, it's good to nip these things in the bud. Otherwise, they might turn into chronic patterns, lowering morale and even impacting production. Promptly addressing workplace conflict can stop an escalating situation before it turns into something bigger.

When you look for ways to enhance your profit margin, energy management is a logical place to look for changes. Doing an energy audit or switching to energy-efficient lighting, two key steps in an energy management program, can have a significant impact on the bottom line. Yes, as the operator of a large facility or multiple large facilities, you will need to make an investment--perhaps substantial--to get the ball rolling on energy management, but the data compiled by the U.S. Department of Ene