When it comes to a small business, it’s fair to say the risks from one day to the next can be more impactful. While larger, established businesses can weather difficult periods and withstand losses for some time, smaller businesses are more reliant on a good performance each and every day.
How do small businesses succeed? Profit. However, there are two sides to profit: income and expenditure. Often, we see small enterprises focusing too much on income. How can we get as many customers as possible? How can we increase prices without turning customers away? When it comes down to it, decreasing expenditures can be just as effective as increasing income. We want to focus on two areas of expenditure and overall efficiency: time and labor.
Staff Scheduling and Calendars
First things first, all employees need to be aware of what they’re doing from the moment they walk into the office or store to the moment they leave again. If their workload hasn’t been established clearly, some inefficiencies will arise. If possible, we recommend using a tool that everybody has access to. For example:
- Paycom
- Scoro
- Trello
- Asana
- Toggl
- Timecamp
- Hubstaff
Essentially, these are all tools that have time and labor management aspects. You can track what everybody is doing, set tasks, share files, generate reports and even get clients in on the discussion. With the right tool, even those away from the office can stay up to date with the goings-on of the business.
Accountability
When managing time and labor as a small business, we’re big believers in accountability. If employees aren’t accountable, they won’t spend their time completing the tasks that are set. As we mentioned, management tools and software can help with this. However, accountability needs to be within the overall culture of the business. When new employees are entering the business, they need to know they will be expected to contribute and help growth.
For workers, this is actually an important point of any career. If they feel as though their work has true value, they will want to stay with the business as it progresses.
Outsourcing
Management tools are great, but they can only help distribute tasks between your team. What if the tasks themselves are a waste of time? Every year, we see small businesses completing tasks that can be outsourced or handled by technology and automation. Let’s look at some examples:
- Chatbots – allow your customers to communicate with the business even when there’s nobody in the office.
- Inventory – why take inventory manually when you can manage it with software?
- HR/payroll – There are some fantastic payroll and HR services that will take the pressure off your shoulders for a small fee.
Traditional Communication
We’ve mentioned the power of technology and automation, but we mustn’t forget the importance of communication, too. As an example, there’s nothing wrong with holding a short meeting every morning to ensure everybody knows what they’re doing. This way, you don’t have two workers on the same task, and you can prevent inefficiencies before they have a chance to get really costly.
Throughout the day, encourage collaboration with the team and provide the tools needed to communicate. These days, there are many tools for businesses that want to boost time and labor management; it’s just a matter of finding the one that works for you. If you have remote employees that work from home, having a cloud-based tool to manage time and labor will be beneficial to everyone. While some track to-do lists, others work on the labor hours required on a daily basis. Start today and make progress with your small business!
