All you can hope for as a business owner is that your day-to-day operations run fluidly and that the hiccups are few. In this article, we will be zooming in on the top five secrets to ironing out any imperfections in your business operations so that things run smoothly on a daily basis.
Make Things Automatic
Taking away the fiddly manual aspects of your business will help achieve a more fuss-free workflow. This can be done by automating everything that you can automate, meaning you do not have to put in the hard graft to make absolutely everything happen yourself. The less time spent manually doing things that could be automated, the more time you will free up to dedicate your time and attention to other areas of your business.
Regarding the accounting and finance side of things, consider adopting credit control software. You can automate your accounts receivable instead of manually sending out invoices to charge customers for your goods and services.
The list of accounts receivable automation benefits is huge: your finance team will save time and energy not having to manually manage accounts and chase for payments, which will ultimately create a less stressful work environment – and everyone knows that happy employees are key when it comes to running a business smoothly.
Another example of how you could automate your business is in your marketing strategy; you can schedule social media posts, newsletters and email campaigns to be published at whatever time you choose, having pre-written everything you want to say.
Automating your business wherever possible reassures you that work is going on in the background, while the things that are higher on the priority list get your undivided attention.
Involve a Third-Party for Fiddly HR Work
HR tasks are a necessary headache that needs to be conducted in every business. But if you are only a small business trying to juggle several things in very few hands, running payroll and paying employment taxes are probably the bane of your life. A busy start-up may not have the time or resources to complete these HR tasks in-house, yet the business cannot run without them. The solution? You should consider palming off these tasks to third parties who are built to do them.
To ease the HR workload, there are also payroll programs like WPS Payroll that can carry out payroll online, submit new hire reports, pay taxes, insurance, and many other essential HR tasks to keep your business compliant.
Refine Communication Channels
We’ve all spent at least one entire morning sifting through hundreds of emails in our professional lives. We probably aren’t seeing the extinction of email anytime soon, either. That said, many companies are slowly shifting towards other means of communicating.
Instant messaging services are increasingly becoming a primary mode of communication for many modern companies. These social media encourage rapid responses and problem-solving, whilst also being easily searchable if you need to refer back to a conversation. Web chat calls have also proven themselves to be a very nifty and useful tool in light of the pandemic, which can be recorded and used as a reference if need be. Implementing these communication channels into your business will help it to run smoother on a day-to-day basis.
Hold Regular Catch-Ups
No matter if you are living in the flesh or over Zoom, it is vital to hold regular stand-ups to know what your employees are up to; doing this keeps everyone accountable and in the loop about what is going on and what needs to be done, also enabling staff to raise any pertinent issues ahead of the day.
Should you choose to hold them daily, they should be kept brief – no more than 20 minutes – and Morning catch-ups also limit the need for periodic meetings throughout the day, thus increasing productivity. It may also be an idea to hold a ten-minute meeting to wrap up the day. This will ensure everything that was achieved that needed to be.
Value Your Employees
Simple acknowledgements of your employees’ hard work go a long way. While you may have started the business, it is important to recognise that you may not have gotten as far without your team. Tell them this on a regular basis – it will make your employees feel appreciated and their hard work seen, and in turn, make them more productive and help the day-to-day workflow be smoother.
In addition, making sure you develop your employees will minimise the number of responsibilities on your shoulders and allow the business to function better when you are absent.
The Secret Extra Tip
Another key part of making your day-to-day business operations run smoothly is making sure you do not drive yourself mad with stress. Running a business is no easy task; stress can sometimes get on top of the best of us. But try to find ways of managing your stress, and avoid doing this by micromanaging your team; trust them to help you run your business. The attitude you espouse at the top will trickle down to your employees; hence, if you are a high-stress business owner, this will be mirrored by your team and will send morale plummeting, disrupting any potential for smooth business operations. However, if your attitude is one of “everything will get sorted in the end”, you will be fostering a happier workplace where operations are more fluid and, importantly, productive.
