When a venture is running smoothly, business owners and managers often get complacent. Many stop keeping an eye out for areas that can do better with sharply focused improvements. Whether you run a business that’s doing well or could do better, you need to start making a list of the things that you could be doing to make a difference to your efficiency levels.
Potentially profitable projects that have been hung up for a few days or have now fallen by the wayside need to be revisited. Any lack of proper processes in your business needs to be addressed and rejigged so you can make your business more efficient. There may be issues that need to be fixed, but efficiency is not something that can be fixed overnight.
In fact, it can take some time to get that traction back when you are trying to make changes. Whether it’s improving your finances with the help of a dedicated accountant, hiring a consultant to see where your processes may be failing to measure up, overhauling business communication or researching ways to make more efficient use of your resources, there will always be ways to improve. Let’s take a look at the things you can do now right now to make your business processes more efficient:
1. Automate where you can. If you don’t know where to begin, start with mundane tasks like routine paperwork. Look through document generation comparison websites for an easier approach to creating professionally formatted documents like contracts, reports, sales proposals, invoices and so on. It will save your staff a lot of time. Whether it’s for sending out payslips to employees or paying vendors, you need to utilize business automation wherever it’s an option. It’s not just a luxury in today’s competitive market, it’s a necessity and you need to be a part of it.
Automating monotonous tasks will also allow your employees to concentrate on jobs that are actually productive and require critical thinking.
2. Encourage face to face conversation. Chat messages, video calls and emails may seem like the quickest ways to connect with other people, but it’s sometimes much better to have a face to face discussion where the conversation flows naturally. “Zoom fatigue” is real, according to a Standford study. Tools like Skype, Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams are being overused in businesses today.
A face to face interaction can speed up the process of solving a problem without having to wait for the back and forth via messages or mails or risking anything getting lost in translation.
3. Don’t have too many meetings. Unless absolutely necessary, make sure that you are not scheduling frequent meetings with your employees. You don’t need a staff meeting at 9:00 AM, a separate department meeting at noon, and then another meeting before the end of the day. All you are doing is interrupting the workflow process of your employees. Constant e-mail alerts and meetings are disruptive.
If you want to encourage innovation, make sure you have fewer meetings and when you do, conduct short, stand-up meetings. Participants will mostly pay attention and keep their input to the point.
4. Communicate clearly. If you need to communicate something important to your employees, don’t do it in writing. Do it face to face. If something is going wrong or you want something done in a certain way, don’t mumble about it: communicate about it and watch things change.
5. Don’t encourage multitasking beyond a logical point. Most people think that they’re excellent at multitasking. But it’s important to ‘single task’ where necessary. If you want your employees to be more productive, make sure that they are working on one thing at a time. It can actually be a smart thing to do because they can give their full attention and effort to one task before moving on to the next.
6. Improve processes that need to be improved. It’s nice to stick to the established business processes that get things done. But don’t get stuck in that comfort zone. Some processes need to be updated to keep up with the competition and/or increase business efficiency. At the same time, if you’re planning to change a process in any way, make sure that you are doing it with deliberation and not just on a whim. Processes can be changed, but they should be changed with communication, with intention, and with future plans in mind.
7. Embrace task management software. It’s a good idea to streamline your processes by embracing software like Asana, ProofHub, and ClickUp to help you to do that. This will help your staff work together much more efficiently and stay on schedule.
8. Promote a positive work culture. Every department should work together to promote a positive work culture that encourages productive communication, employee well-being, trust and mutual respect. You can’t be everywhere all at once. But if you are making sure that your staff members interact appropriately with each other, it will make a mark on business efficiency. When employees are comfortable with the idea of sharing their thoughts and suggestions openly and respectfully, you won’t have to be everywhere all at once because you can trust them to do their jobs.
9. Don’t micromanage your team. As a leader, it’s very important that you don’t micromanage your team to the point where they feel like you do not trust them to complete their tasks proficiently. You should instead focus on delegating jobs efficiently and not be looking over your employees’ shoulders while they do it. Striving for efficiency is so much easier when you are not micromanaging the situation and forcing people out of their comfort zone.
Business efficiency is a measure of how effectively a company uses its capital, labor force and other assets to earn revenue. The only way to improve this is by taking a step back and truly recognizing all the areas in your business that need change.
