There are two things that every business wants to achieve — higher sales, and lower overheads. Combine those two together and the profit margins increase dramatically. This can mean more money to reinvest in your business, bonuses to doll out to your employees, and generally a more attractive profile when it comes to the stock market (if you are public).
To help you restructure your business in ways that promote real change in productivity, you will want to focus on these five areas first:
1. Invest in a Small Office Refit
You don’t need to completely redesign your office, but there are a few places you need to invest. This ranges from smart light bulbs that change colour balance throughout the day to improve the white balance, to investing in (and caring for) life, air-purifying plants.
The only other area you will want to focus right away is the break room. Try to make it as comfortable as possible and ensure that your employees have everything they need to make and reheat their meals from home.
Tip: Encourage healthy living by sponsoring bike-to-work schemes, lunch-from home schemes, and other benefits that support healthy living.
2. Offer Benefits that Matter
If you want talent, you need to work hard to keep it, which means you need to support employees at every stage in their life. You can do this by allowing employees to pick which benefits suit them best. A single person might prefer a few extra days off, for example, while a parent would prefer a discount on day care. Don’t be afraid to ask your employees what benefit they would need to improve their work/life balance to gain ideas on what to focus on.
3. Install Management Systems
Muscle memory is a powerful thing. It allows our body to perform a task while our mind wanders elsewhere. This is great for physical jobs, but when it comes to information-related tasks like sorting through accounts or processing payments, there is a big risk that the mind will wander and a mistake will be made.
You can avoid this by installing the right management systems to easily keep track of all the large batches of uncatalogued information. Let a system sort and organise it, and let your employees benefit from the reports.
4. Improve Your Management Style
There are so many different management styles out there, and it is up to you to find the one that suits you and your team best. Regardless of which management style works for you, however, you are going to want to partner up with a great project management software option that will help you better manage your team, overview tasks, and doll out support.
5. Reward and Recognise Talent
If you want your best employees to continue to work hard, you need to reward them accordingly. If they are treated the same as an underperforming employee, then they’ll simply stop putting in the effort, or worse, leave for somewhere else. Use performance recognition software to keep track of high-performing employees and reward them with bonuses, benefits, time off, and of course, promotions or raises.
