Steps To Improve The Efficiency Of Your Employees In Your Small Business

As a small business owner, it can feel like you have a never-ending stream of challenges, large and small, buffeting your business every day. This constant juggling of problems can be demoralising and exhausting, and sometimes gets in the way of important everyday tasks, reducing the overall efficiency of your team. While these problems are just something you have to face as a business owner, there are ways to improve efficiency so that you can be confident that background operations are going ahead smoothly so you can focus your attention on any issues that crop up. We’ve put together a list of ways to improve the efficiency of your employees in particular, to really take off some of the pressure.

Clarity Of Goals
You may have huge dreams for your business but the more goals and tasks you assign to your team, the longer it’s going to take to realise those dreams. In fact, the more goals and targets you set, the higher the risk for your team to get confused and unfocussed on their work. Instead, lay out a few goals at a time and don’t overburden people with excessive tasks. As well as this, define each goal simply and clearly so there is no risk of misunderstanding of what you’re after. Keep the acronym SMART in mind for when you create a goal as this can really help you to ensure clarity. SMART goals are used by lots of businesses to ensure your targets are achievable and the success of those goals can be measured in some way so that you can assess the overall success at the end of each deadline.

Let Go Of Some Control
One of the most important choices you can make as a small business owner is promoting someone to a position of leadership and management that you can delegate tasks to. The thought of this might make you flinch at first because your business may be something you’ve put a lot of yourself into. Time, effort, and vision have gone into this project and passing responsibility onto someone else may feel like a huge risk. However, trying to juggle every single task is likely going to be way riskier in the long run. Let go of some of your control to someone you trust and try to avoid micromanaging them. If you’re constantly looking over their shoulder to direct what decisions they’re making, you’re first of all going to annoy them and prove you can’t trust them, and secondly you’re going to be wasting the same amount of time as if you hadn’t delegated that responsibility in the first place.

Communicate With Your Team
While it may seem like communication within a smaller business isn’t as important as communications within a huge corporation, you’d be surprised at how easily mistakes can happen within even the smallest group when there has been a communication breakdown. If certain members of your team are working from home or away from the office, it can be very easy for people to get confused and have to spend time on rectifying mistakes instead of progressing certain essential tasks. Instead, make sure your communications channels are improved via networking software such as Slack and even collaboration software which can be used by individuals collaborating of particular projects. This will help to reduce the risk of time wastage from people accidentally doing the same tasks, or assuming that a particular task has been completed when it hasn’t. Communication is key in any business so don’t let it slide.

Improve Your Team’s Skills
Every one of us has the room to grow and develop into a better version of ourselves, especially in our careers. This means that as a good business owner, you should be spending time and effort on improving the abilities of your workforce so that they can ultimately provide you with better work, as well as having a boost to their morale due to you helping them improve themselves and their career prospects. Making use of business coaching like that from The BCF Group for example, can help you to improve your team’s communication and interpersonal skills, or even provide certain team members with managerial training, so that you can then feel more confident in allowing them to run certain aspects of your business.

Provide Incentives For Good Work
If there’s one thing that can boost efficiency in the workplace it’s incentives. Whether it’s a simple bit of recognition for good work, or a bonus for hitting extra goals, this is a great way to show your gratitude to your team. Monetary bonuses are a common option for businesses as it’s a simple transaction: you work harder, you get more money. However, some people aren’t as interested in this as you’d think and are more than happy to just do what is expected of them for their standard salary. While this is generally okay and you can’t exactly complain about this, finding other ways to boost morale and increase the desire for your team to go above and beyond is important. You can offer extra time off for hard work or even group rewards for hitting those targets, such as taking everyone out for a meal.

Automate Mundane Tasks
When thinking about efficiency in your business, it’s a good idea to identify any areas which are taking up too much of your team’s time. Mundane admin tasks for example take up a significant amount of time, and you can actually find ways to automate some of these tasks, such as automated email responses or chatbots for customer service purposes. Automation is an essential part to any efficient business so try to find ways to free up time for your employees where possible.

Listen To Your Team
Finally, this suggestion ties in with communicating with your team. It’s one thing giving the right information and making sure everyone is on the same page at work, but communication also involved listening and taking on board suggestion from your employees. Be open to their comments and proposed changes, as they’re the ones who are doing the job and have a pretty good idea as to what could help them provide you with better and more efficient results.