In a small business, you are likely to find that even small changes can have large effects. This will be most obvious when it comes to looking at the way that you carry out certain tasks and try to make them more efficient. Improving efficiency has a number of benefits, including increasing profits for the same amount of expenditure, or freeing up more time to improve your work/life balance.
As you are undoubtedly already busy, you might not have given much thought to improving your efficiency, but following this basic plan will provide you with a solid starting point.
1. Assess Your Current Position
Before you can start improving matters, you need a clear picture of where you are now. You might think you have a good handle on what your business needs, but you might be stood too close to be able to see clearly. By taking a step back and using a more analytical approach, you’ll have a snapshot of the current state of the business that you can use as a foundation for any improvements.
By using this method, when you come to present your improvement plan to your workforce or business partners, they will be able to see that you have made data-driven decisions rather than ones just based on your opinion.
2. Ensure You Are Using the Best Tech Available
This might sound expensive, but it does not necessarily mean kitting everybody out with a new laptop; you might get past many of the tech frustrations you and your colleagues feel by simply finding a better internet service. You can eliminate problems caused by unreliable providers by doing a quick audit of the internet service providers in Los Angeles (or wherever your business happens to be) and finding one with a good track record.
You might even find that you can save money here, which is not to be overlooked with rising costs everywhere you look.
3. Upgrade or Implement Training
It might seem like common sense, but your employees can work more efficiently if they know what they are doing. Despite this, many business owners seem to neglect this key area or let it slip behind when it comes to refresher training. You will find that by training your staff adequately, not only will they be working faster, but you are also likely to get fewer equipment breakdowns and less rework. You will also see a marked-up turn in morale as they become more confident in what they do and that you are taking them seriously by spending time training them.
To help with this training, you might need to spend some time writing up your current work practices or consider outsourcing the whole process to a specialist training company.
Final Thoughts
Improving efficiency is never an easy task, but it can be made much simpler if you go about it in the right way. You need to know where you are starting from and look for easy wins, such as simply improving the speed of your internet connection. Don’t forget that trained staff are better at their jobs, so investing in a training program is money well spent, and not the needless expense you might have considered it to be so far.
