As a small business owner, you are wearing multiple hats. It is more likely though that you are or were recently(congrats on your first hire!) wearing all the hats in the business and on a budget. Your to-do list is never ending. You have more things to do than there is time in the day. Got employees? Tired of training your employees only for them to forget and ask you every time they encounter the same problem? Are you tired of your employees asking you the same questions over and over? You hired them to free you up to do more meaningful work that will move your business forward but you cannot do that because your employee/s keep interrupting you with questions. Do not worry, it gets better. You just need to give your employees the tools and training to succeed. An added bonus if you do it really well is that your employees will be able to resolve common issues on their own moving forward.
Top 3 Things Every Scaling Growing Small Business Needs:
1) Checklists
Checklists are great for to-do’s and processes that involve a lot of steps, paperwork, or hand-offs such as onboarding, hiring, training, and off boarding, etc. It is a quick, easy, and visual way to verify everything is done – great for fast-paced environments or for non-computer based job environments. What’s great about checklists is that they are easy and cheap to make and fast to implement! The checklist can take the form a of paper checklist or an online checklist using whichever technology available based on your company budget and business needs. Trello is a free project management system that offers online checklists. You can even use a spreadsheet such as Excel or GoogleSheets to create your checklists. GoogleSheets is good free option for Gmail users. Using checklists can increase accountability as well by providing you with something you can reference in case you need to check whether something is missing or simply was not completed.
2) SOP‘s
SOP’s are essential to any business that needs to grow, hire, or train employees on how to do their jobs Learn More. SOP’s ensure that the all the required processes, forms, paperwork, steps, etc are completed to ensure that the job is done correctly and consistently every single time. Ok, so what are SOP’s? SOP is short for “Standard Operating Procedures”. SOP’s outline the work process flow from the beginning to the end. SOP’s can be broken down by job function, task, or department depending on company size. Detailed SOP’s will often include screenshots which are great for those new to using a system, the screenshots will help give them an overview of the system and how to the things required. SOP’s only become more and more important as your company scales and hires.
3) Automation
Automation is great for tasks that are repetitive or if they are a part of a multiple-step process within or across multiple departments and/or job functions. If you are still using paper forms, it is a sign you can use some automation in your life. If you are spending hours manually typing in addresses to ship packages, you need some automation in your life because with the right system all it takes is a few minutes and a couple of clicks and nominal monthly fee with systems like ShipStation. There are so many new systems and technologies being created all the time, it is easy to find an affordable option that fits your budget that will do what you are manually doing except faster and with less mistakes. This is great because it frees you and your employees up to do more meaningful work.
Make Your Work Life Easier
Putting these 3 things in place will help make your work life easier, ensure consistency, save time, and cut costs!
The best part is, creating checklists, processes, and automation are that these are all things you can do on your own or hire out parts you don’t want to do! If you want to yourself the save time and headache, let our team do it for you! The HR a La Mode loves creating and optimizing SOP’s, learn more about our available consulting services.
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