If you run your own small business it can feel like a race against time just to get from one day to the next. You start every day with the best of intentions. You tell yourself that you’re going to spend the entire day in your office, managing the more strategic aspects of your business… only to find yourself right back at the coalface with your frontline employees. This could mean one of two things. The first is that you’re a relentless micromanager whose passion and obsession with quality control leads them to try and rush around doing everyone else’s job for them instead of focusing on your own. The second is that your processes are inefficient.
While few entrepreneurs will readily admit to either shortcoming, many live in fear of the latter. After all, inefficient processes means upheaval, training, teething problems and transitional periods. These can all conspire to damage the all important bottom line. On the other hand, if you don’t do something to address these issues now, they will only continue to leach away at your bottom line leaving you with less and less opportunity for recourse. Here are some telltale signs that the processes that were just fine for your business when it was finding its feet have become inefficient. Now’s the time to do something about them before they negatively impact on your operation…
It takes new employees a long time to get to grips with your IT infrastructure
Lots of software is esoteric and it’s only natural that even technically literate candidates may experience some teething problems when getting to grips with your business’ IT infrastructure. But when new employees routinely struggle with the tech they need to do their jobs, this can point to a systemic failure that could seriously undermine your productivity if not addressed. Talk to your IT support provider and find out if there are more intuitive solutions to ensure a smoother transition for new employees. It will not only be empowering for them, it can usher in a new age of productivity.
The number of mistakes made on the job just isn’t shrinking
To paraphrase The Simpsons, everybody makes mistakes, that’s why they put erasers on pencils. Yet as employee learning curves progress, it stands to reason that mistakes made by them on the job should show a generally downward trend. Sure, employees have bad day, they get sick, they lose sleep, they have fights with their spouses; there are a number of things that may cause blips in performance. But when mistakes show no perceptible trajectory it may point to inefficient processes.
Your employees lack motivation
Even the most motivated employees with solid work ethics can be undone by processes which are needlessly complicated, elaborate and inefficient. Is there an aspect of their operations which you find that they consistently put off and await with dread? It’s all too easy to accuse them of being workshy, but it may be that simply altering the process and making it easier and more intuitive can cause a huge surge in employee motivation.
A great entrepreneur needs to be willing to take a risk and throw out the rule book to thrive in the fast paced and ever changing business climate of the 21st century.