The monetary compensation plays a big role in retaining your best employees and giving them good reason to give their job their all. But if you believe that’s all they need, you’re going to find more people leaving the team than you would like. There are deeper needs that you and even they might not recognize at first. Neglect them for too long, however, and those will serve as the reasons you can’t retain your staff.
Goals
Employees have responsibilities for day-to-day work in their role, and they should know that. When it seems like the day-to-day involves nothing other than just running through a workload to no aim, however, that’s when people can get frustrated. Goal setting for employees, whether it’s collaboration toward a certain goal or simply improving productivity and efficiency can give them something important. It can give them something to aim at, so they don’t just feel like they’re standing still in their job. It’s also a good way to align their goals at work with the goals of the organization.
Progress
Beyond their work goals, you should consider your employee’s personal goals a little more. If they’re looking to progress in the company, see if you can bring out that leadership material. If their job requires expertise, help them build on it with training. If they have personal projects they want to tackle, then offer them time in the office environment to work on it. Make your leadership instrumental in their personal progress.
Value
Let’s not pretend this relationship is all about what you can do for your team. Your team does plenty for you and showing that you acknowledge and value that is important. From simple thanks and an employee-of-the-month scheme to an awards dinner complete with award plaques. Showing real, verbal appreciation and offering a physical token of that appreciation shows that you truly value the team. It also gives you the opportunity to incentivize the behaviors that you consider most important in the workplace.
Cohesion
The work environment is most likely one of multiple people. Getting them cohesive and collaborative is important. Even for those like remote workers who aren’t in the physical environment. Improving the ways they communicate and organize, such as using project management tools, removes the barriers from that cohesion. You should also consider those corporate get-togethers as the opportunity to have people build rapport and relationships without the pressures of work exerting on them.
Flexibility
Speaking of those pressures, every workplace has them. But allowing a little more flexibility to your team can help them deal with said pressures a lot better. Everyone has ways that they work better. Flexibility helps them discover those ways. Whether it’s flexibility in time, location, dress code, method or otherwise. You have to think of what you can reasonably allow. Whatever you can allow, you should.
A better understanding of the human needs in your team is going to make you a better employer in every way. You’re going to retain them, keep them motivated, engaged, and even happy to work for you.
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There is always a chance that something will go horribly wrong for your business. All business owners have this at the back of their minds. You don’t have control over what happens in the wider economy or how sales trends develop. You do, however, have control over what your business does. And if you want to make sure that your business is going to be able to survive a downturn, you need to put it in a financially secure position as soon as possible.
Start Investing
First of all, you should start doing some investing. If your business owns properties and rents them out, you can make money. Or you could invest personally and put the returns into the business. There are plenty of ways in which your business can invest in order to improve its finances. You might want to go to companies like triple net if you need help with beginning an investment strategy that’s going to work and pay off for you and your business in the long-term. There is nothing wrong with getting help when you don’t really know what you’re doing.
Next, you should start to think about diversifying your business as best you can. This will make your business more financial stable because it will allow you to get to appeal to more customers and, hopefully, sell more products or services. It will also make your business better able to cope with a potential downturn in the future because your business will be more diverse. You won’t be reliant on selling just one type of product, and that can be a big deal when you want to get ahead and remain profitable.
Save Money Regularly
Simple saving some money can make a huge difference to the financial stability and security of your business if it’s something that you can manage to do regularly. You only have to put aside a small amount each month, and you will soon see that your business is ready to face any problems that might be heading its way. The money you save should be stashed away and only called upon when something goes wrong and your business is in urgent need of cash. It’s pointless saving money if you also keep spending it. Put rules in place for when that savings pot can and can’t be dipped into.
Many businesses are pretty careless with their spending plans. Is it really worth spending big money on an extravagant idea or statement? Sometimes, you need to look at the value that a particular project is going to return to your business before you push ahead. When you do that, you can be sure that you only spend money on things that are really worth it for your business from a financial point of view. So, if you have an extravagant spending plans currently in the pipeline, it might be a good idea to halt them until your business is more financially secure.
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To a lot of start-up owners, growth is a universally good thing. You’re a small business now, and you want all the financial stability and branding strength of a large one. Naturally, this means that once you stimulate enough growth, everything else will fall into place, right? Well, not quite. If your start-up has experienced a lot of rapid growth recently, you’ll know that it’s something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you’ll have better profit margins and a stronger platform for making a name for yourself. On the other, you’ll have to take care of a lot of scaling, which will mean managerial and organizational changes. Regardless of what your period of growth has done to your business, you need to be able to sustain these challenges. Here’s a guide to managing a rapidly expanding business…
When you drew up your business plan, it’s pretty much a given that you set a range of short and long-term goals, but what about medium-term ones? When business owners totally overlook any medium-term milestones, it can cause all kinds of scaling problems which will come back to bite them in the future. Every good business plan should have a long-term vision and mission, which you’ll ultimately want your business to reach. You’ll need a wider range of medium-term objectives, which will support that end-goal vision, and are usually milestones set five to three years down the line. Then, there are short-term plateaus you should keep in mind – skills, accomplishments and experiences which you can achieve realistically in the next year. A lot of people at the heads of growing businesses become too wrapped up in the long-term, and change the direction of their venture far too frequently. Set yourself some medium-term goals, and stick to them!
Keep Your Customers Happy
You should be placing a strong emphasis on customer satisfaction no matter what stage your business is in, but it’s especially important to make sure you’re not getting distracted by scalability. Your customers are the people who will come up with the most relevant ideas, the most immediate feedback, and in today’s social media-oriented world, they’re increasingly happy to help. No matter how rapidly or drastically your business is changing, don’t sacrifice a formal process for constantly listening to customers, and acting on their input. Aside from holding an ear to the ground, you also need to make sure that you can keep a handle on delivery, back-end support systems, and order fulfillment in the midst of all this chaos. If your customers become dissatisfied with your performance, you’re going to have a very hard time retaining them, and continuing to grow at a healthy rate.
Think About Finances
As your business expands at a fast rate, there are a range of financial implications which all need to be taken into consideration. As your business becomes larger and larger, your cash flow is going to become strained before it gets any better, so it’s a good idea to look for ways to save as much as possible. Recover any outstanding debts promptly, decrease prices wherever it’s practical, consider refinancing and borrowing money, offer up some rewards for prompt or upfront payments, and eliminate as much unnecessary overhead as possible. You may also be able to draw some savings from incorporating your business or registering it as a certain type of company. This can be done through services like yourcompanyformations.co.uk – registered formation agent . As more and more factors are added to your cash flow, you need to make it a priority to understand and manage those factors, and eventually manage all your income and outgoings with a “big picture” mindset. Financial growing pains have ended countless promising businesses over the years – don’t let yours become one of them!
Find a Good Mentor
Finding a good mentor, with a wealth of experience as an entrepreneur or executive in your field, can take a huge amount of the weight off your shoulders. You’ll be able to reap the benefit of their years in the business, and the advice of someone who’s been in the same position as you in the past. When you imagine a great entrepreneur, you probably don’t see someone who’s constantly asking for advice. However, you shouldn’t let your pride get in the way of the potential success of your business! Some of the most successful businessmen in recent history have developed on the advice of a mentor. Bill Gates had Buffet, and Mark Zuckerberg had Steve Jobs. I don’t care how smart you are, or how disruptive your business idea is, find a mentor if it’s possible!
Continuing on this theme of not thinking of yourself as a one-man-band, surrounding yourself with team members who are significantly smarter than you is essential for anyone who’s at the head of a fast-growing company. No matter how good your product, service or strategy is, if you don’t have a good team behind you, the rapid growth of your business can quickly become overwhelming. If the departments at your company are growing faster than you can handle, then choose the best minds you have available and give them positions as the heads of their departments. By doing this, you’ll be able to free up your time and invest it in your overall strategy. As these people become more familiar with their departments and senior roles, you should keep them in the loop about more executive decisions. Make them a part of the hiring process, and anything else that could impact their role.
Take Away While You Add
A lot of business owners think that once their company grows enough, they’ll have a lot more freedom and flexibility. As a matter of fact, scaling can actually be very restrictive. There’ll be all kinds of things that used to work, but won’t anymore, meaning that you’ll have to rub these out of your usual strategy. It’s only when your operation gets a little larger, you’ll realize that there are a range of things that have always been slowing you down, without you realizing it. Whether you axe paperback to revive the company or do away with things like performance reviews altogether, you need to be aware that certain things will need to go, and holding onto them will only drag your company down. Getting rid of performance reviews, for example, will mean that you’ll free your employees from a lot of tedious work, and redirect those people-hours to more pressing issues. Don’t be afraid to make drastic changes when they’re a gamble, provided that you’re certain you can make them pay off. If your grocery is on the verge of bankruptcy, but hiring greeters will reduce theft and improve sales, then go ahead and do it. If team meetings are too long and ineffective, don’t be afraid of being seen as a horrible boss by banning the use of phones! Whatever’s on the horizon, you need to stop resisting change, and choose the sacrifices you’ll have to make very carefully.
Wrapping Up…
Rapid growth, if you know how to handle it, can promise all kinds of great things for your business. However, if you approach it in the wrong way, it could be the thing that brings your promising idea to ruin. Going from managing a bootstrapped, fledgling start-up to a feverishly expanding business will require a lot of changes in your tactics, but through applying the strategies above and learning as you go, you’ll be able to assure a bright, successful future for your company!
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Think of everything you have to do in your day as a business owner. Think of the mass of tasks and work you have to perform. Think of the systems you rely on.
When you stump it all together like that, running a business seems like hard work! And it is. There is no doubt about that whatsoever.
Now, technology moves at such a fast pace in the modern age. If you want your business to succeed, you’re going to have to build a good relationship with tech and understand exactly how it all works. You’re going to have to appreciate that your gadgets and computers are going to be outdated. You’re going to have to adapt to thrive and the future is now.
Now, let’s return to the beginning. If you are adapting so your business can thrive, you’ve still got heaps of tasks to complete. It is now time to knit everything together and see how we can simplify your business tasks.
Let’s talk money first. Accounting software like Sage accounting online is going to save you a lot of headaches. Not only can you keep yourself in the know with your finances with some simple data entry, but it’s also going to be automated and can save you the hassle of replicating invoices and calculating your tax. What does this mean? Well, it means you can spend more time on your actual job than counting coins!
What more is there to know about money? Well, payment is crucial! Sites like Paypal can offer you a cloud-based payment solution that automatically exchanges payments into a currency of your choice – meaning you’re not the one heading to the exchange! This is an amazing solution whether or not you have a lot of overseas customers.
With accounting and currency exchange out of the way, there are already two heavy tasks dealt with. Now, it’s time to talk communication.
Basecamp is an amazing software package that can do it all for you. Basecamp’s Campfire organizes your internal communication and projects in a single dedicated place. The advantages of this are too often underestimated and having a single platform for multiple, yet linked, subject matter (like work) is a brilliant way to increase the productivity of your staff. The campfire app within Basecamp allows you to communicate instantly, like an old school instant messenger app, and in-real time and you can even link to work. This cuts a number of steps out the process and allows your workflow to be centralized with a single piece of software. There are no more messy and long email chains between staff members. Instead, Basecamp offers topic based message boards, instant chat tools, to-do-lists, staff check-ins and instant work reports. Not only can you simplify your staff’s communication process, but you can get everything moving forward in the same direction.
Communication, work flow, accounting and payment – four huge tasks have been broken down and simplified with technology – find out what else you can simplify and launch your business forwards.
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If you have an E-commerce store, chances are, you’d like to expand and grow. Everybody wants to make more money and get more conversions, right? Here are a few ideas that can help you to achieve the success you want:
Make It As Easy To Check Out As Possible
Make it as easy as you possibly can during the check out process. Just because somebody is checking out, doesn’t mean they won’t change their mind if it’s taking too long. Go through it yourself and make it as simplified as possible to stop people from abandoning their cart and going elsewhere. This could mean offering a guest check out rather than forcing people to sign up with you, for example. However, there are a few things you might need to change.
Show Complementary Products
Make sure you find a way to show complementary products on the page as a way of up-selling. Show the customer what others have bought, or what goes well with what they’ve bought. This can help you to achieve more sales. If you’re a clothing company, you could show complementary shoes with a particular dress, for example.
Offer Coupons And Discounts
Offer coupons and discounts for certain things. For example, signing up to your newsletter, or even birthday discounts to loyal customers. You could even offer discounts when somebody recommends a friend. Many stores are also offering point systems, so customers can earn themselves a free product after so many purchases. The following infographic can give you even more useful information!
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