When it comes to productivity and your bottom line, sometimes your own business systems and practices may be letting you down. Outdated, arduous or particularly manual tasks can take a lot of time out of your team’s day and may be costing you more time and money than they should. Below you’ll find a list of 3 ways you can streamline some of your processes to improve efficiency and productivity.
1. Consider Upgrading Your Human Resources Tools
There have been advances in technology that can help you accurately identify workforce/labour requirements, ensure that your team are achieving their goals and that payroll stress and drama becomes a thing of the past. Whether you’re looking for a fully managed solution or a way to make things quicker and easier for your team, you may benefit from updating your system to a new Payroll and HRIS system. Something like Aurion by Chandler Macleod lets you chose the modules and services that you need from a fully outsourced solution through to a powerful tool that will speed up the way things like payroll, labour forecasting and staff engagement are monitored and measured.
2. Reward Your Team For Identifying Inefficiencies
Often it is the people performing the roles who are going to be your best source of identifying ways that you could streamline systems and processes. Why not consider running an intra-company competition offering rewards and incentives for people who can suggest ways that could save the business time and money? In 2009/2010, at a nickel refinery in North Queensland, an employee-led program managed to find $16 million in savings and turn a plant facing closure into a profitable business! Hopefully your own situation isn’t that dire, but if you give your people a reason to want to improve the workplace,imagine what your team could do for you!
3. Consider Hiring Consultants and Third Parties
Sometimes it comes down to working smarter, not harder. Outsourcing and third-party consultancies can sometimes be the most effective way to improve your business processes because you and your people have the time to work on the business. While you’ll pay a fee for their work, the costs will often be less than having another full-time-equivalent staff member on the books and you’ll be accessing a whole host of resources, ideas and assistance that can be invaluable for your business to continue trading now and into the future.
If your business hasn’t updated your processes or systems in recent years and has fallen into the ‘this is the way we’ve always done things’ mindset, you may be costing yourself time, productivity and ultimately employee engagement. By actively working towards making sure that the way you work is streamlined and your team have the tools and resources they need to perform their tasks, you will be future-proofing your business.
Has your workplace undergone change or process improvement in recent times? What advice would you give to somebody undergoing this process now?
