Efficiency should be a buzzword in every smart business person’s vocab. Here is a handful of ways to increase efficient working for your business.
1. Start scheduling your social media messages
Wherever possible, schedule some of your social media messages in advance. Tools like Hootsuite are ideal for this. By scheduling them in bulk, you’re saving time further down the line.
If you like your statuses and tweets to be up-to-date, schedule evergreen info and put out news as and when it comes. Marketing Donut has more information on how scheduling can make your Social Media team for efficient.
Scheduling social media doesn’t just make increase efficiency. By scheduling tweets at different times throughout the day, you can discover when they get the most positive reactions. This can help inform your marketing decisions moving forwards.
2. Automate business tasks if you can
Automation is a necessity in the ever changing business environment. Automating some monotonous tasks can save your employees time. It can also save costs. Common tasks like reporting, documents backups, email follow ups for similar customer complains, research and accounting or invoicing can easily be automated.
3. Improve your methods of accounting
There are many key parts of a business that can benefit highly from increase efficiency. Accounting is one for these. Simple but smart business decision can make a difference.
This begins at the recruitment stage. Hiring somebody who is already well-versed in the systems you use will save time on training. The staff member will be up-to-speed and already efficient in getting tasks done.
Alternatively, upgrading and improving the types of system you use can make a huge difference. Quickbook checks, for example, makes paying vendors and employees far more efficient. There are various other companies who put increased efficiency as a top priority.
As a result, their products offer this amongst various other positive attributes. The initial investment will come back to you in spades.
4. It pay to ban internal emails
Consider an internal email ban. Companies trying this rather controversial technique out have reported impressive results. It is now widely acknowledged that emails are a massive time suck! When we speak, we can quickly filter and edit what we want to say.
However, when it comes to writing it down, we have to think about things like spelling, punctuation and grammar. This means that communicating with someone via email takes longer than asking verbally.
While it does not seem like a lot at the time, doing this over and over again during the day can really stack up. As for emails with clients, some business now opt to only check and reply to emails at set periods during the day.
9am-10pm, 2pm-3pm and 5.30pm-6pm, for example. Getting your clients used to it might be hard, but if you can get them on board, it will free up your workforces time for more pertinent tasks.
5. Ensure your staff care
If there is one thing that slows staff down, it’s apathy. If your staff don’t care about your business, they won’t work with energy. This is just one of many reasons why employee engagement is so crucial.
Staff deserve to be looked after and communicated with by their managers. A staff member who feels valued and respected will repay their thanks with hard work and enthusiasm. This will feed into their work and increase the efficiency with which they work.
6. Encourage your employees to communicate openly
If your employees feel free to communicate their ideas, concerns, and suggestions to management, they can help spot and identify areas that need improvement.
When you encourage your staff to be part of the efficiency process, they will deliver their best, knowing that management values their opinions and feedback.