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Spend Vs Splurge: Can You Afford Not To Invest In These Areas Of Your Business?

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In business, a company owner will often take steps to try and reduce spending, but there are certain areas where cutbacks should be discouraged. Often, it is possible to reduce overheads, but lowering spending could put you at risk. Before you make any budgeting decisions, consider whether you can afford not to invest in these key areas.

Legal advice

Even if you run a very small business, it’s beneficial to have legal experts in your corner. You never know when you may need to make that call and take advantage of expert advice. Running a business isn’t always as simple as sealing deals and selling wares. There are many legal aspects that you have to take into account as a company owner. If you employ people, the last thing you want is a personal injury case brought against you because your office doesn’t comply with health and safety regulations. If you’re launching a new product, you don’t want a rival firm to rip off your idea or customers contacting you complaining about the quality of the item. If issues arise, and you need to investigate insurance fraud, take action against a competitor or find out more about compensating a customer, it’s helpful to have people in the know at the end of the phone. It is sometimes possible to handle your own legal affairs, but cases can be very complex, and if you hire a professional, you’re much more likely to achieve a positive outcome.

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Accounting

There are few things that are more important than getting to grips with the numbers when it comes to managing a company. If you own a business, you may not have the time or the expertise to manage the books, and if this is the case, it pays to join forces with an accounting firm. If you have no idea what’s going on in your accounts, you may encounter cash flow issues, and your balances may be much lower than anticipated, which could result in missed payments or failure to hit growth targets.

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Training

If you manage a team of people, investing in training can help you upskill your employees, promote health and safety and increase productivity. In the short-term, you’ll be parting with cash, but in the long-term, you’ll be adding value. Training enables your employees to develop new skills, which could prevent you from needing to hire additional workers and enable you to diversify the services you offer. Think carefully about the programs you choose for your team, and have a look around at the opportunities that are on offer. Ask your employees what kinds of courses they’d be interested in undertaking, and read some reviews to find the best training providers.

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When you run a business, balancing the books is key. While there are some areas where you can save money, it’s wise to invest in legal advice, accounting services, and training. This will enable you to act swiftly if legal issues arise, keep an eye on your books, and upskill your workforce.

Harmony vs Chaos: Keep Employees on the Same Page

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Making sure everyone in your business is on the page shouldn’t be seen as mere courtesy. When everyone is on the same page, then it becomes much easier for business to go smoothly! You want everyone working in some sort of harmony, in order to fight off the chaos that big business projects can often bring.

Employees are your strongest asset, but you’re doing them a disservice if communication and collaboration isn’t that strong in your business. Here are a few tips you should keep in mind.

Contribution

If employees don’t feel all that involved in certain aspects of the business, then it’s going to be more difficult for them to really engage as deeply as you want them to. One of the best ways to encourage professional harmony in the workplace is to get more employees involved in the planning process of a particular project, or even in its inception. Of course, you have to balance this with the risk of having too many cooks in the kitchen – this approach may stretch out the planning process. It could benefit the project in the long run, though.

Collaboration

The easier it is to collaborate, the more people you’re going to get on the same page. Thankfully, there’s a bunch of software and web applications you can use to facilitate this. SharePoint, a Microsoft Office feature, is currently gaining popularity in this area. It’s relatively new to many people, however, so consider working with a consultancy business such as HingePoint to help people get used to things. There’s also suites such as Google Drive, communication programs such as Skype and Google Hangouts, and project management web apps such as Trello and Basecamp that are all recommended.

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Documentation

Whether it be documents detailing the goals of the project or notes taken from meetings, keeping strong documentation of the project is pretty essential. When people get a little lost, they can refer to a central piece of information – such as a project bible – to help them get back on track and see what the particular aims and expectations are. This is also very useful for instances in which employees are late, have to take a sick day, and return from vacation. You should make sure that these documents are kept up-to-date, too; they shouldn’t be static texts. After all, things are probably going to change a few times on a given project!

Sociability

A lot of business owners see encouraging sociability to be something quite peripheral to work. They want to keep things friendly in the office, though they also know that these good vibes can also increase satisfaction, which helps drive productivity and focus. But encouraging sociability really helps in a very direct way when it comes to people being on the same page at the workplace. When bonds grow between employees, they don’t only talk about private or trivial matters – they also begin to talk about work more frankly, and become more enthusiastic to offer each other help. So arranging after-work social events, as well as allowing employees a bit of space to talk casually from time to time, can help your business more than you might think.

Want To Be A Great Team Leader? Look On The Bright Side

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Some entrepreneurs are great at managing their money or developing new deals with clients. But sometimes, they lack skills in the leadership department, mainly because they’ve not had time to practice them elsewhere in their lives. Some people believe that you’ve either got leadership skills or you haven’t. But, as it turns out, there are plenty of ways to improve your leadership skills that don’t require you to totally change your character. Here’s how.

Be An Optimist

It’s hard being a great leader while believing that the world is getting worse. It kind of takes a bit of the joy out of running a team of people and striving for a better life in the future. As a result, great leaders tend to be optimists in general, and this helps to keep their staff upbeat and on track. Positive thinking tends to go hand-in-glove with higher team output and individual productivity.

Get To Know The People Working For You

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With the rise of internet working, it’s becoming more and more difficult for managers to get the know the people who work for them. But just because a lot of your interactions are digital, doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do. Even if you’re just employing contractors on a temporary basis, ask them how their lives are going, whether they’re enjoying their work and what they want to achieve in the future. All these questions can help bring a team together even if they seem unimportant at the time.

Get Excited About Going To Work

In every job, there’s something worth getting excited about. That’s because all jobs are fundamentally about serving other people and helping to meet their needs. Even if your business does something mundane, like clean out septic tanks, it’s still possible to get enthused about what you do. After all, who wants a malfunctioning septic tank? It’s funny: the longer you work at something, the more passionate you tend to become about it. The best way to really get into a management role is to embrace it and make it an important part of your life.

Update Your Skills

The science of management has come along a long way since you last went to school and a lot has been learned. As a result, it might be a good idea to head back to school temporarily to update your skills. Thanks to things like FPU online degrees, there’s no longer any need to go to a physical college or school to learn more about the craft. It can now all be done over the internet meaning that you can organize your training around your day job.

Find A Mentor

Leading a team is never easy or a process because people are complex creatures. As a result, it can sometimes help to get a mentor to help you through the harder times – and there will be tougher times. Mentors are great for giving advice and well as sharing stories about the leadership trials they faced and how they got through them.

Smooth HR Equals Smooth Business Growth

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In the business world, growth relies on a team of knowledgeable and experienced professionals. Naturally, the quality of the service or product, the success of the marketing campaigns, and the satisfaction of the customers and partners also play an essential role. But there is no denying that a company that is struggling with finding the appropriate talent or retaining essential skills in-house will also experience a slow or even negative growth. After all, a business is made of people, and it is them who create the necessary additional value. Therefore the performance of the HR department matters hugely to support business expansion. Often overlooked or labeled as the department responsible for internal policies only, the HR has essential tasks to perform successfully in the business structure: From a recruitment process that identifies the right candidate for the job to the effective organization of the team structure. And that is without mentioning the abilities to run useful employee retention policies.

At A Recruiting Level

When it comes to the recruitment process, the HR team is responsible for the job advertisement. While it can be designed in collaboration with the relevant manager, in truth, HR is in charge of defining the job perks that are likely to attract candidates. It is essential at this stage to be realistic. Free gym membership, free coffee, fancy IT devices, company cars, and much more, are among the most common perks to be found in job specs. However, most candidates would happily exchange the latest MacBook against flexible time, as their values have evolved. Additionally, when it comes to the choice of the right candidate, most companies now prefer to use the cover letter as a gauge. Yet this doesn’t mean that the resume doesn’t count: It is used to identify the suitable skills and experience.

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At An Organizational Level

StrategyDriven Talent Management ArticleWithin the company, HR continues to make sense of the internal teams for all, especially in large companies where it can be difficult to keep track of everyone. In these organizations, creating an org chart is a mammoth task that needs to be updated with every employee who leaves, changes function, or is hired. However, there are tools, such as the Pingboard org chart software solution, that enable the HR team to complete the chart in a matter of minutes, saving time for more urgent projects. Finally, it is essential that the HR provides each new employee with an information pack and ensures that an introduction day or week – depending on the size of the company – is planned for the newcomer.

Limiting Staff Turnover For A Healthy Structure

Last, but not least, it also falls under the HR responsibility to work on employee retention concepts. This requires regular measurements of job satisfaction, stress level, and team integration, as well as internal communication. It is more expensive to launch a new recruitment process than to try to fix existing issues. With this in mind, the HR needs to help develop recognition models that go beyond monetary rewards, and identify structural issues that turn off new employees, such as excessive micromanagement or disinterested team manager.

Organization chart photo courtesy of Wikimedia

Managing Your International Team Without Letting Go Of The Reins

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Many business owners understand the enormous benefits of having sales teams based in their international territories. Unfortunately, there are also a large number of disadvantages to recruiting internationally. Global operations can feel too distant and remote. Soon you may feel like you have to let go of the heart of your business and allow these international offices to become their own entity. That simply isn’t the case, if you know how to tackle the challenges of remote working effectively.

Managing your international teams can be easier than you think. The situation calls for you to manage your own time so that you can be available to them as they need you. That’s challenging enough in your own territory without having to worry about time zone differences as well. If you hate to travel, or you simply don’t have the time, you need to find other ways to personally communicate with your teams. Fortunately, technology has the answers.

Video conferencing gives you the chance to view the room and better measure the reactions and mood of your distant team. When you summon the entire office to a meeting, it confirms you’re the one in charge and you’re not letting go of the reins. Do this weekly, so you are continuously and reliably available to discuss issues. Try not to treat it just like a meeting, but instead make it less formal. Chat about local issues both there and here. Catch up on a personal level with the key members of your international team.

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Personnel challenges are common when you’re not there in person. It can be too tricky to route all your HR function through your local head office. Instead, you might find it useful to consult experts in global payroll to ensure you are meeting local requirements at home and abroad. You should also outsource your recruitment drives to local providers to ensure you don’t make any cultural or legal faux pas.

Training your remote team can be particularly challenging when you’re not there. You will need excellent resources to guide the team (potentially in their local language) through your preferred business practices. Their understanding and compliance must be tested, so don’t be afraid to set up a couple of exams or practical tests. Again, video calls are very useful here. You can set up a webinar that offers the opportunity for feedback and interaction while you present your ideas. Contracting an educational video production company could be very useful here.

Ultimately, you’re going to need someone to take the lead in your overseas office. This individual may be a sales manager so helping them to become a good leader as well takes some careful planning. They may need your guidance and coaching. You may even become their mentor, but you need to clearly draw the line when it comes to their limitations. You’re the boss, and the buck ultimately stops with you. Make it clear which issues they can seek to resolve themselves, and which must go over their head directly to you.

Managing an overseas team has its challenges, but it’s not impossible. A global presence can help you reach the territories you need with success. How do you manage yours?