How To Make Your Business More Efficient

Business owners must always be able to adopt a positive outlook to their work; as this attitude promotes high morale across the board, increases productivity, and allows for problems to be resolved quickly and without stress. However, the best business owners are also realistic, meaning they’re able to identify any problems they are encountering in their daily practices that may be hindering their success. 

One of the biggest challenges that modern businesses face is a lack of efficiency. After all, this impacts just about every area of your business, wasting time, resources, and money. In fact, a recent study found that “almost a third of your business’ total revenue can be lost because of inefficient practices and processes.”

With that in mind, here are some top tips you can use to make your business more efficient. 

• Invest in the right software and systems. The right software is key to improving efficiency within your business. For example, a SharePoint document management system can heighten efficiency by eliminating administrative errors. They also serve as a gateway to better collaboration across departments, as it enables a team member to quickly access and edit documents, without having to wait hours to be given access permission or to receive the files over email. 

• Create a productive work environment. Productivity and efficiency go hand in hand, meaning you must take this as an opportunity to create a productive work environment. The easiest way to achieve this goal is to first identify the causes of poor productivity. For example, low productivity rates could be caused by the fact that employees are not given the appropriate training or support when they first join the team, indicating that you should develop new employee training and education programs. 

• Promote good employee wellbeing. Employee wellbeing also plays a role in your overall productivity and efficiency, as happy employees are more likely to reach their goals than those who feel demotivated or underappreciated. As such, you should find as many ways as possible to promote employee wellness. Building a HR team is one of the easiest ways you can better support employee productivity as your staff now feel as though there is an appropriate support system in place for them to rely on. You should also work on developing a wellness program. For example, you could put your team in touch with a wellness coach.  

• Reduce your workload. Poor efficiency is often the product of burnout, where employees have too much work to do and therefore cannot complete any of their tasks to the desired standard. Thankfully, there are various ways in which you can reduce employee workload, without having to turn down customers. To begin with, you could focus on growing your team and sourcing new talent to cope with a growing customer base. However, you can also learn how to outsource the right way. For example, you could outsource certain tasks that lie outside of your employees’ expertise, such as accounting and administration, so they can focus on what they are good at. 

• Put together a  daily to-do list. While the concept of a ‘to-do’ list may seem outdated, they’re a great way to manage your time and stay on top of deadlines. As such, you should spend a few minutes each morning writing down your goals for the day and prioritizing tasks that may be time-sensitive. While it may be tempting to conquer the more demanding tasks later in the day, it’s actually far better to tackle these projects first thing in the morning. After all, if they prove to be time or labor-intensive, you’ve got more time to work through them. Additionally, studies suggest that we are actually more productive in the morning than later in the day. 

• Eliminating unnecessary meetings. We’ve all sat through countless meetings that could really have been an email, and while this may seem like nothing more than a minor annoyance, they could also derail your efficiency for the rest of the day. After all, attending unnecessary meetings means that your team loses an hour (or longer) of their time that could be better spent elsewhere. Boring and unnecessary meetings also lead to a decrease in employee morale, as they feel as though their time and energy is not being respected. As a result, they’re likely to be less productive and efficient in the time following the meeting. As such, you should only schedule meetings when they are absolutely necessary, and ensure that only the people who need to be there are in attendance.