When you’re running a business, you can often feel as though you need to choose between spending money and keeping up the quality of goods or services that your business offers. Letting employees go might save money, but it can also shift a burden onto remaining employees that means decreased efficiency. It’s better to look for solutions that can lead to improvements in your spending and in what you can offer your clients or customers. While it’s true that you may need to spend more money up front sometimes, that expenditure should save you money or increase your profits in the long run. Below are several ways that you can accomplish both objectives.
GPS for Your Fleet
If your business runs a fleet and you haven’t explored GPS solutions for safety and cutting costs, you may be leaving money on the table. GPS systems are increasingly helpful at providing real-world savings, keeping your drivers safe and protecting your assets. They can help your fleet manager address inefficiencies and solve other challenges.
Explore Virtual Options
There are several ways to save by looking at digital solutions. First, if you aim for a paperless workplace, you’ll save on printing, copying and storage costs. You might also want to look to having a remote workforce some or all of the time. This can save you money on overhead in the office and can also give you the opportunity to attract top talent without geographical limitations.
In addition, with more of the workforce opting to work from home, this is becoming a desirable perk that you may want to offer to remain competitive. If you are concerned about quality of work, many find that their work is more focused and efficient without the distractions of a busy office around them. Even if a fully or partly virtual office isn’t feasible for your business, you may want to consider whether any business trips could be replaced by video conferencing instead.
Audit Your Efficiency
Shifting the burden of extra work onto employees by laying others off is generally not a solution that you can sustain, but it is worth taking a careful look at the different parts of your business to determine whether you are operating at maximum efficiency. In an effort to be more productive as a business founder consider the strategies you employ regarding managing employee time. Look at meetings to make sure you are using time as wisely as possible. Meetings that should have been emails has become something of a cliche, but that’s because they are so common.
Keep in mind that you can’t expect 100% productivity 100% of the time, but you may find that there are underutilized employees that you can assign additional tasks to or whose positions might need to be eliminated. It’s also useful to talk to supervisors and employees themselves, who may have more granular insights into their workflow that you’re unaware of. An employee might appear to be idle for long stretches of time because of delays upstream or because they’re saddled with software that is out of date and due for an upgrade.
