Anyone who runs a business, whether large or small, feels like there are not enough hours in the day to do everything you need to do. There are meetings to attend, clients to liaise with, and the future of the company to think about. With so much going on, no one can blame you for feeling exhausted.
So what can you do? While there’s no way to magic more hours into your day (yet), there are options for you to explore. If you feel overwhelmed with work, along with everything else you need to do every day, here’s how to make some changes that will benefit your company and yourself.
Consider Outsourcing
If you’re not yet on the outsource train, then what are you playing at? Outsourcing is a spectacular way for you to find more time and save money while still getting the superb results you’re used to. There’s no limit to the sort of services you can explore, from law firm marketing to payroll, to content creation.
By investing in a reliable outsourcing firm, you will be able to focus your energy elsewhere, which gives you more opportunity to indulge in your creativity and perhaps manage to increase profits that would otherwise be lost to competitors.
Prioritize Your Tasks
A quick way to find yourself with more time is to create a list of the tasks you need to accomplish each day. There are many different ways to do this, such as ordering them from the most pressing to least pressing and vice versa. Whichever you choose, the rush you feel from crossing tasks off your list will give you the motivation to keep going.
By writing a To-Do list, it allows you to visualize your day better so you can tackle everything. While you can start with the more straightforward demands, this might not always be ideal, as there is any number of delays which could throw you off your game. Because of this, it’s arguably more efficient to start with the more challenging tasks and sprinkle in smaller jobs in between to give yourself a break.
Know When to Switch Off
Speaking of taking breaks, humans were not designed to work, work, work all day long without stopping. The recommended amount of time to work is 52 minutes with a 17-minute break, and from here you can separate yourself from your work for 5 minutes before getting back at it.
It will also be beneficial to give yourself a set finish time. You won’t be able to adhere to this every day, but it should push you to get your work done on time and still leave time in the evening for family, exercise, and you-time, too.
All the Time in the World
It may take a while for you to get to grips with your new schedule, however, once you manage to perfect it, you’ll find yourself with enough time to do everything you want. From here, you can finally get back to enjoying your time at work, your time at home, and any time you wish to do whatever you please without feeling guilty.
If you feel as though your team retention rate isn’t as good as it could be, or if you are concerned about your team leaving your company for your competitor then there are a few things that you can do to try and help yourself.
Here’s why Employee Retention is Important
Employee retention is a critical issue that so many companies have to deal with. After all, you need to make sure that you are able to compete in the tight economy and you also need to make sure that your team are loyal too. If you spend half of your time and your budget seeking out employees, then this will impact your work and you may even find that you are not as efficient as you could be either. Luckily, there are ways that you can get around this and that’s by making the team you have now feel more appreciated.
Start with the Recruitment Process
Retention starts from the beginning. You first need to identify which aspects of culture and strategy you would like to emphasise before you start seeking the right qualities in your candidates. The longer someone stays with your company, the more productive they will be over time. You need to look at things in the long-run and you also need to make sure that you take the right steps at all times. If you don’t then you may find that your work production suffers and that you also end up impacting your own success.
Identify people Who Can Stay on Course
How can you choose people who are more likely to stay with your company? There are a few indicators that you can look out for before you even hire your candidate. Think about it, have they worked with the same company for years? Do they take part in team sports? Are they committed to volunteer work? All of these options are very good signs as they show that they are passionate and that they are willing to stick things out. If you see someone who jumps from job to job, then you may be taking a bit of a gamble by hiring them. You might find it hard to retain them and this can cost you dearly in the future.
Education
Promoting from within helps to provide a clear career path and it also gives your employees even more responsibility too. It even makes your team feel as though they are a crucial part of your company’s overall success. Of course, you do need to make sure that you understand promotions go hand in hand with your employee’s development and their education. It doesn’t matter whether you put them through corporate training or whether you put them through tuition reimbursement because you need to do everything you can to make sure that you are giving them the tools they need to excel as professionals. Learning should never be an afterthought.
Focus on Offering the Right Benefits
Benefits and perks really do play a massive part in keeping your team happy. It does help to offer health benefits as standard. If you aren’t doing this or if you want to find out more then check out Jobfit Health Group. Of course, if you want to take things to that next level then you need to make sure that you offer some kind of stock option or even financial reward. Flexible working schedules or even the option to work remotely will help your team out considerably as well. If you want, you might also want to think about offering a generous leave policy as well. This will go a long way to making your team feel valued and it will also help them to feel much more appreciated in the workplace. If you make the point of not offering your team leave or if you tell them that they need to take unpaid leave, then it may be that they become resentful or that they are distracted. This would then cause your otherwise satisfied employee to turn to other options and this can affect your company.
Be Transparent
Creating an open level of communication between your management and your employees can really help you to foster a high level of communication. It can also help your team to have a shared purpose too. Regular meetings where your team can ask questions can benefit everyone. If you want to take things to that next level, then you might also want to think about having an open-door policy too. When you do, you can then give your team the chance to ask questions and you also give them the chance to speak frankly about management. This will help them to grow and it will also help you to better meet their needs.
Leverage Tech
Another approach would be for you to use some kind of polling tool. This will send out a question to your workforce at set intervals. The answers that your team give can then be tallied anonymously. Of course, everyone knows that the world of business is constantly transforming so you have to make sure that you are changing with it. It may be that your team need more from you than they once did, or even that they need a more efficient way of working. The more open and transparent you can be, the more you can help your team overall so make sure that you keep this in mind.
Put your Data and AI to Work
Organisations really have incredible amounts of data about their employees available. If you want to help yourself here, then you need to find out who is most likely to leave so that you can stop them. On the surface, you might not be able to see why someone is leaving and their departure might seem odd. That being said, sometimes it’s possible for you to get to the root of the problem and if you ask them and talk to them, then you can easily put the right measures in place. If you have a certain quarter that is most popular for people leaving, then there could be a reason for this. For example, people might wait until New Year before handing in their resignation because it’s right after the Christmas period. If you look closer at this then it may be possible for you to change that. After all, it might be that you aren’t paying your team enough throughout the year or even that you are not giving them the support they need throughout the year. Take commute time for example. You might not think that this affects your team’s happiness or even their engagement, but at the end of the day, if their commute is an hour to work and then an hour home again, they may be missing out on valuable time with their friends and family. If you want to stop this, then it may be a good idea for you to offer your team some flexible working hours. When you do you can then help to address the pain points overall. If you are able to relax your vacation day policy, then this can really help your team to spend more time with their family and sometimes this is exactly what they need.
Remove Gruelling Team Activities
If you put your team through a health or physical exam every single year when it’s not required, then you may be putting them through needless stress. If you ask them to work late so that you can impress clients but don’t give them anything extra in return, then this can also be gruelling for them and although they might not say anything at first, eventually you may find that they end up resenting your company as a result. One way for you to stop this would be for you to work with them and to also make sure that they are happy with the way that things are going. As mentioned above, anonymous surveys are ideal here and you would be surprised at how much insight it can give you into their lives.
Match your Competition
If someone hands in their resignation, then ask them why they are leaving. Usually your team members will be more than happy to tell you the reason and they can also work with you while you spend the two weeks’ notice period trying to fill their position too. If it turns out that your team are leaving for another company because they pay more, demand less hours or have a better infrastructure overall then this is exactly what you need to be improving within your own business. If you don’t then you may find that the problem only gets worse and that you are the one who ends up paying for it.
So all in all, there are many things that you can do to help your team and if you take your time to understand them, then you can be sure to see an increase in your retention rate.
Steve Jobs famously flunked out of Reed College before finishing his degree so that he could pursue a career in computers.
He turned out fine, didn’t he?
So surely that means that it’s okay for entrepreneurs to forgo education and just dive right in?
Not so fast.
You Are Not Steve Jobs
This argument is a little bit like the argument that people sometimes trot out when it comes to living a long time. A 105-year-old grandmother will say something like “I’ve been drinking, smoking and eating a pound of deep-fried bacon every day, and I’m fine!” People will then take that as meaning that it’s okay to go out and do all those things because, well, you die when you die.
Of course, that 105-year-old grandmother is the exception, not the rule. Sure, SHE is fine, but not the thousand other people who died young because they engaged in dangerous lifestyle habits. It’s called survivor bias.
The same is true of Steve Jobs. Just like our hypothetical grandmother, he was the freak, not the rule. Steve Jobs had a personality that meant that he was almost built to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He was ambitious to a fault, brash, ruthless and utterly unshakeable. Nothing seemed to phase the man.
Steve Jobs wasn’t an average human being. He was an outlier on many fronts. Saying that it’s okay not to get an education because he founded the most successful company without completing college is a step too far. Most people NEED training to prepare them for the vicissitudes of the market.
Sorry, You Probably Still Need An Education
Are you the next Steve Jobs? If so, then this post isn’t for you.
If, however, you’re just a regular person who wants to experience the long-term benefits of being a CEO, then you should read what follows. It turns out that most entrepreneurs don’t forget about education to pursue their companies; they do both.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had a business coach. So too did Warren Buffett, as did Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square fame.
There’s a belief that entrepreneurs don’t need an education and that getting one actually holds you back. But when you investigate the lives of the most successful people on Earth, you soon discover that they do nothing but learn.
Billionaire financial maniac George Soros, for instance, spends around eight hours a day thinking, researching and developing his theories. Microsoft founder Bill Gates spends practically every waking hour reading about how to build better toilets more cheaply in Africa. (Lack of toilets are a big problem over there). Even small-time CEOs put time aside to research the latest happenings related to their industry so that they can stay up to date.
In many ways, being an entrepreneur is a race for knowledge. You’re trying to unearth new insights faster than anyone else so that you can use them for market advantage. Thus education is actually an invaluable tool, not something that you can dismiss out of hand.
