“DAUNTING BUT NECESSARY”
by Susan Melony, ©2019
(Jan. 3, 2019) — Even if things at your company are running rather smoothly, you can probably think of at least a few areas where it could be functioning even better.
One of the top goals for any business, big and small alike, should be to maximize efficiency so your company can be running to its full potential as a whole. There are also several ways that you can improve efficiency drastically, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
Here are five simple things that can be done to improve efficiency at your big business:
1 – Analyze What’s Going Wrong
First and foremost, and perhaps most critically of all, you need to analyze what’s fundamentally going wrong at your company. Which services are being poorly utilized? Which processes are redundant? Which processes are needlessly complicated?
These are the kinds of questions that you will need. To be asking yourself as you conduct a thorough overview of your company from the inside and out in order to discover exactly what is causing it to be slowed down.
2 – Have A Policy of Open Communication
This is perhaps one of the most overlooked strategies that your company can follow to improve overall efficiency. What exactly is an open door policy?
Basically, it means that your company has a culture of open communication between departments, between staff and management, between employees and team leaders, and so on. And besides encouraging open communication, you also need to encourage collaboration and feedback between those groups as well.
3 – Automate As Much As You Can
Automating time consuming and redundant policies at your company will be one of the very best ways that you can save money while simultaneously boosting employee productivity and efficiency.
Today especially, automating different aspects of your business is becoming easier than ever thanks to technology. A prime example of how you can automate part of your company is to use corporate expense management software to automate the process of collecting, filling, processing, and approving company expense documents.
In the long run, automation simply helps to cut costs and increase business efficiency.
4 – Listen To Employee Feedback
A major component of having a culture of open communication at your business will be to listen to and apply employee feedback.
Remember that your employees are people, which means that they have opinions, which in turn means that they each most likely have good ideas on how your company could improve. To put it simply, listening to your employees can help your business efficiency improve.
What you can do is set up a hub in the building for your company where employees and staff can congregate together to share ideas on improving the company. Alternatively or additionally, you could have a section on your website to allow this as well.
Another idea would be to hold meetings on a regular basis, such as by the week or by the month, where employees or staff members can get together and share ideas.
5 – Set Goals That Are Achievable
Last but not least, you need to set goals that are very realistic and achievable. Setting broad goals is something that most businesses do, but it’s also not good enough. The management team of the company will also need to set smaller and more attainable goals that work your way towards those bigger goals as well.
Even though goal setting may seem like something that belongs on a personal, individual level, the truth is that entire corporations benefit very heavily from the power of goal setting as well. It helps to create motivation for all members of the corporation, and gives you a mark in time at which point members can look forward to and relax temporarily after the goal has been reached.
You can also take this a step further by setting a culture of goal setting in your company in addition to a culture of open communication. Help each employee become goal oriented by having them set work-related goals that they then submit to their supervisors, to be reviewed later upon a designated date.
Improving Efficiency At Your Big Business
Improving your big company’s efficiency as a whole may be a daunting process, but it’s also a necessary one if you want you company to be functioning at its full potential.
Susan thanks for your article. I not only copied your article, I also printed three linked articles.
I don’t have a business, but will apply your info in my job, family matters, in my church and dealing in interactions with others.
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