Accountancy. Recruitment. Marketing. Events planning. Some companies have individual staff members and even departments dedicated to these roles. However, many business owners will instead choose to take on all these roles themselves on top of the core tasks of their job.
On top of leaving very little free time, taking on too many roles could result in tasks being rushed, wires being crossed or important responsibilities being neglected all together. This can have serious effects on the productivity and reputation of your business – not to mention your physical and mental health. If you feel you’re juggling too many roles, here is how you can take the pressure off.
Learn to delegate
If you have staff, you may not be giving them enough responsibility. This may be an issue of trust or it could be a case of not wanting to put too much pressure on your employees.
Either way, you may need to bite the bullet and start delegating some small tasks to relieve the pressure off yourself. Start by delegating low-responsibility tasks and build up from there. Consider the small tasks that take up a lot of your time such as replying to emails or phone calls.
Outsource
Another alternative is to outsource tasks. This involves paying another company to take care of them. There are many companies such as Akshar Accountants that can handle your book-keeping, whilst various marketing companies can handle tasks such as social media and SEO.
You can pretty much outsource anything nowadays from replying to emails to recording and handling employee absence. You can rest assured that these tasks will be professionally handled and it will be far cheaper than hiring extra full-time staff to take on the job.
Structure your time
Rather than working on lots of tasks at once, it could be worth dividing your time up so that you’re working on one task at a time. Prioritise certain tasks and try to keep to deadlines to stop tasks over-running. Spare enough time for interruptions such as phone calls or queries from staff, or encourage others to handle these interruptions.
You could even create a time each day in which you don’t want to be disturbed unless for emergencies. That said, you shouldn’t become so engrossed in your work that you cut yourself off from your employees.
Speed up progress with tech
Start using technology to make tasks quicker where possible. Software such as Intuit QuickBooks could help to speed up accounting if you’re still relying on Excel or worse paper records.
You may also be able to use mass-mailing software such as MailChimp for email marketing. On top of this, start using video-communication instead of physically traveling to meetings.
Know when you’ve reached your workload limit
If you’re busy, it’s usually a sign that business is going well. However, are you getting too much business to handle? At this point, you need to take a decision to either stop taking on more work or expand.
Expanding could be expensive – it could involving hiring lots of experienced staff and doing some training, on top of potentially upgrading premises and investing in better technology. However, it could help take your business to the next level.
Pin and Share – Thanks
- This post was written for Morning Business Chat by an outside source.
