October 22, 2024
Business owners need to have a wide range of skills, and organisational skills should be near the top of the list. Even if you run a side hustle or a small business from home, being organised will help you to schedule your workday well and reach your goals. The same applies to contractors trying to hit their deadlines, and larger companies trying to manage multiple employees and projects.
Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a quick fix when it comes to being more organised. But once you have all of your ducks in a row, you will be more prepared for whatever the business world has to throw at your company.
This article explores why an organised working environment is so important and how you can improve matters.
One of the primary reasons to improve your business’s organisational skills is to become more trustworthy and reliable to your clients. If your projects are consistently late or, even worse, forgotten about and then rushed so they’re low quality, your relationship with your clients will suffer.
However, if a client knows that your company will deliver a product or service when you say you will, they will be more likely to use your services in the future. This good reputation can spread as well.
Word of mouth is a powerful tool, especially when it’s positive towards your company. Good reviews encourage more people to do business with your company, which can boost your profits and ability to grow and thrive.
There is more to delivering a great product or service than being organised, but it does make things a lot easier in the long run. Also, it’s one of the most recognisable signs of professionalism or competency.
Unfortunately, it’s much more difficult to build a good name for your company than to tear it down. So you need to maintain a consistent level of professionalism. If something does go wrong, be transparent about it and work immediately to fix the problem.
Whether your company is manufacturing products or delivering a service, efficiency is one of the best ways to improve your profit margin. The adage “time is money” is especially true in business. The longer something takes, the more money it costs. You might also have to use other resources, all of which cost time and money to acquire.
This is for the simple reason that the time spent doing one task could have been spent doing something else that also earns money. Also, employees are paid by the hour, so you have to consider manpower when you try to work out the costs of a project.
Interestingly, organisation is an investment of your time and sometimes money. Spending the time to plan and organise a project might seem less efficient than just jumping into it. But those plans will save you so much time in the future.
With a plan, you can work through different scenarios and make sure everyone on the team knows what they need to do and when. If a problem comes up, it’s okay, you’ve planned for it. A good plan should allow for flexibility and innovation, but without being too vague and undefined.
Another way to boost efficiency and productivity is by shifting some tasks to AI tools. Again, this requires some organisation, but it can help in the long run. AI can be controversial, but the best way to use it is to make sure that you use AI for the specific tasks that it excels at.
For example, repetitive tasks like data entry can be automated by AI. It will be completed far more quickly than if a human was inputting data, and the cost of the software is far less than the salary of an employee. Your employees can then work on more complex tasks.
On a related note, the more employees you have, the more complicated and potentially bloated your company will become. This can lead to a managerial headache, because it’s far more difficult to organise multiple teams of people than just yourself or a small group of people.
As your company grows, the importance of management will rise. As well as hiring people for specific tasks and roles, it’s worth considering people with managerial experience. Ideally, you want to hire managers who know enough about your industry to effectively manage it, but the important thing is that they can handle the people in their team.
It’s also important to find a balance between too many employees and not enough employees. A lean team has obvious benefits. It’s less expensive than hiring too many people, and everyone knows what everyone else is doing. However, it’s not a good idea to have a completely skeleton crew.
One of the things to bear in mind when running a business is the ability to be flexible. Things do crop up and this can stumble a team that’s too small to handle a situation. For example, if one person falls ill, does your entire company grind to a halt? What about if two people aren’t well or are on holiday?
Workloads can vary, and sometimes you can get a lot of orders all at once. Is your company able to handle a more demanding workload than usual?
Crunch time is a fact of business. There will be times when your numbers are lower than normal, deadlines are piling up, and people will have to work especially hard to get the projects done. But these times should be the exception, not the rule.
If your employees are all consistently doing the work of two people each, they will get burnt out and they will look for other opportunities. So listen to your employees if they say they need extra hands and consider hiring managerial staff to make the workflow run more smoothly.
In some cases, it can be helpful to promote someone to a management position. You will then have a manager who understands the projects and the role. But there are different skills involved in managing employees, so make sure that employee is able to meet the challenge.
So far in this article we’ve mentioned a few times that surprises can and will crop up. It doesn’t matter how great you are at planning, something will happen that your company doesn’t expect. But just because you don’t expect it, it doesn’t mean you can’t be prepared for it.
For example, some audits and inspections are surprises by design. If a restaurant knew when they were going to be inspected every single time, they would be able to prepare every single time. It’s much easier to be perfect for a week than for an extended period of time.
Being organised means that your company will be able to ace your BRC audit and other audits and inspections, even when they’re not expected.
Make sure that you have all the information you need at all times. Management software allows you to digitise a lot of your information, which is incredibly useful for these situations. If everything is digitised, your documents are all in one place and are easier to access as and when you need them.
Of course, audits aren’t the only unpleasant surprise that your business might encounter. Disasters, crime, and world events can rock companies that aren’t prepared. The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 was a completely unprecedented event for individuals and businesses around the world, and the companies that survived were the companies that were able to adjust quickly and continue operating.
One of the biggest pitfalls a company can face is unsustainable growth. This is partly a failing of planning and being organised.
Growth is, generally, a good thing. As your company grows, it can take on more opportunities, earn more profit, and continue to grow. This allows you to earn more and support your household, your company, and your employees.
But unsustainable growth can be a problem. Sometimes your company encounters positive surprises. For example, you might suddenly become a lot more popular and find more demand for your products.
This might encourage you to quickly hire more employees and increase your production chain to meet these extra demands. But if that boom slows down, your company is suddenly in a worse position. It’s more expensive to run, quality might dip, and you haven’t necessarily hired the right people or grown in the right way.
So, instead of shooting forward in growth, build your company from the foundation up. As you grow, make mindful growth decisions and investments. Think about the consequences of each business decision. Hire the right people, rather than the people you stumble upon.
Above all else, shore up your management strategies and make sure that your company is properly organised. This will allow your company to grow to further successes without falling into any pitfalls or traps.
