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As a business leader, such as a manager or owner, you should be looking to try and save time within your business wherever possible. If you can save time, then you will be able to dedicate this time to other areas of the business.
It can seem difficult to know where you want to start with this. For this reason, we have put together a guide that can help inspire you and give you ideas for time-saving to help increase production within your business, so let’s get started.
5 Ways To Save Time Within Your Business
Distribute Tasks
Delegating out tasks to your employees will be an essential role of a business owner. You need to not only distribute out general tasks, but you will need to distribute out these tasks as a matter of priority. This means that you are allocated out tasks to employees in an order that makes the most sense.
If you are just sending out work all the time, then it is likely that they will complete the work in a random order. If you needed something done sooner rather than later, then this could set back your business and require more time to be used to play catch up.
For this reason, you should ensure you are delegating in a way that works for everyone and ensure you are setting achievable goals and deadlines for employees to reach. You will find that you are wasting valuable time if you don’t distribute tasks effectively and instead try to work on them yourself. Give more responsibility to your employees, and they will show you respect and ensure they are completing work to the expected standard.
Track Time
If you want to gain more of an understanding of how you can save time within your business, then you should start to track time. This means tracking the hours your employees are working and tracking the time it takes to complete certain tasks.
Once you know how time is being spent within your business, you can start to work out what changes you can make to prevent time from being wasted. For example, you may see that too much time is focused on one task, whereas now you know what you need to do to ensure that time is wisely spent.
You could use software to help track the time being spent or just observe. It depends on how much free time you yourself have to work with. The next section will delve more into the benefits of software in general and how it can save time within the business.
Utilise Software
If you want to improve your time management within your business, it will benefit you and your employees if you look into implementing software that can help you save time. Depending on the nature of your business, there will likely be a range of different software applications that you can implement.
For example, if you work in an office, then you will want to ensure that you have all the latest relevant software installed that allows your employees to get on with their work. If they don’t have the right tools at their disposal, then it is only natural that they will take longer to complete tasks, meaning plenty of time could be saved.
Software doesn’t have to be anything too advanced to implement. It could be basic software that all businesses need, or it could be for something more specific to your business. You may find that you or your employees aren’t the most technically aware people in the business world, but that’s ok, as everyone starts somewhere.
You should try to become more computer literate. This means you are more aware of computing terms and know how to use certain software. You can learn more by visiting software provider websites and using some services to show you how easy it is.
For example, you can visit a website that allows you to compress a large PDF file online, making your large files smaller, and easier to share. This saves you time within your business for sharing data and can also assist in your data storage too.
Look Into Automation Solutions
On the topic of utilising software, it is also worth being aware of the benefits of specific software and even hardware that can assist you in automation. If you aren’t aware, the term business automation refers to when something is done without much human input. Essentially, it will be a task done in a quicker and usually more accurate way.
The classic example of automation comes from the 1913 moving assembly line introduced by Henry Ford. This involved a moving belt that moved the car from worker to worker, allowing the work to be taken directly to the worker, saving masses of time and increasing production. Even now, the Ford company is using smart robots to increase the speed of the assembly line further.
This is just a specific automation example, but any business in any industry will be able to look into automation techniques. For example, most businesses will utilise some sort of warehouse or place where they keep their stock.
It’s possible that you have dedicated time out of your employees’ work time to regularly count all of the stock. This can take hours or even days, depending on the size of your business.
There will be stock counting automation software that you can implement. There will be a few different ones available. For example, you could install software that keeps track of what comes in and out, so that when something is sold it is automatically taken off of the stock. To know what sort of automation software will benefit your business, you should look at your competitors and consider attending industry events.
Schedule Breaks
It may sound odd to say, but you may be able to save time and be more productive within your business if you schedule breaks. While your employees may feel like they want to choose their own times for breaks, you should be aware that this could lead to everyone going on break at once, which means there is a period of time where no one is working, therefore seeing no productivity.
Instead, you should try to schedule the break time for your employees to mean there is always work being done at some point. This will help save time within your business and still ensure your employees get the breaks they need.
If nothing else, scheduling these breaks into your workday helps ensure that your employees are getting time off during the day. If you didn’t have a clear-cut system before, then you could be risking your employees not taking their full break, which leads to them losing motivation and not being able to fully recharge their batteries before returning to work.
On a similar line of thinking, you should think more about how you could potentially incentivise your employees to work harder. If you offer chances for more breaks for meeting certain goals, then you may find that they are working harder. When you have an increased amount of production, you will ensure that you are saving crucial time within the small business.
