No matter what your size your business is, nothing would have prepared you for the previous year and a half. The turnover of your company will have been impacted, along with the turnover of staff. Some people just left because of stress, others because of financial implications and many didn’t feel safe. It was certainly a weird year. However, now is the time to act. With employees coming back to work, it is now time to ensure you can release the pressure on your staff. Here are 5 ways you can help them.
Listen to your employees
Listening to your employees is important but even more so now. If your company has been affected by sales and turnover (increase OR decrease), then workloads will have shifted. If people have been made redundant or are on the furlough scheme, then other members of staff will be affected.
Do not allow your staff to be overloaded. Have weekly or bi-weekly meetings to ensure everybody is getting on okay. Be creative and listen to what they are saying. If a member of staff tells you that they have too much on then you need to figure out if it is a priority. If it is not important, tell them to do it when they have the time. Should it be an important task, see if someone else can help.
There is nothing worse than a stressed and overworked employee for your business. Their mental health matters, so listen to them.
Outsource certain tasks
Following on from workload discussions, one of the best ways to relieve pressure on your staff is to outsource some of the work. The two most popular outsourcing niches are Marketing and Accounting and complex work such as digital product development. Rather than having your staff go through the difficult work of research, design and development, it’d be better to give the task to a company like Pixelfield.
Obviously, if you have a strong marketing team who are well placed to deal with their workload, then do not outsource for the sake of it. Marketing can be kept in house as deals, branding and all other things are important to your business, and you want to keep them under your control.
Get professional help for your payroll
Payroll and finance is another thing entirely. This could be the biggest decision you make in terms of reducing stress and pressure on your staff. Regardless of the size of your business, the chances are your HR team have taken on some of the financial dealings in terms of employee wages. They are likely stressed with all the turnover of staff and bonuses now, on top of everything else that COVID has brought. HR teams have gone into overdrive. There are simple and easy solutions though. You can get a company like Azets to manage your payroll. These companies are there to help big businesses reduce workload pressure and stress. Most importantly, employee wages are something you want done right, so it can be best to leave it to the professionals.
Rely on your network around you
Perhaps the best piece of advice overall is to know that you are not alone. In any sense of the word, you should not be left to feel helpless. Whether it is your friends that can help you out when you lean on them for advice, or even the Government, there are people that can offer tips to help you reduce the workload.
Take away these important points and you should have a happier and more productive workforce. HR don’t need to be dealing with payroll anymore so you can outsource that. Your marketing team are doing a great job but if they need a hand, they will tell you.
Go digital
That is not to say that you should replace your employees with digital or virtual services, rather you can make their life easier by switching to digital services. Technology has allowed for the streamlining and efficiency of many processes in the workplace. Not to mention, made many tasks considerably easier. Yet, a surprisingly large proportion of digital services are not actually being utilised.
If you are still operating a paper system, go digital. Digitise your files, to-do list and your meetings. You can even digitise your premises maintenance with resources such as SFG20. It may require an upfront cost, maybe a dedication of time to training and implementing new systems but it will be an investment that your employees, and profit margin, will thank you for.
Above all else, listen to your employees.
