There’s one thing all the owners of successful businesses have in common – the ability to look at the wider picture and identify ways of helping their small business grow, whether this means learning how to delegate or adopting the latest technology. A recent study showed that the owners of many small and medium companies spend up to 120 days per year on routine admin tasks. As a business owner, if you are spending much of your time answering emails and dealing with invoices, you will have less time to devote to developing your business plan. Getting your office organised will not only save you time and create a pleasant working environment but will also boost your profits: read on to discover our top office management techniques to help you develop your business to the next level.
1. Create routines for office management – and make sure everyone sticks to them
Create routines for handling your paperwork. Prioritise digital communications such as emails and either act on them immediately or flag them for future attention and track and file every piece of paper that comes into the office. Make sure that regular maintenance on office equipment is carried out in a timely manner and also that everyone in the office knows who to call to fix the problem if a glitch arises with your equipment.
2. Delineate responsibilities clearly
Make sure that things get done by making your employees accountable: ensure that everyone knows who is responsible for what. Make one person responsible for all the purchasing for your office, for example, and ask your employees to request supplies by emailing them or by placing a handwritten list in a prominent place where others can add their own requests. The same principle applies to IT admin: make a trusted person responsible for the security of your system and keeping tabs on items such as software, accounts and passwords, as well as assigning permissions and adding and deleting users.
3. Make sure your records are kept accurately and updates regularly
Keeping accurate records is one of the most basic office management techniques and sounds straightforward enough, but it’s essential to keep your customer database up to date and easily accessible. When you get a new customer, make sure that their details are entered onto your database immediately. Of course, you should also ensure that your handling of customer information complies with the new GDPR regulations.
4. Optimise your office layout
One of the most important office management techniques is to arrange your office to maximise space and efficiency, making it a better place to work. Keep your office layout as streamlined and spacious as possible. Brainstorm your staff for their ideas, take a walk around and try to look at it with fresh eyes: do you have to detour around obstacles or run the risk of tripping over things? Make the most of the latest technology. Simply by replacing an old paper visitor’s book with a modern visitor management system such as Visipoint, you give visitors a good first impression of your reception area as well as freeing up staff for all the other demands on their time.
5. Schedule tedious work into your diary
It’s all too easy to procrastinate when dealing with boring routine tasks such as filing, making cold calls and bookkeeping but your business won’t run smoothly unless you keep up to date with this tedious work. If you’re an owner of a small business and are not able to delegate these tasks to someone else, build space in your schedule – just a morning or an afternoon once a week may be enough – to tackle them. Do this regularly and it will soon become part of your good office management routine.
6. Hire outside help
One of today’s office management techniques that you may not have thought of is to reduce some of the time you spend on admin by outsourcing or delegating certain tasks. For example, you can hire a social media company to run Facebook or Twitter accounts for your business, highlighting your promotions and advertising campaigns and updating your blogs and newsletters with fresh content.
7. Prioritise business planning
When you’re running your own business, you’re often so busy acting and reacting to daily events that it can be difficult to find time for forward planning. One of the key office management techniques employed by successful entrepreneurs is to schedule time every day for setting goals and targets for growth. If you have employees, you should involve them in your planning, whether in a casual chat or a more formal meeting.
You’ll soon see the difference
Don’t allow a disorganised office get in the way of growing your business: as soon as you start to apply the principles of good office management, your business will take off to the next level and you will reap the benefits. The Visipoint visitor management system is a great solution to many of your office management problems: to find out more, please call us on +44 (0) 191 341 0016 or visit https://www.visipoint.net/ where a member of the team will respond to your enquiries via live chat.