Every year brings new challenges to business owners. If you’re reaping the rewards of a growing company, then it could be time to start considering how you’re going to keep growing. Perhaps you’re already crowded at your current premises. As businesses develop, more staff are employed, more complex systems are purchased, and more paperwork than ever starts to pile up. Whether you choose to move the business to more spacious accommodation or not, it could be time to address your assets and have a spring clean. Or perhaps it’s time for ideal cleaning.
Filing
Over the years, paper-based documents can overwhelm any filing cabinets you may have. There are plenty of new systems available that can quickly and easily scan and catalog your documents for future access. Of course, if your business is ‘analog’ this may not solve the problem! But even print firms and advertisers store emails, digital files, and other computer-based data. If your workplace server is struggling, you may need to find a hard drive degausser to clear unwanted data or expand your capacity.
Staffing
Rapid expansion can convince some company owners to keep employing more and more staff. However, if your business reaches a plateau in new orders, you may suddenly find yourself with more employees than is necessary. Your HR and Operations Manager should get together and audit the company for efficiency. Your employees may be your most valuable assets, but they can also be the most expensive. Check everyone is working to full capacity and peak efficiency.
Working Space
Could your offices fit more people and workstations with a different layout? When was the last time you addressed the working environment for each department? Chances are your employees would love the opportunity to give you some feedback and suggestions. If the office has become quite busy, it may be long overdue. Home or remote working is very easy to adopt these days. Do all your staff really need to be here every day of the week, or can they desk-share by using the office on alternate days? Maybe allocating space to big meeting rooms is a better approach for when you are all together?
Public Facing
When was the last time you spent quality time with your branding officer? If your business is in a competitive marketplace, you need to make sure the brand is fresh. The customer-facing employees you recruit should also be fresh, energetic, and full of great ideas to engage customers. If uniforms look tired and dated, replace them. If your reception area looks 1990s then bring in an interior designer to bring it up to date. Change the music on your call-holding service. Put up your latest awards and new recruit photos.
Website
Your website is the first place any supplier, business partner, or customer is going to go. It has to be fresh and free of old, irrelevant clutter. Search engines love plenty of new, informative content. So get blogging, tidy up the branding, and remove irrelevant product pages. There is nothing wrong with rewriting old content and including new photos, but don’t leave pages to go stale and out of date. Happy cleaning.
