5 Things you can do to Let Your Business Keep Moving in Your Absence
Go and take a holiday, spend a week off the job. Don’t worry about your company as it can run without you. The only reason this hasn’t happened yet is that you think that it’s too early. You don’t want to go on holiday, to make your business run smoothly. Can your business run without you? It sure can!
The best way to do this is to empower your staff. Let them know it’s not a bad thing to be “okay” with your absence. Encourage and inspire them to make an impact. You will start delegating and educating the right people with your well-motivated and inspired team.
Choose a trusted employee to take over in your absence:
The first step is to find a trusted member of your team who could take over and keep your business running smoothly if one day you were unable to make it work.
Consider having the employee sign a confidentiality agreement (or, if appropriate, a non-compete) before revealing any company secrets to be on the safe side. Your company may be too small to need an in-house full-time network guy but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to hire experts when you need them. Your IT manager should be a professional technologist who knows how to set up, manage and extend your network according to the specific needs of your business.
Always Have a Written Business Plan for Operations:
For the person you have chosen to take over in an emergency, have specific operating instructions in writing. One way to ensure that you don’t miss anything is to pay attention and write down notes as you’re running the business over a day, week, or month.
What are you going to do? What data are you using? Let’s say if your raw material supplier is an ABC Company, write it down with your contact person’s name, number, and email address. It should also contain your account number, where you place orders, and how and when you pay them. The written proposal must be super-specific. The person must be able to grab and go like a playbook.
Practice your Plan Beforehand:
The practice is particularly important because it allows you to see what functions, what needs to be changed, and if important information is lacking. Your selected employee may also use keys, security codes, and other tools to access and operate the company.
It is advised that you should do a practice run when you go out of town for a couple of days. Have your employees take note of any issues that arise if you return to update them.
If you have a plan that you never test or execute, you never know whether or not it works.
Apps Truly are a Lifesaver:
There’s an app for everything from a time monitoring device to a tool that streamlines team onboarding. It’s just a matter of finding the right tools to help you run your business more effectively in this era where technology is beyond us.
Productive resources motivate businesses of any scale and help their workers stay focused on what they do and become the best. There are even free apps, even if they are new in the digital world, with which team leaders or business owners can control their team members or staff, projects and productivity.
Do something same for Your Key Employees:
Becoming an expert in an important area such as database programming is not unusual for one person in a small business. Tell yourself what would happen to your business if that person stopped working for a long period of time or becomes too sick. It’s time to make sure you have a plan if the company implications are too gruesome to imagine. If it is not possible to train a second employee or report the duties of the employee for an immediate replacement, it may be wise to invest in life insurance for workers who are truly an asset for your company.
Conclusion:
Nothing is guaranteed in life, and for small business owners, it gets double trouble if one is not prepared enough. In many cases, though, if you obey these simple rules to remain ready, you will fend off trouble.
What plans do you have to make sure your business remains up and running?
