What if some of the best advice about running your company came from a superhero movie?
In Wonder Woman 1984, Maxwell Lord (played by the charismatic Pedro Pascal) has a simple motto: “Life is good, but it can be better.” How does this apply to your company? Simple: Business is good, but it can always be better!
One of the best ways to improve your business is to improve your company workflow. How, though, can you begin improving workflow as early as today? Keep reading to discover 5 amazing ideas!
1. Frequent Auditing
Improving company workflow is about finding more efficient ways for everyone to complete their assigned tasks. However, you can’t take any action until you know what you need to improve.
That’s why the first step in improving company workflow is auditing. You must regularly audit your workflows in order to identify any gaps. From there, you can brainstorm creative ways to fill these gaps and make your company more productive and efficient than ever.
It’s important to conduct such an audit each year so you can improve workflow on an annual basis.
2. Separate and Explicit Duties
The secret to good leadership is delegating responsibilities. Most of the time, creating a better company workflow simply means improving your delegation.
For example, it’s important for each worker to have separate and explicit duties. This ensures that nobody is doing redundant work or otherwise getting in each other’s way.
Furthermore, you need to delegate the most important responsibilities to your best leaders. These leaders can help improve workflow in the areas they supervise. Your workers should have easy access to these leaders (such as with an open-door policy) to quickly get answers to any of their burning questions that may be impeding workflow.
3. Training Focused on Optimization
Most workflow problems begin with employee training. That is because businesses typically focus only on training workers to complete specific tasks. If you really want to improve company workflow, it’s important to integrate workflow optimization into the training process.
What does that mean? Employees should understand your KPIs (more on this later) and how their specific roles will help your company meet goals. They should also be trained in specific procedures to deal with everything from common problems to major emergencies. If you have needs that can’t be met by your current workforce, you can always use business process outsourcing.
Ultimately, your workplace should function like a well-oiled machine, which means each employee must understand both their own responsibilities and how their performance affects the entire company.
4. Set Key Metrics
Is your company moving closer toward its goals or further away from them? Until you establish key performance indicators, it’s impossible to tell.
Chances are you already have KPIs in place. However, it is vitally important to update all of your key metrics after you complete your workflow audit. This helps you re-prioritize different projects based on your changing priorities.
Once you establish your new key metrics, make sure to invest in the tools and software necessary to track your progress. In addition to helping your company meet its KPIs, these tools and software can help you reward employees who go above and beyond. Cultivating employee loyalty and motivation in this way is just one more way you can boost company workflow.
5. Encourage Breaks
One workplace cliché we’ve all heard is “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.” The message is simple: Rather than taking breaks, employees should invest all of their spare time and energy in the company.
But would you believe this cliché is actually doing harm to your company? Even though you have likely automated as much as you can (a key aspect to improving workflow), you still need creative human minds to handle the most important parts of your business. Simply put, working your employees relentlessly will dull the very creativity you are counting on!
Instead, schedule frequent breaks and encourage employees to take advantage of them. This helps workers relax and recharge so they can give 110% to their assigned duties. As a bonus, frequent breaks means employees are less likely to get distracted by things like text messages and social media when they are supposed to be working.
Become Part of a Winning Team
Now you know how to improve company workflow. But do you know how to find a company that values your talent, passion, and drive to succeed?
Here at Confie, we are always looking for entrepreneurs who are willing to join our team or start their own exciting franchise. If you’re ready to see what Confie can do, all you have to do is contact us today or call us at (714) 252-2500.
