Areas like human resources and company culture require attention if a business is going to succeed. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for small businesses to give these areas their proper attention.
Tight budgets, finite schedules, and limited manpower can make many areas of business feel like frills that only larger operations can tend to.
The problem is, often success or failure hinges on addressing at least some of these peripheral needs. If you’re a small business owner or manager, here are a few key areas that need more of your attention — as well as some suggestions for how to do so, even with limited resources.
1. Pay Attention to Benefits
It’s easy to see benefits as a perk reserved for larger companies with plenty of cash to spend. But putting things like a good benefits package on the back burner to attend to “later on when you’ve grown” can ultimately undermine that very growth that you’re looking for.
Modern employees tend to be well informed when it comes to compensation — and how it compares to your competition. With an ever-expanding job market, thanks to things like remote work, employees have never had more employment opportunities. This is especially true for those with a high degree of talent and experience that you want to keep around.
The recent Great Resignation showed how quickly employees are willing to abandon one employer to move to the next. If your employees don’t feel well cared for, it leaves the door open for a more consistent flow of employee turnover.
This can be detrimental to long-term growth. Initially, it saps your monetary resources, as it costs thousands of dollars on average per hire to replace employees. Even when you’ve replaced employees, the need to train them, explain your internal infrastructure, and help them build a rapport with your team is time-consuming.
Investing in a good benefits package is an effective way to retain employees. It goes beyond mere dollar figures and salaries and shows them that you’re invested in their well-being.
There are many ways that you can create a competitive benefits package, even as a small business. Some benefits are simple, such as allowing your employees to work remotely.
With modern tech and the rise of third-party service providers, you can also address many traditionally complex benefits with ease. For example, there are small business 401k package providers that can do the heavy lifting for minimal cost.
2. Address All of Your Payroll Needs
Some areas of business need an extra dose of attention not because they’re neglected but because they’re getting too much attention already. One of these is payroll.
Small business payroll can be a demanding activity. Many smaller enterprises can’t afford to hire a full-time accountant. When that’s the case, it often leaves business owners or their managers to shoulder the burden of overseeing that everyone gets paid.
If you’ve found that you spend too much time paying everyone rather than focusing on the actual work that you exist to accomplish, it may be time to overhaul your payroll.
Fortunately, as technology has advanced, this has become an easier thing to do. Automation has made many tasks unnecessary to do by hand. In addition, there are many third-party payroll services that have been tailored to meet a small business’s payroll needs.
These tools make it easy to manage everything from payroll itself to compliance concerns, tax issues, and the like. They often put a lot of the control right into the hands of your employees themselves, too. Some options also integrate different payroll tools, like bookkeeping and time tracking, into a single location.
Outsourcing and condensing payroll responsibilities free up business owners to focus on the actual task of running their businesses.
The best part is, many of the payroll options out there are also designed to scale with a company. This means you won’t have to change services any time soon, even if the initial adjustment leads to an explosive amount of growth for your team.
3. Invest in a Real Company Culture
The size of a company should never dictate if it needs a culture or not. All enterprises should have a central philosophy that they strive to adhere to.
By establishing a company culture, you give yourself a North Star to orient your organization toward at all times. This may not feel important when you’re starting out. After all, you have a clear vision of how to get your company off the ground.
However, when you start running into roadblocks, such as unforeseen competition or employee turnover, a strong culture can become instrumental. It can help you make crucial decisions and stay focused on long-term goals.
The good news is that building a healthy company culture doesn’t have to be a resource-intensive activity. On the contrary, many successful leaders recommend starting with small-yet-impactful steps, such as:
- Defining what really matters to your company;
- Starting with your core values;
- Aligning your company with internal stakeholders and employees;
- Establishing a “no-compromise” vision for your leadership;
- Clarifying your vision and being transparent with communication;
- Strategically prioritizing your cultural implementation.
While this can take time, creating a blueprint for your company culture is absolutely attainable for a small business.
From nitty-gritty elements like payroll and benefits to big picture concerns like company culture, it behooves small business owners to sit up and pay attention. It’s all too easy for startups and smaller companies with limited resources to ignore or, at the least, under-prioritize these areas.
However, each one plays an important role in long-term success. The fact that all three have become easier than ever for small businesses to address only makes them that much more important.
So take stock of your own company’s efforts. Figure out where you need to pay closer attention, and then hone in on those areas in the name of building your company both now and in the future.