An effective Business Plan is your roadmap to success. It clarifies all aspects of the business, from marketing and finance through operations, products or services you provide, and how you will outperform your competitors and stand out in the market.
A strategic plan will help you grow and expand, creating long-lasting success by ensuring that all areas are covered in detail.
Even if you’re not just starting, updating your business plan is a crucial way to keep the vision and growth of your company in mind. By reviewing and updating it often, you can identify what’s working well and where things could be improved for future success!
This article looks at the top 3 benefits of having a business strategy.
Clarity and Direction
A business strategy will help you set the direction for your company and make it easier to work towards, as you’ll know exactly where you are going. Your strategy will help you make the right decisions for your organisation. A good Business Plan can help identify what’s important and when to focus on them so that there are no distractions or resources wasted on unproductive tasks or investments.
Business Planning
Structure and Smart Decisions
With a strategically planned company, it’s more possible to know whether or not you’re making the right moves.
A business strategy will help guide your decision-making process and give an insight into which path might be best for success!
A business plan is like your company’s roadmap, setting out what you want to achieve and when keeping your company well structured. It becomes an essential reference tool that helps keep everything in order – from sales targets, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or operational milestones and every other aspect of running a successful enterprise!
Working together in business
Measuring Success
It is essential to have a business strategy if you want your company or business to succeed. If there isn’t one, it can be challenging to measure success because the only thing that will count as being successful are things like revenue numbers and market share growth without any clear target in mind for what those outcomes mean specifically, which means they won’t help much when planning future moves beyond just looking back over past performance stats! A well-thought-out plan with defined targets ensures progress regardless of whether something went right this time or wrong. It helps organisations focus on achieving even more by staying ahead of themselves instead of getting stuck under their weight.
Strategic plans are like a map to help you stay on track. They include an assessment of where you are now, your company’s vision and mission statements and goals to drive the company to success. The goals can be broken down into smaller milestones or tasks by the end date envisioned to ensure your business strategy is successful. The journey to a strategic plan begins by identifying where you are now.
Strategic planning is an essential part of any organisation.
No matter how big or small your business may be, there will always come a time when you need to think about where it’s going next.
This article will walk through how to get started developing one for your organisation, including what steps need to be taken to make sure everyone stays informed along the way!
Tracking Business
Developing a Plan
It’s not enough to know where you’re going when developing your plan; your team must clearly understand the current state. This starts with understanding who they are and what makes them unique, but also includes asking questions like “What problems does this group solve for customers?” or “How do I see our success in terms of business goals?”. While these might seem simple on paper, collecting data from all stakeholders will help shape an accurate portrayal and identify opportunities missed at a high level. The critical data sources you should gather are; customer insights to learn about what customers want, employee feedback and SWOT analysis.
Once you have an accurate picture of your current situation, you can set some goals to improve and drive the organisation forward. When you’ve figured out your strategy, it’s time to put pen to paper. You’ll need a plan that is flexible enough for changing conditions but still has the outlines of what will happen at each stage.
Executing your Plan
Now that you have set up your plan, it’s time to execute it. This means clear communication across the entire organisation so everyone knows their responsibilities and how they can measure its success with key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs will help gauge which parts of this strategy work best for each business process to achieve optimum outcomes overall!
Measuring Performance
Review and Revise
Your strategic plan is a living, breathing document. It should be constantly reviewed to ensure you are responding to any market changes and updated as needed to ensure that you’re always staying on top of the game and taking the best possible steps for your company’s future growth!
Lastly, the most successful strategies are those that change and evolve with your company. As you achieve goals or the needs of your business shift over time—it might be worth creating a new plan to suit these changes!
What is your organisation’s fundamental purpose? A mission statement tells consumers, both internal and external, what you hope to accomplish in the simplest way.
Mission
What is a Mission Statement?
If you ever visit a website and find yourself wondering what an organisation is doing and why a mission statement would undoubtedly help them to clarify. It should be simple enough for anyone to understand what they exist to do clearly.
Every brand has a purpose, and the mission statement articulates that intention. It’s an integral part of any successful branding plan. The mission statement is an essential part of your business. It gives you the why and how to make things different from everyone else! An effective mission statement focuses on the value you deliver, is realistic, and inspires all stakeholders.
How to develop a mission statement
The perfect mission statement is a delicate balance between what you want your company to stand for and how much time, effort and money it will take. There are many methods on how best to approach this balancing act, but here we list some clear do’s/ don’ts that should be considered:
Keep things concise. Short and to the point is best.
Think of the future. Ensure it reflects your long-term goals for the Company.
Don’t be limiting. Ensure to keep in mind expansion into new locations or products in the future
Expansion
Things to avoid
The problem with most mission statements is that they’re just words; anyone can say they ethically source, are progressive and blah blah blah. They might be accurate, but it’s hard to tell what your company really does and why when you have such a general statement for an organisation–especially one whose goals can seem so broad in scope! Let’s be real: most mission statements are awful.
Here are the most common problems with mission statements; a list of things to avoid:
Avoid jargon. No one should need to Google what a word means to understand your mission statement.
Don’t add fluff. Be plain and concise in your language. Your mission statement should be to the point and as short as possible without losing the meaning behind it.
Don’t be boring. You want people to read your mission statement and be inspired by it.
A business strategy is a plan that helps you make wise decisions about your company’s future. It provides principles, methods and tactics for taking these actions within an organisation so it can be successful in its goal – growing!
Running a successful company is no easy task. As the owner or CEO, you must be able to understand your business and advocate for its success with investors and other stakeholders to get them on board- which means creating a business strategy that makes sense! In this article, we’ll discuss what exactly makes up one’s “strategy”, why it’s important and the different components of a business strategy to help you generate ideas for your own company.
Developing a good business strategy can be difficult, but once you have it in place, there are many ways to ensure your company is successful.
Developing Business Strategy
Vision, objectives and values
A business strategy can be a powerful tool for reaching your goals. The vision part of the strategic plan provides a clear direction. It enables you to develop tactical instructions that will guide what tasks need completion from which resources and who is responsible for them if they are completed successfully!
Business Leader
SWOT Analysis
The backbone of any successful business understands its strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. This helps to define where you can win with your current situation and areas that need improvement for the organisation’s goals to be met.
A critical part of the SWOT process involves being humble enough. Hence, there aren’t vanity goals that might cost more money than necessary because they were done without considering everything with a high level of self-awareness beforehand!
Execution and Measuring
Execution tactics and resources are the operational backbones of any successful business strategy. They ensure that time and effort won’t be wasted by not meeting goals and that resources are allocated correctly because managers know what needs to happen at each step for their plan’s success!
Backing this up is the measuring and evaluation phase, when you’re given the opportunity to review how well your company has been doing in relation to its strategic goals.
This can be done through measurement, ensuring that decisions are made based on solid data, not just opinion or emotion.
Do you have a crystal clear mental image of what you want to be like in five years’ time? This vision can stop you from heading off course.
The best way to come up with your vision, I’ve found, is by creating an image in my head that depicts what success looks like at this point or somewhere down the line when these goals are accomplished! However, we need to be able to formalise and communicate our vision; this is crucial for the success of any company.
A good way to formalise it, which also helps you communicate more effectively with co-workers or clients alike, would be through writing down what this entails in terms of how best your company can achieve their goals in making an impact within said industry/field goes.
Setting a vision is the first step to creating something great. It means we are passionate and have dreams for where we want to end up! Having this larger-than mini goal clarifies everything that needs doing right now so you can get on board with achieving them all at once instead of spreading yourself thin over many different tasks/projects, which ends up giving less impressive results because there isn’t enough time spent working towards your ultimate objective.
What is the Business Vision?
It is often confused with a mission statement. The difference between a vision and a mission statement is that the former looks towards what you want to achieve in future, whereas the latter focuses on current activities. Vision provides a sense of purpose and direction for your business. “Your” vision will help you define short-term and long-term goals. It can also guide decisions that are made along the way. A company’s vision must align with its mission, strategic planning, culture, and core values. A vision statement is not necessarily set in stone; it can be returned to and changed as the business evolves over time.
Passion
How to Define Your Vision?
Now that we’ve established what a vision statement is, here are some steps to use when defining yours:
Be specific. It needs to be detailed yet easily understood by everyone. It should clearly spell out the future direction.
Make it challenging. Your vision statement should create excitement and inspire. You want it to be ambitious and motivating.
Do Something Great
Why vision is crucial
A vision statement provides a focal point for goals, culture and everything else. Most importantly, a company’s clear vision can unify employees and create more profound meaning for their work. Not only does this bring people together, but it also helps them achieve success as they are all contributing towards achieving shared goals. And if tough times arise, it provides the motivation and drive to persevere through those challenges. A vision is designed to inspire and align.
Businesses tell me that they have no time to work on business strategy. The reality is that businesses can feel rudderless without a business strategy. A business strategy is a great way to help an organisation achieve goals, and define its methods and tactics. A business strategy needs to include the whole team and become what you do every day and not something that gets done occasionally.
Business Strategy
What is a business strategy?
A business strategy is a set of objectives that articulate the organisation’s business plans. A business strategy also defines what the organisation needs to do to achieve the goals and will guide the way. This helps for better decision-making and workforce planning, and resource allocation. A business strategy guides all the organisation’s departments in a clear set of critical responsible areas (KRAs) and working together to achieve the organisation’s goals.
It is essential to create a business strategy aligned to your organisation’s purpose, vision, mission and values to ensure that your strategic objectives align with your culture and meet your customers’ needs.
What are the key considerations for creating an effective business strategy?
When creating a business strategy, it is essential to have insight into your organisation, foresight into the environment around you, and opportunities for future planning. This will involve using tools such as SWOT to assess where your organisation is at a point in time and research your current and future sources of sustainable growth and innovations. Assess the external factors that may impact your organisation or industry, such as:
Connected all the time – what does this mean to employee wellbeing and delivering to your customers
The information age – are you aware of all the latest industry innovations
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics
Codification of money
Cybersecurity
Life Sciences
Climate change
Getting the whole team together early in the process will ensure that you consider all the essential factors such as the strengths and weaknesses, create or review the vision and identify your top big hairy audacious goals (BHAG). In addition, the process will help you determine where you are now, the external factors to consider, where you want to go, and how to get there.
Elements of Business Strategy
Basic Business Strategy Planning Process
Planning Awareness
Formulating goals
Analysing the external environment
Analysing the internal environment
Identifying strategic opportunities and threats
Performing gap analysis – create a strategy that leverages your strengths and identifies any gaps that need to be addressed.
Developing alternative strategies – is essential also to building contingencies.
Implementing strategies – creating a business action plan, including all stakeholders, is crucial to executing your strategy.
Measuring and controlling the progress
Planning and awareness – A business strategy helps you identify the key steps to reach your business goals. Setting big goals is essential to stay focused on achieving your objectives.
Efficiency – A business strategy allows you to allocate resources effectively for your business activities, automatically making you more efficient. It also helps you plan for deadlines, assign job roles and stay on track for your project goals.
Control – Creating a business strategy gives you more control over choosing the activities that will directly help you reach your goals and allows you to quickly assess whether your actions are getting you close to your goals.
Competitive advantage – By identifying a clear plan for how you will reach your goals, you can focus on capitalising on your strengths, using them as a competitive advantage that makes your company unique in the marketplace.
Other Key Components of Creating Business Strategy
Vision
A business strategy is intended to help you reach your business objectives. With a vision for the direction of the business and clarity of purpose, you can create clear instructions in the business strategy for what needs to be done and who is responsible for completing each step.
Core values
A business strategy guides top-level executives and departments about what should and should not be done according to the organisation’s core values. It helps everyone stay on the same page and with the same goals.
SWOT
Stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This process helps an organisation assess where you are, identify and evaluate your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses, and identify untapped opportunities and threats that you need to mitigate.
Tactics
Many business strategies articulate the operational details of how the work should be done to maximise efficiency. As a result, people responsible for tactics understand what needs to be done, saving time and effort.
Resource allocation plan
A business strategy includes where you will find the required resources to complete the plan, how the resources will be allocated and who is responsible for doing so. In this regard, you will see where you need to add more resources to complete your projects.
Measurement
The business strategy also includes tracking the organisation’s output and evaluating how it is performing about the targets set before the strategy’s launch. This helps you stay on track with deadlines, goals, and budgetary concerns. This will ensure that you can do more of what is working and stop doing what is not working.
Business Strategy Plan
Pitfalls of Creating Business Strategy
Not executing – strategy is a choice; execution is imperative
Do-it-all – Failing to make choices and making everything a priority
What can you execute now with the resources available
Not customer-focused – what’s suitable for customers is good for business
Not agile – Need to adapt and change to market conditions or customer needs and feedback and stay relevant
Something-for-everyone – Attempting to capture all consumer or category segments simultaneously. Be clear and serve one market well
Simple examples of Strategic Goals
Cross-sell more products
Increasing the amount of product sold per customer can increase your average spend. However, even a slight increase can significantly impact profitability without spending money to acquire new customers.
Improve Customer Service
Having customers top of mind in your business can help to deliver quality customer service by building a solid reputation of having exceptional customer service with help more referrals and more sales. If you have a problem in a specific area of servicing your customers, having a goal focused on improving customer service will have objectives that centre around the customer.
Sustainability
You could launch an entire business strategy to increase your business’s sustainability. For example, focus on reducing energy costs, decreasing your organisation’s carbon footprint or becoming more circular. This may also include how you will be more community focus.
Start Creating your Business Strategy
Organisations may feel overwhelmed, time-poor, and unable to work on creating a business strategy. What are the consequences if you do not set a plan? So, start small. Get your whole team together, review your business honestly and assess where you are and where you want to go. Then set clear goals and actions aligned to your vision, purpose and values, including being customer-centric. Ensure you assign accountability for each activity. Make each goal realistic and part of what you do day-to-day and measure, review and act. Stop doing what is not working!
Creating and building a profitable and successful franchise brand involves a lot of factors; having a great product or service, clear vision and strategy, a profitable business model, success for franchisees, franchisor and customers, effective leadership, an organisation with purpose, a great team of staff and good franchisees with solid alignment to brand and a great relationship with the franchisor.
Where the franchisor sets the vision and strategic objectives for the organisation, it is the franchisee that executes the vision with the customer. It is, therefore, important that the franchisee is clear on the vision and run it well. Franchisees aligned to your brand and able to deliver at ground level as was intended.
So, what are the essential ingredients in franchisee recruitment to have the most excellent chance to succeed in your franchise?
Firstly, you need to know what it takes to be successful in your organisation and the attributes that make a franchisee successful in your brand. This might be their work ethic, how they interact with customers, lead their team or specific attributes required for your industry. It will also help understand and identify their characteristics and assess when they apply to be a franchisee. As a franchisor who has been in business, you will be able to train in the practical skills, but you must determine what they are at the recruitment stage to create a development plan before they start in their franchise. You will also need to ensure that they have the financial capital to succeed. In some cases, it can take over twelve months to reach profitability. Therefore, the franchisor needs to understand that the prospective franchisees have enough working capital until profitability is achieved. This will vary for different industries. Finally, you will need to train and prepare them to run their own business under your brand. This may include business acumen and industry skills, brand culture and onsite practical training.
Prospective Franchisee Candidates
It would be best to determine what makes a successful franchisee in your brand. These may be personal or professional attributes. Profile and criteria that contribute to their success.
Some candidates are cooperative, decisive, impulsive, egotistical and often afraid and sceptical. Determine what works for your brand’s success.
Are they able to communicate with your customer and future employees? For example:
Need to be able to communicate with individuals ages between 30 and 50
What is the profile of your prospective franchisee? Gender, age, industry experience, profile. Are they:
husband and wife teams
out-placed executives
partners
existing entrepreneurs
immigrants
Are they able to transition entering into a new world of self-employment?
Do they have support?
It is essential to identify an individual’s decision making, overall attitude, dedication, work ethic, eagerness to engage in a long-term relationship and follow a business operating system. Additionally, an individual’s net worth and education do not correlate to utilising their financial resources and working capital during their start-up phase and a first full year in business. Personality, life circumstances (family, health, marriage, personal interests), local and national economics, employee availability, and customer response must also be factored in; local and national economics, employee availability, and customer response all play into the franchisees’ high, medium and low business results.
While measurable evaluative criteria are essential, controllable and uncontrollable factors (seen and unforeseen) influence the outcome of the business, such as family disruption, illness or divorce. Franchisees may possess all of the measurables of a great franchisee. However, there is no guarantee of their success or failure. High quality and thorough franchisee “interviewing and approval” process will help identify the intangible factors that will lead to success. Even then, there are still no guarantees; however, if you formulate a set of behavioural questions which will objectively evaluate and assist in better understanding the candidates.
When I was recruiting for a restaurant franchise, I used the Nathan Profiler’s recruitment tool to assist in this process.
Once you have determined the attributes and formulated a set of interview questions and a schedule, you will need to advertise to attract prospective franchisees. You may hold discovery days for groups or individuals (these may be in a metro or regional area). The most effective way is to have a robust website with lots of information to enable prospects to understand your brand.
Leverage your website
Before their initial contact with the franchisor, franchisee applicants are armed with much more information today than they used to be. They can compare available opportunities online and typically make a preliminary assumption about whether the opportunity is right for them and, equally as importantly, on the business’s professionalism before they first get in touch. During this initial search, you must make a good impression by attracting prospective franchisees to your website and engaging them to interact and seek more information.
How much is real estate on your website dedicated to franchisee enquiries? Do you regularly update content on your website? Online tools such as Google Analytics allow you to measure who is visiting your website, where they came from, what they are doing and when they leave. Keeping your website regularly updated with fresh, relevant content will allow you to appear higher in organic search results. The higher you appear, the more clicks and franchise enquiries are likely to flow onto your website.
If you do not feature prominently in organic search results, it may be worthwhile investigating a Google Adwords campaign, so you can appear when specific terms are searched. The beauty of this is you can measure how effective every dollar you are spending is at the click of a button. Would you like to be appearing each time someone searches for “Buy a franchise”? Maybe you would prefer to focus on more specific terms such as “Buying a food franchise” or “Buying a beauty franchise”? Like when selling to your customers, it is essential to understand what your target market is looking for and how best to attract them.
Attracting Prospective Franchisees and managing the enquiries
The fundamentals of building trust and awarding franchises to qualified candidates remain highly personal, consultative and relationship-oriented. Do not fall into the trap that website automation and technology are the “be all and end all”.
These shortcuts and impersonal approaches are the root cause of declining contact rates, contributing to failure. It would help if you considered how you communicate via live telephone calls, messaging, and emails, including professionally printed and electronic collateral material, videos on your website and testimonials.
There are varying degrees of etiquette and courtesy on when to contact candidates (hours) and how to respect the value of time. When a candidate is serviced professionally during this partnering process, they will be much more receptive to your field support representatives throughout the life of your working relationship.
Types of franchise inquiries.
Live telephone inquiries
Internet portals
Consultant referrals
Tradeshows
Corporate website
Customer referrals
Qualifying Leads
It is crucial to ensure your franchise opportunities page encourages people to search for information (essentially pre-qualifying themselves). By the time they contact the franchisor, they already understand the business and the offer. You only need to look as far as Ben & Jerry’s to see an inviting franchisee enquiry page. Videos are intuitively interactive and provide a great tool to promote the opportunity. If prospects are comparing options, they will seek to see clear points of difference. You should already have defined your franchise offer, so communicating the benefits should be relatively straightforward.
Lead Management:
One of the essential things about pre-qualifying leads online is being as transparent as possible and explaining the process. This indicates the business’s professionalism and sets a good benchmark for the rest of the process. It is worthwhile to outline the recruitment process carefully so the applicant knows what to expect. Dominos has a straightforward application process outlined on their website, so the prospect is already informed of what lies ahead for them.
Items to consider to process and manage prospective leads:
Each inquiry is a human being with dreams and aspirations.
Each individual should be treated as a customer, not a lead, regardless of their financial or educational pre-qualifications to own your franchise.
Each prospect deserves an equal opportunity to be considered.
We are courting individuals more than qualifying leads.
Regardless of the lead source, each inquiry should be processed fairly and equally.
Franchise Approval/Accreditation Process
Detail the process, so candidates know what to expect. For Example:
Initial enquiry
Telephone calls (1, 2 or more)
Franchise application submission and confidentiality
Interviews (individual and/or panel)
Accreditation
Induction and Training – culture, marketing and support.
Include information along the way on the positives and detail any obstacles and challenges they will encounter throughout the journey. Include details on training such as industry or non-industry professional experience they require or will receive from the franchisor (restaurant, retail, etc.).
Franchisee Funding:
It is essential to request an in-depth financial analysis of their completed franchise application (unique net worth composition).
Ensure their net worth has been pre-qualified to complete your discovery process.
Provide funding strategies and consult with your franchisee candidate on various methods of funding their business.
Disclosure and Validation:
Franchisors must not give prospective franchisees misleading or deceptive information and follow the Franchise Code of Conduct. As part of the legal compliance steps, franchisors must provide information to prospective franchisees. For instance, you must provide your candidates with a Franchisor Information Statement. This will assist the candidates in understanding your business and its purpose.
Individuals who want to learn more about franchising and determine if franchising is the right investment choice should consider completing the ACCC free online course. You will know how franchising compares to independent small business ownership, what you are likely to find in a typical franchise agreement, why it’s essential to do due diligence and some of the common issues you can face. Franchisors should consider recommending the course to ensure that prospective franchisees understand what it takes to be part of a franchise system.
Manage the Franchisee Recruitment Process
It is one thing to generate good leads, but appropriately managing the recruitment process and selecting the best franchisees is equally essential. Many disputes in franchise networks are caused by something that occurred during the recruitment process. So, please do not assume that prospective franchisees’ advisors cover essential information. Include clear and simple information that is easy to understand and provides ample opportunity for the applicants to ask questions and make informed decisions.
Final comments
The common saying in franchising is:
You get the franchisees that you deserve!
So, ensure that you understand the factors that help franchisees succeed in your brand, set up a profile, and then build a recruitment process that helps you identify these factors in prospective franchisee applicants. Additionally, it is necessary not to take any shortcuts when recruiting because this could have devastating consequences in building a successful relationship with franchisees. It is essential to use the recruitment process to identify applicant skill gaps that you need to address before starting their business, creating a robust induction and training program to prepare them for success. Recruiting the ideal franchisee is not simple but will lead to mutual success for the franchisor and franchisee when done well.
Fostering a people culture helps organisations succeed.
What does people culture mean?
As Peter Drucker put it, ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. He did not mean that strategy is unimportant, rather that a powerful and empowering culture is a surer route to organisational success.
People culture means that employees perform from a value-based lens. They feel valued and empowered and have a sense of belonging. Employees seek workplaces where they can intertwine their beliefs with those of the organisation and work together on a shared vision of purpose and success.
Leaders successful in building people culture unite the team around a common cause. Help align to the vision, purpose and goals of the organisation.
How do you create a people culture in your organisation?
In today’s workplace environment, people would rather forego a fancy title and higher salary and not work in a bad workplace environment. Employees care about whether companies foster environments where they can be themselves and positively impact society. Today’s workforce wants to know that they’re making a difference within their companies.
Leaders can take action by listening and allowing employees to speak up when they don’t agree with an organisation’s activities or work on projects they are passionate about. Let the team lead in their expertise and empower them with the ability to make decisions.
Create opportunities for employees to strengthen relationships and team building by having social gathering spots around the office. Encourage recognition and feedback at all levels and build trust with open communication.
People working together
Encourage employees to examine or reconsider how their role ties back to the greater organisational purpose.
Being authentic and transparent is also essential to enable communication in the workplace and ensure that everyone participates.
Creating a people culture involves selecting a series of values that define the organisation’s products and services represented. Then, as a leader, you need to encourage those values in your employees’ everyday behaviours.
Have regular conversations which help people know where they can improve and what actions are most important to the businesses’ overarching mission and goals.
Feedback sessions help all parties clarify whether employees are content with what they’re doing and align with the organisation’s values.
Recognition and praise are essential parts of fostering a positive work environment and showing people they are valued. Therefore, it’s crucial to give detailed feedback and be genuinely grateful for the employee’s strengths and accomplishments.
Flexible working environment
More and more people today enjoy flexible work schedules and working from home.
Some ways you can encourage balance at the workplace include:
Onsite daycare
Paid time off
Lunchtime yoga classes
Gym discounts
Formal work-from-home arrangements
Anything you can do to help employees make their day-to-day schedules less stressful will message that you value and appreciate them as people. The result should be happier, more productive staff.
So, creating a people culture takes alignment of all stakeholders, owners, management, and employees. Ensure employee voices are heard, recognise employees, have genuine one-on-one meetings, align employees to company purpose and success, provide honest real-time feedback. Finally, the organisation’s leaders embody a culture that values its people and employees and walks the talk.
Boosting productivity in your organisation means you will be able to increase profits. Small businesses have twenty employees or fewer. Therefore, it is essential to have strategies to make your business more productive and efficient.
Some of the ways to increase productivity in your small business include tools, systems and processes, and some are about how you build and nurture your employee relationships. If one team member is not performing in a small business, the whole organisation feels the consequences; therefore, it is crucial for small business leaders to also focus on people.
Here are some of the ways to improve productivity in the workplace.
1. Have a purpose, plan and clear goals for the business
Without direction in an organisation and a clear plan, your employees may not be working on tasks that improve or benefit the business. Having clear strategic goals means that each department and employee has a compass on what needs to be achieved and prioritise their tasks to align with the business goals. It is also essential to set and commit to deadlines. Regularly meeting deadlines demonstrates reliability and the ability to stay focused. Customers can be lost if an organisation does not ensure goals are completed on schedule.
2. People Culture and excellent workplace conditions
Develop your employees, offer them support and practice positive reinforcement. Create a culture where employees feel included and that they belong. Employees that believe in the business purpose and vision are more likely to be happy working for you and performing at their peak.
It is also vital to create a well-organised and decorated office, a pleasant workplace to see every day and physically and visually enjoyable. The more comfortable employees feel at the office, the less stressed they will be. One way to maintain a healthy work environment is to create an upbeat atmosphere that makes everyone feel appreciated and motivated.
Every employee doesn’t need to be busy every minute of the entire workday. Keeping your staff too busy can create fatigue and cause burnout. That’s why one of the steps to improve productivity is to take occasional breaks. Taking 10 to 15-minute breaks allows your team to recharge and feel refreshed when they approach the work again.
Try using 90-minute cycles divided by breaks. It’s a practical tip that can lead to higher output. During the 90 minutes, each employee should put as much effort as possible into achieving a task. This is followed by a break to recharge. Creating a flow of 90-minute sessions followed by short breaks is enough time to establish a rhythm and complete tasks without getting burned out.
3. Reduce Distractions
It’s essential to stay focused while working; therefore, remove as many distractions as possible. Remote employees have this advantage, whereas office employees must deal with background noises made by devices and co-workers. Your team in the office should try using soundproof headphones and turning off their personal mobiles unless they are a necessary part of the job.
Avoid booking unproductive meetings that do not have a purpose and do not accomplish much. Like staff meetings. Some topics can be communicated via phone or a quick email.
4. Be Efficient – Track and measure
Most businesses track their financial performance but forget to track and analyse how their team uses their time. Studying the data reveals which employees are productive and which employees need more training. The technology can assist you with communication and performance.
5. Have the right tools, equipment and technology
Technology is an integral part of the modern workplace, and any business without some level of technical savvy will likely fail. Assess that you have the right technology, system, and tools fit for your purpose. There are many cloud-based solutions to achieve different outcomes you may consider. Some of the technology to consider (This list is an indication only):
An accounting package such as Xero allows you to track your business metrics and performance accurately, keep inventory, make and record sales, manage and pay bills and handle payroll.
A Client Relationship Manager (CRM) such as Hubspot or Zoho allow you to keep accurate customer data and track your customer’s journey. A CRM will keep you efficient and give you the ability to nurture customers efficiently and without leaving it to chance.
Software packages that can assist in meeting your employer compliance and facilitate all the templates to help recruit, onboard and train employees, such as Employment Hero.
Industry-relevant – regardless of your industry, technology makes what you do easier. For example, if you work in health care, countless technologies save lives, protect patient privacy rights, and make sure providers get paid through insurance. On the other hand, if you are a farmer, engineering and robotics will help you maintain crops and improve yield.
Communications tools such as Slack will allow instant message co-worker communication.
Social Media – Use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to communicate directly with your customers. Create and promote your brand and get your message directly to the customer.
Stay informed with the latest technology and adapt. New and upcoming technologies such as Blockchain[1], AI[2], and IoT[3] are revolutionising business. Stay informed and aware
Being proactive and going beyond what is needed to limit, reduce or eliminate future vulnerabilities is a great strategy. Businesses that don’t take time to proactively prevent future disasters may find themselves in a difficult situation when the disaster occurs. For example, computer networking businesses would take a proactive approach by building a solid defence against cybercriminals.
Consistently assessing how your team works and areas of improvement will help increase overall workplace productivity. While there are various tools out there that aim to streamline workflow, ultimately, as a leader in your organisation, you must be there to support your team.
Forget perfection. It is unrealistic to be perfect in every aspect of your business. Your business can only be as good as your technology and resources.
Footnotes[1] A blockchain is a distributed database that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. As a database, a blockchain stores information electronically in digital format. Blockchains are best known for their crucial role in cryptocurrency systems, such as Bitcoin, for maintaining a secure and decentralized record of transactions.
[2] Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of a computer system to mimic human cognitive functions such as learning and problem-solving. New level of AI is machine learning, which is the process of using mathematical models of date to help a computer learn without direct instruction. This enables a computer system to continue learning and improving on its own and can solve problems based on experience.
[3] The Internet of Things (IoT) describes the network of physical objects—“things”—that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the internet.
The Triple Bottom Line (TBL) is a way of measuring an organisation’s impact on its social and environmental effects in addition to financial performance.
Purpose-led organisations find that using triple bottom line to monitor more than just the financial performance helps them improve how they treat people both within and outside the organisation and reduce their adverse impact on the environment.
John Elkington first explained the triple bottom line in his 1999 book, “Cannibals With Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business.” It’s a bottom line that continues to measure profits, but also measures the organisation’s impact on people and the planet”.
The triple bottom line expresses an organisation’s impact and sustainability on both a local and a global scale.
The concept behind the triple bottom line is that organisations are responsible first and foremost to all their stakeholders, including everyone involved with the organisation, whether directly or indirectly, and the planet we’re all living on.
The standard bottom-line infrastructure is based on profitability. However, the triple bottom line includes social, environmental and economic impacts that might affect an organisation instead of using profit and economics as the driving force.
The shareholders are part of the stakeholder group, but not the only factor.
So, some critical trends support the need for organisations to be more socially aware and responsible:
Organisation’s imperative for success in hiring, motivating and retaining good people. At the extreme, think of leading sports teams or media organisations, in which the people earning big money are the stars, not the shareholders. These organisations need to be focused on their people.
Good people are in short supply. Baby Boomers are moving out of the workplace into retirement, and there are fewer people in the following generations. The impact of COVID19 border restrictions has escalated this problem further. Organisations that don’t look after their workforces will quickly find they can’t attract and retain the right people they need.
While earlier generations may have tolerated impoverished conditions at work, people in the new generations are likely to be looking for more meaning. Unless they find this meaning, they’ll move on.
Consumers and potential recruits have many more choices than they had in the past and are more aware of large companies’ ethical and environmental stance—some base their purchase and career decisions on these things.
Triple bottom line is also expressed as “People, Planet, Profit.”
The Three Ps of the Triple Bottom Line
People, Planet and Profit
People
Organisations fostering the triple bottom line way of doing business think about their actions on all the people involved. This can include everybody from farmers supplying raw materials, customers, employees and up to the CEO of the business. Every one’s well-being is taken into consideration. The organisation offers a flexible working environment, reasonable working hours, foster diversity and inclusion, a healthy, safe workplace, and opportunities for advancement and education. It does not exploit their labour force (using child labour or offering sweatshop wages).
In some cases, the “people” bottom line can also include the company’s community.
While the people’s bottom line concept is undoubtedly attractive, the difficulty comes in deciding how far you go. Do you apply it to employees? Their families? Suppliers?
Planet
Triple bottom line organisations focus on reducing or eliminating their ecological footprint. They strive for sustainability, recognising that “going green” may be more profitable in the long run. But it’s not just about the money.
Triple bottom line organisations look at the entire life cycle of their actions and determine the actual cost of what they’re doing regarding the environment. As a result, they ensure they reduce their energy usage, dispose of any toxic waste safely, use renewable energy sources, and don’t produce unsafe or unhealthy products for people and the planet.
Profit
The financial bottom line is the one that all organisations share, whether they’re using the triple bottom line or not. When looking at profit from a triple bottom line standpoint, the idea is that profits will help empower and sustain the community as a whole and not just flow to shareholders.
People – How an organisation engages and develops its employees and its impact on people.
For example, how do the mines in Western Australia affect the surrounding communities and the benefit the organisation offers employees.
Planet is related to the environmental footprint of the organisation.
Such as energy use or waste footprint.
Profit is the standard method of measuring profit and loss in accounting principles.
The Triple Bottom Line in Practice
While you may or may not consider the Triple Bottom Line appropriate for your business, it makes sense to recognise how the workplace is changing and consider whether you need to adapt your approach to business to reflect this.
If you decide to explore the concept further, start by researching what other companies are doing to change the way they do business positively. Looking at the steps they’ve taken will save you time brainstorming on ways to improve your own business. Some examples from different industries include:
An international shipment and packaging company has reduced its ecological footprint by having 30 per cent of its stores use renewable energy.
A food business sets goals to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 10 per cent over the next few years. Investigate using more environmentally friendly ways to package products and set targets to reduce waste.
A coffee company only buys its beans from farmers who grow coffee environmentally friendly and ensures that all its workers are treated fairly and receive a living wage for their skills.
A computer company focuses a lot of its community efforts on training and education programs. It helps underprivileged kids by giving them access to technology and has goals to recycle a percentage of its annual waste.
By taking the time to start using the triple bottom line approach, you might be surprised at just how positive the reaction will be from your colleagues and your customers.
What can you do for your business to work towards a TBL model?
The Triple Bottom Line is essentially a reporting system. But, in itself, it doesn’t improve the company’s impact on people or the environment any more than the action of producing a set of management accounts would affect profits.
However, it can drive improvements in how an organisation impacts people and the environment by helping leaders focus on what they need to do to improve all of the bottom lines and keeping this work high on their agendas.
The B-Corp certification is an excellent way for a larger organisation to ensure you’re incorporating people, plane, profit into your business. The impact assessment and getting certified hold you to a standard of TBL verified by the B-Corp framework.
If you are a small business, don’t try to do it all at once. Instead, pick one or two initiatives, execute them well, and create a TBL mindset from leadership to all stakeholders. For instance, try to reduce waste and introduce environmental measures like saving energy or offsetting carbon emissions if you are a trucking business.
Your profits shouldn’t come at the expense of people and the planet.
Imagine working every day for an organisation you are genuinely excited about and proud to be a part of.
Sure, the pay is decent, and there’s childcare, but those aren’t the only reasons why you love working there.
You’re proud to be a part of this organisation because they’re honourable.
They stand out from the typical “cut-throat” business world by the way they treat suppliers, the community, their commitment to environmental sustainability, their ethical investments, and their desire to empower and promote their team members instead of dragging them down.
There is a constant air of excitement and possibility, and you love coming to work each day.
Triple Bottom Line (TBL) is not at profit’s expense, but more to incorporate other measures into an organisational health profile. Businesses must be financially healthy and prosperous for People and Planet to thrive.
All three must work in unison to fulfil its Triple Bottom Line goal.
