Planning a new business takes a lot of time. If you’re working on a start-up and business plan, you’ll see that it’s more than just snazzy websites and for small business owners, time is valuable. A new business takes a lot of graft and working long, hard hours is the norm. Managers can often feel like they’re working all day long but have achieved very little for the time they put in.
Time waits for no man, and time management is an essential tool to master if you hope to make your business successful. Prioritising where you should be focusing is important for your company and for that, you need to learn to budget your time. Making time for the business books can be difficult so it isn’t uncommon for a business to invest in outsourced bookkeeping, as what you spend on the help of an outside company is money well invested if it means you can concentrate on more important things in house. “Time budgeting” means that you need to make a list of what business tasks are important to you. Devoting the appropriate time to those tasks is important so making your budgeting plan should be your first step.
Creating a time-management grid can help managers and CEO’s identify the priority business tasks and dedicate the time necessary to those tasks. Issues that are important and urgent together should be the first things you work on, while important but not urgent can be built into a later timetable. Limiting your distractions and fitting the work into the hours you have in a structured way can go a long way to ensuring you aren’t going to fall behind. A new business is a heavy work load and without the correct plan in place, it will fail. It’s a harsh reality, but a reality nonetheless.
You can budget daily or weekly. Pretend your time is money (well, it is, but you know what we mean) and imagine that every hour is worth £1,000. Would you waste any of those minutes on menial tasks that can be delegated? Probably not. You’d make sure every minute of your valuable time was spent wisely to improve your business and the way your company runs. Keeping an eye on a weekly time budget can mean being able to spot when your workforce productivity levels tend to dip. Monday through Wednesday may be extremely efficient and motivated, whereas Friday may be a slow day for work. While understandable, it’s important to understand how to manage your staff productivity levels so you aren’t wasting minutes.
Routine at work is as important as routine at home and sticking to it should be your company priority. Falling behind in the way you do things can cost you customers, clients and cash and none of those things can afford to be lost by a new start-up. By setting up a time budget for your staff and filtering that down through management, you can ensure that you have an efficient workforce and let’s face it, every new company needs that!