How To Give Your Business Structure

Once your small business starts to grow and you take on more staff and clients, you may be finding that the systems you had in place are no longer working for your business.

As much as they try, business owners can’t do it all, and it is important to ensure that you are building a business that is sustainable after you retire. This means that you will need to put structures and systems in place to ensure that not every aspect of the business is reliant on you.

This process can be hard for businesses who have never been in this situation before, so we have created a guide on how you can implement a structure that will support the sustainability of your business.

How To Know When Your Business Needs A Structural Overhaul

Small business owners who have been through a growth spurt have likely seen the need for a structural overhaul. They may have found that their team is overwhelmed with work, staff are unsure about how to complete certain tasks, more mistakes are being made, or staff are not performing well.

This can put a lot of pressure on business owners who may feel exhausted trying to keep it all together or like they are are not in control of their business. If any of these apply to you, it may be time to implement a new structure in your business.

Document Your Processes

Many small business owners haven’t seen the need or felt like they had the time to document what they know, which leaves important information inside the owner’s head. This means that staff need to ask the owner about this information, which puts pressure on the business owner and takes up valuable time that would be better spent elsewhere.

As such, your business should identify the key functions of your business and write out a procedural manual that goes in depth on each step in your processes and who needs to sign off. Not only will this make it a lot easier to train employees, but it can also allow you to delegate tasks to others and reduce the bottleneck in your business.

By taking the information out of the owner’s head and putting it on paper, your staff can gain better clarity on what needs to be done.

Identify The Resource Gaps

To further increase the ability to delegate in your business, you should realign staff responsibilities in your business to become more efficient and quality focused. To do this, you should ask each of your employees to write down their responsibilities and highlight what they are currently struggling to get done in a day, whether that be due to a lack of skills or time.

You should also do this exercise to identify what tasks you can delegate to add the most value to your business. Once you have all of the highlighted responsibilities, you can then shuffle tasks around to better suit people’s capabilities and identify where you may need to take on an extra employee.

For example, if you have tasked your receptionist with the social media marketing, but they are struggling to find time to create engaging graphics, therefore you could consider contracting a graphic designer or marketer to handle this for you. From this, you can create new job descriptions for everyone that better suits the needs of your business.

Introduce KPIS To Create A Sense Of Accountability

Now that yourself and your team all have brand new job descriptions, you should set KPIs to measure their performance in their role. These KPIs must be specific and measurable, for example, “providing great customer service” can mean something different to every employee, therefore a KPI such as “answer the phone before the third ring” would make more sense.

This ensures that all of your staff know what needs to be done and what is expected of them to always deliver an excellent experience to your customers.

After putting your business through a structural overhaul, every employee should know exactly what needs to be done and what role they play in your business.

Having better clarity about your business’ structure and processes can help ease the pressure and stress of having to micro-manage your employees as a business owner.