Your Most Valuable Asset.

Believe it or not, it is not your product, nor is it your enormous brain or fantastic location – it’s your workers! Without them nothing happens – you can’t do it all! Without strategic management, retention of your staff can be difficult. Going through the ordeal of replacing an unhappy staff member can cost up to three times their original annual salary. Couldn’t that money be better spent on trusted, loyal employees that reflect your business values? On a quality HR strategy? On simply making them happy? Side effects of looking after your most valuable assets include; lower staff turnover, attraction of the ‘right’ talent when you do need new people, higher productivity and output and increased customer satisfaction. Sounds like a terribly successful way of doing business doesn’t it?

What Workers Really Want.

So what makes for a dissatisfied worker? It could be one of many things… lack of advancement in their position, boredom with job content, low wages, long hours, managerial gripes, bullying, company dynamics or personal problems. What a way to spend eight hours, every day – for whatever reason, it’s pretty evident that this person will either leave or eventually stop doing their job effectively. A happy worker on the other hand, envisions a workplace where they are valued and feel appreciated, where they feel a shared ownership in the brand or company.

Opportunities for professional advancement, training in and access to new technologies, and a pay cheque that reflects their contribution to the business also helps! On a more human level, workers just want to communicate and feel heard once in a while. They’d love it if the boss would acknowledge that they have a life outside the office and be flexible for family and social commitments.

How You Can Deliver.

First and foremost, if you have a large company and are not trained in human resources yourself, get an expert in strategic management in to look after it. Whether on a contract basis, or a permanent addition to your team, an expert in HR strategy will ultimately save you time and money. Even if you don’t have a huge number of employees in your own small business there are lots of ways to get your staff morale flying high above the bar and raise the stakes for your success! Try being more flexible, both with hours and job roles. Allow timeshare or trading for parents or students; where they can either work from home or take a ‘part time’ or different roles when outside pressures and commitments arise.

Work with people’s natural circadian rhythms; have rotating shifts for morning and afternoon people – as long as the same amount of work is getting done, does it really matter when? Offer genuine thanks for good work; this is so simple, but almost never done properly.  Have readily available opportunities for advancement available, in-house or external professional development can only help give you an edge over your competitors. Any which way you look at it, an investment in your workers happiness via quality strategy planning, will reap major rewards for your overall business performance.

Meanwhile, your nearby competitor may be busy developing a business strategy for the future, determined to climb over you to the top! A little business analysis and strategic planning now might help you take the lead.

Do you want to remain competitive in your field? If you do, spend time on your business by analysing your current situation. Develop a business strategy and a technology strategy that will help your business grow and develop profitably as trends, technology and client expectations change.

Analyse Your Business.
As you analyse your business and plan your new business strategy, you’ll need to consider several aspects of your business. These should include human resources, technological assets and processes, advertising methods and the needs and desires of your clientele. Are you meeting your clients’ expectations? Are you taking full advantage of the Internet and all it offers? Are there new trends emerging that may require you to change your product range or upgrade the services that you offer?  If there are, making those changes before your competitors do can give you a major advantage and increase your profits!

Consider your current methods of operation. Can you apply new technology to increase the efficiency of your business? Will the technology you have now be adequate in the future? Are you employees utilising your technology to the advantage of your business or do they need additional training? Technology and the changes it brings are inescapable. It advances at an ever increasing pace and for many over-worked business operators, it’s only too easy to slip behind and lose touch with change. It pays for modern businesses to have a technology strategy in place to ensure they remain competitive.

Developing a Technology Strategy.
The content of your technology strategy will depend on the nature of your business – whether you sell technology or simply use it in the running of your operation. If you sell it, part of your technology strategy will be designed to ensure you keep up to date on available products. There are other things to consider too – are changes in technology likely to bring about new trends or products? Depending on the nature of your business, your strategy may include new ways of marketing your products or services, product development, plans to attend relevant conferences and expos, or simply ensuring that you’re subscribed to industry publications for up to date information.

If your business is service orientated, the major role of technology in your business is likely to be in the day to day operation of your business. That is no less important. The quality and speed of your service can be determined by the quality of the technology you are using. Quality and speed of service are vitally important to your clients.  If you want to be competitive or take the lead in your field, keeping your systems up to date is a necessity.

Think about some of the businesses that have left you unimpressed in recent years and why that occurred – it’s quite likely that as you walked out the door you considered them to be behind the times! Having a business strategy for the future and a technology strategy to keep you in front will give you a significant advantage over your possibly out of touch competitors