Getting started with a new business is an exciting time. There are logos to design, offices to set up, and personnel to hire. Amid all the activity swirling about, it’s easy to lose sight of some of the important personnel actions you need to take in order to establish long-term business viability.
Many startups include friends and family during their earliest days, going to outside employees only when the major growth starts. For this reason, there is an intimate atmosphere of trust and shared enthusiasm at the beginning. When new faces – the faces of strangers – begin to appear later on, it can be easy to forget that this atmosphere can’t continue indefinitely.
As a result, there are some things that need to be put into place just as soon as you begin to hire employees. If you miss that opportunity, you can end up with a very awkward transition later on when it becomes unavoidable.
When a firm uses a program like Asure Software, they are taking on critical business functions by way of a computerized platform that streamlines operations and saves them money. Specifically, they address three major areas that are best described with some familiar old sayings.
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors.
We could have chosen, “Give an inch, they’ll take a mile” here as well. The point is simple. It is important to have policies in place before there is anyone around to make them necessary. If your plan is to have the office staffed through the entire day, then you need a policy in place to require staggered lunch breaks. A system that tracks working hours will ensure that employees are complying.
What you’ll find is that there won’t be many problems because the rules were clearly established and explained prior to the beginning of their tenure with you. There won’t be any backlash after changes are made in response to abuse. It will just be how business is done; they won’t know you any other way.
An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth A Pound of Cure.
That carries us to our next point. Once again, it’s easy to get caught up in a relaxed, familiar atmosphere and to assume that everyone will see the business the same way you do. But the fact is that conflicts will emerge. Someone will need this meeting space and claim to have requested it first, and someone else will disagree. Hard-charging millennials will lock horns, and things will escalate.
Avoid these problems. Have a policy in place on how meeting spaces are reserved, and utilize software to maintain meeting schedules so that reservations and time frames are logged chronologically. This will head off nearly all scheduling misunderstandings, keeping things civil and, more importantly, keeping meetings on track.
Trust, But Verify.
The twice-daily queue at the time clock is a thing of the past. Workers are all over the place, telecommuting or making calls to customers. As a result, it’s inefficient and pointless to drag them into the office only to clock in, then to have them return at day’s end to clock out.
But of course, working hours must still be tracked. Everyone needs to submit some form of proof that they were on the job for the length of time that their pay stub reflects.
The solution is an online timesheet system. Workers can log in and log out for the day’s activities from wherever they may be. Management knows who is working when and where so there’s no need for a time-consuming review as payroll gets ready to run. Hours are logged clearly and efficiently.
During periods of rapid growth, your business will require that you think ahead. That can be overwhelming when everything needs your attention at once. But a wise investment in good software solutions will head off problems for many years to come. You will find that it’s time well spent.
