Successfully building a small business doesn’t merely involve addressing the tasks that are immediately relevant to your current needs and circumstances. It also requires planning for the future.
Right now, maybe you’re working for yourself, with no other employees. If you do have a few other team members, your workforce might nevertheless still be so small that you have little difficulty managing it.
That could change in the future. You probably want it to. Like most business owners, you likely want your business to grow.
You need to prepare for that growth. One way you can do so is by researching workforce management solutions now. Although the specific features a workforce management tool offers can vary from one product to another, generally, workforce management software allows you to keep track of employee time, maximize productivity, and forecast staffing needs.
There are many reasons you should consider looking into workforce management software products now, even if you don’t think you’ll need to use one in the immediate future. They include the following:
Easier Onboarding
The main reason you should research your workforce management options sooner rather than later is simple: you may one day have enough employees that you’ll need to use this type of tool.
Onboarding those employees can be costly. One recent report indicates the average cost of a new hire is $4,129.
Many factors impact how much it costs to add a new employee to the team. The amount of time it takes to train new hires is one such factor.
Thus, you can reduce costs by choosing various tools and systems that are easy for new employees to acquaint themselves with. Keep in mind, your future workforce management solution isn’t a tool only you will use. Every member of the company may theoretically use it at some point.
That’s a good reason to demo a workforce management tool now. You want to find one with an intuitive and user-friendly dashboard that new employees will have little trouble getting accustomed to in the future.
Preparing to Boost Employee Engagement
When your workforce grows, your ability to directly interact with each and every employee on a regular basis will decrease. You want to make sure the interactions you do have with your future employees matter.
For example, research indicates that acknowledging employees for their hard work (when they’ve genuinely put in hard work) is an easy way to boost engagement, which in turn boosts productivity. In the future, you should prioritize using the limited time you may have interacting with ambitious employees to let them know you appreciate their contributions.
A workforce management tool can help. The right solution will give you both a broad sense of your workforce’s productivity and needs, while also letting you assess the work of individual employees easily. Thus, you should prepare to foster engagement when your workforce grows by testing workforce management solutions now.
Forecasting Staffing Needs
This point touches on a way in which a workforce management solution can help you right now, even if your business is currently very small.
A workforce management tool should offer robust forecasting capabilities. These features help you determine how many employees will need to be assigned to specific projects. Proper forecasting helps you maintain client relationships by avoiding understaffing while also helping you save money by guarding against overstaffing. Because any successful business should be in a constant state of growth, even now, you could use a forecasting tool to help you determine when it’s time to hire a new team member.
Again, as an ambitious small business owner, you have goals of growing a thriving operation. You need to prepare for the day when you reach some of your goals. One way to do so is to equip yourself with the right workforce management software sooner rather than later.
Anna Johansson is the founder and CEO of Johansson Consulting where she works with businesses to create marketing and PR campaigns.
