Partner Article

How to Make Your Life Easier as a Business Owner

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, but what if you could lighten the load, just a little bit?

Life as a business owner can be stressful. Most of you work longer hours than traditional employees, with as many as 39% of business owners working 60 hours or more a week. Striking a work-life balance in this hectic lifestyle becomes difficult — there are so many responsibilities pulling you this way and that. For the modern business owner, anything that can alleviate some of the strains and stresses of work-life is a blessing; but these blessings are few and far between.

While opportunities to make life easier won’t often fall into your lap, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Sometimes you have to go looking for them instead. By investing in the right practices, and thinking about the management of your business carefully, you can start to ease off some of the burdens that weigh down your shoulders.

Outsource HR Management

HR management is a heavily resource-intensive task that requires a lot of paperwork and an understanding of the legal process. For a business with a handful of employees or more, good human resource management is essential. But it can become another aspect of running your business that you don’t have time for.

Improper HR management is a disaster waiting to happen. So if you are going to do it yourself, you need to do it right. But managing HR may be something you don’t have time to even think about, let alone do. And, while you may believe the only alternative is to hire a member of staff to manage HR, that’s not exactly an enticing idea either. Hiring a dedicated HR manager for a small pool of employees is costly and unnecessary if you employ less than ten people.

So what’s the solution? You outsource HR

Outsourcing HR does three things for your business:

It allows you to have expert HR management that conforms to the appropriate practices and enhances business processes.

It makes for affordable HR solutions that don’t require expensive and unnecessary staff onboarding.

It removes the need for you to manage any element of HR, giving you back the time lost to even thinking about it.

All these three elements work together to make your life as a business owner easier. You get peace of mind, cost-effective solutions and more time. It’s a win-win-win.

Accommodate Remote Working

Remote working is on the rise, and for good reasons.

The practice allows businesses to work with a great deal of flexibility. Since flexibility is a quality that makes everyone’s lives easier — including yours — there is no doubt you’ll be keen to get a piece of it.

To achieve the life-changing benefits of remote working, you have to make room for it. Many business practices remain entrenched in the idea of the nine to five workday, set within an office or business headquarters.

Outside-the-box thinking is required to break free of these confines.

The most important step to success is the investment in new technology that enables remote work. From carrying out tasks at home to effectively communicating with colleagues long-distance, new software and hardware solutions developed for remote work practices can enhance your processes and allow you to manage your business wherever you are.

The goal here is to find solutions that mean you can do anything for your business without being in one location or working within the classic nine to five routine. Cloud-based technology, smart devices and tailor-made options are your bread and butter.

Examples of solutions to incorporate include:

Digital faxing enabling fax communication without the need for a fax machine Out of hours virtual receptions that manage calls to enable activity whenever necessary Communication platforms that allow colleagues to reach each other easily Cloud document sharing to facilitate long-distance project collaboration

These are just a few basic examples based on common problems faced when moving to remote work. In short: Look at your business tasks, find an appropriate solution and integrate it so you can start your journey towards an easier life of remote work.

**Cut the Dead Weight **

Compassion, understanding and patience are all great qualities in a leader — but not if they result in you making poor decisions that negatively impact your business.

Business owners who are unwilling to fire awful employees are a common situation and one reported on countless times — in the media and anecdotally. The person may be having a negative impact in many ways. They might cause problems for other employees, slow processes down, make mistakes and leave you to clean up messes. Or they may just be costing you money doing an unnecessary job. All these situations create stress and issues that make your life harder, not easier.

If dropping an employee will make life easier, it’s time to let them go.

There are many reasons why managers opt not to fire bad employees. From personal feelings and family ties to fear of backlash, there are plenty of unpleasant elements that make the idea of letting the employee continue to work for you more appealing than letting them go.

However, the short-term upset is always worth the long-term results. Shed the dead weight, cut the ties, and your life as a business owner will be better for it.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Exposure Ninja .