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We all love a good hack or two that makes life so much easier, and that’s no different for small business owners. Productivity is the name of the game for smooth sailing in small business, so why not use time management tools and other hacks that make it happen?
We’ve gathered some of our favourite small business productivity hacks just for you. While tips like using a daily calendar for meetings or having a workspace that matches your vibe and organizational preferences are good places to start, we want to dive into some next level tools and tricks.
1. Take advantage of time management tools.
A simple way to make sure that your small business is running smoothly and staying as productive as possible is through the use of time management tools like Time by Wagepoint.
One of the newest additions to the Wagepoint ecosystem, TSM has a wide variety of features to keep both you and or employees organized, productive and on task. Seriously. It’s got the basics like scheduling shifts and notifications and alerts so everyone is in the know. If you’re looking for something a bit more advanced, it has features like staffing for projects, geofencing, shift swapping and more. It even includes team messaging!
2. Automate processes and tasks where possible.
The more that automation can help you with, the more time you have for other projects or tasks. Take payroll for instance (it’s our favourite!). Gathering employee hours worked, doing the calculations for the gross payroll, calculating the deductions to get the net payroll amount and cutting pay cheques can take a lot of your time. And we haven’t even gotten to manually handling remittances and employee forms.
With a software like Wagepoint, so many of those steps can be automated that you’ll be done in a snap. Wagepoint is a self-serve payroll software built with small business owners in mind, meaning we do what we can to save you time. Calculating pay, source deductions and other deductions and using features like direct deposit make paying your employees super easy. It can also handle payroll tax remittances and many employee forms, including T4s, T4As, RL-1s and Records of Employment (ROEs).
When we say Wagepoint helps you process payroll quickly so you can do literally anything else, we mean it!
3. Save time with tech stack integrations.
Since we’re piling on the tech recommendations, it’s a good time to mention integrations. It’s common these days for a lot of software and technology in general to work together. That’s built in for productivity purposes so that you don’t have to spend time entering info from one software into another.
Let’s look at the two we’ve mentioned so far: TSM and Wagepoint. This time management tool and payroll software are a tag-team duo that communicate with one another so that you can easily handle both the time amangement and processing side of payroll.
But the integrations don’t stop there! Small business owners have more to worry about than just payroll… like bookkeeping. Which is why Wagepoint has super simple integrations with accounting software like Xero and QuickBooks Online. Our Xero integration even includes a single-sign-up option, giving you the chance to create a Wagepoint account using your Xero login credentials. How’s that for efficiency?
4. Strengthen communication with your team.
We don’t just mean techy type communication like making sure everyone is reading their emails or checking their Slack messages. (Although that’s super important, too!)
Communication also refers to how you and your team interact with one another. We’ve all seen how miscommunication or even disagreements can derail productivity in an instant — and while it may happen from time to time regardless of your efforts, taking steps to prevent these situations can help.
One thing we love here at Wagepoint is emotional intelligence. While some might reduce emotional intelligence to having empathy, that’s only a small piece of the puzzle. More broadly, it’s the awareness, control and expression of your emotions, especially when interacting with others.
Emotional intelligence for your small business can keep you and your employees out of sticky situations by encouraging everyone to be mindful of how they’re interacting with each other.
5. Make mental health a priority.
While society is getting better at recognizing the impacts of mental health on, well, everything, it’s still left out of a lot of conversations. Including conversations in the workplace and in relation to performing our jobs.
A bad mental health day can sweep productivity’s legs out from underneath just as much as anything else. Unfortunately, we can’t escape all bad mental health days, but by making mental health a priority and taking steps toward mental wellness, we can reduce or at the very least better manage them. Giving everyone in your small business the space to take care of their mental health will truly make a difference.
Happy productivity! Get hacking!
There you have it! Five of our favourite productivity hacks for small businesses. From tech stacks to the human elements of running a business, we’re sure these will get you started on the right track.
