YOUR GUIDE TO BUSINESS GROWTH
Strategies to Grow Your Business in 2023
Reflection
2022 was a year of pivotal change, especially around sustainability and digitalisation. As businesses continue to operate in a tough economic climate, the ability to anticipate and respond to challenges and opportunities will be key.
Accelerated by the pandemic, business owners have learnt how to be adaptive and agile, this will be equally as important in 2023.
Lead your business in the right direction this year by taking a deeper look at how your business has changed, the goals you want to achieve, and the strategies you need to achieve them.
What will we explore?
- How to Grow your business
- Importance of Scheduling and its benefits/outcomes
- Implementing and exerting workplace values
What does 2023 look like for business?
Many of 2023’s trends are focused on how small business owners can stay resilient and find ways to thrive, building on the lessons learnt in 2022 and during the pandemic. They also show how the UK’s changing entrepreneurial landscape is being driven by a broad range of economic, social, technological, ethical and environmental factors.
How are businesses staying resilient?
- Prioritising company culture
- Using technology to automate manual tasks
- Ensuring wellbeing and Health and Safety of employees
- Focusing on creating loyalty in customers through community building
- Reviewing their company values, mission and visions.
Prioritising company culture
Possessing a unique culture in the workplace is what drives performance. Having a positive culture will see better engagement amongst employees and staff who will elicit the organisation’s leadership, values, traditions and beliefs all whilst delivering a high quality level of work.
It will set your employees up for success. If you don’t have a positive culture, now is a time for reframing.
Looking to get an idea of what your current company culture is like? Do a quick survey with your staff. Here is what you can ask in a Company Culture Survey.
How to prioritise culture?
Communication
With the switch to remote and hybrid working, many employees can feel disconnected from their colleagues. For shift-based businesses and smaller businesses, often there is no formal platform in place to exchange messages with the team. Generally, it is either via email or WhatsApp, which can get extremely messy.
Using a central communication tool will enable you to converse efficiently with your team, in one place and eliminate confusion. Your staff can have all messages in one place, and not misplaced amongst personal messages. This keeps work and personal life separate, promoting productivity and a healthy work-life balance.
Wellbeing
Since COVID-19, many people have taken a different approach to life and to work. They are longing for a more balanced work life, more flexibility and encompassing a positive approach.
A suggestion is to start by adjusting work schedules, making them fairer where you can. That could be shorter shifts over more days or longer shifts for less days for some staff. Consider what you think might work well for your business.
You should plan more spontaneous check-ins that are less task-oriented and more focused on socialising and sharing experiences.
Creating an environment where your employees feel safe, welcome and comfortable will promote a positive and welcoming place to be. They will feel respected and valued and happy to come to their place of work.
Set clear goals
With no goals or expectations in place, staff will not be as productive.
Researchers have found that setting goals can help employees feel a greater connection to their organisation. Setting and reiterating goals enables staff to contribute to the outcome with increased optimism and overall encourages better employee performance and ultimately, growth!
Having no goals can lead to lower morale, lack of motivation, awareness or drive to create the best customer experiences.
Trust your employees
Trust goes a long way in the workplace. It means managers can put faith in their employees to fulfil the goals and objectives that have been set.
Both employers and employees benefit when there is a feeling of trust at work. Not only can trust help to build and maintain strong working relationships, but it can set a good precedent for many aspects of a work day – from teamwork and collaboration to employee performance.
Without it, any employee is likely to be less motivated and productive.
In their global CEO survey, PwC reported that “55% of CEO’s think a lack of trust is a threat to their organisation’s growth.”
Be a team
Teamwork makes the dream work, cliché but true.
Solving problems and working together is much more effective for business. It leads to better outcomes and customer experiences.
Research shows that collaboration in teams allows for more creative flow and willingness to learn on the job. With the support of a team, confidence grows and calculated risks are taken, showing innovation.
Working together as a team encourages personal growth, improves job satisfaction, meaning less turnover of staff for the company and reduces stress for your staff.
“Schedule changes are rare since we implemented Bizimply, staff request dates off, managers either approve or deny the request and if approved, the time off shows up on the schedule for that employee meaning they can’t be accidentally scheduled, it sounds so simple but makes such a difference to how we operate.”
Mansoor Jilani, NICCE
Get creative and involve your customers
There are ample opportunities nowadays to get creative, especially online. Use social platforms, in particular Instagram or Twitter to keep your customers and possible prospects up to date.
Whether this is new product information, stock arrival for a highly sought after product, new menu updates etc., your followers will want to know.
Not only is it about announcing what has arrived or is new, but it’s how you do it. Video, Image, Reel, Stories? There are so many creative ways to distribute the information.
Social media may not be your thing, but be open and adaptable to learning what it can do for your business.
Personalise where you can
Creating personalised experiences for your customers will make them feel more special and engaged with your brand.
Openly ask them for their opinions, create discussion threads on Twitter or encourage them to give their ideas/questions in questions boxes on Instagram stories, or even create polls.
Simple actions like these make the customer feel involved and motivated to return to your business.
User Generated Content
User Generated Content (UGC) is content that is created by actual users of the product. They are brand advocates who really love the brand and are happy to promote it on their socials.
UGC comes in many forms, including images, videos, reviews, a testimonial, or even a podcast.
It appears more authentic than the typical influencer content and encourages more audience to follow the brand and become a customer. Therefore, it grows the brand’s community and in turn brand loyalty too.
Partner Marketing
Partner Marketing is an effective way to get seen by people who can also resonate or become involved with your brand.
Whilst the partnership is already there, it makes sense to run marketing campaigns with your partner. Doing so will open the opportunity for a wider community and bigger audience reach.
Keep staff involved too
Live up to cultural promises
Finding and hiring the right people can be a real challenge, especially in today’s climate as the staff shortage continues to loom over us.
Make your job postings desirable, highlight your positive working culture and be open about salary, benefits and expectations.
Research by Brandon Hall Group found that organisations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%.
Ensure you have a proper onboarding process in place so new employees are fully aware of the organisation’s goals, expectations and a full understanding of their role and responsibilities are adhered to.
Opportunities for growth
Making new hires or staff aware there are opportunities for training and development within the workplace will encourage them to come onboard, and to stay working with the company too.
The availability of completing and tracking staff training allows for the opportunity of promotions within the workplace. It will also result in a happier, engaged and more productive workforce as staff have something to strive for if the desire is there.
Encourage open discussions amongst staff
It’s important to listen to your staff and value their opinions.
Set up a monthly meeting for staff to allow for open discussion. It could be an opportunity for staff to share any problems, more efficient ways of completing tasks or skills they can share with other team members that will benefit both the team and your company.
Team communication like this will resolve problems and encourage a more engaged team.
External team activities
A bit of downtime with your team will be great for bonding and boost morale in the workplace.
Staff will feel they can relate to each other more as they will have learned more about their colleagues’ personal lives and may even encourage further relationship building.
Offsite activity is beneficial to managers as well, they can gain a different perspective of their staff and see further potential in them which they may not have seen before.
Implement the right technology so you can boost efficiency and reduce labour costs
Business today needs more than manual processes to strive through the competition.
Owners and managers need to always be thinking about new ways of operating that are more efficient for the business.
Day to day processes can be automated now with better technology in place. Using technology can help you run your business more cost-efficiently and manage your team with less manual work.
What software enables you to grow your business?
Workforce Management - Scheduling
It’s time for your priorities to change. Manually creating a rota every week can be time consuming and often, quite the headache!
Take the stress away and implement a scheduling software that allows you or your managers to get back out onto the floor with their team, training them up, greeting customers and doing what they love to do best.
You’ll see huge changes around the time spent on creating the rota, a happier, more engaged and productive team, and as a result, happier, loyal customers.
With Bizimply’s scheduling software, you can schedule your staff in the right place at the right time. Monitor customer demand and see if you’re under or overstaffed, as well as seeing weekly labour spend.
Scheduling software is created to make every shift run like clockwork.
We have created for you ‘The Ultimate Guide to Scheduling’, check it out here.
Payroll
With payroll software you can minimise errors from manual data entering and be reassured payslips are accurate for your staff.
Eliminate these worries and spend more time exerting your efforts into other areas that will benefit the business.
Payroll software enables you to track your business’s revenue, profit margins, and payroll with good accounting software.
Accounting software can also help you allocate budgets for hiring new staff and working with a new vendor.
POS (Point of Sale) System
Lead with better inventory management and quicker payments. Point-of-sale platforms enable your employees to ring up customers and complete sales.
Majority of POS softwares can be customised to suit your business and industry needs. The system allows you to get a deeper insight into business data, measure your revenue growth and understand customer buying patterns.
Having a Clear Vision and Purpose
Obtaining a clear vision and purpose for your business is the epitome of success and encourages the development of a great company.
It generally involves encouraging the whole team to contribute and be truly involved in the purpose and direction of the company. Leaders who closely share the vision with their employees report positive staff retention, engaged and loyal employees.
In a report we conducted with Hospitality Mavericks; ‘The Six Tenets of Agile Hospitality’, we found that the definition, emphasis, and method of communication change from leader to leader, company to company, to suit the context and culture in which the business operates.
It goes beyond important or time-bound mission-focused tasks.
Clear communication from the leader that elicits the purpose and direction of the business will resonate with each team member and too, resonate with their own personal ambitions and beliefs.
The business and leader will then focus on implementing systems to assist every individual in understanding how their role connects to purpose. They utilise a variety of techniques to motivate their staff to take part in creating and growing a unique business around this shared calling.
Building a 2023 Vision
– Take a step back and truly see what you want to achieve with your business. Review what you currently have, and what you have achieved. Do you want to take this to the next level? Or do you want to change your business strategy altogether?
– What current impact do you have on your community, and can you enhance this further?
– What do you need to make your vision a reality? Do you have the resources required to make the changes?
– Visualise your ideal 2023.
How to propose and maintain a 2023 strategy
– Put making a difference first. Focus on how your legacy can make a greater impact to your employees and customers over revenue and profit.
– Don’t stray from your values. Keep these forefront to your mind and exert them through the company to achieve a strong and growing brand.
– Do regular check-ins on yourself to ensure you are staying true to goals and values you outlined. Do they align? Are they relevant to the business and those involved?
– Get input from others. Don’t be afraid to get opinions from staff, customers, and the community. They will appreciate your consideration and it will create a more engaged atmosphere. It will also further enhance their connection to the purpose and vision you wish to achieve.
Are you ready to grow in 2023?
Who knows what lies in the year ahead when it comes to business principles. However, it is up to you to embrace any challenges and overcome them. Prepare yourself by setting goals, outlining your purpose and vision and be clear on what you want.
Use our tips and advice to help you achieve these, create and implement a strong strategy that is right for your business and start to see the growth take place.
Find out more about streamlining your business with Bizimply and how you can make every shift run like clockwork.