Have you, like so many other small businesses, encountered a staffing shortage? Do you need to get more done while improving your employees’ user experience? The right technology—what’s in your team’s toolbox—can help you cope with staffing shortages and increase productivity.
How this blog helps your business
- Retain employees by improving their user experience and productivity
- Get the most out of your current software applications
- Make sure technology works for you
More than ever, small businesses are revising their team’s tech toolbox to get more done with what they have or even with less. Many turn to technological solutions, previously unavailable, that help retain employees and boost efficiency.
During the Great Resignation, many small businesses are coping with staff shortages. Retaining good employees who contribute to your business’s success becomes more difficult. And hiring new talent remains very challenging. Simply offering higher wages and more benefits won’t cut it since budgets are already stretched thin. Workers increasingly want jobs that provide satisfaction and a fulfilling experience.
Get the Right Tech Stack for Your Staffing Shortage
Your business’s collection of software applications—your “tech stack”—is crucial to your success. When you have the right lineup of applications, your staff won’t have to cope with so many drudgery-filled manual tasks.
For example, when your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) application integrates with your sales and billing applications, team members need only enter or review client information once. Updates are similarly easy. If your applications don’t work with one another, your staff need to fill in the gaps.
Chances are that you or your primary IT staff member already deal with many other important tasks. In that case, you might consider consulting an expert to make sure that your tech stack is optimal for your needs. Doing so will save you time for other, more pressing matters.
Provide Good UX and Improve Efficiency
During the past couple of years, employees have learned that working from home is not a panacea for their problems. Many report that they’ve hit a breaking point after months of working remotely. This caused many to think about their work-life balance and, in several instances, resign to look for a superior situation for themselves.
Better employee user experience (UX) and improved efficiency often go hand-in-hand. In 2020, some 39% of small businesses spent five or more hours per week dealing with payment problems. Many of these issues involved manual tasks that staff found tedious to resolve. This kind of thing leads to burnout.
However, the right tech stack can make billing and collections easier for everyone—customers and your staff alike. In addition, using applications that live in the cloud makes it easier for staff to retrieve and update information, while improving security. These applications are automated in order to reduce the number of manual tasks that staff must handle.
By including more automation in your tech stack, you will free up your employees to address more important matters than manual data entry. They will be able to engage in creative, strategic activities that contribute directly to your bottom line. And they will have more control, a greater sense of agency, when performing their duties. That leads to greater employee satisfaction, improved morale, and success for your business.
Staffing Shortage Solution
The path to a better tech toolbox for your business lies in expanding automation. Sometimes, that means using the (perhaps hidden) capabilities of your current software package. Or you might need to exchange what does not work efficiently for something that will.
In either case, you will likely make worklife better for your employees. And your business will be able to improve service more efficiently.
At Now IT Works, we’re ready to help you cope with these challenges. Give us a call.