By Lily Asis
To make sure that it is able to both meet and adapt to the demands of the day, you need to do all you can to ensure that your business is flexible. When you do, dealing the challenges that are thrown its way and the changes that are enforced upon it will become second nature to you.
To find out how to go about making your business operations and practices as flexible as they can be, check out the advice below.
Be flexible when it comes to your working environment
You have a number of options when it comes to increasing the flexibility of your working environment. One is to embrace remote working. This would involve you hiring a number of employees, either on full-time contracts or in freelance positions and sending them their daily work electronically to be performed at their own pace. This would see you have fewer troubles with staff relocation should you decide to up sticks and move your business’s headquarters at any point.
Embracing remote working does come with a set of drawbacks, though, the biggest one being that communication is made harder. It’s only natural, as when an employee is not sat within earshot of you, it’s always going to be harder to converse with them. There is tech out that is fixing the issue of poor communication levels between office-based staff and remote workers, though, the best of which being VoIP. This kind of tech, which is offered by Monster VOIP, allows staff members to retain a high standard of contact with one another wherever they may be, even if four continents separate them.
Be more versatile with the hours of work that you assign
You shouldn’t be too quick to adhere to the age-old business practice of assigning 9 to 5 working hours to your employees, and should instead become far more versatile with the hours of work that you set. By doing so, you’ll find that work efficiency is boosted thanks to the way in which your staff wellness is tended to. More freedom will better staff morale, too, and that will only ever better productivity.
In a roundabout way, being more versatile with your working hours will also enhance your customer service skills. Today, customers want to be free to bring their queries to businesses at a time that suits them. By spreading the hours in which your employees work, your phones will be manned over a greater period of time, meaning customers will stand a greater chance of getting into contact with you at a time they deem appropriate.
Flexibility is key in business. By being too rigid, you won’t leave your business much room to maneuver if or, more likely, when, things go wrong. For this reason, you should seek to be more flexible when it comes to your working environment, and you should seek to be more versatile with the hours of work that you assign. They might not feel like big changes initially, but they’ll impact your business for the better in a big way in the long run.