How (And Why!) To Systemize Every Role In Your Business: Nail Productivity For Your Team

Are you comfortable with money coming into your business in random, unpredictable spurts? Or would life be easier if the business brought in reasonably consistent, predictable cash flow for you? If it’s the latter, read on.

We all got into business because we had some creative juices to get out into the world. So looking at your business as a system can be a bit of a buzzkill. But to achieve a bit of consistency in income, consistency in workload (and consistency in stress levels!) you must operate your business in a consistent way. It all comes from the bottom up.

This is a PROACTIVE vs a REACTIVE way of managing time and managing tasks. Some people shy away from being managed or operating this way. So be mindful when interviewing, or thinking about your current staff. People who seem to faff (*technical term!*) or don’t manage their role with any kind of system, make it hard for your business to operate at peak efficiency. You want your business to run like a well-oiled machine, and therefore you need staff who enjoy working in a similar way. As you get higher-level managerial roles joining your team, the way this looks can of course change. But particularly in small businesses with two to ten support staff, it works well and makes life for you as the owner a whole lot nicer. It doesn’t just make it easy for you to manage your staff easily. It is vital if you ever want to holiday, step aside from managing the business, or sell your business at some point in the future.

Systemizing roles is super simple, yet so incredibly effective. Let's have a look why.

1. Your Staff Member Knows When They Are Doing A Good Job And When They Aren’t - Clearly And Objectively

Good staff members want to know they are going a good job. They enjoy being accountable and love demonstrating that they are performing to (and above) expectations. With a role that is more systemized and scheduled, employees can easily demonstrate when they have achieved and exceeded what is required of them. They can objectively demonstrate if their workloads are too high, and proactively manage that situation. Perhaps there are some types of people who thrive and create with zero parameters, but it can be difficult as a business owner to know where they are "at" at any given time. These can be the kind of staff that regularly miss deadlines, often aren't great to work with as part of a team, and are difficult to manage. Which brings me to point 2:

2. Makes It Easy For You To Manage, Without Micromanaging

As small business owners, we are cautious around micromanaging. It’s a balancing act between employee autonomy and business owner confidence that things are running the way they should. With Systemized roles, you don’t have to keep tabs on your staff or pop in to enquire how they are going, It's clear to you as a manager what they should be doing, when it should be done by, and whether they are performing their tasks as required. With a proper system, you can check their day to day performance without having to actually ask them (talk to us about this system).

3. Improve Productivity And Time Management

With your staff members week mapped out for them, you can clearly see if there is any “fat” in their schedule. I always like to leave some fat in my employees' roles - I refer to it more kindly as "Other Projects" time. Who doesn’t have Other Projects they would like to complete but never find time to prioritize? Or on the flipside, employees can get carried away with their fun or distracting 'other projects', and let their bread and butter tasks fall by the wayside. With a schedule and a systemized role, there is appropriate time allocated for every task, so there are no excuses for falling behind. And if time gets away - proactive communication is required, rather than you finding out a few days later that a certain task hasn’t been completed. This is where the scheduled "Other Projects" time helps as well - there is room for spillover that won't affect the next day's tasks.

So, how do you do it?

1. Clearly Define And Categorize The Tasks Associated With The Role

After being in a role for some time, many employees manage their day by simply working their way through their emails. This is really inefficient, as you lose out on time efficiencies by grouping like tasks together. So go back to basics - Create and categorize key tasks first. This might require a couple of hours brainstorming with yourself and your employee. Even if they have been in the role a while, often the lines get blurry around the breakup of their tasks.

2. Set Up A Clear Weekly Schedule With Tasks And Allocated Times

The schedule lists the Tasks the role is required have sit with them. Some tasks will be every day, some will be weekly. Each task has an estimated or allocated time associated with it (spreadsheets are a great way to map this out). Be sure to include an appropriate time for "Other Projects" not related to day-to-day tasks

3. Include Specific Time Allocated To Inbox Management.

Responding to emails as soon as they appear in your inbox is SO 2019. It is so incredibly distracting and focus-crushing. Depending on the role, between 1 and 4 allotted times to review and categorize emails per day, prevents that sloppy inbox-directed output. In your allocated time, you open your inbox, move emails to their respective categories in your inbox folders (a la Step 4), respond to any emails that are time critical, then get back to your allocated tasks on your schedule. Sometimes there is concern that

4. Setup Inbox To Align With Staff Schedule

All tasks on your staff’s schedule should be setup as a folder in their inbox. During their allocated time each day for their Inbox Management, every email is dragged and dropped into the relevant folders. The emails are then left to rest until the allocated time to tackle the particular activity that the email relates to.

5. Have A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) Documented For Every Task

Procedure Manuals can be a daunting task but they are so worth it. And it is 2021 - we don’t necessarily need to write out process notes with diagrams (although we LOVE doing that - nerd alert!). Jump on your laptop and create easy walk-through videos with Loom or other screen-sharing apps. Just ensure you link them to each individual task in an employee's Weekly Schedule. You want tasks to be done in a consistent way. And with SOPs documented via a manual or videos, onboarding new employees is easier as well, less time is spent on training from your end and the employees' end.

6. As You Go Up The Hierarchy, Schedules Can Be Less "Scheduled"

We have created schedules for staff members as high up the ranks as Operations Managers and Company Accountants, and granted these roles tend to need more unscheduled time and flexibility. But there is no doubt there will be certain tasks, approvals and reports that can be provided to you as the business owner in a systemized way. Take some time to think about the key outcomes that these roles are there to achieve for you. Also think about what information you need to know from them. And by having set times for these kinds of things to be due to you, you can quickly get an idea of their level of accountability, which is so crucial in senior management - these guys need to lead by example.

7. Complete A Final Overview Of Timings And Tasks Across The Whole Business

Look at all employees' schedules and make sure the timing of tasks flows between roles and departments. As a simple example, if your accounts officer completes a supplier payment run on Thursday, all bills should be approved by the relevant manager on Wednesday. This is a simplistic example, but as your business grows with more roles and departments, this will become very important. Process Maps and Swim Lane Charts are great tools to help map this out when it gets complicated. But with 2-5 employees, should be easy to do by just having all the schedules in front of you.

8. Sit Back, Relax, And Let The Business Work For You! (NOT)

As a business owner, no doubt you know that you will never really get to this point - if you are passionate about what you do, there will always be something you will be able to keep yourself busy with in the business - but with systemized roles underneath you, your time can be focused on things like research and development, high level client engagement, and doing the things in your business that you were born to do.

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If this is ringing any alarm bells in your head about how your employees are managing (or not managing) their time and their work week, please give us a call. It no secret, that at the numbers edit, we LOVE process and we LOVE systems. And we LOVE helping clients with our schedule edit service. We love extracting the right info from you and your employees to put the above system into practice. We believe in this service so much that if we cant demonstrate we have saved the money you have invested in this service, we will provide you a 100% refund.