A multi-skilled team is better placed to cover the varied workload as demands change
Posted in General on 25. Sep, 2010
A multi-skilled team is better placed to cover the varied workload as demands change.”Remember that ‘Team’ means ‘Together Everyone Achieves More’. Rapid Hire Service could consider training all its employees to perform different roles. The key to freeing up time is getting a greater contribution from team members.”Working longer hours may not be the answer Look instead for ways to improve efficiency. Perhaps asking his employees what they think needs changing might be a good starting point.”Paul Baker, business coach, Action International”Mr Jay faces the common dilemma of time being the most precious resource for the business owner.
That would free up his time to focus on strategic decision-making rather than short-term delivery of the business, and in this way he would maximise his own personal efficiency.”The alternative would be to employ (possibly from an agency) a good business development professional to concentrate on this area, while Mr Jay continues to run the business itself.”Critically, he needs to be more hands-off in his approach, otherwise nothing will change. At the moment he’s doing the work of two people, and using his evenings, weekends and holidays to focus on the company’s future.”Employing an operations director might help here as I am presuming he already uses outside financial and accountancy advice. But his main weakness, he says, is that he had no management experience before setting up Rapid Hire Service.Rapid Hire Service, 020 8561 8830.WHAT THE EXPERTS SAYAlexandra Jones, senior researcher, The Work Foundation (the research and management consultancy)”Mr Jay has the classic problem faced by many small firms: how do you expand in a controlled way? This is not so much a question of achieving a work-life balance as of getting the professional advice needed to manage the expansion of his business. “In any case, all my staff are already fulfilling their roles.”He believes his strengths include being well organised, self-motivated and capable of planning in advance for the sporadic nature of the firm’s cashflow. “But we tend to get one who is really good, then another who costs us money and slows us down. Recently, we had someone who had a crash they didn’t tell us about, and many don’t know their way around.”So what about delegation? “It sounds great in theory, but in practice, I find it hard,” admits Mr Jay. Instead, we need a bit more help with the accounts, a bit more help with repairs and a bit more help with testing and running all the equipment when it comes back.
That makes it difficult.”I don’t think it works to have a lot of part-time people because there would be a lack of consistency, and I don’t think it would work to get in temps because you need to know our business well to be productive.”He does take on temporary drivers from time to time, he says. “But we want to expand, so I try to take time out to step back and consider where we want to take the business and how we’ll achieve it.”Among the obvious solutions to Mr Jay’s problem is to hire more staff But as he explains: “We don’t need any more full-time staff. There isn’t one clear-cut, specific role that we need another person for. There are four other members of staff: a full-time driver, a full-time fitter, a part-timer who looks after the administrative side of the business and some of the accounts, and a part-time driver. “They work long hours too,” he says, “not as long as me, but they’re still pushed and often have to work overtime.”In the evenings and/or on Sundays, Mr Jay focuses on the future of the business. “During the day, I find myself dealing with the day-to-day side of things,” he says.
Sales and repairs are the secondary functions of the business. “We began trading in 1993 and have grown organically ever since,” says Mr Jay. “But despite expanding at a relatively slow pace, we do always seem to be very busy, which is why I work so much.”Mr Jay’s role involves managing the shop, solving any problems that arise, juggling the cashflow and overseeing and chasing the finances. Even then, he often cancels or changes his plans at the last minute because of work priorities, and he always takes his mobile phone with him.