Make Your Assets Pay Off
In our third segment of business makeovers, we’re looking at you and how you allocate your resources. Looking at asset management in a blog is like trying to write a three volume book in a single paragraph. But let’s look at three forms of asset management, and you dive into the one pertaining to your particular business:
1. Managing things. Asset management affects both your liquidity and your focus. When too much product gathers dust inside your business, money comes to a grinding halt. What you need is a consistent flow, and these fifty tips can help.
2. Managing the future. Sometimes you need to hone in on your blueprint and just get back to basics. These six steps serve as a quick check and go to review your one- and five-year plans.
3. Managing your greatest assets—people. Think about the adage less is more. The Hartford suggests you may need fewer employees and more temps. Does that surprise you?
The reasons for streamlining your staff may not be readily obvious. Seventeen million workers in the United States serve as contract workers, consultants, temps, freelancers and interns…and that number is growing. It’s growing because it’s good business. For one thing, they don’t require benefits, which saves you money. Their presence is fluid, which means when you need help you’ve got it, and when you don’t, you’re not paying for it. That’s a biggie, isn’t it? It means that if you need a specific skill set, you don’t need to pay top wages, orient, train and employ one on your staff. Contract out the work and everyone wins.
Temps represent short-term need fulfillment. Let’s look at two fields: For example, you may need a blog once a month to diversify your social output. You may need a newsletter once a month to keep clients in your loop. Are these daily needs? Of course not…so why pay someone a monthly wage for two shorter assignments? A second field lies in social influencing. If you have a website and folks are not visiting your site, you are not using what you have to best advantage. Yes, as a business owner, you could post on social media five times a day, but you don’t, so your piece of the pie shrinks instead of growing.
The biggest trap business owners fall into is one of wearing too many hats. A blog or a newsletter or a Facebook post all fall within every business owner’s abilities…but not within time constraints. Yes, you could write it yourself, but do you? All too often, the frills slip past busy small business owners, but they affect the bottom line.
People are your greatest asset and when you manage employees wisely, prosperity follows. Insperity offers seven tips for a better strategy toward success. Their third tip on investing in employees is priceless. This isn’t counter-intuitive: Temps can loosen up the purse strings, allowing you to pay your team more and lighten workloads. As you do this, your bottom line actually improves.