Welcome to The Ledger where we sum up the latest finance and accounting news and trends for you. On this week’s entry, we’re diving into the topic of best business practices for growth that will propel your company forward. Read on to see how to grow your business during uncertain times, best practices to utilize while working with a remote development team, how to foster a great workplace culture, and how to become the next unicorn business.
How To Grow Your Business During Uncertain Times
The past year and half has been a whirlwind of unexpected changes. Everyone has had to adjust to a new normal, including businesses. But how can companies continue to grow amidst uncertainty? Here are a few best practices to help you and your team navigate the pandemic and beyond:
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Continuing expanding your team – how can you grow your company without growing your team? And don’t ignore your current employees – they are just as important as the new team members.
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Go online and change your recruiting tactics – remote work is here to stay, so embrace it. And if you’re wanting to add top talent to your department, create an efficient recruiting strategy.
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Enhance your onboarding procedures – this includes:
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Assigning every new team member a ‘support team’.
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Developing a web page with company history and personal files of the employees.
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Creating questionnaires for the first day, week and month.
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Schedule regular check-ins with your new employee.
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Allow professional development and self-education – just because most in-person events were cancelled, doesn’t mean your employees can’t continue to learn to further their skill set – there’s webinars, online workshops and conferences, etc.
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Encourage personal holidays – make sure your employees know that they’re not just colleagues but family.
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Compromise with a hybrid work method – understand how many of your team members want to return to the office and how many want to continue working remotely.
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Review the benefits of working from home – don’t focus on the negatives of the pandemic, but instead focus on the positives – what good came out of working from home?
To explore more of these best practices, read the full article on Forbes.com.
Best Business Practices for Growth To Utilize While Working With A Remote Development Team
Not only did COVID bring about unexpected challenges, but it also changed how organizations across the world functioned. Remote development teams were not a new concept pre-pandemic. However, once the pandemic hit and forced teams to go virtual, these teams had to restructure their day-to-day processes, including how to communicate with teams that had never been remote before. Moreover, most remote development teams are offshore, which brings about challenges in of itself – communication, time zone differences, diversity of business practices, etc. So how can you manage an offshore team?
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Set expectations – outline the key metrics that each developer needs to hit.
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Create a defined workflow – make sure that each process is consistent across all teams.
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Offer numerous communication tools – this includes video chats (Zoom, Google Hangouts), phone calls, instant messaging (Slack, Microsoft Teams), and email.
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Track tasks – you should know what each team member is working on.
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Encourage transparency – this includes organizing weekly remote lunches and virtual coffee breaks.
To learn how to manage and established a remote development team, head over to Business2Community.com.
How To Foster A Successful Workplace Culture
Having a great company culture is more than just offering unlimited PTO or having a ping pong table set up in the break room. In fact, the best employers believe that their employees are their number one asset. Being recognized as an employer of choice is something to value and act upon because in today’s job market, finding and retaining top talent has become a company’s greatest challenge. So what makes an employer of choice the top pick?
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Employee recognition programs
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Internal communication
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Ongoing feedback and mentoring
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Clear career roadmaps
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Better management training
And if you’re wanting to make it in the first round of the draft, you need to follow these best practices:
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Conduct cultural and engagement assessments – building a great company culture begins with leveraging data.
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Meet your employees’ personal needs – esteem, empathy, involvement, ability to share, and support.
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Provide and receive feedback – instead of conducting annual reviews, opt for feedback/coaching sessions. Another thing to consider is providing tools that measure work culture.
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Utilize effective job postings – sell the job like you would a product, tell your company’s story, describe your culture, etc.
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Develop a learning organization – foster a culture that is centered around ongoing learning.
To understand more about how to create a great company culture, read the full article on IndustryWeek.com.
Best Practices To Utilize If You Want To Become A Unicorn Business
If you’re a small business looking to grow or a midsize company aiming to net over a million, you might be wondering how other organizations do it. How are they achieving such a high dollar amount? And if it’s not a luck of the draw, then what could it be?
They followed a set of best practices.
If you want to join the mile high club comprised of unicorn businesses, here are a few practices to implement:
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Don’t sugarcoat information – tell it like it is; honesty is always the best policy.
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Leave politics at the door – politics don’t belong in decision-making; get rid of the ‘us versus them’ mentality.
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Create KPIs and then monitor – you should be continuously watching your metrics.
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Make sure you get it in writing – just like you would never make a deal verbally (without having it in writing), you should never verbally express your goals and intentions. Written communication helps the business stay on track.
Becoming a unicorn is not an overnight process – it takes years of hard work and dedication towards your products or services and your team. To explore how to reach that rare status on becoming a company valued at $1 billion or more, read the full article on Inc.com.
