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Because many businesses have struggled with revenue and income in the past few years, often employees are laid off and others are expected to pick up their slack. For example, administrators are often some of the first to go, even though they aren’t usually paid very much and do a number of very small but incredibly important tasks. So instead of having an assistant to do those tasks, highly-paid specialists are answering phones, getting their mail, and setting up meetings on their own time.
In short, this never leads to a gain and often just leads to a waste of valuable time. However, organizing and making your employees use their time to the best of their abilities doesn’t mean hiring back a team of secretaries. It does, however, mean a bit of reorganization.
Compensate Appropriately
Your highly paid employees should be doing tasks appropriate for their pay level. Even if you don’t have a ton of administrators left, you can still find the lowest-paid employees at your office and have them do the admin work. It’s important to know what each task is “worth”, depending on how much profit it may bring your organization. Answering phone calls shouldn’t be worth as much as marketing your website or designing a new one.
Make Your Employees Goal-Oriented
The goals of your company and the goals of your employees don’t need to be the same, but they should definitely have the same interests in mind. Making sure your employees do things that don’t really make any sense for their roles (filling out their own calendar, for example, when you have an admin or other employee that could be doing it for them) is taking them away from the tasks they know how best to do. This can result in a “spread-too-thin” problem, and the actual tasks that need to be done are put aside for things that won’t help your company nearly as much in the long run.
In short, make sure your employees are doing things that make sense not only for their pay rate, but for their role in your company as well. Now is the time to make sure that your employees are managing their time effectively, and with a little guidance and direction from you, they should understand what they should be doing to ensure the company grows – and they can get their assistant back in the process.
