Spring cleaning is a long-held tradition to minimize clutter, freshen up your space, and keep your home tidy. But these same principles can also be applied to your business! Below are some of our favorite payroll & HR spring cleaning tips to keep your business running smoothly all year long.
Clean the windows
Having a clear view of what’s going on in your business is so critical to success. But when was the last time you thought twice about your current analytics and reporting? Get a better look by:
- Brushing up on Reporting in SDP Connect and how to pull all the employee and pay data you need
- Taking advantage of SDP Time for real-time analytics on who’s working, overtime, and break-tracking
- Utilizing a task management system that gives you a birds-eye view of progress towards goals and projects across your entire organization
Donate the excess
Spring cleaning is also the perfect opportunity to identify things that are no longer serving your business. That could be policies, procedures, or even a particular product or service that’s not meeting your ROI needs. Here are a few ideas to start:
- Review and update internal documentation to make sure it reflects current processes
- Identify 3 of your most time-consuming processes and brainstorm with your team how to improve them. For example, can you use delegation, automation, or redistribute the workload to be more efficient?
- “Marie Kondo” your operations–with a twist! Instead of asking, “Does this spark joy?” Ask yourself, “Is this fair, consistent, and scalable?” If not, consider making changes to improve the process. (Shout-out to SDP’s Director of Operations Cherrise Newman for the fair-consistent-scalable test!)
Replace old and worn items
Out with the old and in with the new, right? After you’ve removed or amended any inefficient elements of your business, consider where you can invest to add value. A great question to ask yourself is, “what will move the needle most for my business?” A few sample goals could be:
- Upgrading your payroll process with a robust system like SDP Connect to save time and minimize payroll errors
- Leveling up your HR department with HR On Demand Plus or HR Complete to support your (re)growing business and mitigate compliance risk
- Adding an automated timekeeping system to replace paper timecards and reduce manual processes
- Revamping your company’s Onboarding program to improve retention and meet your organization’s rehiring needs
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Tidy up each room
Next, it’s time to “tidy up” the individual components of your business. If need be, you may also need to “reorganize” or shuffle some things or people around. To get started, you can:
- Analyze the strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement for each department in your business
- Review your org chart and current career paths to make sure they still make sense for your current workforce
- Evaluate your managers and identify new promotion opportunities
Change your smoke detector batteries
Lastly, don’t forget about the “important but non-urgent” tasks that are designed to proactively protect your business. These tasks are usually the first to be neglected. However, they’re also the tasks that have the biggest impact on reducing the number of “fires” you’ll have to put out later on. When we think of these “smoke detector” tasks, a few that come to mind include:
- Committing to creating or updating your employee handbook – this should be reviewed on at least an annual basis (ideally bi-annually)
- Making sure all of your employee information is up-to-date – you should confirm names, addresses, and SSNs with employees at least once a year to avoid errors and costly amendments down the line
- Undergoing an HR audit – If you feel you may be out of touch with employment laws, have run into legal trouble in the past, or just underwent a major change in your company (moving out of state, opening a new location, surge in employee count, etc.), conducting a mock HR audit to identify your blind spots can be invaluable in protecting your business
- Updating your job descriptions – the hiring pool is constantly changing! We recommend reviewing and updating your job descriptions on an annual basis to stay relevant and competitive so you can keep attracting top talent
Top Tip: SDP’s HR Complete service can be turned on or off as needed throughout your business lifecycle. We recommend organizations with 15+ employees turn this on every 3-4 years for a few months of maintenance to undergo the included HR audit and make sure you’re still on track compliance-wise!
Let’s Talk
We hope you enjoyed these spring cleaning tips for your business! Although springtime is a great natural reminder to do some “spring cleaning”, you don’t need to wait for spring to do maintenance on your payroll and HR processes.
If you need any assistance streamlining the admin side of your business, then let’s talk! And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for even more business tips and news.
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