It’s generally considered good business practice to reinvest profit back into the company. This is a basic business concept, but like many principle like this, looking a little closer can unveil a world of complexity. After all – there’s so much out there to spend your money on, and so many investments a business could make.
Do you invest in a rebrand if you deem this to be necessary? Do you reinvest it in structuring a new department within your growing firm, like a dedicated marketing department? What about transferring to a new office, this time with easier access to worthwhile parking and closer to a metropolitan district where the chance of acquiring the best talent is assured?
Reinvesting profit into your operational workflow is a great idea. But what does this mean in effect, and what kind of purchases or long-term spending does it require?
Put simply, operational workflow is every set of tasks followed by your employees in order to achieve their goals. So for example, calculating the hours worked by your staff is part of the operational workflow to determining your wage payroll, but it may take place by using recorded timesheets implemented into a competent database, then subtracting taxes and any other necessary contributions worth keeping on top of.
In this post, we’ll determine how and why reinvesting this profit towards improving these tasks and the systems used to complete them is essential – and where to get started:
Daily Productivity & Automation
It’s good to improve the daily productivity of your staff, but it’s important to provide them tools for making that easier rather than arbitrarily asking them to meet higher targets simply because it looks good to upper management.
Often, this means making repetitive tasks easier to accomplish, freeing up time for creativity, and the work that takes real brain power to get through. So for example, you could free up simple things like how someone clocks into work. A check-in system through your main terminal could allow staff to accurately record hours worked to the letter.
On top of that, automating small tasks like providing staff with a blank template, replete with your branded letterhead, for every document they could possibly need allows them to draft that with care – effectively increasing the tempo of communications. On top of that, you might onboard onto an app like Slack for intra-office quick and private messaging, allowing your staff to effectively collaborate without having to undergo the proper formatting of email communications. In the long run, this makes a profound difference to how comfortably staff can format their days.
Premises Provisions
Many of the top tech firms invest in helping their staff creative freedom regarding how they work, or at least allow certain groups to designate their time in certain directions for the completion of their goals. So for example, private meeting rooms can be booked for those woking on projects to collaborate, without constantly encountering managers breathing down their neck.
On top of this, minor provisions like a comfortable seating space for communal working, and even simple making certain that refreshments, free coffee and even snacks are available can keep your staff working well, happy, and together as a team. You’d be surprised just how much of a positive impact this can have on your staff, when they’re treated like adults trusted to deliver as opposed to children that need corralling. That might sound patronizing, but it’s true that many firms take a strict management style as a definite marker of higher productivity, but that’s not always the case.
While this is unrelated in scope, you can see how that impression is often busted by recent revelations that four-day working weeks are generally accepted to cause no loss in productivity.
Safety & Saved Time
It’s also good to think about how you can keep your staff safe as part of their daily working responsibilities, allowing them to save time from being put in a difficult situation, allowing safe protocols to be followed to the letter each day, as well as saving time through further reinvestment as necessary.
Think of how a Teledyne FLIR SIRAS drone could help a site manager better inspect and recce a location as opposed to trekking around the entire affair for constantly updating photographs, or how emergency staff could use the thermal imaging capabilities to better identify those they’re looking for. Equipment like this can help your staff become more effective in their roles and in the long run, may inspire a better, more coherent, and even more cohesive schedule for your staff – keeping them out of the danger but ensuring they remain no less productive and capable than they already are.
Simpler Onboarding
When we invest in our operational workflow, including streamlining, simplifying, and making certain that the right tools are accessible, onboarding new staff after you hire them is a much easier process to deal with.
For example, software onboarding where the digital (and printed) signing of contracts, instructional videos, one-on-one easy meetings, and staff-to-staff tutorship program allows them to onboard carefully instead of having to ask questions about what to do, where to go, and how exactly your firm approaches certain duties.
In some cases, this could allow you to hire differently than many businesses. If you run a firm dedicated to creating content online, for example, then you may be able to renovate a useful and worthwhile dashboard that allows you to hire freelanced professionals on a relatively light and mutually supportive contract – perhaps one where the freelancer is responsible for submitting content on time and paying their own taxes, saving your firm a great deal of headaches. As you can see, reinvestment is not necessarily just wasting money that will never be paid back, often it will lead the way to better, more fundamental savings and conveniences. Onboarding is certainly part of that process.
Software & Remote Possibilities
It’s also good to consider how remote work is not only integrated into the workflow of the office worker but how all manner of professionals make use of it. Increasingly, for example, doctors are utilizing this format so that they can offer more morning appointments to their local communities and can then further advance certain reported issues if they feel that’s necessary.
Could it be that standards like remote working could also benefit your brand? Think of how property agents are now providing full video walkthroughs of properties for their site so prospective buyers, or buyers that may not be able to make it in person, get a clearer sense of the property they’re purchasing or letting before they get there.
This was a pandemic provision, but now it’s a full-time benefit considering how useful it was. The reinvestment here involved structuring video hosting possibilities on their website (or private YouTube channel) and then training their staff on how to record and narrate the features carefully. As you can see, not all business reinvestment needs and intensive and drawn-out funding cycle.
Updating Standards & Compliance
Of course, from time to time your business must update to the latest protocols or processes in order to compete. This may mean investing in a company-wide upgrade of the software packages you use. Editing houses and creative studios will often update to the latest package of Adobe software when it’s been released, for example, allowing their team to utilize the latest creative methodologies in order to compete on the world stage.
Reinvesting time in this outfitting process, as well as in training, company-wide tuition programs, and conforming to the latest digital standards is important. Yet after all, this is just one element of updating standards and compliance protocols. For example, when Biden’s cybersecurity executive order that determined every single company working on a government contract would need stringent security methodologies in place, many companies, even those that worked with established tenders, updated their methodologies and benefited as a result.
As such, upgrading standards is very important and can lead to the most coherent outcome possible. With this approach, you’re sure to benefit.
Essential Departments Are A Long-Term Investment
If you can justify it, then structuring long-term departments that allow you to offer further functionality to your customers or clients and save you money in the long term can be a fantastic idea.
For some time, Amazon solely delivered their products with national mail carriers and third parties. They still do so for some packages, but in some countries, they now also run their own logistics with drivers they hire for a range of purposes, and even gig workers for their grocery line. As such, they’ve invested in an in-house solution to logistics. Sure you might not be Amazon, but as you can see the concept of opportunity cost is often one that can inspire lateral moves like this, allowing you to further expand your portfolio and potential offering in the best possible way.
With this advice, we hope you can see how reinvesting profit into operational workflow is a great idea, and take some suggestions for how to get started in line with that.
