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Remember when you could catch up with your whole team over a morning coffee? Soon you’ll need a whole day — and that might just be the start. Growth is a marker of success, and something to which many small business owners aspire. However, as your employee base grows, managing the needs of individuals naturally becomes more complex. Tasks you could once handle solo now require a team, operating costs start to spiral and tasks like payroll, scheduling and employee onboarding become harder to stay on top of.
There are four key areas of employee management that may get tricky and more time consuming as your business expands — but fortunately, there are a number of apps that can ease your transition into the next stage of growth.
Stay on top of employee payroll and tax compliance
As your employee base grows, so do the complexities of reporting tax obligations to the ATO, managing superannuation, calculating leave entitlements, and complying with award wage legislation — all on a rapidly growing scale.
You can eliminate manual data entry and save time by using employee management apps like Deputy, which makes it easy for employees to log timesheet data from anywhere, while integrating with Xero for increased payroll accuracy.
Plus, these payroll-enabling apps automatically calculate wages according to award entitlements and keep up with Fair Work rules. Payroll compliance has never been so easy.
Streamline employee onboarding and HR
When you have a tiny team, you may be able to manage HR and employee onboarding manually. But as you grow, it can quickly become a time-sink riddled with human error. Digitising your HR can automate and streamline processes like setting up new employee profiles, receiving acknowledgement of company policies and scheduling introductions. Introducing an HR app to take on these admin-heavy tasks will not only speed up onboarding, but can also make compliance much more straightforward for everyone involved.
Apps can create digital records of sign-offs and policy acknowledgement across the employee lifecycle, while ensuring that each document complies with industry-specific Fair Work legislation. When integrated with Xero, apps such as HR Central combine streamlined HR practices and compliance with necessary payroll data, like superannuation and leave entitlements, in one accessible package.
Simplify scheduling, time and attendance
Whether your business deals in goods or services, growing numbers of employees can mean juggling an increasingly complex employee roster or job schedule. Rather than taking the manual route, digital tools allow you to create new and flexible rosters and employee schedules in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take.
Digital rostering apps like RosterElf and Deputy each include time-saving features like simple shift-swapping options, automated leave updates, data-based demand forecasting and the ability to repeat rosters with custom templates. For businesses that bill by job or time spent, time tracking apps like MinuteDock or Streamtime can make billing a breeze instead of a headache.
The more people in your team, the more holidays, hybrid work styles and work availability you need to oversee. Employee availability apps like LeaveCal can be vital tools to give management visibility of team movements, simplifying rostering and meeting schedules to get the full picture of employee leave entitlements, birthdays and availability in one spot.
Foster employee wellbeing and productivity
Success in business is no longer just about hitting targets and boosting profit — it’s also about creating a great environment for employees. People-focused organisations look at productivity as part of a greater whole, along with employee satisfaction and the quality of relationships. Creating or maintaining a great team culture is made easier for small businesses who may not be able to hire an HR department with the help of some innovative people-focused digital tools.
Performance and productivity are two areas that have historically butted heads with employee wellbeing, adding pressure to workers and creating stress, while often not giving management the full picture. Reporting apps like Everperform feature innovations like a ‘Performance Passport’ which combines productivity data with smart insights into every team member’s personal wellbeing. It delivers insights such as, ‘Does team morale drop as meeting lengths increase?’ ‘Are billable hours correlated with happiness?’ These insights help inform those important one-on-one conversations with your team, too.
Traditional tools like the timesheet can be anxiety-inducing, and actually reduce productivity while offering little in the way of personal insight. Apps like Streamtime use intuitive time-tracking and to-do list software that helps employees stay on task while giving management some clues as to who’s working well and who’s at risk of burning out.
Visit the Xero App Store to find, try and buy apps designed to make managing your business easier. Login with your Xero account to connect your data and trial or connect a new app in just a few clicks.
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