When warm weather starts to roll in across New England, getting up and getting active seems like a no brainer. With daylight savings time beginning on March 14th, you’ll be seeing more light — which naturally makes us want to get up and start tidying up! Spring cleaning at home is easy enough, but spring cleaning at your business can be a little more difficult. Let’s talk about where you should focus your efforts this spring in tidying up your business.
Storage & Stock
If you own a business with raw materials, work in process or finished products, you may want to take some time to do inventory reconciliation. That means counting your physical inventory and adjusting your records appropriately. Inventory should be reconciled on a regular basis to keep out-of-stock conditions from occurring, automatic reorders happening, and knowing where you may be losing items (and money) due to shrink or other reasons.
Evaluate your staffing needs
Is everyone at your workplace constantly stressed out trying to get work done before the deadline? Or maybe you lost an employee over the winter but couldn’t get around to filling the position? It may be time to bring onboard a new employee. Also consider developing your bench. It makes sense to hire and develop a rookie who can someday fill in or take over when one of your veterans retires or moves on.
Clean up your website
Take a moment to pull open your website and review the content on your homepage. If you have out-of-date information, such as services you no longer offer, or employees that no longer work with you, make a list of all items that need to be changed, and deliver them to your web developer to make those changes.
Clean your desk and personal office
While having a cleaning plan in place, such as scheduled cleaning like EcoSource provides, can help you keep your office clean, the reality is that cleaners will not likely remove items from your desk for you. Decide if you need everything that’s on your desk and shelves, and if anything can be placed elsewhere. Remove clutter from beneath your desk and your desk drawers, and, if necessary, consider new furniture if you suffer from a broken desk or broken chair.
Clean out your email
Many business owners simply keep thousands and thousands of emails, and then are forced to sift through all of those emails to find certain ones. Consider deleting spam mail, old marketing emails (“graymail”), promotional emails, and other things not needed. Things you may need later, create folders for them and start sorting them out of your endless inbox into folders. Your inbox should be for the most pressing of items and only the most recent — get into the habit of moving items as they come in and are no longer needed.
Are you spring cleaning your business? What steps are you taking? Let us know in the comments!
