Regardless of how a business is performing, the start of a new calendar year often results in a focus on improving performance. Whether this means reducing costs or increasing sales, there are many business new year resolutions that will set your business up for a successful 2019:

Better understand your team
Your team are where the rubber meets the road. If they are disengaged or don’t understand the roadmap for your business, meeting your goals will be much more challenging. The key to understanding your team is to communicate with them. Your team members need to understand how they contribute to the growth plan of the business. Similarly, the leadership team should understand how best to support and grow the team. Rebecca Knight, author of the article: ‘How to boost your team’s productivity’, recommends that individual team members should be encouraged to set their own goals and a forum should be established where they can freely communicate challenges they have to ensure that everyone is on track to achieving their goals. In terms of setting business new year resolutions, clearly understanding what motivates your employees is key to engaging your employees.

Better understand your customers
If you are looking for strategies to grow your business, look at your customer insights first. They will tell you everything you need to grow. If you don’t have a customer insights program, don’t worry. At it’s most basic level, it’s a survey. You should be surveying a cross-section of your customer base and asking them what they like about your business, what needs improvement and the (ever important!) Net Promoter Score (NPS). Your NPS tells you in one simple question which customers are promoters, passives and detractors of your business.

Develop a culture of learning
Knowledge expands your world and enables you to consider how other businesses tackle problems or find pockets of growth in their industries. Quite often, a key bvsiness new year resolution includes taking responsibility for your professional development, which is quite often something that is left after you’ve competed the core tasks associated with your role.  Like everything, however, it’s necessary to developing an engaged team.

Be adaptable
‘Pivot’ may well be the buzz word of 2018. Agile businesses are the ones that have business goals but can adapt their growth strategies based on macro factors such as the economic environment or changes to their business (staffing changes or business performance, for example). Being agile in a market that is constantly changing is vital for survival and growth.

While defining your goals may be a challenging process, ensuring that they are actioned can be even trickier. Here are some recommendations for the goal setting and actioning process for business leaders:
• Ensure your plans are long term
• Ensure your business plan is up to date
• Ensure your goals are achievable and measurable
• Delegate some actions to those who can execute them (you don’t have to do it all!)

If you would like support with setting and achieving business new year resolutions, speak to the HR Consulting team at Flexi Personnel.