It’s around this time of year that we start to think of the New Year’s Resolutions we’re going to make as soon as we have finished eating mince pies and having a few too many Christmas drinks. But, before we make yet another resolution to set our alarm clock for 6am on New Year’s Day and to go for our first early-morning run of many to come, could we be better off resolving to put some of these good intentions into practice in a business setting instead?
After all, the most popular personal resolutions could continue to have a positive impact on our business well after we’ve fallen off the wagon ourselves.
1. Get Active – Get out there, learn to network, and talk to people face-to-face. If you haven’t seen your clients or customers in a while, now is the time to get out there in person. Ask them what they want, get your business seen and make an impact. While it might be hard to win new work at the moment, networking can help, and waiting for customers to come to you probably won’t.
2.Start Budgeting – We all have budgets to stick to in the workplace of course, but even if you’ve been budgeting successfully for years it’s always a good time to revisit your expenditure and see where you could make cuts that won’t impact on the business. Small savings add up!
3.Go on a Diet – Cut the fat when it comes to the time you spend on tasks that aren’t benefitting your business. If it isn’t profitable, doesn’t build your brand or add real value in another way, should you still be doing it? Are there some tasks that seem to take up a lot of time but bring in very little reward? If so, it might be time to streamline what you’re doing.
4.Make more Money – Now might be a good time to investigate new opportunities for your business. What are the strengths of your business and its people, and could these skills transfer to other projects or fill gaps in the market? Could you partner with other businesses to win new projects, or are there skills your employees have that you don’t even know about? And of course, once you have ‘cut the fat’ by cutting out the tasks you no longer need to be doing, you’ll be able to find the time to ‘add value’ in this way. And even if you don’t make millions, new projects, clients, and unusual directions also help to keep things interesting for you and your employees.
5.Learn Something New – What are other businesses doing that you’re not confident about? Is there something new emerging in your field that your business needs to get on top of? Could you position yourself as the expert or leader in something? Undertaking training, taking on new challenges and upping your skills with different work experiences, help to make sure that you and your business don’t get left behind.
6.Spend More Time with Family & Friends – While this is an admirable personal goal many people will be making this New Year, it is also a good resolution for businesses to embrace. Building a culture of work-life balance or flexible working often results in happy, more motivated employees who are willing to go that extra mile for their employer.
7.Quit Smoking/Drinking – Work-place culture is difficult to change but are there things that have become habit in your workplace that probably aren’t very healthy? By doing little things like changing the drinks and snacks in your vending machine to healthy alternatives, helping employees with ‘quit smoking’ programmes or becoming part of an ‘Employee Assistance Programme’ you could help your staff to keep their own New Year’s resolutions, and to stay physically and mentally healthy. As cynical as it sounds, you are helping your own business in return, because healthy, positive employees help to create successful businesses.
8.Become More Charitable – Ok, so your business may not have the money to generate the positive goodwill/PR that can come from making a generous cash donation, but there are other alternatives. Donating your time or your employees’ time to charitable projects will make you feel good, will make them feel good, and will help to position your business as an important part of the local community. How about donating your time to a project like the Chartered Accountants Voluntary Advice Service? Or even supporting your local charity shop, with donation days at your office, or charity days where you hold quizzes, games or sponsored events to raise money.
9.Get Organised – If you are lucky there is sometimes a quiet week in the office over the Christmas period when many employees are taking some annual leave. If so, it could be a good time to clear out your cupboards, tidy your desk, and rid yourself of unnecessary paperwork. Get yourself a new diary and plan some time for making your New Year’s resolutions happen – if you write something down it’s more likely you’ll succeed. And if nothing else, you’ve tidied your office and can come back to work in January feeling like you’re making a fresh start.
I know, I know, that’s only nine resolutions! The tenth most popular was ‘find love’ and I’m not sure how your business could benefit from that – unless your resulting relaxed, walking-on-a-cloud type behaviour had a positive impact on everyone else in the office perhaps. But then I might just be clutching at straws now!
And finally, whether you make any resolutions or not, at the very least why not take some time out to have a think about what went well this year, and congratulate yourself on it before thinking about the work ahead.
Have a very merry Christmas and New Year, and all the best for 2010 from the CPD Department.