arnocas

Time management for business owners

marketing@arnocas.com (Lucas Lang) — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 01:14:28 GMT

You didn’t start a business to spend all day at your desk.

As business owners, our priorities run the gamut. Some of us want to be out there looking for opportunities to grow. Some of us want to be on the floor, engaging with our customers. And some of us just want to be at home, spending quality time with our families.

Whatever it is you want to be doing, there are better uses of your time than menial tasks and busywork. If you want to take back your time and get back to what you really value, we’ve gathered some tips to help you do just that.

Use business software

As the owner of a small, growing business, you’re probably responsible for way more than just the direction of your company.

Business software is designed to help you deal with in-house tasks quickly and easily, so you can get back to working on what matters.

Management software

Management software can help you handle your bookkeeping, keep track of your workflow, and communicate with your team. But that’s just scratching the surface.

Monday.com is like a to-do list for your whole company. It allows you to input tasks, then set a deadline and assign a team-member.
Xero is an accounting platform that lets you send invoices, visualize cash flow, pay staff, and file taxes. All at the click of a button.

Marketing software

It’s almost impossible for one person to be an expert on all the different skills needed to market a product. That’s where marketing software comes in. These intuitive platforms allow anyone with basic computer skills to create professional-quality marketing materials.

Canva is a drag-and-drop design tool for creating signage, labels, or any other visuals your company needs.
Hootsuite helps you plan, schedule, and post content across all of your social media platforms, in one place.

Start outsourcing

All that software is great for cutting down the time you spend working on in-house tasks, but what if you didn’t have to work on them at all?

Outsourcing allows you to give all that tedious work to someone else, so you can spend your time focusing on what you’d rather be doing.

What is outsourcing?

Outsourcing is when a company hires a third party to perform tasks, provide services, or handle operations. If you’ve ever hired a freelancer, contractor, or third party, then you’ve already outsourced parts of your business.

Benefits of outsourcing

Outsourcing is used by businesses of all sizes to lower costs, improve outcomes, and save time.

Outsourcing works so well because the third-party provider is fully dedicated to the type of task you’re giving them, which means they can do it cheaper, quicker, and better than you could in-house.

Not only will you get better outcomes on that task, but you’ll also be able switch your focus back to your own core-competencies; the things you can do cheaper, quicker, or better than anyone else.

Hire a new employee

If outsourcing isn’t for you, then it might be time to bring on a new team-member. After all, your business can’t keep growing unless your team grows with it.

Benefits of hiring new employees

The obvious upside to hiring is that your new employee can take some of the work off your plate. With another hand on deck, you can offload all those non-essential tasks that were taking chunks out of your day.

Another advantage to hiring is that you can bring a new skill set to your team. You might need a marketer to bring in more customers, an accountant to balance your books, or an operations manager to keep things running smoothly. Whichever it is, hiring a specialised employee will bring fresh ideas and give your business new opportunities to grow.

Speaking of growth, new hires are essential to keep scaling your business. You’ll need to expand your team if you plan on selling more products, taking on more clients, or entering new markets. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all yourself.

If you’re thinking about hiring more staff but don’t know where to start, check out our guide on finding and hiring great employees.

Don’t want the risks of hiring?

Ask arnocas how we can help you take back your time, without the hassle.

How to find and hire great employees

marketing@arnocas.com (Lucas Lang) — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 01:14:27 GMT

As business owners, we’re always finding reasons to grow our team.

Whether it’s because we’ve identified a new revenue stream to capitalise on, or we need more manpower to handle our incoming leads, or we need someone to help lighten our workload, hiring always seems to be on our radar.

But finding great employees who’ll bring value to the company is easier said than done.

Here are a few tips we think could help you navigate the pitfalls of the hiring process.

What’s the cost of hiring a new employee?

Unfortunately, just because your business needs a new employee, doesn’t mean it can afford one.

The costs of hiring go beyond your new team-member’s salary. Here are some of the hidden expenses to consider before jumping into the hiring process.

1. Workspace and equipment

Brainstorm what kind of resources your new hire will need to be effective. Can you afford to provide them?

2. Payroll tax

Will this new hire take you over the payroll tax threshold? You can check your state government’s website to find out.

3. Recruitment, training, and management

Your new hire won’t just cost money, but time as well. Will this new hire save you more time than it’ll take to find and onboard them?

How to find good candidates?

Now that you’re sure hiring is a good idea, it’s time to source some candidates for your job opening. There are a few ways you can do this.

1. Hire a recruitment agency

Hiring a recruitment agency can be costly, but they'll save you an equal amount of time and effort. Your recruitment agency will attract high-quality candidates, sort through their applications, and present you with the cream of the crop.

2. Advertise on job search sites

Websites like Seek and Indeed allow you to advertise your job to millions of potential candidates with minimal costs. The downside, you’ll have to sort through all the applications yourself.

3. Headhunt on LinkedIn

Linkedin is a social media platform which allows you to actively search for your dream candidate, instead of waiting for them to come to you. Unfortunately, this method may be the most time-consuming of them all.

How to interview a new employee?

Your candidates will walk into their interviews with answers written, rehearsed, and ready to go, which can make it hard to figure out whether they're really the right fit.

These interview strategies will help you get past the scripted answers for a better understanding of your candidates.

1. Ask out-of-the-box questions

Your candidates will be prepared for generic ‘interview’ questions. Get a deeper insight into their character and skill set by asking how they’d deal with specific situations they could encounter in your workplace.

2. Get your team to help

Introduce candidates to your team and see what initial impressions they have. You’re not the only one who’ll have to work with your new hire, so your staff should have a say too.

3. Get away from the office

The formality of an interview can make it hard to gauge your candidate. Take them out for coffee and see how they behave in a more natural setting.

And now, all that’s left to do is decide who you’ll hire, and reap the benefits of having another set of hands to help take care of your business.

Of course, if you don’t want the hassle of sourcing candidates, interviewing them, and budgeting for hidden costs, you can always consider offshoring .

Already familiar with outsourcing and offshoring?

Ask arnocas how we can help you find the best employees to grow your business risk-free.

How offshoring can grow your business

marketing@arnocas.com (Lucas Lang) — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 01:14:27 GMT

If you’re a business owner, there’s no doubt you’re always looking for ways to jam more hours into your day and keep more cash in your pocket. Offshoring has become such a popular practice because it was designed to do just that.

If you’re curious about offshoring and how you can use it to grow your business, we’ve collected answers to some of the most common questions we get below.

What is offshoring?

Offshoring is when a company hires workers based in another country to perform the same tasks and provide the same services as local employees, but for a fraction of the cost.

For example, if you hired a freelancer from Japan to design your logo, then that would be offshoring.

Almost any business process can be offshored. You could offshore your bookkeeping, customer support, digital advertising, or any other task that’s eating up your time.

Outsourcing vs offshoring

If you’ve heard the terms outsourcing and offshoring being thrown around, you may be wondering what the difference is.

First let’s define outsourcing.

Outsourcing is when a company hires a third party to handle one or more of their business processes. If you paid someone to design your company’s website, then that was outsourcing.

As you can see, the only difference between outsourcing and offshoring is the location. When you outsource to another country, that’s offshoring.

Benefits of offshoring

For most of us, the worst part about growing a business is the grunt work. Bookkeeping, invoicing, payroll, and paperwork are all menial tasks that take your attention away from the bigger picture. Offshoring allows you to hand that tedious work off to someone else, so you can get back to finding new leads, keeping customers happy, or whatever else you could be doing to grow your business.

Hiring a new employee could also help you cut those in-house tasks out of your day, but the difference lies in the time commitment.

With offshoring, you won’t need to waste time sourcing candidates, sorting through their resumes, or interviewing them. Your offshoring agency will handle the recruitment process for you, presenting you with the most skilled candidates to choose from. They’ll also take care of training your new offshore employee, and making sure they stay on task.

But offshoring isn’t just more time-efficient than hiring your own staff. It’s also less expensive.

For example, wages in the Philippines are typically lower than those in Australia, and the Australian government won’t make you pay payroll tax on the wages of your overseas employees.

There’s also no need to purchase equipment or allocate office space for your new employee, that will all be absorbed and taken care of by your outsourcing agency.

All of this adds up to a significantly cheaper employee, which means you’ll have more money to invest in other areas of your business. With offshoring, you can save time, reduce overheads, and grow your business risk-free.

Want to learn more about offshoring?

We get it. We did too once upon a time.

Give arnocas a call to discover how you can use offshoring to grow your business, today.