∞When you’re in business, you quickly find out which are the jobs that you need to spend your time doing and which are the ones that you need to find others to do. It’s something that you’ll come to learn rather quickly. Generally speaking, you want to be doing the tasks that generate revenue for your company; if they’re not instantly generating, then you’ll be doing the jobs that lead to the bigger income sources. For all non-revenue generating tasks, you’ll need to either outsource them or pass them over to somebody else in your employment. Startups and new businesses often need a little guidance as to just what these jobs are…

Health and Safety

Health and safety is a big thing in business. There are a lot of companies that you can outsource training to in order to both save you a job and, even more importantly, ensure that your staff are completely covered and in the know for what needs to happen in their place of work. Passing on the responsibility of being trained can help them assume accountability for things that have gone wrong. It’s a good sense of business mind for your staff to be empowered enough to take on a form of duty and sense of acknowledgement for all of the potential hazards and dangers that are surrounding them and their fellow employees. That way, they will be alerting not just themselves but everybody else as to the potential slips that could come from performing a particular task. Let your staff be the eyes and the ears of the business when it comes to health and safety. Bring in a training company such as Croner to ensure that absolutely everything is covered. Regardless of whether you think that your working space is safe or not, there are things that need to be taken into consideration that most people haven’t given a second thought to. It’s not about operating heavy machinery or having to make sure that you’re bending your knees at the right time to lift boxes and other items – health and safety takes into account so much more than that. Your staff need to learn where they need to exit if there is a fire or other emergency, how to sit well at their desks and even how to give their eyes a break from staring at the screen for too long if they’re working with computers.

Accounting

Let’s get one thing straight here – accounting, when done by those who are leading the business, is a waste of time. You could be channeling your energy into revenue-generating jobs which will help your business to succeed. Making sure that your finances are in order is a job that can take way too long to do, especially if your company is taking off quicker than you had imagined. Getting on top of everything and ensuring that it is all in order may have only taken you a bit of time in the beginning, but it is something that can quickly become tedious. The slightest blip in your accounts can see you and your business being fined by those auditing your income, so it’s best to either outsource this work or leave it to a professional within your company. This is one of the things that needs sorting as soon as you possibly can. The quicker that you have somebody to pass the job on to, the quicker that you can get to work on focusing your energy into something more productive for your business. It’s important to remember that accountants have had the years of training to get to where they are and to be able to get you completely covered, with the work being done in a small percentage of the time that you had intended to do it in.

Printing

The amount of time and money that is being wasted on printing your documents in-house is astounding – especially when it can be outsourced. Outsourcing your printing work to companies such as Xerox can see you slashing your printing bills, freeing up room in your office or place of work by getting rid of the pieces of equipment that are doing the printing for you. Realistically speaking, the costs of getting everything together in order to do the job for you can be a huge expenditure for your business. Keeping it maintained, employing somebody to make sure that it’s all working correctly and operating it and training your staff to know how to use it are all things which are sucking the money out of your business without you really realising it. Bringing in another company to cover everything that you need doing and either sending it back to you or sending it on to where it needs to go is something that, while seemingly a big expenditure for what you’re dishing out all in one go, is actually one of the biggest money and time savers out there.

Content Creation and Design

This is something that definitely needs to be left to the professionals. Unless you have somebody working in your team who has a good way with words, has been trained in marketing for specific ventures and has a keen eye for design (and is able to successfully implement it!), you’re better off paying somebody who has the skills to be able to get you something brilliant done in less time. These creative types are in their jobs because they’re good at what they do; you don’t need to reinvent the wheel and spend hours in front of a screen coming up with something that they could imagine for you in an instant. Outsourcing your work shouldn’t be seen as a failing, but the meeting of minds in terms of propelling your business forward. It is something that can be beneficial to both you and them; your company needs their work in order to succeed, and they need your business in order for them to succeed. Keep the circle going and add to it every so often.