Coleman Technologies Blog

Leverage Automation

Answer me this: would you rather pay your staff to accomplish their responsibilities, or pay the same amount to have them work just as hard but only accomplish half as much?

That’s what I thought.

Automated solutions and processes can make your business far more efficient than it would be otherwise, simply because it makes it so your staff doesn’t have to take care of rote responsibilities and can instead focus on capital-generating endeavors. As a result, you can streamline how your dollars are spent, making more for a relatively small investment.

Ditch the Landline

Let’s face facts… all technology follows the same trajectory: it starts as an invention, is innovated upon, becomes the established norm, and is eventually phased out by the next invention. Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for the telephone is almost 150 years old - suggesting that it is high time for the next innovation to step into the fold.

In a large way, it already has, with Voice over Internet Protocol. VoIP leverages your business’ Internet connection to place calls, meaning you no longer have to pay the telephone company for service. Furthermore, it is far easier (and cheaper) to expand a VoIP solution, making it an even better option for a growing business.

Invest Wisely

When selecting a solution, there’s a lot to be said about seeking out a bargain. However, you need to lean more towards frugality, and less towards being miserly. A solution that you may have gotten for a considerable discount, but ultimately costs you three times its worth in maintenance and repairs can barely be called a solution at all. Furthermore, cheaper devices are often cheaper because the manufacturers skimped on key aspects, like performance, security, and durability. The same can often be said of emerging technologies - it is better to be late jumping on the bandwagon than it is to be in the front row when the whole thing crashes.

Coleman Technologies is here to guide you as you outfit your business with the technology solutions it needs for success. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to talk to our seasoned professionals.

Burn out? 

Oh, no! That certainly wouldn’t be a good thing… but how can you prevent such a thing from happening in the workplace, when you really can’t tell if workplace stress has worn them down, or if it was a more personal issue? You can’t keep things from influencing their personal lives, after all. 

Maybe they just need to get more sleep, or something.

Besides, what if you just happen to work in an industry that creates more stress upon its workers by nature of the work? It isn’t as though you can help that, either.

Sure, that’s fair.

You can’t be expected to be in control of your employees’ personal lives… but you should be in control of their professional environment.

What Leads to Employee Burnout?

While general stress can contribute to burnout, certain job factors and features can create “special” kinds of stress that contribute specifically to burnout tendencies. Let’s consider these factors briefly.

Non-Stop High Stress

Look, I’m not saying that a business should be a stress-free area. That just isn’t realistic.

However, businesses typically experience busy, stressful times and once those times are over, there is usually a period of time that employees get the chance to recover. Bookending stress with these low-stress times (and adequately compensating your team for their stress) can make employees feel better - but keeping them in a constant pressure-cooker certainly won’t.

Unclear and Unreasonable Tasks

How frustrating would a puzzle be without a picture on the box to reference?

Each and every time an employee is given an unclear task, they feel that same frustration. They’re just trying to do their job, but they can’t if it is unclear what that job is. It only gets worse if the tasks that they are assigned literally (yes, in the literal sense) can’t be done.

The more stress and frustration that builds up with tasks like these, the more likely burnout becomes.

Huge Consequences for Failure…

Some workplaces have higher stakes than others. For instance, you have those who work for child services, whose work frequently takes them into risky and heartbreaking situations.

People in positions like that have a much more stressful job than, say, a fortune cookie writer or the greeter at a superstore. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to hear that high-stakes workplaces frequently see higher rates of burnout.

...With No Recognition for Success

How would you feel if your considerable efforts were, day-in and day-out, overlooked? If you went above and beyond in everything you did, and not one word was said to you?

Chances are, you’d probably feel unappreciated, demoralized, and unmotivated. Workplaces like this can have a severe morale problem. 

Welcome to burnout.

Communication is Neither Efficient nor Effective

Without proper communication, any of the other problems your business is experiencing will only get much, much worse. Unclear and incomplete statements will make issues more complicated, especially if you are trying to deal with an employee’s issue.

As a result, demoralization and burnout become very real risks.

Lacking Leadership

Finally, if a strong, fair, and supportive leader isn’t present in the business, employees could be accelerated on their way to burnout by the lack of guidance the missing leader should be providing. Employees may feel like they aren’t getting something out of their employment - be it recognition, support, or job security - and swiftly lose the drive to perform well.

Clearly, there is no shortage of ways for an employee to reach the point of burnout… but how can you tell when one really has?

The Symptoms of Burnout

There are quite a few signs that can indicate if an employee is truly burning out, or if one is simply having an “off” day. I’m pretty confident that we’ve all felt and exhibited some of these signs - maybe even all of them - at one point at least.

How many of these symptoms have you seen among your employees?

• They feel distant from their work, cynical about what they do and who they do it with.
• They may be suffering from a variety of symptoms, including headaches, sour stomach, and intestinal issues.
• They have slipped in their tasks at work, but their home life is unaffected.
• They may keep themselves emotionally distant from their coworkers.
• They may lack creativity, and will have trouble concentrating.
• They are low energy, feel drained, and feel that they can’t cope.
• They are visibly frustrated and stressed.

Again, we’ve all had an “off” day, where these kinds of things are almost to be expected. It’s just a part of life.

It is when these symptoms have become chronic, stretching out beyond hours or days to weeks, that your employees may be suffering from burnout. Thanks to these symptoms, burned-out employees may appear depressed, and are actually at a higher risk of developing depression later on.

Why This Really Matters to You

So, why should you care?

Well, basic human decency aside, burnout can have some significant impacts upon your business itself. For instance, sick leave is much more commonly taken among employees who are burned-out, and they are also far more motivated to find another job.

If they are successful in the latter, you will need to spend the significant costs associated with hiring a new employee to replace them.

You also need to consider the “typical” state of your employees. They might actually be some of your top performers, simply struggling through a hard time. What impact on their productivity will your business be able to just absorb?

A burned-out employee in the wrong position can exacerbate the problem, too, as a burned-out manager can easily create a burned-out team… killing productivity and morale on a wider scale. 

You also need to consider the optics that burnout can produce - what business or potential employee would want anything to do with a business that has what is really a very visible issue?

(I certainly wouldn’t.)

Bringing basic human decency back into consideration, this condition can actually do a number on a human being. Not only can the influence of burnout impact an employee’s personal life and relationships, it makes them slightly more likely to visit the emergency room.

What You Can Do to Help a Burned-Out Employee

Keeping these warning signs in mind can help you to better spot when one of your employees is clearly going through a rough patch. While you may not see it as your job as their boss, it is your job as a fellow human being to offer them some support.

The easiest way to start this process? An honest conversation.

Discuss It with the Employee

Have an informal sit-down with this employee and just talk to them about it. Express your sincere worry for them as a person and offer your support with whatever they have been going through.

This support itself could help greatly, and if it is another personal issue, some personal time may be all it takes to help.

Redistribute the Workload

Even the most competent employee you have could potentially bite off more than they could chew. Whether they overstuff their schedules, offer to help with anything they can, or both… before long, this employee is going to fall behind schedule. 

You should go through that schedule with them, organizing it and trimming some of the fat to make sure it is humanly possible to accomplish, redistributing some tasks if need be, if not pausing them.

If your business has any collaboration tools, they can certainly come in handy here.

Teamwork makes the dream work, as some say, so if you can leverage your collaboration platform to help the task-redistribution process, it just makes sense to. You can make use of your platform as you manage your team, assigning them certain responsibilities and sharing the weight of their tasks between multiple resources, not just the one. 

Email is a great collaboration tool, but many employees can find the amount of emails they receive overwhelming, which (among other things) makes them less productive. You can help them out by introducing them to the different tools that email solutions can offer, like filters and rules to help organize incoming messages, and snoozing, to give them some uninterrupted time. 

Switch It Up

If you had an employee that was particularly good at Task A, it only makes sense that you would want them covering Task A as much as possible, right? 

However, designating that employee to Task A will likely make that employee pretty sick of Task A before long… and all the employees who always get Task B, or Task C will likely feel a similar way. Try rotating the responsibilities of your team on occasion, taking their preferences and goals into consideration.

Preventing Burnout in the First Place

As we’ve alluded to here, there are many warning signs of impending burnout issues, and we’ve barely scratched the surface here. Doing everything you can to keep burnout from happening at all is a reasonable strategy. 

Fix your company culture to focus on self-care. Try bringing in external experts to keep your employees happy and healthy, whether that’s a yoga instructor or accounting services. Remember that your employees have lives outside the workplace to live, and encourage them to enjoy them. 

These, and/or many, many other behaviors will help keep your employees engaged, motivated, and happy.

One great way to keep burnout from taking hold is to allow your employees to work how (and when and where) they work best. Remote working solutions can allow you to give your employees the freedom to shape their work habits around their lives.

While this may sound like a way to let employees slack off on work time, many employers have found the effects to productivity more than worth it… and employees have certainly shown their appreciation for the flexibility.

At the end of the day, your employees are going to feel a certain way - you can only try and help them feel more positively about their workplace by giving them better technology, more initiative, and an ear to turn to when needed.

We can help where the technology is concerned.

For solutions to help your employees be more productive, more communicative, and more successful, reach out to Coleman Technologies at (604) 513-9428.

Understanding Why Managed Services Work

It may help to look at managed services a lot like how you’d look at any other outsourced services provider external to your business, fulfills some business needs you to have. However, this service goes a little more in-depth than many you may be more familiar with. An MSP (or managed services provider) will supplement your existing technology management, reducing the responsibilities you have to maintain them (oh, and the costs of doing so as well).

While this might not sound like much at first, it can greatly cut down on the time and resources that any one of your given tasks can require. Let’s assume that your IT technicians spend about 45 minutes each day on maintaining your servers, and again, that’s maintenance. An issue could make this process take much longer.

So, each week your techs are spending three hours and forty-five minutes on mere maintenance. What else could be accomplished during the time dedicated to this maintenance? Now, think about how that time increases every time an issue is discovered, and all the time that is spent resolving these issues after the fact.

It all adds up pretty quickly.
However, adopting managed services can help relieve your in-house staff of these responsibilities. This could allow them to devote more time to improving your business’ technology, or supporting your other internal staff, or any other goal that would benefit your operations more than playing Whack-a-Mole with IT issues ever would. Can you confidently say they have the time to accomplish all this now?

What If You Don’t Have Internal IT Resources on Staff?

If you don’t have internal IT resources, outsourcing your IT needs to a managed services provider has even greater benefits. Take, for example, the reduced financial obligation. While there are many benefits to maintaining a small business, the typically limited size of the budget isn’t one of them. These limitations may mean that you have fewer qualified in-house IT technicians, meaning that some of the IT maintenance and support falls to your other employees -- likely IT novices. This is just too risky to enact, as improperly configured or maintained solutions could (and likely will) contribute to major issues with downtime.

Managed services help to make your solutions more predictable, without the need to manage and maintain them internally. To find out more things that Coleman Technologies can do as an MSP, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

We’re not trying to talk smack about organizations that are forced into this position. Small businesses have it tough, especially with the more technical aspects of infrastructure management and the finer details of computing. It takes more than a passable amount of knowledge to manage an infrastructure filled with the IT needed for your employees to complete their duties on a daily basis.

Vendors are there to sell you the products and services that your company needs to thrive, including the processes of building, delivering, and supporting these products and services. If you want to be successful in the business world, it’s your prerogative to create a solid relationship with your vendors. Unfortunately, vendor representatives can eat up a considerable amount of the time you should be spending managing your business.

One particular study suggests that IT vendors can take up over 13 percent of a CIO’s time; that’s time that your business simply can’t get back. We recommend taking action now to change the way your organization handles vendor management. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

• Consolidate vendors: Often times businesses will test products by working with multiple vendors. If they are comparable, you should consider moving to one vendor rather than several, making the process of handling all of your products much easier as a whole.
• Measure vendor performance: It can take time to measure vendor performance, but the time you spend will easily be made up when you eliminate vendors that aren’t providing adequate services.
• Implement a vendor management service: When you have a single point of contact for all of your vendors, you’ll find that it’s easier and more effective to work with them. Outsourcing this to Coleman Technologies can help you save time and resources. We can handle your contracts, performance analyses, relationship management, and vendor risk to keep your technology working as intended.

Don’t let vendors hold you back from being successful--that’s not what they’re there for. To find out how you can better manage your vendors and resources, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

The first considerations you need to make are fairly straightforward.

Cost

You really do get what you pay for. Rather than settling for a cheaper system with plans of replacing it later, make sure you select a system that can be upgraded and expanded (yes, there is a difference). That way, you can avoid doubling your costs by eliminating the need to procure more than one system. It also helps to seek out a vendor that can supply all the needs your business has - like additional hardware for your POS, or enhanced software to power it - to simplify your processes.

Integration and Implementation

As mentioned before, your POS system should have the ability to grow as your needs of it do. For instance, while you may want to implement customer pagers at some point, it is probably wiser to focus on the essentials - like receipt printers and cash drawers. However, you will also want to make sure that your POS system has the capability to be upgraded to incorporate more advanced features as your business grows.

Tracking

Although this isn’t too far off from integration, you may want your POS to integrate with your inventory system, your quoting system, your CRM software, or any other business app on your network. Depending on your needs, you might even want your security cameras to pull a feed from your POS system to record purchases.

Support

Let’s face facts… you don’t want to find your POS system experiencing technical difficulties without anyone available to help you resolve them. Whether its complications with the software itself or a hardware issue, you need to be sure that support is always available to you.

When running a business, it is crucial that you have the technology to properly take payments. Coleman Technologies can help ensure that you are prepared to do business with reliable solutions. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to get started.