The element of structure is paramount for any organization, especially one that involves remote working in home offices. Essentially, organizational structure encompasses formal and informal procedures and policies that a business owner can use to govern all the operations from a home-office.
Table of contents
- 1. Streamlining all the Business Operations
- 2. Improved Decision Making Processes
- 3. Improving Employee Performance with more structure
- 4. Enable Easy Operations from Multiple Locations
- 5. Directing More Effort towards Sales and Customer Service
- 6. Good for Growth and Expansion based on a sound structure
- 7. Efficient Task Completion
- Bottom-line
However, many home-based businesses don’t actually implement working structures in their operations because the business owners complete a huge chunk of the operations by themselves. Even though it only makes sense for larger businesses to take advantage of business organizational structure, home-based organizations can also start implementing policies and procedures to enjoy some of the universal benefits of having a solid structure.
In this post, you will find some of the major reasons it is important for any business, home-office or not, to implement an operational structure to reap incredible benefits, especially during this COVID-19 period where a lot of people are now working remotely. Continue reading to learn more.
1. Streamlining all the Business Operations
You can easily streamline all your business operations by putting in place a working structure. As a business owner, you are entirely responsible for organizing all the business functions and breaking them down into departments. When you break operations into departments, you essentially improve your employees’ efficacy, regardless of where they are working from.
Furthermore, it is important to lay down bare these departments and functions in an organizational chart, which indicates all the management levels. This is also an ideal way of letting your employees know how they report at what point in time. Also, you will get to reduce the amount of money you spend because you will cut down on the number of similar operations run by different departments.
2. Improved Decision Making Processes
Organizational structure is important in improving the decision-making processes, especially if there are written down guidelines and orders and how the organization is supposed to operate. Essentially, the decision-making element relates to the quantity of information different players in the business gather over time.
If the business has a streamlined structure, it will easily promote how information flows from the frontline team to the individuals responsible for making critical decisions. This is only made possible because of the laid down channels of communication that structure provides, which is instrumental in completing all the business operations.
3. Improving Employee Performance with more structure
When you implement a well-thought-out business structure, you are able to document all the company’s business processes and, at the same time, specify all the roles and responsibilities (competencies) in your company.
Since most employees will be working in their home-offices, they may have to undergo some training to gain new skills on how to work under the new structure remotely. Moreover, your employees will now know who performs what and who they need to report to in case of any approvals.
The structure can also bring in some level of flexibility because you have the freedom to add a few more departments to ensure that the workload does not burden managers. This is very important in improving employee performance, thus, increasing the organization’s productivity.
4. Enable Easy Operations from Multiple Locations
Since most employees have to work online from their home-offices, organizational structure will help ensure business operations run smoothly despite the multiple locations. It will be instrumental in helping you come up with a sort of management chain to ensure that all your employees function according to your business’s standard procedures.
Since you may not be able to conduct one-on-one staff meetings or visit all your employees in a timely manner, it is only practical to implement a structure that will work to your advantage despite the geographical barriers.
5. Directing More Effort towards Sales and Customer Service
When you put in place a well-defined business structure, you avoid spending too much time correcting your business’s operational issues and directing your time and effort towards customer serServic
When you spend more time on your customers, you can efficiently help your business attend to customers’ real questions and inquiries concerning your goods and services. At the same time, you direct more effort towards increasing the company’s sales revenues and focusing on making more profits from your operations since you are in a better position to meet your customers’ needs and wants.
6. Good for Growth and Expansion based on a sound structure
One of the key reasons why some companies grow faster than others is a sound structure, enabling them to effectively manage resources, including talent. This means that you are able to fix your employees in the right position. In doing this, you can easily point out any deficiencies or weak spots in your current team.
Furthermore, your structure must be flexible enough to allow for growth. You may have to create new management layers in your organizational chart and make it clear who reports to who in the office.
However, make sure that you don’t institute several changes to your structure in a short time because it can easily lead to employee anxiety, which can cause distraction and ultimately loss in their productivity.
7. Efficient Task Completion
If your business has implemented a sound structure, it will be easy to complete your projects on time. Your project manager will be better placed to identify the available human resources, including their responsibilities and capabilities. Therefore, there will be smoother task allocation while knowing how reports to who to ensure efficient task completion for greater productivity.
Bottom-line
A business with a poor structure or no structure at all may find it quite challenging to meet critical deadlines or run short because of the inadequacy of human resources. This is because it may not be entirely clear who was supposed to do what at a given time. Furthermore, if there are breakages in communication or conflicting assignments from managers, things may easily go south. Therefore, with the right structure for your home office business, you can easily foster a more engaged workforce without necessarily stifling innovation in the highly competitive business world. Contact us to identify the best organization for your business.
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