When TempWorks Chief Operations Officer, Mari Kautzman, began at TempWorks more than a decade ago, she was employee number 35. In 2018, TempWorks now has more than 130 employees and the processes that worked 12 years ago are no longer able to support the structure of a larger headcount and client base. Starting out as a Payroll Tax and Funding Specialist and moving up to her role as COO, Kautzman quickly became known for taking a chaotic situation and turning it into a highly efficient process. As TempWorks continues to grow, she cautions companies to never become too comfortable with how the business is run.
Here are four tips from Kautzman to make your business’s internal processes more efficient:
1. Continuously assess your current processes for inefficiencies.
Review each department individually and note any inefficiencies that you see. Gradually work through each one to create processes with greater efficiencies. This can be something that you can chip away at gradually until each one has been checked off the list. At the end, you’ll feel proud of your accomplishments and eager to start another round of assessments to see where else you can make improvements.
2. Never be complacent with your operations.
Your business changes every single day. You should never think that your processes are perfect and don’t require adjustments. New technology is released everyday to help make your operations more streamlined. It’s important to constantly evaluate your processes to make sure that they are working for your business. This doesn’t mean you need to continuously shift processes to find greater efficiencies. Give each process time (perhaps six months or an entire year) so that you can properly evaluate its merit and adjust accordingly.
3. Don’t be afraid of change; embrace it.
Change is never easy, not on the operations side and not for your employees; however, operations teams can implement specific habits to help facilitate change for the company and its employees. Transparency and identifying clear goals through this change process are often the first steps. The second step includes communicating how each department and individual employee’s role will help to accomplish those goals. You can help to decrease opposition to the change in process by ensuring each employee understands how their work will help contribute to the end goal and provide value to the company.
4. Be cautious of change just for the sake of change.
It’s easy to be drawn in by the allure of a shiny new gadget that will make a segment of your business completely automated. When researching new tools, it’s important to weigh the pros and the cons to see if this is a “we needed this yesterday” or a “we might need this in five years” type of solution. Proper evaluation of new tools is necessary to make sure that the ROI is in line with your company’s business goals and growth.
About Mari Kautzman
With dual degrees in math and accounting, Kautzman streamlined our tax and payroll processes before leading the highly successful conversion of a public bank’s payroll funding arm to TempWorks. As COO, her superb organizational and communications skills help our development, implementation and sales teams execute at peak performance.
