The new year is an opportunity for growth. Now that a new calendar has flipped over, it is the perfect time to evaluate your company’s weaknesses, identify opportunities for improvement, and create goals that will help change your business for the better. Make sure this year is more productive than the last by considering our workspace resolutions for the new year.

Here are our workspace New Year’s resolutions at a glance:

• Get your internet connectivity up to speed
• Cut your printing costs
• Beat load shedding
• Try new tech tools
• Help your employees work smarter

Get your internet connectivity up to speed

If your internet has been slowing down to a crawl more than once in a while during the last year, then your connection is no longer reliable. You would not want to trudge through another year with an internet solution that just isn’t up to the task of handling browsing, video conferencing, downloading documents, and using multiple online tools at the same time. If you have not started thinking about shopping for an upgrade, now is the time to consider installing an enterprise-grade wireless internet or fibre connection with reliable speeds that ensure employees can effectively complete their tasks.

Cut your printing costs

Keeping printing costs in check represents a big opportunity to save money. Encouraging employees to change their print behaviour — for example, printing only what they need or printing two pages to one sheet — can go a long way towards reducing expenses. If your business does a lot of printing, a Managed Print Solution is also worth considering. MPS providers monitor and manage your printing fleet on your behalf, helping you determine how much your business spends on printing so you can keep costs under control.

• READ MORE: Why annual leave is still important, even during lockdown

Beat load shedding

Frequent power outages have become an unfortunate norm for South African businesses, and according to several news reports, we can expect power supply to be unreliable and unpredictable for the upcoming year. Making sure your business has measures in place to eliminate downtime in the event of a power outage will help prevent potential productivity losses. With an alternative energy solution such as a generator, inverter, battery back-up or solar power system you can continue to run critical aspects of your small business during load shedding.

Try new tech tools

Keeping up with new technologies is something that will always benefit your company, and encouraging employees to use a new tool this year is an important part of achieving this. If there’s a new productivity, collaboration, or organisational tool you have heard about but haven’t used yet, then go ahead and give it a try. Whether it’s a document signing app or the latest features in Office 365 — the right tools are essential for employees to grow and compete. Not all tools will work for everyone, but it is still beneficial to try out new options on a regular basis.

Help your employees work smarter

Take a moment to check  how your current methods of working are measuring up to your workloads and demands for productivity. If they just don’t cut it anymore, maybe it’s time to try some new ones. One way to do this is investing in the technology that helps employees accomplish tasks more efficiently. For example, an interactive whiteboard can make your presentations more detailed and informative instead of the boring write, erase, repeat formula that a dry erase board entails. 

As a business owner, it’s important to look ahead and plan out what you want to achieve in the upcoming year. Without preparing for the future, it’s impossible to set out where you see your  business going. There are so many more resolutions you can make, but we hope that these will perhaps inspire you to make changes that will set your business up for success. Have a great 2021.