Ways to reduce your workload in business as you get closer to retirement
Collaborative Post
When you start to get a little older and you no longer enjoy your work week as much as you once did, it might be time to start thinking about retirement. If you’ve spent your life growing and running a business, you deserve a rest as much as anyone else.
If you want to, first of all, start working a little less as you get closer to retirement that makes sense. But how should you approach that change and get ready for it? It doesn’t have to be a difficult transition or a particularly painful one for the business.
So read on now and learn all about the individual steps you might take as you begin to reduce your workload in business as you move step by step closer to the day you ultimately retire.
Start Handing Employees More Responsibilities
First of all, you probably want to make sure that you start handing employees the responsibilities you feel they’re able to deal with. You may not be able to do as much of the work as you previously did if you want to start reducing your hours and moving toward retirement. So identifying which employees would be suited to particular jobs and delegating to them more over time is something you can start working on. It’ll also act as a test to see how they respond to those new responsibilities.
Hire More People if You Need To
It might also be the case that you need to start hiring more people to help make this transition possible. If you simply don’t have enough people on your team right now and you’re not sure how to get the job done with you working fewer hours each week, it’s probably time to expand your team a little. With a bigger team and more hands on deck, you’ll find that you feel much more comfortable with the idea of working a little less and letting your team get on with things in your absence.
Plan What Will Happen to the Business When You Retire
You’ll want to start thinking about what will happen with the business once you enter retirement. Do you intend to pass it on to a member of the family? If so, you’re likely to want to start talking to them about and passing things down gradually. They’ll need to be a part of this transitionary period. Or do you intend to sell the business? If you do, you’ll need to prepare the finances and all the necessary paperwork so that you can sell the business in a way that’s fair, accurate and likely to get you the money you feel it’s worth.
Gradually Limit Your Hours
Gradually limiting the amount of time you spend in the office is a good rule to set. For many people who are passionate about their businesses, moving away from them can be tough. It’s not always easy to step back when you’ve been doing this work for such a big part of your life. It might be a little easier if you do things slowly and gradually limit the amount of time you’re spending on the job. This should also help you to get more used to the idea of retirement and taking things easy.
Focus on What You Do Rather Than How Much Time You Spend in the Office
If you don’t want to limit your time in a strict way, you might want to focus on completing only particular tasks and letting your team get on with the bulk of the tasks. That way, you have specific kinds of work that you can focus on and complete each time you’re in the workplace. And when you’re done with that, you’re working day is over and you can leave the rest of the work in the capable hands of your team. That can only be a positive thing for them and for you.
Outsource More Tasks
Outsourcing more tasks to external teams and third parties might be something you want to do more of when you’re edging closer to retirement. Outsourcing is a big deal these days and lots of people rely on it to get things done. It can certainly be one way of reducing the workload that you have to deal with. And if you have a small team that’s already pretty stretched, it might be easier for you to outsource to third party organisations than to simply put that work on your own team.
Schedule Things Carefully
Scheduling your time and making sure that you’re not working more than you want to will help you with making this transition into fewer working hours and eventually retirement. When you stay on schedule and make sure that you’re not working more than you need to, it helps you get used to your new situation. It’s easy to get lost in your work and to carry on working too much if you don’t monitor your time. This restaurant schedule optimization system will give you an idea of how to manage time better when running a small business.
Prioritise Automation
Automation is another tool that you should try to make the most of if you want to make sure that your business moves with the times and become more efficient. When it’s operating efficiently with the help of automation, it can make your life a lot easier than it might otherwise be. You’ll have a lot less to do and you won’t need to spend quite as much time on repetitive tasks that can be completed by just about anyone. That’s what automation changes for you.
Be Clear with Employees About Their Duties
Being clear with your employees about their duties and what’s expected of them is definitely something you should focus on doing. When you’re clear about what needs to happen and how you can make sure that each person is pulling their weight in the ways you expect, clarity is the most important factor of all. If people are not performing how you want them to, it might not be because they’re lazy. They might just not fully understand what you want and expect from them.
Let Someone Else Deal with Communications
Letting someone else deal with communication is a good way for you to spend less of your time on repetitive tasks. Lots of us waste a lot of time reading through emails and other communications and responding. If you hire someone else to do that or simply delegate that work to a member of your team, you’ll have a lot less time that you’ll need to spend in the workplace or focusing on work tasks.
Schedule Shorter Meetings
Scheduling shorter meetings is definitely something you can do if you want to free up more of your time and spend less of it in the office. Long meetings are often unnecessary and end up not achieving very much. There are so many other ways of sharing communications and ideas these days and old-fashioned meetings might just end up feeling like a waste of your time.
As you can see, there are lots of things you can do to reduce your overall workload in business if you’re looking to ease yourself into retirement. Each of the tips above should help you to wind things down while also planning for what might come next for the business. So be sure to make the most of the ideas above.
Photo by SKYLAKE STUDIO on Unsplash
