Chuck Noll, the former coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers for 23 years, knew about success. In his final 20 seasons with the Steelers he had 15 winning seasons and won 4 Super Bowls. In the prior 36 years the Steelers only advanced to the postseason once. Tony Dungy, in his book, Quiet Strength, described his time as a player and assistant coach under Noll. He said that Noll prioritized his time between work and life and didn’t hang around the office more than necessary. He didn’t expect his staff to, either. Dungy said that he worked himself ragged around the clock for other far less successful coaches. Busyness is not the secret to success. As a small business owner with remote employees, this may be a struggle for you. But there is a way to achieve a proper work/life balance.
In The E-Myth, Michael Gerber says you should learn to work on your business instead of in your business. Stephen Covey says that we should plan our time/activities based on 4 quadrants to stay focused on the most important. In his blog post, “Optimized or Maximized“, Seth Godin draws a distinction between the two concepts. You can perform at maximum speed for a while, but is that optimal for your long-term goals? All of these ideas are great, and we have the most practical suggestion that helps with all of the above.
If you own a small business and manage remote employees, our online employee time clock system is the most effective way to optimize your efforts. Employees use the Chronotek app, or the employee call in system, to clock in and clock out. We automatically create time card reports from these punches that you can access online 24/7/365. Can you imagine how much time you will save by not tracking down handwritten time sheets? Or hunting through text messages to get your employees’ times so that you can then manually enter the hours into a spreadsheet? We can also send you a text or email alert if employees don’t show to a scheduled job. Would you get more sleep at night with the assurance that if an employee is a no-show, you will know about it before your customer? How much time do you spend manipulating spreadsheets to calculate labor costs by job? Punt this practice in the past. When you use our online employee call in system, our detailed Weekly Labor Cost report automates the process and puts a lot of time back onto your game clock.
We want you to be successful and we are convinced that success doesn’t have to come at the expense of everything and everyone else. You can strike a great work/life balance with the right tools and practices to make your time at work optimally efficient. Our last blog post, “Run Your Small Business Like Super Bowl Champions” (hey, we like football), gave you a game plan to save money. If you utilize our online employee call in system, you will be equipped to save both time and money. It’s the perfect play to score a better work/life balance.
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