5 ways to improve employee utilisation

The latest edition of MYOB's newsletter mentioned that, "according to a study by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICAA), an ideal employee utilisation rate is around 85–90%, if your employee utilisation rate is lower than this, it may be worth reassessing how your employees are used."

Here are their 5 ways to improve employee utilisation and my take on each one including some questions to ask yourself.

• Prioritise billable tasks - this is a no-brainer but how often do we and our staff get caught up in non-billable work. Often setting billable hours as a KPI is a good way to place the focus on this.
• Streamline processes - how's your tech? Have you mapped out your processes to see where inefficiencies are happening? Are you and your team spending too much time duplicating effort? Are you using the software you have to its fullest?
• Cross-training - Can your team members step in and do what's necessary if another team member, or you, is off sick? Do you have services, or even mangement tasks, that are currently solely your domain but which other team members could also do if you trained them well? Admin? Software training? Advisory?
• Identify and address underutilised employees - Do you have team members with capacity while other team members are bottlenecks? Are you being precious about holding onto work when you need to step more into your leadership role and delegate.
• Review and adjust your employee utilisation rate - This is something that should be a part of your weekly, if not daily even, review process to ensure that work is being completed in a timely manner and that all your team members, including you, are being utilised in the best way possible.

All of these things come down to you treating your business like it's your best client.
Need help with any of this and want a bookkeeping business coach to help you to build a better bookkeeping business?

 Stephanie 

PS: Interested in working with me as your bookkeeping business coach? Send me an email to start the conversation.