Small Business Support: Avoid Burnout With Process Automation

You've poured your heart and soul into building your business from the ground up. But as your business grows, you might find yourself drowning in repetitive, time-consuming tasks like data entry, payroll, and HR related tasks, that are stealing your joy and leading you straight to burnout.

Don't let burnout be the boss of you! It's time to take control and automate those pesky tasks that are holding you back.

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The impact of entrepreneur burnout.

Burnout is no joke. When you’re feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, it’s hard to stay passionate about your business. You get frustrated quickly, you don’t have a good work life balance, you may avoid socializing both at work and during your free time, and you begin to have health issues, including problems sleeping.

Factors that lead to entrepreneur burnout include: 

You feel like you have to do everything yourself

While you have the vision for your business, that doesn’t mean that you have to do everything yourself. Entrepreneurs that get burnout often feel like they are the only person that can take care of an issue or task. Having that mindset snowballs quickly. At some point, there are too many tasks for one person to realistically accomplish. 

Relying on your team to do the jobs you hired them for and tapping into innovation to alleviate tasks is critical to avoiding burnout.  

You are always at work – or always thinking about work

Everyone needs time to rest and recharge. If you head to your business first thing in the morning and keep working late into the night, you aren’t giving your brain or body time to recover. That leads to feelings of exhaustion – and eventually burnout. 

Even if you aren't physically at work but you still think about all of the things that need to be done or that you should be doing for your business, it’s like you are still at work. You aren’t taking the break you need to stay energized about your business. 

Nothing is good enough

We get it – it’s your business and you want everything to be perfect. But it’s easy to have unrealistic expectations of yourself and your team that lead to you believing that nothing is ever good enough. This mindset forces you to work more as you try to make everything perfect, which is simply unattainable. Working for perfection will lead to overworking and feeling frustrated – which both lead to burnout. 

Avoid burnout with process automation

Without intervention, burnout can eventually cause you to mentally and/or physically disconnect from the business you spent so much time building. You can avoid burnout by implementing process automation tools. 

What is process automation? It’s technology that automates repetitive tasks that take time to complete. The automation gets things done quickly, saving time. Think of it as your magic wand to help you get sh*t done so you can reclaim your time and energy.

By automating time consuming tasks, you can take hours back in your day and use those hours to focus on other, more strategic work to grow your business. You can also use those hours to improve your work-life balance and take time for self-care. 

Process automation also offers a sense of control and alleviates some common small business owner worries. Because tasks are performed automatically and through trusted technology, you don’t have to worry about errors and inconsistencies. You also don’t have to worry about forgetting any details – or forgetting to do the task entirely. The technology handles the task without you needing to even think about it. 

The benefits of implementing process automation tools for small businesses include: 

• Increased efficiency and productivity
• Reduced errors and inconsistencies 
• Cost savings
• Improved customer service
• Improved customer and employee communication 

Process automation tools can also scale, so as your business grows, the technology grows with you without any need for capital investment. 

Examples of tasks that can be automated

Here are some tasks that may come up as your biggest frustrations while running your business that can be automated:

Employee scheduling

Managing vacation requests, employee availability, and unexpected sick days to build your employee work schedule takes so much time – and the schedule has to be built over and over again. 

Employee scheduling is the perfect task for process automation. With the right tool, like Homebase, you can set it and forget it. Technology takes over building your employee schedules giving you more time to sneak in a few hours of self care or actually take a real lunch break. 

Running payroll

Running payroll takes time and a whole lot of it if you’re doing it manually. As you know any little mistake can significantly impact your team who are depending on receiving an error-free paycheck. Process automation tools for payroll can save time and frustration by automating payroll tasks.

Onboarding new employees

There are a lot of tasks required to correctly onboard a new team member that all take time. Process automation can help with onboarding tasks by giving new hires the ability to complete paperwork without your direct support, including completing and signing W-4, W-9, and I-9 forms and enrolling in direct deposit.

Personnel management

Keeping track of employee information is hard – especially if you have multiple locations. Process automation tools can automate personnel management, including updating contact information, name changes, and availability. 

Improving customer service

New tools that use generative AI can write automated customer responses to typical questions you may get on your contact or FAQ form on your website. This saves time with drafting the responses each time a question is submitted. 

Identifying tasks that can be automated in your business

Ready to take back your time? Start by identifying the tasks that are causing you the most headaches. Think about:

• What tasks frustrate you or your team?
• What tasks are causing bottlenecks?
• What tasks are taking up valuable time?

When you identify those tasks, evaluate your current workflows. Document the steps required to complete the task and how much time is spent on each step. 

Once you have identified a list of tasks, prioritize them based on what you would like to accomplish first – or the task that has the highest pain point. 

Once you know what tasks you would like to automate, you can look for the right process automation tools for your small business. There are tools on the market that automate everything from payroll and HR tasks to customer invoicing, email marketing, cybersecurity, and logistics. 

Finding success with process automation

Implementing process automation tools doesn't have to be overwhelming. Start small by automating one task and see how it integrates with your current workflow.

Some helpful tips? Make sure your team is aware of what is happening and share the “why” before implementing the new automation tools. Help them understand the benefits of automating processes to gain their buy-in on learning the new tool. This can also cut down on any fear your team may have about being replaced by technology. 

Being transparent with your team will also help with any future tasks that you will automate. Be sure to also train your team on using the new tool. This will reduce any frustration when the tool is implemented and avoid any hiccups that could waste time.

It’s also a good idea to regularly monitor your automated tasks to ensure everything is running smoothly.  As you find success with one task, expand your efforts to other areas of your business. 

Reclaim your time with process automation.

You started your business to pursue your passion, not to spend all your time on data entry and paperwork. Process automation is here to help you reclaim your time and avoid burnout.

With tools like Homebase, you can automate everything from employee scheduling to onboarding to payroll. So why wait? It's time to take control of your time and your business.

Learn more about Homebase process automation tools in this guide.

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