5 Tasks to Prepare Your Business for the New Year

Chances are you’re thinking about New Year’s resolutions. Whether it’s business or personal, ‘tis the season for setting goals, making plans, and taking chances. But before launching into the next year, don’t forget to tie up projects and tasks from this year. Whether you’ve applied for some small business loans in florida, or wherever your business is based, or you are part way through painting the house, make sure you have everything in line before closing out the year.

Make sure to complete these five tasks to guarantee a great start for your organization come New Year’s Day!

Finish your to-do list

It’s time to start with a clean slate! Whether written or digital, the to-do list can be endless. Setting aside time to wrap up those lingering responsibilities ensures you are ready to face the new year, and not struggle to complete old assignments. Encourage your teams to adopt a final to-do list cleanse to ensure everyone starts off with a good plan. It is critical to have goals to work toward as a business in order to continue to grow and develop. This is why it is critical to have a to-do list for your team to work on. These objectives can take many forms, ranging from financial objectives such as increasing revenue or profit margins by a certain percentage by the end of the year to objectives that are less fiscally motivated but still important to the company. Many businesses have implemented goal-setting frameworks such as OKRs after witnessing the results this approach has helped to deliver for hugely successful companies such as Google. The fundamental relationship between the OKR Software and engagement of the employees is that setting ambitious, challenging goals can make a valuable contribution to employee motivation and engagement.

Review IT policies

It’s no secret that technology lives in the fast lane, and your IT policies must be able to keep up. Adopting an end-of-the-year review of current and upcoming policies certifies that the business is starting the New Year with information that accurately reflects and answers business needs. When reviewing procedures and regulations, consider if they still apply to your day-to-day and overall business needs. Are there any old ones that need revision? It may take a few extra hours to review and designate updates, but come January, you’ll be glad you did.

You may even decide to update your organization’s leave policies if it is not providing you with as many monetary benefits as you expect. So you might want to go through the list of upcoming holidays and give your employees an idea of how the company might handle it in the future. If you’d like to take a look at the holiday lists for the coming years, you can click here to do so and plan your organization’s goals consequently.

Update inventories

No matter what industry you’re in, businesses go through multiple changes throughout the 365 days. To make sure your IT department is fully prepared to handle whatever comes your way in the new year, check your inventories to ensure all company technology, hardware, and software is accounted for and utilized properly.

Back it up!

While most IT departments automatically backup the company systems on a regular basis, you can’t back up data and files often enough in today’s digital age. Create local backups of data you need easy access to in the next year and archive old files in a secure location.

Keep it secure!

New threats to your business emerge each year. Cybercrime is on the rise, as is physical crime, from outsiders or even employees. Review what security measures you have in place and take action where there are weak points. Train employees to recognize online threats, change door codes, install a business security alarm, and upgrade your IT systems to close loopholes.

After you’ve tied up the loose ends of the past year, it’s time to look to the future. What steps can you take right away in the new year to help your team get organized to achieve their goals? If possible, make it a collaborative event. Call the team together to collectively to decide on how to accomplish these goals. Regardless of industry, making sure last year’s projects are completed, saved, and archived is a great way to start the New Year with a clean slate. Share your top tips for preparing for 2017 in the comments below!