7 min read
April 19, 2019 
Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or a newbie just starting a new business there are so many supports and programs out there that can help. There are also a lot of tools and communication methods that can be used to make the everyday task of running and managing your company easier.
Set Up a Business Plan
One thing that must be done – and trust us we know how hard this can be – is to author a Business Plan. This may seem like a tedious and time-consuming activity, but if you are serious about taking your business forward and eventually seeking help either from the government, the banks or a funding body, it is the one document we can guarantee they will all ask for.
There are lots of websites out there that can help you create a good business plan. We recommend that you take the time to do this right. Why? Well, because it will save you time in the future. Once you have the first draft, don’t hesitate to reach out to someone and have them read it over for you. There are also many sources online to help you do your research.
A website offering an excellent business plan creation guide is Invest Northern Ireland's step-by-step guide. Or if you want to take it a step further, you could use a business plan software package.
At HRLocker, we use LivePlan, and we love it! Why? Liveplan is inexpensive, easy to use and links directly with our accounts package Xero. This connected approach allows us to gauge how we are doing against our business plan in real time, allowing us to know where we stand and keep our eyes on the future too.
Northern Ireland Business Info Guide
Another great website, ThinkBusiness.ie, offers excellent guidance on creating a business plan and provides a handy downloadable template.
Think Business Business Plan Template
ThinkBusiness.ie also has a handy list of 50 funds and supports available in Ireland.
Taking the time to go through the process of writing the business plan will allow you to get a clear picture of the task at hand. By assessing what needs to be done and how you plan to do it, what may have seemed like a good idea can become an inspired entrepreneur’s vision.
Business Plan: Check! What’s next?
Once you have a well-crafted document that you're satisfied with, you can revisit it and make adjustments as needed to reflect the business's evolving needs as it grows. Here at HRLocker, we advocate planning your workload step by step and breaking down your management tasks into workable chunks. Trust us—you don’t need to do everything at once!
When you are off the ground and starting to consider hiring people, it's time to talk with us. Normally, when companies start hiring people, they look to friends, family and their immediate network. This can prove to be the biggest mistake that a start-up makes.
Our advice would be to absolutely use your network, but also explore the market to see what is out there. Products like the applicant tracking software HIRE in HRLocker will enable you to advertise across all social job platforms and popular job boards for a very low cost. Less money, in fact, than putting out an advert in your local paper or going to one specific job board. The great thing about HRLocker is that you can take on these supports when you need them, so you're not forced to take the whole package from day one.
Here in Ireland, we have a range of support from local and national, public and private organisations that can be approached for help. A good place to start would be your Local Enterprise Office.
Another common business issue you might have when you reach 5+ employees is managing employees’ holidays and tracking time.
How can we help? For starters, we can assist with tracking employee hours, holidays, leave entitlements, and requests. This can include helping your business comply with regulations by allowing workers to sign in and out of work, or record and track their hours worked. In Europe and the UK, this is now a requirement. Here in Ireland, we must stay in line with the Working Time Act 1997.
In Europe and the UK, keeping records of your employees’ time worked is a legal requirement, and if you don’t have an electronic system like HRLocker, it means holding a lot of paper and Excel spreadsheets in case you get audited, which is a pain to check and keep track of. If you start to think about even a small company with, say, 10 employees, that is a lot of records that need to be maintained and secured.
What Business Issue Do You Want to Solve?
It’s a compliance thing...well, let’s face it, you have to do this, so how can you stay compliant and add more value to the business?
- You could record time, if positioned and properly introduced, to help keep employees more focused.
- You could then use this data to inform you of other things that would help you in business decisions.
You can see more about your legal obligations on the Employment Rights Ireland Website
Using our system would alleviate the stress and worry about falling short of these legal requirements, enabling you to focus on making sure your employees stay more engaged and productive.
HRLocker has two ways for your employees to record their time worked. Option #1 uses timesheets, where employees record their hours worked. Option #2 gets your employees to log in and clock in/out as the day progresses.
Another handy feature of our timekeeping systems is that employees can also input time spent on projects. All this information is then stored in our secure cloud, allowing it to be easily accessed, reported on, and run with HRLocker.
Business Solution – Time-tracking & Clock In/Out
Many business owners and companies panic when they discover that they must track employees’ time, so they go out and buy expensive time and attendance systems, with biometric recording and the like. But, you don’t have to over-commit with a fancy, costly solution, slow down and ask yourself if a more affordable software that includes functions like timesheets or clock-in/out could do the job. HRLocker's Employee Time and Attendance Tracking does both!
Business Solution – Leave Tracking
Our Leave Management solution makes tracking employees’ holiday and annual leave entitlements a breeze. Allowing employees to see who’s off at any moment improves communication and reduces the likelihood of getting caught out with too many people from the same department off at the same time. This gives managers the comfort of having the ability to avoid resourcing nightmares.
There is no need to stress when either onboarding or offboarding employees about how many days they are entitled to; all these calculations are done automatically with HRLocker.
Business Solution – Applicant Tracking
HRLocker is also able to help recruit, hire and onboard prospective employees. Our Applicant Tracking System does the hard work for you, saving you time and money. Plus, it enables you to automate all administrative tasks and job postings associated with hiring new employees.
When starting a business, it can be all too easy to get bogged down in the actual day-to-day tasks of managing the company. This can lead to high levels of stress and also feelings of not having enough time and energy to do all that needs to be done.
By being clever about your approach and using some of the handy tools out there for running a business, many of the less exciting tasks can be automated. This will leave you breathing space to spend more time doing the things that get you more customers and that you enjoy.
Starting a company is hard work, and at times it may seem overwhelming. Please don’t hesitate to book a call or drop into our HRLocker chat bubble for any advice about how using HR Software can help to make your business and employees happy!
And, if you haven’t started yet, get to work on that business plan!
