Every business, from time to time, experiences idle working hours. This can be due to many reasons, including downtime, reduction in sales, or customer interest. In the ideal world, these downtimes would be a thing of the past.
However, there are ways in which you can make idle hours happen less within your business and therefore keep your workforce enthused as well as motivated.
#1 Encourage your customers to purchase more
You can encourage your customers to purchase more using different techniques. This can be done by either offering discounts, freebie items, or free postage and packing on orders above a certain value or quality.
Discounts are likely to encourage those businesses that order within your specifications. At the same time, there are very few people that will turn down the opportunity of getting something for free – even if they are undoubtedly paying a lot more to obtain it in the first place. Free postage and packing, however, could encourage your customers to order more frequently to get the best out of the deal before it is taken away.
#2 Take on additional delivery work
You could take on additional delivery work to keep your drivers busy and happy. You will find additional delivery and shipping work on sites such as Shiply. These sites are shipping brokers and allow businesses and individuals alike to post shipping jobs for delivery drivers and shipping businesses to bid on.
This means that you will be able to locate shipping work in your area (or the area where your drivers happen to be if they are on their way back from carrying out a delivery drop) for them to do in order to fill up their time and any free space within their vehicle.
#3 Train employees to be multi-skilled
Training your employees to be multi-skilled is not as daft as it sounds. Businesses, for instance, such as shops and stores, have already cottoned on to this way of thinking. It allows their workforce to follow the work rather than employing additional employees to perform just one specific criterion.
However, having multi-skilled employees could benefit most businesses. Being able to cover sick time or holiday hours or being able to cut down to a skeleton workforce when necessary to save money and provide a more stable form of employment for your most valued members of staff.
Final thoughts
There are many methods that you can adopt to keep your workforce moving and reduce idle work hours to a minimum. Whether it is sales strategies, the addition of more work for your delivery drivers, or training your employees to be multi-skilled so that they can follow the work rather than waiting for the work to come to them.
Of course, the last thing you want is for idle time to be wasted time. So maybe the solution to any idle time you have is to provide training for the betterment of your business and of your employees’ knowledge, confidence, and general morale.
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