How To Prepare Your Business For The New Year

The first few weeks of January are always the hardest for most businesses because everyone is out of cash from the Christmastime shopping and gifting spree. Everyone’s hoping that the “Noche Buena” leftovers will last them at least the first 14 days of the New Year before they spoil. For most businesses, sales are scarce. Some are conducting clearance sales at waist-deep prices to clear out inventory and make whatever bit of sale they can still rummage. Receptionists are starting to blend with the walls because there are just no clients coming in or calling. January is admittedly for almost every business, a problem month.

So, is it really all that bad for businesses? Should we just move the first day of work to the second week of January? Of course not! We have a lot of things to do this New Year, and the work starts as early as the last firework pops. Here is a list of things you might want to consider doing while the clients are out:

Maintenance and Repair. What is the color of the office walls when you first painted it and what is that disfigured stain now? Despite all the care possible, facilities inevitably deteriorate due to wear and tear. If there was not any time available last year for you to conduct major repairs, now is the time to do so. Repaint scraped walls, vacuum the carpets, make your windows clear again, replace broken lightbulbs, and most of all, remove the Christmas decorations. “New Year, new you” is not just a tag line for kids sharing a resolution they will never even bother to do, but a requirement for businesses. Make your office shine and look like it’s the first day it opened. Make it smell fresh and make it safe and sanitary. Make it look like a modern office again. File all the documents that you have printed and scattered on your desk. You can even buy new cabinets. Replenish your inventory if you haven’t been keeping up with it last month.

Restructure. Remember that people’s interest over something they do or experience repetitively lessens overtime, and you might have seen this last December. It’s supposed to be festive, but some of your people seem to have decreased their productivity. This year, you might want to consider a bit of restructuring the office, even in tiny ways like assigning your people to take new roles and try new things for the year. If you plan to do so, then the downtime you have this January is perfect for training and adjustments for employees. You have all the time to teach them how to perform their new tasks effectively and let them get the feel of the new process. Who knows, a small job rotation might turn out to be the key to keep your competitive advantage in the market. If you’re bold and sure your old process was barely keeping up with the demands, then try out a new process; install new ma-chines to hit your forecasted demand for this year.

Recover. Hopefully, before you closed for the Christmas vacation, you were able to get to speed with what has happened in the company throughout last year — the overall sales, trends that occurred, total generated awareness of your marketing efforts, and most of all, the summary of brick walls that your company hit last year. This is the time when you plan out and orient your people on how the company can recover from those blunders. This is the New Year, and virtually every company out there is surely bringing out brand new guns. Orient your people about the new strategies that will be implemented. Talk with the problem employees and give suggestions on how they can improve their performance in the company. If things went bad last year, this is the time to start your recovery plan.

Hopefully, these tips can help you prepare yourselves for the coming months during this downtime in January. There will be a lot of changes in people, your target market last year has matured now (somehow), and trends might not be the same as last year. You must consider this downtime as the calm before the storm, and ready yourselves!

*Originally published by the Manila Bulletin. Manila Bulletin, C-10, Sunday, January 10, 2016. Written by Ruben Anlacan, Jr. (President, BusinessCoach, Inc.) All rights reserved. May not be reproduced or copied without express written permission of the copyright holders.