Take a Break

Monday morning and back to work! Or is it? Way too many folks these days are simply staying at work. "Back to work" doesn’t apply.

With too few employees attempting to get all the work done these days, there’s no time for a break. It’s a recipe for disaster.

Reed Publishing has experienced this trend. At GAM - as with most companies - there are fewer people trying to shoulder the load. Unfortunately, cutting back employees doesn’t cut the workload: it all still has to get done.

You almost certainly are confronting the same sort of difficulties in your business. It’s an industry-wide trend and a disturbing one. Of all the tools at our disposal these days, the single most valuable one is the employee: the person we are counting on to get the job done.

We can ease some of the burden through automation and software tools that allow us to get more done in less time, but when your constantly treading water just to keep afloat, there’s no time to look for, acquire and learn how to use the new tools. Cutbacks in purchasing and training mean less access to new software and proper training.

As an industry, we have to resist cutbacks with no foresight. The only way to trim costs effectively is to make sure we’re not cutting into the heart of what makes our businesses run. We need healthy, productive people and we need to be continually investing in them, not burying them with a workload that will ultimately burn them out. It’s a difficult tightrope to walk, with some very tough choices to be made.

Print providers need to keep investing in productivity boosting software and training. And employees need to insist on not being overburdened with unmangeagable, burn-out inducing workloads.

Take a break. Don’t give up your weekends, your family and your spiritual well-being. Take stock in what’s important not only to the bottom line but to the people who will need to be around to run your business next year. Find ways to boost productivity rather than just continuing to pile more work on fewer and fewer people.

That’s the only way our industry can survive.

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