1 December 2024

How Small Businesses Can Thrive in a Hybrid, Digital-First World

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After more than a year and a half of the pandemic, small business leaders are still grappling with challenges posed by remote work and supply chain issues. As they attempt to maintain morale, retain staff and meet rapidly-changing consumer demand, they often neglect their own needs—and as a result, are struggling with their burnout and a loss of purpose themselves.

For many small and midsized businesses (SMBs), the future of work is a hybrid one, resting somewhere in between the in-person status quo of the “Before Times” and the nonstop video calls that have defined the past 18 months. This evolution will require yet another adjustment on the part SMB leaders, some of whom have just recently figured out how to make “work from home” work, and many of whom have grown exhausted in the process.

“Tedious tasks can consume a small business owner’s energy, leaving little left for creativity, innovation and quality face-time with customers,” said Todd Gerber, vice president of product marketing at Adobe Document Cloud. “By modernizing how business gets done with technology, small businesses can claw back that time wasted on admin work and avoid the burnout trap.”

To explore this reality and identify solutions, Adobe conducted a survey of more than 5,000 enterprise employees and SMB leaders on how our concept of time has evolved in the face of new demands placed on it. Within the findings from Adobe’s Future of Time study, there are several important takeaways for small business owners desperate to take back control of their time and regain their entrepreneurial enthusiasm.

Establish boundaries by embracing automation 

Even before the pandemic, many small business owners found the phrase “work-life balance” laughable. Running a company can feel like a 24/7/365 task. The Adobe survey found that three in five small business leaders now feel pressured to respond to emails and customer queries after traditional working hours. More than half feel as if they’re “constantly stretched for time at work.” Minority, women and “essential” business owners feel this pressure most acutely, leading to higher levels of stress.

With record levels of burnout, it’s more critical than ever for small business owners to establish boundaries about when and how they can be reached by both employees and customers. For example, automated systems can handle common customer inquiries so that SMB owners can cut back on the feeling of being “on call” around the clock. Investing in chatbot technology that can answer simple FAQs, or even adding an FAQ page to a website, is another simple step. Ensuring seamless, digital systems for online ordering, invoicing, returns and general communications is another.

When it comes to employee interactions, boundary- and expectation-setting is just as critical. Here, too, digital solutions like project-management software or cloud-based collaboration platforms can streamline workflows. Personalized dashboards — where employees can access everything from onboarding information to payroll to custom notification settings — can help workers both set and stick to healthy boundaries.

Think outside the 9-to-5 

If there’s one thing the pandemic made workers value more than anything else, it’s their time. Case in point: in April 2021, almost 4 million Americans quit their jobs — a record, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Workers are seeking more flexibility and control over how they spend their time. And the problem is widespread among SMBs — more than one-third of leaders struggled to mitigate employee burnout and attrition as a direct result of pandemic-related pressures, Adobe’s survey found.

Younger employees in particular are leaving their jobs in droves. Generation Z, which will represent about 27% of the workforce by 2025, is at the forefront of the “great resignation” trend. More than half of Gen Z respondents to the Adobe survey said they plan to look for a new job within the next year.

It’s not just employees who are feeling this way – more than half of minority (55%) and essential (51%) small business leaders reported “losing passion” for their work — an unsettling trend. Should those businesses close their doors, already-pronounced socioeconomic disparities may worsen.

Digital solutions, like Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Sign, not only help with time-management, but they can also ensure employees are able to work at the time of the day that makes the most sense for them. (A quarter of Gen Z respondents to the Adobe survey reported that they work more efficiently outside of the traditional 9-to-5 workday.) Implementing progressive policies — like limiting the hours of the day when employees are expected to be available for impromptu meetings or calls, for instance — is another tactic to boost engagement and keep employees from feeling overwhelmed.

Streamline low-effort, administrative tasks 

In the Adobe survey, 83% of small business leaders reported that tasks like managing files, forms, contracts, payments and invoices gets in the way of them doing their jobs effectively. Likely due in part to this tedium, 56% of SMB leaders say they work longer hours than they’d like.

Luckily, artificially intelligent task-management platforms, cloud-based collaboration systems and other emerging technologies are rising to the challenge to help make this work schedule more manageable. A recent Forrester report found that productivity-boosting tools like e-signatures can translate into more than a full week of time — 43 hours — saved per employee per year.

Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that SMB owners are highly interested in such solutions. According to Adobe, 91% of SMB leaders expressed interest in tools that may help them handle low-effort tasks more efficiently.

It’s not just wishful thinking. There’s reason for optimism about technology’s ability to make SMB owners’ lives a little less time-pressed. The Adobe survey found that 79% of SMB leaders who are excited about adopting new technologies are more satisfied with their day-to-day work tasks. Seventy-six percent reported greater levels of satisfaction with their work-life balance. And a quarter (25%) said that technology solutions have enabled them to weather the pandemic — and even increase company revenue.

Looking to the future, it’s clear that time is the most valuable commodity for SMB leaders and their employees. The processes and platforms put in place over the coming weeks and months will likely prove instrumental to SMBs’ ability to adapt to the new and inevitable hybrid future.

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