Small changes could help SMEs lessen the pressure on their finances, staff and management, a senior accounting professional has said.

Jeremy Gardner, Head of Accounts and Business Advisory Services South at international accountancy and business advisory group Azets, is encouraging directors and owners of SMEs to explore their options around technology, tax planning, rewards, retention and operational planning to see where they can free up time and potentially reduce their outgoings.

His six suggestions are:

1. Where appropriate, use technology to automate tasks, free up time, and reduce the strain caused by staff shortages and heavy workloads. Automating the manual aspects of tasks like logging invoices, reconciling bank accounts, and spreadsheet-based accounting work can free up a tremendous amount of time across the business – especially for senior staff.

2. Reconsider how you reward your staff by introducing performance-linked incentives. Offering staff bonuses based on specific income targets sets clear performance goals, motivates employees to deliver by linking their rewards to the business’s success and shows that you as an employer want to reward those who help you grow.

3. Explore your tax planning options and use tax efficient benefits to keep staff motivated if the business can’t afford to raise salaries. Benefits like share options cost very little now, but reward staff for their contribution and their loyalty as the business grows, while salary sacrifices for pensions can reduce employer costs and increase staff’s take-home pay. Other incentives like salary sacrifice electric vehicle schemes also benefit staff by allowing access to new vehicles, reducing their tax payments, significantly reducing the cost of leasing a vehicle, and increasing their take-home pay, and can also help the business save money by reducing its NI costs for employees who take part in the initiative.

4. Incentivise your team to bring in new hires by rewarding referrals rather than relying solely on agencies. Offering referral payments for new hires allows you to reward staff who help with recruitment and also saves on the commission you would pay an agency. It can also reduce the time spent on the recruitment process as your employees will know why someone from their network is potentially a good fit for a role you're looking to fill.

5. Focus on staff retention – improving your culture, development programmes and flexibility cost less than losing talent – both financially and in terms of productivity. This can take the form of basic steps like making sure staff understand how they will evolve with the business and know how their specific role supports the delivery of a company’s business plan, to investing time and money in employee training and development. According to PayFit, the average cost of replacing member of staff is £25,000 – investing a small percentage of that in developing your team can help reduce employee turnover and the costs associated with it.

6. Refine your planning and forecasting – align shifts, overtime and roles to match the demand and ensure capacity is highest during your busiest periods. At its most detailed, this can take the form of planning the shape and structure of your team alongside your business plans and milestones 18 months to two years in advance, or at its simplest can take the form of introducing policies around how much time can be taken off by how many people during parts of the year where capacity is tightest and workloads are highest.

Jeremy Gardner said:

“At the moment, SMEs are being affected by a number of issues that include rising costs, wage pressures, skills shortages and retention challenges, and hidden costs relating to staff turnover – all of which hit productivity, morale and the bottom line."

“There is no silver bullet for any of these, but I’d encourage SME owners to think about areas where they can make small changes to lighten the load on them and their staff, free them up to think about how they can grow their businesses, and ease some of the financial pressures they face."

“It isn’t a road they have to travel alone – the right third-party advisor can help them identify which areas need to be improved in the short and long-term so their business can survive, thrive and prepare for the next stage of its growth.”