What are the Responsibilities of a Business Owner?
Running your own business can be a great way of allowing you to work in the way you like. This could involve changing your hours of operation, or even allowing your team to work remotely to remove the stress of commuting. Part of being a responsible business owner can be about making sure that you follow guidelines and regulations, as well as making sure that your team are being treated correctly. You may, therefore, want to consider some of your current processes, as well as to review, and hopefully improve, the different ways of working.
Finance Management
One of the first aspects that you might be responsible for can be ensuring that your company’s finances are all in order. To do so, you may need to produce an Income Statement each tax year. This might need to include information regarding how much money has been made on sales, as well as the general costs of running your business. This can help to work out how much tax you need to pay. Preparing this statement may not be overly difficult, especially if you have kept good records throughout the course of the year.
Due to this, you may want to consider ensuring you have copies of all invoices and account for any company money that has been used. A locked filing cabinet can be a good way to store physical copies. You may want to check that any information kept on a computer is backed up, either on a USB drive or on a cloud-based database, in case of a system error.
Recruitment
As an owner, you may also have some level of involvement with the employment of new staff. In doing so, you might want to ensure that there is no discrimination during the hiring process. This could occur due to a person’s gender, sexuality, race, religion, or even disability. Being mindful of different types of people, and hiring based on the person rather than their characteristics, can help you to avoid this. Once employed, you may also want to make sure this discrimination doesn’t occur within your workplace, and discipline employees accordingly. Having more diversity in your business could help it to be more of a positive place for people to work.
Safety of Employees and Customers
Keeping yourself, your employees, visitors and clients safe can also be one of the fundamental responsibilities you may have as the owner of your company. This can be achieved in a number of ways. You might be required to take out different types of business insurance before you are allowed to trade. In addition to this, you might want to have regular safety checks of your goods, equipment, and protective clothing to ensure they are up to standard. Regularly reviewing your processes can also help you to find safer ways of working.
Improve Working Relationship
A responsible business owner may be more likely to build up good working relationships with both clients and employees. In doing so, you may also be able to create a positive reputation for yourself and your company.
