The new year is often a time of reflection, stock-taking, and goal-setting. As holidays and festive season revelries fade into memory, we turn our attention to the year ahead.
What does 2025 hold in store? How can we set ourselves (and our organisations) up for success? How can we ensure we're prepared for any shocks or jolts that might happen?
Drawing on productivity research, science, and our own experiences as small business leaders, here are some key business process optimisation activities to make time for as we ease back into working life and charge ahead into the year.
Let's start with the often-neglected but crucial "R-word": rest. It can be hard to find a good time to be away from work, especially if you’re in a small team or the owner of a business.
However - trust us on this one - regular breaks are not only essential for your overall well-being (correlating with longer, healthier lives) but also a secret ingredient to boosting productivity (up to 8% for every 10 hours of leave, according to one study from Ernst & Young).
Do you like to take short, frequent breaks or are you someone who saves up your leave for a long holiday in August? Do you have an important event coming up, like a wedding or sports tournament?
Whether it's planning a big trip or strategically placing a few long weekends throughout the year, make sure that you’re scheduling time to down tools and spend time doing what’s important to you. Remember, a well-rested you is the healthiest you, to say nothing of your productivity.
Plan your leave accurately with our public holidays calendar.
Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”, which is as relevant to our professional lives as our lives outside work. So, before we get too far into 2025, take a moment to revisit the twists and turns of 2024.
You might want to reflect on the details of personal strategies, behaviours or habits, or more broadly on the practices and rhythms of your team or organisation.
There are lots of tools you can choose from to make the most of your reflecting time:
Whatever approach you take, we guarantee you’ll uncover at least two gems that will help support your success in 2025.
Businesses of all sizes often have an “HR health check” on the to-do list, but for one reason or another, it never quite gets finished. While any time is a good time to review and refresh your employment documentation and processes, the start of a new year presents a real opportunity to run through your HR compliance checklist.
Start by answering these 10 questions:
If you’ve answered “no” to any of these questions, work them into your priorities and planning (steps 4 and 5, below), and figure out when and where to get started.
Now, let's tackle that overwhelming, seemingly endless to-do list that can loom over us like a dark cloud.
Take a deep breath and jot down your top priorities for the year. Are you launching a new product? Does your website desperately need an overhaul? Will you have several new faces joining your team?
Order them from most important to least important. Be practical and, if you need to, be ruthless about what stays on your list and how high up it is.
Once you've got them down, here's the twist: cut that list in half.
And no, that’s not a typo.
Humans are really bad at predicting how much we can get done, a phenomenon known as the planning fallacy. It's a common trap to overestimate what can realistically be accomplished in a single year, even if we’re pretty experienced or have done similar work before.
By paring down your list to only the essential items, you can channel your energy and resources where they truly matter, ensuring you're not spreading yourself too thin.
With your streamlined priorities in hand, it's time to take action. We highly recommend employing a digital calendar or wall planner to schedule your "big rock" items – those significant projects, milestones, or goals that will propel your enterprise forward.
By placing them prominently on a wall planner, or sharing access to a digital calendar, you not only keep them visible to yourself but also to your entire team. This transparency serves the dual purpose of keeping everyone aligned with your vision and holding you accountable for achieving your goals.
As you move through the year, take note of what tasks, activities, and priorities are aligned with your “big rocks” – and what is just noise or shiny distractions that don’t move you forward.
One of 2024’s key workplace trends was the embedding of artificial intelligence (AI) into our everyday work platforms and practices, particularly large language model chatbots – for example, ChatGPT grew from 1.6 billion worldwide users in March 2023 to 3.8 billion users in November 2024.
It can be tricky to stay on top of new tools and solutions that make running an organisation easier – working in the business takes up so much time that it’s hard to find clear air to work on the business, too.
In 2025, staying ahead of the curve means embracing technology and automation. Evaluate your business processes and identify areas where you can implement smart software solutions or automation tools to boost productivity, or look at providers who can streamline your services.
MyHR automates some of your most time-consuming HR processes - from one-touch employee onboarding to streamlined payroll and leave - unifying your HR functions in a single platform backed by unlimited expert HR advisory support. Explore the MyHR platform today.