How to Manage Multiple Business Locations Effectively

How to manage multiple business locations effectively

Growing a successful business is as rewarding as it is difficult. Managing a single location can be a challenge in itself, but as you scale and add more locations it can quickly become overwhelming. How can you make sure that all of your sites are running smoothly?

We’re here to help! This article will guide you through navigating the challenges of managing multiple locations for your business.

First, let’s understand what you need to manage. 

While there are a number of finer details that will vary from business to business, the two primary areas below – process management and people management – are good starting points for understanding which areas to focus on to set up a system that will run smoothly, with or without you:

People Management

This has to be the most critical direction of your efforts. If you have the right people, everything else will fall into place. Here are some tips to effectively manage teams across multiple business locations:

Hire Good Managers and Leaders

While your hands-on leadership is essential and required, delegation is one of the most important skills you can master to keep your business running efficiently across various locations. 

To that end, you need managers at every branch, store or office who you can trust, and on whom your employees can depend on as well. Your managers will be those who create and foster your company culture, hire your team in your absence, and make sure that you’re always in the loop.

Empower Yourself with the Right Digital Tools

With remote working rapidly gaining traction (despite the initial resistance it faced), businesses now have access to an array of tools that help manage remote teams. Planday’s Staff Management Software is a reliable and efficient way to manage your employees’ files, data, check-ins and email.

Tooling yourself with an efficient and effective staff management system for longer and more unusual shifts not only gives your business the cost and operational oversight you need but it will also empower your best asset – your people – to manage the complexities of long and unusual shifts with the rest of life’s demands. 

Learn How to Manage People

You can read more about management styles in our complete people management guide, including how to delegate, how to handle conflict and learn how to level up your skills with tips on managing difficult people. We’ve even included our favourite management books!

Encourage Ownership

In your absence, your team needs to feel empowered to make decisions and act strategically. Ownership reflects trust, builds responsibility, and creates a natural sense of accountability among employees. The biggest challenge you will face while managing multiple business locations is your inability to be everywhere all at once – but having adept staff you can depend on will make all the difference.

Process Management

Building the right team is key when you have a business that is geographically spread out – but building the right processes is an equally important aspect of managing multiple teams working out of multiple locations. 

Well-defined processes will lend structure, clarity and consistency in your absence.

It’s important to invest some time in crafting and building processes with your team. Their input is very valuable since they will be running these processes. 

Once you’ve tried and tested a few models, choose the one that worked best for everyone, and then rely on digital tools like Planday’s scheduling feature to automate execution and implementation.

With this scheduling feature, save time by automating your staff scheduling processes. You can enjoy a high-level view of your staff hours and salary, while also sharing the schedule with your employees. As your team managers make changes or edits, stay up-to-date in real-time with how things are being managed in your absence, and save the time and effort it takes to manually update everyone’s schedules with endless emails and calls.

Remote Teams and Teams in Multiple Locations

With a tool that you can share with your team – like Planday- you can not only manage teams in multiple locations, but also manage one team with members clocking-in remotely, and who need intelligent digital tools to work together.

Communication

Cliché as it may sound, there’s nothing more vital than open and easy communication to keep your business running efficiently and in tandem from various locations. 

Make sure you plan visits to every location periodically – it’s important for your team to know that you are making the effort to be there for them. When you can’t travel (haven’t we learnt that lesson from 2020!), use digital tools to make sure you and your team are always on the same page!

Whether your business is growing or you’re starting to think of scaling operations, you need to consider how you’ll be able to effectively manage your teams, logistics, operations, and more across various locations. 

Get in touch with to speak with a specialist and learn more about how our tools can empower you to plan, implement and communicate for success.