There is no doubt that people are becoming more tech-savvy. They love buying the latest gadgets, learning how to use them, tinkering with them, and evaluating their limits.

Workers are keen to use technology

This is great news for business owners. It means that the majority of their employees are comfortable with technology. They have no problem with learning how to use the systems and gadgets that they need to do their job well. In addition, they are often happy to re-skill and are quite comfortable with adapting to and adopting new technologies, when needed. You can read more about this trend, by clicking here.

Those business owners who recognise that many in their workforce have a passion for tech can benefit from tapping into that fact. To demonstrate this and look more closely at how the benefits can be maximised let’s take the example of a small store owner.

Bringing some of your marketing in-house

Most small store owners rely on reps leaving them physical marketing materials to use in their outlets. This means that they are extremely limited when it comes to what they can promote and how much control they have over their marketing. Often, they are competing with chain stores and franchisees who have access to new, high quality, posters, banners, leaflets, and other marketing materials. In those circumstances, it is hard to catch the eye of customers, make an impact and get them coming back for more.

Fortunately, there is now a way to compete, which is to use digital advertising screens. They do not cost much and can be set up in minutes.

Better still, it is the retailer who controls what is displayed on them and when. All they need to do is to identify a member of staff who is good at graphics editing and let them create and deploy in-store ads.

It is surprising how many people use graphics packages at home to create social media posts, GIFs and images that can be printed out onto gifts. If you are a small retailer and would like to learn more about why you need digital signage, just click the link. When you do you will be taken to a guide that explains everything and includes examples of how to get started with digital screen advertising.

Ask staff to help with social media advertising

Social media advertising is still surprisingly powerful. You will find that most of your staff use it and that some of them run their own online businesses and are already skilled at marketing on most platforms. If you do have someone like that on your staff, consider paying them extra to collaborate with you on your campaigns.

Number crunching programmers

Most small store owners now use a digital Point of Sale (POS). Usually, one that also keeps track of stock and orders anything that gets too low automatically. These systems are an extremely rich source of data.

The problem is that not all store owners are tech-savvy enough to know how to pull off the relevant reports. Or take the data, then convert it into something like Excel and analyse it in more detail.

This is a great shame because it means that they miss valuable insights that could help them to sell more. Often, they will have a member of staff that is more than capable of doing all of that for them. More importantly, because they already work in the business, they will notice things that a professional number cruncher may completely miss.

Consider paying for training

If you want to implement some of the above suggestions, but do not happen to have someone working for you that has the necessary skills, consider paying for training. Studies show that staff who get the chance to re-skill enjoy higher levels of job satisfaction. You can find out more about why that is the case by reading this report.

They are also more likely to want to continue to work for you. Something that is vitally important. Especially when you realise that, on average, it costs $4,000 to recruit a new employee. Most of that cost comes from training new members of staff and the fact that it will take them a couple of months to become efficient.

Hopefully, the above article has opened your eyes to the benefits of tapping into your employee´s tech skills. If it has piqued your interest and you would like to learn more, you will also find this article useful.