The Major Challenges Faced By Businesses

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That’s a famous line that you could reasonably apply to the modern business climate. On the one hand, things are pretty favorable to businesses. It’s never been easier to get up and running, there’s plenty of capacity to reach a global audience, and technological tools have made it easier than ever to work effectively. On the other hand, there’s a lot of competition, and global conditions — especially rising costs — can make it difficult to thrive.

The number of businesses that close within two years is pretty sobering, and the five-year forecast can be pretty miserable, too. But if you’re aware of the challenges that businesses are facing, then you can take a proactive approach to ensure that they don’t impact your own operation, at least not overly so. 

Recruitment Issues

It’s hard to find good talent. And it’s even more difficult to bring them on board. While some industries have a surplus of talent, many are facing skills shortages, and that makes it challenging for businesses to reach their full potential. Some job listings are online for months before a suitable candidate applies. 

There are two approaches to handling this issue. One is to outsource the task of finding an employee to a recruitment agency, which can save time and money. Another is to have a rolling hiring policy. With that, you are actively looking for high-level employees at all times, rather than waiting for a position to become available.

Retaining Talent

It’s one thing to bring a talented employee on board. It’s another thing to keep them. Employees, especially the best ones, know that they can find work elsewhere and that in most cases, moving jobs will lead to a bump in pay. Companies that have a high staff turnover rate can struggle because, first of all, it causes them to lose momentum, and second of all, it’s simply expensive to find, hire, and train a new employee. 

You can’t force employees to stay with your business. But you can give them an incentive to stay. Paying well is the obvious one, but it’s also important to ensure that you have a friendly and pleasant working environment and that you’re investing in your team’s career development. Employees that feel that they’re stagnated will be more likely to leave.

Rising Prices

Everyone is aware that prices are going up. You only need to take a trip to the supermarket to see that. Businesses, especially ones that use raw materials, have found that their costs have risen considerably in recent months. It’s likely that prices will begin to fall in the next few months, but businesses shouldn’t rely on that. Instead, now’s the time to take a closer look at expenses to see where costs can be cut, even if it’s just on a temporary basis. It’s also recommended to revisit your pricing structure to see if you can charge more for your products or services. While passing the entire price increase onto the consumer isn’t fair or advisable, a small increase can help to offset the burden. 

High Customer Demands

As we mentioned above, there’s a sea of competition these days. That’s true regardless of what industry you’re in. On some subconscious level, customers know that they have power — if one business can’t meet their demands, then another will. Of course, as a business with an eye on success, you’ll know the importance of keeping the customer happy. 

The question is, how do you do it? Gathering as much feedback as possible from your customers, and then making changes based on their criticisms and recommendations, can help to keep you in line with changing consumer behaviors. In most cases, customer demands aren’t unrealistic or over the top — it’s just that the business doesn’t know what they are. 

Keeping Pace With Marketing Shifts

Professional marketers have trouble keeping pace with everything happening in the digital marketing world. Businesses that don’t have a dedicated marketing team can feel like they’re continually swimming against the current. While marketing has always been complicated, it’s arguably never been more complex than it is today, when there are just so many opportunities to get a brand’s name in front of the audience. While there are some marketing tasks that you can handle yourself, in general, it’s best to outsource the tasks to professionals. This is especially true for technically challenging tasks; as marketing company FatJoe says, it's best to use outsourcing to hand over your video and design work to experts that know how to get results. This will help to free up your time so that you can work on other value-adding tasks. 

Moving Towards Sustainability

It’s no secret that the world needs to shift towards a more sustainable way of operating. Some of this responsibility lies with the consumer, but by and large, it’s businesses that need to adapt to the new reality. Currently, the pressure to operate in a way that’s earth-friendly is largely simply logical — aside from the moral obligation, studies have shown that customers are increasingly preferring to give their cash to companies that show concern for the environment. In the coming years, it’s likely that there’ll be a legal requirement for businesses to have a net-zero impact (or close to it). 

While moving to a greener way of operating can seem challenging, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s more help than ever available. With new solutions emerging all the time, there’s likely no aspect of your operations that can’t be given the green seal of approval. And while it might require some investment, it’s one that’ll position your business well to achieve success in the future.  

Final Thoughts

This is far from an exhaustive list of the challenges that businesses face in the current climate. There are also supply chain issues, as well as increased competition. But as we’ve seen, while it’s not ideal to face challenges, there are more than enough tools to overcome them.

(Devdiscourse's journalists were not involved in the production of this article. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)