It can be tempting to ignore the small niggles and think that the time spent fixing them just isn’t worth it. But we all know that even a grain of sand in your shoe causes problems on a long walk. And it is the same with small things in an office or out of date processes in a growing company.

For me, one of the best tools I have implemented is called Timetastic – a relatively basic holiday booking tool. I was doing some freelance work (for a company that I now work for) and was asked if I could improve how holidays were booked and recorded. This was a typical situation where as a small company, taking holidays is done in an informal basis – you let people knew when you were taking your holiday and were trusted to take your allowance. But as the company grew, more and more spreadsheets and emails came into play – getting permission from your manager, recording your holiday and those of your direct reports, and an overall eye being kept on things by finance.  

Timetastic (who don’t endorse me or this post in any way) has answered (most) of our prayers when it comes to booking in holiday. It has an easy interface and a good app and setting all the rules is very simple. There are still somethings that it isn’t great at doing (eg calculating pro-rata holiday for part time staff who start mid year) but it is continuously improving. It currently costs 50p per person a month and for the amount of time saved by each staff member it is definitely worth it.

There will always be times when resource should be focussed on sorting the big issues but don’t ignore that grain of sand – sometimes removing that pain point has a much bigger impact. What tools have you implemented/ seen implemented that have had a huge impact in the day to day happiness at your office?