How to Do it Better, Faster, Easier and for Less
Re-Engineering Processes and Procedures to Improve Efficiency
Apr 13, 2009
Making our lives more efficient just makes sense. Efficiency means people spend less time, effort and resources to produce a better outcome, whether at work or at home.
Sure there are certain things that should just stay as they are. However, many times workers continue doing the same thing over and over, getting the same result, when, in fact, there is a better, faster, easier and/or less expensive method of doing it.
Rethinking the Process
In one human resources department where the employees were responsible for handling the employment verification process, the original form was received, logged in, partially completed, duplicated and the copy was sent to the payroll department. The original form was held in the log-in file. Payroll would insert the current compensation information (not available in HR) from the payroll records and return the copy of the form to the human resources department.
The human resources staff would transfer the payroll information from the copy to the original they had been holding, sign the original, make a copy for the employee file and send it off to the original requestor. The copy with the financial information from payroll was shredded.
Needless to say this made what should be a simple process very complex. So the suggestion was made to outsource the entire employment verification process to payroll. Now payroll does all the work and then sends human resources a copy for the employee file.
The idea is that every process employees complete needs to have a purpose. Otherwise, it makes no sense to continue doing it. As employees do their jobs day in and day out they need to keep in mind if how they handle each step or if the overall task makes sense. Is there a better way?
Analyzing the Process
Going process by process, employees need to determine if what they are doing can be done in a more efficient manner. Like the proverbial elephant that cannot be eaten in one bite, processes are easier to analyze when they are broken down into smaller steps.
Mapping out each step in a process helps to create a flow chart of what and who is involved along the way. These steps can help to illustrate where there are complexities, bottlenecks, and wasted actions which may be able to be automated, eliminated or outsourced. Keep in mind, like the example above, outsourcing does not necessarily mean using an outside vendor. It just may mean that the process is incorrectly placed in the wrong department.
The idea is not to try to unload work to other groups, but to ensure that every action taken by an employee adds to the overall effectiveness of the group. As Deanna R. Willis, MD, MBA, suggests in her article Making Every Minute Count: Tools to Improve Office Efficiency, “Challenge each step of a process and consider whether it is valuable, capable, available, adequate and flexible.”
In the end it’s important to work smarter, not harder. Why reinvent the wheel? If there are tools and methods that can improve efficiency, quality as well as the bottom line, then it makes sense to figure out how to do it better, faster, easier and for less money.
