Businesses that have seen a huge boom over a short period likely have a major problem on their hands. Companies that scale quickly often need to hastily onboard new team members and improvise systems and processes before they’re given a chance to review them.
In the fast-paced world of modern business, the instinct is to press on and move forward with existing processes. But is this the right move?
Lack of efficiency is costing your business time and money and without taking the time to optimize process flow and make necessary adjustments, the problem will only worsen as your business grows.
Business Process Optimisation not only improves efficiency by removing bottlenecks and improving workflow, but it also has the potential to lead to greater employee satisfaction, reducing frustration and freeing up time for them to focus on role-specific tasks.
Simple Business Process Optimisation tips
Full Business Process Optimisation takes time and commitment. However here are four examples of how to identify issues and implement a new process that you can start working on today:
1. Listen to your employees
Your employees are a vital asset when it comes to determining how to streamline your internal systems and operations. They live your business day-to-day. Workflow problems and lack of efficiency in your organization are their daily frustration.
Coordinate with your human resources department to encourage your employees to give honest feedback in a way that they feel comfortable and safe. This is much more easily achieved if you’ve already invested in creating an empathetic, non-hierarchical and collaborative company culture.
Company review sites such as Glassdoor also give you an insight into what your employees (both former and current) think about your organization. The Symanto Insights Platform can scan all of your reviews to discover recurring topics. Use this information to discover where frustrations lie and work to improve them. This will not only help with Business Process Optimisation, but it will also improve employee satisfaction, and resultantly, efficiency.
2. Limit meetings
Does your business have meetingitis? Zoom fatigue has brought this issue into sharp focus and it’s sparked a number of memes and novelty mugs. “This meeting that could have been an email.”
At this point, it’s universally acknowledged that pointless meetings sap morale and generate discontentment among the workforce. Meetings interrupt people mid-flow and distract them from their task list.
In the interest of Business Process Optimisation, reserve meetings for when they’re truly needed and encourage the use of other communications systems (be it email or corporate messaging) that your employees can deal with in their own time.
When you do schedule in a meeting, create an agenda and stick to it. This will make it easier for your teams to align on tasks and targets and prepare for them accordingly.
3. Invest in development
A high employee turnover rate is extremely inefficient. Onboarding new employees and training them on their specific roles is costly both in terms of time and money, and it impacts the workflow of whole departments.
According to a 2019 report by Work Institute over 1 in 5 employees quit their jobs for career development. They simply don’t see any potential for growth in their existing company.
Employees who are offered training and other development opportunities are not only more efficient and more valuable to your company, but they also feel more valued. A 2019 report by Linkedin found that 94% of employees would stay longer at a company if it invested in their learning and development.
4. Automate repetitive tasks
Free up your employees’ time and energy by automating recurring tasks. According to a study by McKinsey Global Institute workers spend just 39% of the average workweek on role-specific tasks. The rest of the time is split between searching and gathering information, communicating and collaborating with colleagues, and reading and responding to emails.
Research and implement any tools and technologies that can help increase the amount of time your employees spend getting on with the tasks they’re hired to do.
Email automation is one such example. Create templates for your employees to send out when an event is triggered. For example, you can create a series of email templates to help onboard new clients.
As for searching and gathering information, the Symanto Insights Platform has been designed to optimise the time spent gathering data to help with research for product development and marketing & business strategy. Symanto automatically processes qualitative data online into valuable insights, a process that would take weeks to conduct manually.
With every change implemented to optimise business processes, there are cumulative benefits. Among them are improved efficiency, boosted morale, and increased focus across your organization.
We hope that after reading these actionable tips you feel empowered to start making positive changes to your organization today. Bear in mind that the above list is by no means exhaustive. Business Process Optimisation is ongoing and what’s right for your business now may change in a year or less.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Symanto can optimize your business processes, get in touch.
