Operating in a constrained resources environment

With employment hovering around 4% in Australia these days the brutal reality is that the people available for work quite frankly can't or won't. Many businesses, my employer included, are scrambling to find quality people to fill the vacant positions throughout the company.


This brings two interesting issues to the fore:

- you need to be efficient and effective in what you do

- you need smart tools and systems for people to work with


Why?


Efficiency and effectiveness enables your people to do more with less or the same. It allows people to process the 80% straight through activities with the least amount of perturbation and confusion. It frees time for the smart and skilled people to focus on the issues of importance, the 20% exceptions that really need the rigour and focus of the human touch.


Smart tools and systems encourage people to see the value that is placed in their own skills and experience. If you seduce new hires into the business and then present them with fractured and flawed processes that demand they spend an unreasonable amount of time and effort in administration they may well decide to look around again for somewhere that respects them more.


So what can we do as businesses to become better employers of choice then the next guy? Well my employer takes part in the Hewitt Best Employer initiative which measures and reports on the work force engagement across a wide range of focus areas - this is a great initiative and well respected within the business.


At an operational level over the last few years we have implemented a number of improved business management systems including time sheeting and CRM. We have also automated a wide range of internal finance and HR processes within FlowCentric that have radically improved the content gathering, verification and delegated approval activities and unbelievably reduced the time lag. These processes including adding and changing financial customer and supplier records, personal expense claims amongst others. This is an endless journey, there are always new processes to automate and improvements to make to the existing ones.


Interestingly the change management was not as challenging as we had thought it would be. The take up of these improvements and the employee survey feedback has been extremely positive. The web and email environment for the automated processes reduce to virtually zero the amount of face-to-face training required. The speed of process initiation and execution has been pretty much universally welcomed. Indeed now the level of expectation has risen to a point where what was "special" has become just "business as usual".


We are proud of the process improvement solutions we bring to market, we use them ourselves, they work well and deliver genuine and measurable benefits. Our people are more efficient in their jobs and respected in their workplace. We know we have to operate in a constrained resources environment for the foreseeable future and we continue to focus on improving.


Try it out for ourselves - we could deliver a measurable benefit in a key process in your business within 30 days - not must risk or cost in that.

Does your company listen to you?

It is a rare beast indeed that empowers people throughout an organisation to truly initiate changes to "business as usual" in the pursuit of efficiency and productivity. Many talk the talk but how many really walk the walk?

The impetus for significant change struggles to bubble up from within. It depends on senior management for the oxygen and nutrients necessary to survive. This is the reality of the business world we live in and good sales people cut to the chase in their qualification very quickly - am I dealing with a decision maker and is there a budget for this project - if the answer is not "yes" to both of these questions then they know there is a challenge to success lying ahead.

This pragmatism relates directly to the issue of process change and change management within an organisation. No matter how well intentioned and passionate a middle manager may be about their visions for efficiency gains and improvement - if there isn't a senior manager sponsor on board (and at least a little bit of budget) it is going to go nowhere. The passion and vigour will be beaten out of the provocateur and over time they will fade to beige.

So how do you get a senior manager sponsor? You need to ensure that you are focusing on what keeps them up at night - and remember, what keeps you awake at night may not be the same thing so you may need to extrapolate your tactical worry up to their strategic worry. You will most likely need to put a business case in place. You might need to build a return on investment model.

If these are new concepts to you then you probably need a coach or mentor to help you through the journey. Beware however of the coach dogmatically telling you what to actually change, only you have the intimate exposure to what the problem is, however a coach can provide great thought processes, strategies, comparisons and ideas to look for innovative ways of attacking things.