Processes
are essential to preparing your organization for growth - no large organizations would exist
without them, and there's no reason why your small organization shouldn't
convert all of its work into processes. Your
work should consist of processes where possible.
I've covered
the benefits of processes, albeit briefly, but why do businesses need
processes? This post is my answer to that question.
A quick
note: expect individual posts that provide specifics on how to use processes in
order to reap these benefits.
Processes
Eliminate Two Key HR Issues
The biggest
benefit of processes, in my mind, is that they can drive a stake through the
heart of two major HR problems:
- The Key Employee Problem
- The Specialized Knowledge
Problem (Reinventing the Wheel)
The Key
Employee Problem is a major
concern for small organizations. What
happens when Joe, a key employee in one area of your organization, departs
suddenly? Joe was the one person who knew exactly how to handle his responsibilities
and no one else in the organization knows exactly how he did it. How do you
possibly fill that void?
To answer
this question, I'm going to borrow a metaphor from Jim Collins' Built to Last:
Successful Habits of Visionary Companies:
Joe is a
time-teller. Once Joe is gone, no one else knows how to tell time, and this
leaves your organization vulnerable to the key employee problem. Rather than
have Joe tell time until the day he decides to leave, have him build a clock
instead. This is where processes come into play. Processes are one crucial part of building a
clock for your business-they explain how Joe did his job. If Joe builds
a clock, everyone will still be able to tell time if Joe leaves.
The
Specialized Knowledge Problem is a training/exodus issue similar to the key
employee problem. Two jobs with identical job descriptions in two different companies
might be vastly different due to the different markets, company culture and
millions of other variables-in essence, your current employees have acquired
all of the specialized knowledge needed to make your business work.
It can take
years, even for experienced professionals, to take hold of all the specialized,
organization-specific knowledge required to do the job well. Many companies
accidentally let specialized knowledge go to waste when employees leave and
they simply expect new hires to "pick it up" along the way. We call
this "reinventing the wheel"-businesses lose a lot of utility and
productivity from new hires because they have to rediscover all of the
knowledge that was lost when the predecessor departed.
Processes
can help alleviate this problem-each documented business process is one more
piece of knowledge that doesn't need to be reinvented whenever turnover occurs
in your organization.
Processes
Make Measurable Quality Possible
Here's a
quick theoretical for you: you have a team with two employees assigned to
identical tasks. At the end of each day, the outcomes of each employee's tasks
are completely different from the others; how do you measure the quality of
that team's performance?
If the two
outcomes differ by a wide margin, it's almost impossible to measure the quality
of your organization's results-it's only possible to measure quality of results
when the outcomes are predictably similar, and that's where processes shine.
Processes standardize routines and tasks.
When organizations have their employees conform to identical processes
for business, the outcomes of those routines become predictably similar-this establishes
a reasonable baseline by which organizations can reasonably begin to measure
quality.
Processes
Can Help Identify Operational Inefficiencies
The act of
capturing business processes itself has an additional benefit: they help you
identify inefficiencies in your operations. If you inspected every major
operation in your business and formalized those operations into processes, you'd
undoubtedly come across a number of inefficiencies. Correcting those inefficiencies can obviously
help to improve the level of output and quality of those procedures, with little
additional cost.
Over the
next few weeks, we're going to publish four more additional posts that cover
all of these individual benefits and how to reap them using business processes-so
make sure you subscribe to Working
Smarter for more updates.
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